Editing Bulgars (section)

== Ethnicity ==
[[File:A jug with golden medallions.jpg|thumb|right|The jug golden medallion, from the [[Treasure of Nagyszentmiklós]], depicts a warrior with his captive. Experts cannot agree if this warrior represents a [[Khazars|Khazar]], [[Pannonian Avars|Pannonian Avar]], or Bulgar.]]

Due to the lack of definitive evidence, modern scholarship uses an [[Ethnogenesis#Historical scholarship|ethnogenesis]] approach in explaining the Bulgars origin. More recent theories view the nomadic confederacies, such as the Bulgars, as the formation of several different cultural, political and linguistic entities that could dissolve as quickly as they formed, entailing a process of ethnogenesis.

According to Walter Pohl, the existential fate of the tribes and their confederations depended on their ability to adapt to an environment going through rapid changes, and to give this adaptation a credible meaning rooted in tradition and ritual. Slavs and Bulgars succeeded because their form of organization proved as stable and as flexible as necessary, while the [[Pannonian Avars]] failed in the end because their model could not respond to new conditions. Pohl wrote that members of society's lower strata did not feel themselves to be part of any large-scale ethnic group; the only distinct classes were within the armies and the ruling elite.<ref name="Pohl">{{citation |last=Pohl |first=Walter |author-link=Walter Pohl |date=1998 |chapter=Conceptions of Ethnicity in Early Medieval Studies |title=Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and Readings |chapter-url=http://www.kroraina.com/bulgar/pohl_etnicity.html |editor1=Lester K. Little |editor2=Barbara H. Rosenwein |publisher=Blackwell Publishers |pages=13–24}}</ref>

Recent studies consider ethnonyms closely related with warrior elites who ruled over a variety of heterogeneous groups.{{sfn|Golden|2011|p=55}} The groups adopted new ideology and name as political designation, while the elites claimed right to rule and royal descent through origin myths.{{sfn|Golden|2011|p=55}}

When the Turkic tribes began to enter into the Pontic–Caspian steppe in the Post-Hunnic era, or as early as the 2nd century AD,{{sfn|Golden|1992|p=392}} their confederations incorporated an array of ethnic groups of newly joined Turkic, Caucasian, Iranian, and Finno-Ugric peoples.{{sfn|Golden|1992|pp=392–398}} During their Western Eurasian migrations to the Balkans, they also came into contact with  Armenian, Semitic, Slavic, Thracian and Anatolian Greek among other populations.{{sfn|Golden|1992|p=383}}

From the 6th to 8th centuries, distinctive Bulgar monuments of the Sivashovka type were built upon ruins of the late [[Sarmatians|Sarmatian]] culture of the 2nd to 4th centuries AD,<ref name="Graves">{{cite book |author=D. Dimitrov |date=1987 |chapter=Pit graves, artificial skull deformation, Sarmatians, Northern Bactria |title=Prabylgarite po severnoto i zapadnoto Chernomorie |chapter-url=http://www.kroraina.com/p_bulgar/p_bulg2a.htm |place=Varna}}</ref> and the 6th century [[Penkovka culture]] of the [[Antes people|Antes]] and Slavs.  Early medieval [[Saltovo-Mayaki]] (an [[Alans|Alanic]]-based culture) settlements in the [[Crimea]] since the 8th century were destroyed by the Pechengs during the 10th century.<ref name="Rashev"/>{{sfn|Golden|1992|p=261}}<ref name="Great"/><ref name="Saltovo"/><ref>{{cite book |author=D. Dimitrov |date=1987 |chapter=The Proto-Bulgarians in the Crimea in the VIII–IX cc. |title=Prabylgarite po severnoto i zapadnoto Chernomorie |chapter-url=http://www.kroraina.com/p_bulgar/p_bulg9.html |place=Varna}}</ref>

Although the older Iranian tribes were enveloped by the widespread Turkic migration into the Pontic–Caspian steppe, the following centuries saw a complete disappearance of both the Iranic and Turkic languages, indicating dominance of the Slavic language among the common people.<ref name="Rashev"/>