[Allie George] Assignment #2: A Revelation!

I’ll admit it, I was pretty skeptical at first. Having taken a class with Professor Crawford before, I have always felt to be on a much less cerebral level than him, constantly struggling to wrap my little engineering mind around challenging abstract concepts. When I learned that he had latched on to the concept of geology in the region, I felt that all hope was lost, and I was just destined to be the obtuse one of the group. (Sorry professors, I mean this in the most respectful way possible!) I plopped down in the library dreading having to find characteristic Balkan soil types and sift through mounds of dry articles in an effort to grasp at some sort of understanding. Fortunately, I was rescued by the Encyclopedia Britannica and Google.

I love words. New words, long words, spelling words, root words… I particularly enjoy defining things. It makes me feel safe, like I know what’s going on. It puts abstract concepts, visions, and images into something black and white, something that I can grasp. Naturally, one of the first things that popped out from the webpage before me were a couple of definitions:

1. Balkan – A Turkish word meaning “mountain”, and the peninsula dominated by this type of landform located in Southeast Europe, which is comprised of a long list of shifting and changing countries borders
2. Balkanization – The fragmentation of ethnic groups; derives in part from the compartmentalization brought about by this mountainous relief

(Both definitions from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/50325/Balkans)

Bingo. I suppose mountains count as a surface. I guess they are loosely tied to geology. Anyways, I ditched my word-association games (mountains…steep/craggy/jagged…a difficult lifestyle?) and began to consider this novel concept.

                Given this new guiding perspective, everything seemed to make so much more sense. As we had learned from Chaffee and Angela, the geographic region of the Balkans is not really large enough for the people to have drastically different features. It is likely that most of the Balkans people share a common ancestor which then branched out and began to adapt to the surrounding environments. I thought this picture (the Luschaneng Chromatic Scale) provided a really unique and fascinating glimpse into this idea. 

The Luschaneng Chromatic Scale, from http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/2967/luschaneng.jpg

Notice how some of the people truly look like they belong to a certain country (the Italian from Sicily, for example). However, the Hungarians, Romanians, Serbians, and Slovaks look remarkably similar in the fact that they are so varied.

                The factors that do allow these people to be distinguished which I’ve come across between our discussions and my research are 1) their names, and 2) their religions, both of which are essentially developed cultural characteristics. I started by considering religions: Muslim Bosnia, Greek Orthodox Serbia, and Catholic Croatia (predominantly). It made sense, with Catholic Italy to the northwest, Muslim portions of Turkey to the south, and Christian/Orthodox Ukraine to the north/northeast, as well as the obvious Orthodox Greek influences from Greece. It seemed like the religions had “infiltrated” in to the region, affecting each little group as it reached it, and being blocked at various points by mountain ranges.

                However, my mental timeline was apparently off, because I then found a theorized migration map of the area which shows that the people started in the Balkans, and then migrated outward to these other countries. 

Early Human Migration Patterns, from http://www.uat.edu.al/site/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=335%3Abalkan-route-peshkopia-voss&catid=58%3Alajme&Itemid=357&lang=en

Granted, this was just an ethnic diaspora, and did not have any religious ties, but it was still a curious thought. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Exactly how far-reaching of an impact did these mountains have? If I had more (or any) of an anthropological or archaeological background besides a brief obsession with artifacts in the 4^th grade, it would be enthralling to trace out these human migration or religious migration routes from the area, and then follow the development of the distinct cultures from there. I think at some point, the conflicts just come down to ignorance, and not taking the time to understand the people who are “different” from you.

                So I am left today with a fresh (and much clearer) perspective of what sort of thing we will be “ASKing”. The new direction and clarification is much appreciated, professors, and I think could offer a much more encompassing perspective on the trip. Through combining an expansion of my selected question (How have the different groups (even Mongols and Ottoman Empire) shaped identities and contributed to ethnic tensions?) and our research task of finding out more about “deep history and/or geology”, I think I’ve combined the two into a new question which I would definitely be interested in moving forward with: How has the geology of the Balkans as a whole created different group identities (even as far back as to the Mongols and the Ottoman Empire), and how did these go on to contribute to ethnic tensions? I suppose it’s at least a start!