This is a list of four ancient peoples and their tribes that were possibly related and formed an extinct Indo-European branch of peoples and languages in the eastern Balcans, low Danube basin. These peoples dwelt from west of the Tyras (Dniester) river and east of the Carpathian Mountains in the north, to the north coast of the Aegean Sea in the south, from the west coast of the Pontus Euxinus (Black Sea) in the east, to roughly the Angrus (modern South Morava) river basin, Tisia (modern Tisza) and Danubius (modern Danube) rivers in the west. This list is based in the possible ethnolinguist affiliation of these peoples - Geto-Dacians, Moesians, Thracians and Paeonians (including possibly or partly Thracian or Dacian tribes) and not only on a geographical base (that includes other peoples that were not Dacians or Thracians like the Celts that lived in Dacia or in Thrace).
Certain tribes and subdivisions of tribes were named differently by ancient writers but modern research points out that these were in fact the same tribe.[16] The name Thracians itself seems to be a Greek exonym and we have no way of knowing what the Thracians called themselves.[17] Also certain tribes mentioned by Homer are not indeed historical.
Mixed tribes of Thracians and Phrygians, however Phrygians seem to have been a people ethnolinguistically closer to the Hellenic peoples, Greeks and ancient Macedonians, and not to the Thracians.
There are different views and still no agreement among scholars about the Paeonians' ethnic and linguistic kinship. Some such as Wilhelm Tomaschek and Paul Kretschmer claim that the language spoken by the Paeonians belonged to the Illyrian family, while Dimitar Dechev claims affinities with Thracian. Irwin L. Merker considers that the language spoken by the Paeonians was closely related to Greek (and ancient Macedonian if it was a distinct language from ancient Greek), a Hellenic language with "a great deal of Illyrian and Thracian influence as a result of this proximity".[53]
Some scholars as Strabo believe that the Phrygians are Thracian tribe.[61]
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