[Menydh]

Originally Posted by Agrippa

You can't however conclude from parts of the upper and warrior class to the genetic make up of the whole population nor from ethnolinguistic characteristics to longer lasting racial-genetic characteristics.

Fortunately you were wise enough to say "parts of". Otherwise you would have been assuming that the Hispano-Roman senatorial aristocracy dissappeared with the Visigoths, even when this is not supported by the sources and the researches (otherwise there would have been no need for a sortes gothica and a tertia romana). The Visigoths did not replace the true aristocracy. They usurped the bureaucracy.

However, you are wrong to assume the Visigoths (and a number of Ostrogoths, who arrived during the Regency of Theodoric) to have been just a warrior class. The bulk of the Visigoths were neither warriors nor chiefs, but herders. And, by the way, they were initially settled in some of the poorest lands in Iberia, under the terms of Roman hospitalitas (not that it should have mattered much, since the only known addition to agriculture that they brought with them were artichokes! Good as they are).

Your other mistakes are:

If the Germanics in Iberia would have replaced the locals, or the same for the Franks in Gallia, why should those people speak today a Romance language?

I would appreciate it if you (and others) referred to the "Goths" or "Gothics" when speaking of Hispania, Iberia or Spain. The Goths were much a people of their own, and their allegiance to other Germanic nations was nil.

By the time they arrived in Hispaniae, they were already in an advanced state of romanization (i.e. advanced for their level). It is very likely that many spoke Latin (even if in a rude form), especially among the chief classes.

As a side note, the Gothic influence in Southern Gallia (Narbonensis and Aquitania) is more important than any Frankish.

Or why does the racial and genetic characteristics of your assumed source populations and the Iberians differ as much?

You too are making a little too much of an assumption here, about supposed racial and genetic characteristics, for a people who had been chiefly nomadic throughout all of their known history.

To assume that the chiefly sedentary ancient Western Germanics were a homogenous people based on one quote of Tacitus is fine for a surface analysis, even when that leaves out of the picture the more ancient "genetic migrations" (notice the male DNA diversity within modern Germanic countries, and also the male DNA diversity among them).

To assume that this should translate the same to the chiefly nomadic ancient Eastern Germanics, is a grave mistake.

A Roman mosaic representation of a presumed Gothic conquered king.

This all doesnt make sense at all. There was a Germanic impact, far greater in Britain than in France and far greater in France than in Spain, but nobody could seriously speak of a replacement especially not in the last case.

True.

But do tell me about the impact (and replacement) in Bavaria and Austria.