The Pannonian Basin, or Carpathian Basin, is a large, mainly lowland area in southeastern Central Europe, briefly described as a sedimentary basin. It was the core territory of the historical Kingdom of Hungary.
Under the geopolitically changed conditions created by World War I and the ensuing Treaty of Trianon, the geomorphological term Pannonian Plain was also used for roughly the same region, referring to the lowlands in the area occupied by the Pannonian Sea during the Pliocene. However, Hungarian geographers consider the term "Pannonian Plain" not only unhistorical but also topographically highly erroneous. Regarding the name as such, they are arguing in terms of ancient history, namely that the northern and eastern boundary line of the namesake Roman province of Pannonia was formed by the River Danube.Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia, Book III, 146–147.Strabo, Geographica, Book VII, fragments 1–4.Ptolemy, Geographia, Book II, 14.Tacitus, Annales II.46; Historiae III.5. The Roman province Pannonia was bounded on the north and east by the Danube river, thus the Great Hungarian Plain was not part of that province.Fitz, Jenő. The Great Plain in the Roman Period. In: Visy, Zsolt (ed.), Hungary in Roman Times. Pécs: University Press, 2003, pp. 45–52. Fitz explains that the Roman frontier along the Danube left the Great Hungarian Plain outside provincial Pannonia.Visy, Zsolt. A Római Limes Magyarországon (The Roman Limes in Hungary). Budapest: Tertia, 2003, pp. 18–25. Visy notes that Pannonia’s territory extended only to the Danube, excluding the Great Plain east of the river.Radnóti, Aladár. Pannonia a római korban. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1960, pp. 12–15. Radnóti’s provincial maps clearly show that the Alföld lay beyond the Pannonian provincial borders.
Situated at the westernmost end of the Eurasian Steppe, the Carpathian Basin historically served as a settlement zone for various peoples migrating westward across the Steppe, including the Huns, Avars and Magyars, and later for groups such as the Pechenegs and Cumans.
Boundaries
The plain or basin and its area are defined differently by different schools of thought, sometimes motivated by national agendas.
Wider definition According to one definition, it forms a topographically discrete unit set in the European landscape, surrounded by geographic boundaries: the Carpathian Mountains to the north and east, the Dinaric Alps to the south and southwest, and the Alps to the west. The Transdanubian Mountains diagonally bisect it, separating the larger Great Hungarian Plain with the Eastern Slovak Lowland, from the Little Hungarian Plain to the northwest. The plain is also associated with the Pannonian Steppe.
In terms of modern state boundaries, this definition of the Pannonian Basin centres it on the territory of Hungary, which lies entirely within the basin, but it also covers parts of southern Slovakia, southeast Poland, western-southwest Ukraine, parts of western Romania, depends on one's approach), northern Serbia, northeast Croatia, northeast Slovenia, and eastern Austria.
Narrower definition Others exclude from this term the outlaying areas, such as the Transylvanian Plain.
Terminology
The term Pannonian Plain refers to the lowland parts of the Pannonian Basin as well as those of some adjoining regions like Lower Austria, Moravia, and Silesia (Czech Republic and Poland). The lands adjoining the plain proper are sometimes also called peri-Pannonian.
In English language, the terms "Pannonian Basin" and "Carpathian Basin" may sometimes be used synonymously, although the latter holds an irredentist Hungarian connotation.
The name "Pannonian" is taken from that of Pannonia, a province of the Roman Empire. Pannonia was bounded on the north and east by the Danube river. The historical province overlapped but was not coterminous with the geographical plain or basin, as only the western part of the territory (known as Transdanubia) of modern Hungary formed part of the ancient Pannonia, while the Great Hungarian Plain was not part of it:
The term Carpathian Basin is used in Hungarian literature, while the West Slavic languages (Czech, Polish and Slovak), the Serbo-Croatian, German and Romanian languages use Pannonian Basin (in Hungarian the basin is known as Kárpát-medence; in Czech, Panonská pánev; in Polish, Panoński Basen; in Slovak, Panónska panva; in Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian, Panonski bazen/Панонски базен; in German, Karpatenbecken/Pannonische Tiefebene; and in Romanian, Câmpia Panonică or Bazinul Panonic). The East Slavic languages, namely Ukrainian, use the terms Tysa-Danube Lowland or Middanubian Lowland ()
Pannonian Basin vs Carpathian Basin Hungarian literature often gives preference to the term Carpathian Basin, not least due to the irredentist concept of the historical Kingdom of Hungary being the organic result of a landscape-determined ethnogenesis in a region defined by its natural, mountainous boundaries, the corollary being that the current national borders are not natural and defy historical and economic logic.
Hungarian arguments in favour of "Carpathian Basin" The territory of present-day Hungary only overlaps with the ancient Roman province of Pannonia in Transdanubia (a traditional Hungarian term for the area bordered by the Danube River to the north and east, the Drava and Mura rivers to the south, and the foothills of the Alps toward Austria to the west); however the Great Hungarian Plain was not part of Pannonia province. Transdanubia comprises less than 29% of modern Hungary, therefore Hungarian geographers avoid the terms "Pannonian Basin", and especially the "Pannonian Plain", due to them being considered not only unhistorical but also topographically erroneous. Because the term "Pannonian" has historically not applied to 80% of the basin's territory, Hungarian geographers and historians use what they consider to be the more accurate term "Carpathian Basin". The topographical problem with the Pannonian "Plain" term is that with the exception of the Little Hungarian Plain (which is only around 15% of the territory of ancient Pannonian Transdanubia), hills and mountains dominate the landscape, so real plains are very rare on that territory. The largest plain of the Roman Pannonia province is located in Slavonia in Croatia and Voivodine in modern Serbia.
