Balts

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For more information on Germans inhabiting the shores of the Baltic Sea see Baltic Germans

The Balts or Baltic peoples (Latvian: balti, Lithuanian: baltai), defined as speakers of one of the Baltic languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family, are descended from a group of Indo-European tribes who settled the area between lower Vistula and upper Dvina and Dneper. Because of geographical isolation, the Baltic languages retain a number of conservative or archaic features. Among the Baltic peoples are modern Lithuanians and Latvians (including Latgalians) as well as the Prussians, Yotvingians and Curonians, whose languages were extinct in the Middle Ages.

Contents 1 History 2 Baltic peoples and tribes 3 External links 4 References

[edit] History

The prehistoric cradle of the Baltic peoples according to archeogenetic research and archaeological studies was the area near the Baltic sea and central Europe at the end of ice age and beginning of the Mesolithic period. They spread in the area from the Baltic sea in the west to the Volga in the east. The Slavic cradle was in the Danubian - Krakowian region close to the Baltic. The Slavs entered the Dnepr region in the VI century AD. after the Avar invasion of Europe, conquering and assimilating most of the Eastern Balts. According to some older theories, the formative region of the Balts was located until the end of the second millenium BC near the upper and middle Dnepr river in modern Ukraine, which is thought to have been settled by a hypothetical Balto-Slavic community; that is, a population ancestral to the modern Balts and Slavs. In the early 1st millennium BC several groups of people migrated from the area to the shores of the Baltic Sea, where they settled between the rivers Pasłęka and Neman. It is not likely that this migration gave birth to the Baltic tribes.

Several scholars, such as Buga, Vasmer, Toporov and Trubachov, in conducting etymological studies of eastern European river names, were able to identify in certain regions names of specifically Baltic provenance, which most likely indicate where the Balts lived in prehistoric times. This information is summarized and synthesized by Gimbutas in The Balts (1963) to obtain a likely proto-Baltic homeland. Its borders are approximately: from a line on the Pomeranian coast eastward to include or nearly include the present-day sites of Warsaw, Kiev, and Kursk, northward through Moscow to the River Berzha, westward in an irregular line to the coast of the Gulf of Riga, north of Riga. This homeland includes all historical Balts and every location where Balts have been said or implied to have been at different periods of time. The Baltic occupation of Western Russia, for instance, may be dated to the 4th century AD.

In the first centuries of the 1st millennium AD, the Baltic tribes settled the area between the Vistula and the Daugava. Their culture is easily recognizable and most probably they were the ancestors of the tribes of Western Balts (Prussians, Yotvingians and Galindians), as well as Eastern Balts (Lithuanians, Semigallians, Curonians and Latgalians/Latvians), notable during the Middle Ages. In 98 AD Tacitus described one of the tribes leaving near the Baltic Sea (Mare Svebicum) as Aestiorum gentes, or amber gatherers. It is believed that these peoples were inhabitants of the Sambian peninsula, although no other contemporary sources exist.

The proto-Baltic culture that remained in the Dnieper area, however, bore a significant resemblance to its Baltic counterpart, and was also similar to the culture of other peoples inhabitating the forests of Eastern Europe, which became almost completely Slavicised between the 7th and the 10th centuries AD.

In the 12th and the 13th centuries, internal struggles, as well as the invasions of Ruthenians and Poles and later the expansion of the Teutonic Order resulted in almost complete annihilation of the Galindians, Curonians and Yotvingians. The last of the Prussians became Germanized some time in the 16th century, after the Reformation in Prussia. The cultures of the Lithuanians and Latgalians/Latvians survived and became the ancestors of the populations of the modern countries of Latvia and Lithuania.

In addition, and to a great extent in contradiction to research on the basis of linguistic analysis, genetics-related data has started to emerge in recent years. According to Finnish research (Laitinen et al, 2001) and Richard Villems (2001, Estonia) who have carried out principal component analysis of some major genetic lines, the closest genetic relatives of modern Balts (Lithuanians and Latvians) appear to be modern Estonians and Mari people (autonomous republic of Mari-El in Russia) while Russians and Poles have considerably less genetic similarity. This has led some scientists to believe that the people known today as Balts were initially to a great extent of Finno-Ugric origin (or in turn, modern day Finns were initially of east Baltic origin) - thus, the languages spoken today by these groups would have become established through language replacement.

[edit] Baltic peoples and tribes

• Lithuanians
• Latvians (Letts)
• Latgalians
• Curonians (Kursenieki)
• Prussians
• Samogitians
• Semigallians (Zemigalians)
• Yotvingians
• Selonians
• Curonians (Kursi)
• Nadruvians
• Skalvians
• Eastern Galindians
• Dniepr (Eastern) Balts
• Pomeranian Balts
• Baltic Germans

[edit] External links

• Marija Gimbutas' "The Balts" e-book
• Pages and Forums on the Lithuanian History
• Who were the Balts?
• Indo-Europeans in the Eastern Baltic in the view of an archaelogist? An article by Ilze Loze.
• "The world outlook of the ancient Balts" The English summary of book by Norbertas Vėlius.
• "We, the Balts" The article by Algirdas Sabaliauskas.
• "The Cosmology of ancient Balts" The article by Vytautas Straižys and Libertas Klimka.

[edit] References

• (Polish) Bałtowie. Encyklopedia Internetowa PWN. Retrieved on May 25, 2005.
• (Polish) Antoniewicz, Jerzy, Aleksander Gieysztor (1979). Bałtowie zachodni w V w. p. n. e. - V w. n. e. : terytorium, podstawy gospodarcze i społeczne plemion prusko-jaćwieskich i letto-litewskich. Olsztyn-Białystok: Pojezierze. ISBN 83-7002-001-1.
• (Polish) Kosman, Marceli (1981). Zmierzch Perkuna czyli ostatni poganie nad Bałtykiem. Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza.
• Čepiene, Irena (2000). Historia litewskiej kultury etnicznej. Kaunas, "Šviesa". ISBN 5-430-02902-5.
• (Polish) Okulicz-Kozaryn, Łucja (1983). Życie codzienne Prusów i Jaćwięgów w wiekach średnich. Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy.
• "Lithuanians". 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica (1). (1911).
• (Polish) "Bałtowie". Wielka Encyklopedia PWN (1). (2001).