Gânduri despre transhumanță. Amprenta fenomenului asupra istoriei și a identității românești
Reflections on Transhumance: The Imprint of this Phenomenon on Romanian History and Identity

Summary/Abstract: Transhumance, a widespread form of pastoral life found on every continent, is especially characteristic of the traditional way of life of the Romanian people. This characteristic was decisively shaped by the arc of the Carpathian Mountains, situated at the heart of the territory inhabited by Romanians. Geospatially, the Carpathians served as a promontory from which local shepherds—otherwise deeply rooted in their native land (Daci inhaerent montibus, as Annaeus Florus observed)—nevertheless dared, prompted by economic necessity, to set out with their flocks in search of rich pastures in every direction. Clear demographic, linguistic, toponymic, and civilizational evidence has indeed documented the presence of these “navigators of the land,” as Constantin Noica called them, in the territories of present-day Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, the Balkans, the Bosphorus region, the Caucasus, and the Russian steppes. Practiced across such vast geographical horizons, transhumance functioned as a means of crystallizing an ethno-national consciousness independent of any political dimension. Vrancea, where flocks from Moldavia, Transylvania, and Wallachia converged before setting out on their transhumant routes, served as a sui generis laboratory for this experience. As for the Romanian communities dispersed across foreign territories along the routes of transhumance, taken together from an ethnic perspective, they validate in a distinctive manner the concept of “non-territorial autonomy”, a notion that has gained increasing attention in contemporary socio-cultural and anthropological scholarship.

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