Roman province of Pannonia
Pannonia Inferior covered much of the western half of the basin, being bordered by the Danube to the east. Pannonia Superior included the western fringe of the basin as well as part of the Eastern Alps, as far as Virunum. The southern fringe of the basin was in Dalmatia and Moesia. The eastern half of the basin was not conquered by the Romans and was considered part of Sarmatia, inhabited by the Iazyges. Likewise, the parts north of the Danube (now in western Slovakia) were not in the empire; they were considered part of Germania, inhabited by the Quadi.
Etymology
Pannonia Julius Pokorny (1887-1970) derived the name Pannonia from Illyrian, from the Proto-Indo-European root *pen-, "swamp, water, wet" (cf. English fen, "marsh"; Hindi pani, "water").J. Pokorny, Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, No. 1481
Carpathians The name "Carpates" is highly associated with the old Dacian tribes called "Carpes" or "Carpi" who lived in a large area from the east, northeast of the Black Sea to the Transylvanian Plain in present day Romania and Moldova. The name Carpates may ultimately be from the Proto Indo-European root *sker-/*ker-, which meant mountain, rock, or rugged (cf. Germanic root *skerp-, Old Norse "harrow", Gothic skarpo, Middle Low German scharf "potsherd", and Modern High German Scherbe "shard", Old English and English sharp, Lithuanian kar~pas "cut, hack, notch", Latvian cìrpt "to shear, clip").Room, Adrian. Placenames of the World. London: MacFarland and Co., Inc., 1997.
The archaic Polish word karpa meant 'rugged irregularities, underwater obstacles/rocks, rugged roots, or trunks'. The more common word skarpa means a sharp cliff or other vertical terrain. The name may instead come from Indo-European * 'to turn', akin to Old English 'to turn, change' (English warp) and Greek 'wrist', perhaps referring to the way the mountain range bends or veers in an L-shape.
Geology
The Pannonian Basin has its geological origins in the shallow Pannonian Sea, which reached its greatest extent during the Pliocene, when three to four kilometres of sediments were deposited.
Geography Eco- and bioregion
Both the plain and the basin overlap significantly with the Pannonian mixed forests ecoregion.
The plain is also associated with Pannonian Steppe.
Rivers, boundaries, subdivisions
The plain or basin forms a topographically discrete unit set in the European landscape, surrounded by imposing geographic boundaries—the Carpathian Mountains to north and east, the Dinaric Alps to south and southwest and the Alps to west. It is diagonally bisected by the Transdanubian Mountains, separating the larger Great Hungarian Plain (including the Eastern Slovak Lowland) from the Little Hungarian Plain.
The Danube and Tisza rivers divide the basin roughly in half. It extends roughly between Vienna in the northwest, Košice in the northeast, Zagreb in the southwest, Novi Sad in the south and Satu Mare in the east. The Danube enters the basin from its northwest through a valley that splits the Alps and the Bohemian Forest. It runs through the center of the basin exiting it at its southeast margin, where the South Carpathians transition to the Dinaric Alps and Balkan Mountains. The Tisza enters the basin from the northeast, flowing down from the Eastern Carpathians, continuing southwest and south, until it joins the Danube in the southern area of the basin. Another important river of the region is the Sava, which flows along the eastern foothills of the Dinaric Alps and together with the Danube forms a conditional northern limit of the Balkan Peninsula. It also flows into the Danube in the southern part of the Pannonian Basin. Other major rivers include Drava, Mureș, Great Morava, Drina. Lake Balaton is situated in the western part of Pannonia.
Climate and natural resources
Although rain is not plentiful, the plain is a major agricultural area. It is sometimes said that these fields of rich loamy loess soil could feed the whole of Europe. However, there has been an increase in extreme precipitation events that cause soil erosion in recent years. Knowledge of areas affected by severe soil erosion can lead to the implementation of effective measures to reduce it.
For the scarcity of natural resources encountered by the early settlers, see also Prehistory.
Geomorphology The Pannonian Basin is a geomorphological subsystem of the Alps-Himalaya system, specifically a sediment-filled back-arc basin which spread apart during the Miocene.
The Pannonian plain is divided into two parts along the Transdanubian Mountains (Hungarian: Dunántúli-középhegység). The northwestern part is called Western Pannonian plain (or province) and the southeastern part Eastern Pannonian plain (or province). They comprise the following sections:
Western Pannonian Plain (province): Vienna Basin Little Hungarian Plain Eastern Pannonian Plain (province): Great Hungarian Plain Pannonian Island Mountains () Transdanubian Mountains (Hungarian: Dunántúli-középhegység) Drava–Mura lowlands
Note: The Transylvanian Plateau and the Lučenec-Košice Depression (both parts of the Carpathians) and some other lowlands are sometimes also considered part of the Pannonian Plain in non-geomorphological or older divisions.
Regions Relatively large or distinctive areas of the plain that do not necessarily correspond to national borders include:
Bačka/Bácska (Serbia, Hungary) Šajkaška (Serbia) Telečka (Serbia) Gornji Breg (Serbia) Banat (Romania, Serbia, Hungary) Pančevački Rit (Serbia) Veliki Rit (Serbia) Gornje Livade (Serbia)