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Balts
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The Balts or Baltic peoples (; ; Latgalian: bolti, lit. "white"), 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 Daugava and Dnieper rivers on the southeast shore of the Baltic Sea.
The number of lakes and swamps in this area isolated the Balts, and as a result of this isolation the Baltic languages retain a number of conservative or archaic features. Among the Baltic peoples are modern Lithuanians, Latvians and Latgalians -- all Eastern Balts -- as well as the Prussians, Yotvingians and Galindians, whose languages and cultures are now extinct.
The term Balts was created by German linguist Georg Nesselmann in 1845 to describe similar ethnic groups that live near Baltic Sea.
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The Balts or Baltic peoples (; ; Latgalian: bolti, lit. "white"), 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 Daugava and Dnieper rivers on the southeast shore of the Baltic Sea.
The number of lakes and swamps in this area isolated the Balts, and as a result of this isolation the Baltic languages retain a number of conservative or archaic features. Among the Baltic peoples are modern Lithuanians, Latvians and Latgalians -- all Eastern Balts -- as well as the Prussians, Yotvingians and Galindians, whose languages and cultures are now extinct.
The term Balts was created by German linguist Georg Nesselmann in 1845 to describe similar ethnic groups that live near Baltic Sea. The term is sometimes confused with "Baltic", which however refers primarily to the Baltic states, including Estonians and Livonians who are not Balts.
Until the early 20th century the term Balts commonly referred to Baltic Germans.
HistoryPrehistoryThe prehistoric cradle of the Baltic peoples according to archaeogenetic research and archaeological studies was the area near the Baltic sea and central Europe at the end of the Ice Age and beginning of the Mesolithic period. Around 4,000-3,000 B.C. the area of Eastern Baltic experience influx of Finno-Ugrian peoples and their cultures, Finno-Ugrian cultures. They inhabited area stretching from northern Finland to Central parts of modern-day Lithuania. Around the same time, 3,500-2,500 B.C., there was another massive migration of peoples from Kurgan culture. They came from the South-East and spread all across Eastern and Central Europe, reaching even southern Finland. It is widely and universally accepted that Kurgan culture peoples were Indo-European ancestors of many Europeans, including Balts. It is widely accepted that those Indo-European newcomers were quite numerous and in Eastern Baltic assimilated both finno-ugric peoples and earlier indigenous cultures. Recent comparative DNA studies seem to confirm the theory of assimilation between Indo-Europeans and finno-ugrians during that period. Over time the new people formed Balts and they spread in the area from the Baltic sea in the west to the Volga in the east. The Balts or Baltic peoples, 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 Daugava and Dnieper rivers on the southeast shore of the Baltic Sea. Because the thousands of lakes and swamps in this area contributed to the Balts' geographical isolation, the Baltic languages retain a number of conservative or archaic features.
Some of the major authorities on Balts, 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.
In 98 AD Tacitus described one of the tribes living 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.
This homeland includes all historical Balts and every location where Balts have been said or implied to have been at different periods of time. Over time the huge area of Baltic inhabitation shrank, due to assimilations with other groups and invasions. It is interesting to point out that according to one of the theories, which has gained considerable traction over the years, one of the western Baltic tribes, Galindians, Baltic occupation of Western Russia, Goliad migrated to the Eastern end of Baltic realm around the 4th century AD and settled around modern day Moscow, Russia. Finally, according to Slavic chronics of the time they were waring with Slavs, and perhaps, were defeated and assimilated some time in 11-13 centuries.
Balts differentiated into Western and Eastern Balts in late centuries BC. Eastern Baltic was inhabited by ancestors of Western Balts - Old Prussians, Sudovians/Jotvingians, Scalvians, Nadruvians, and Curonians. Eastern Balts, on the other hand were living in modern day Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. Subsequent Germanic, Gothic domination of first half of the first millennium AD in the Northern and Eastern Europe, as well as later Slavic expansion caused large migration of the Balts. First, Galindae or Galindians to the East, and later, Eastern Balts to the West, until they reached the ethnographic area of the Balts as we know since 13th-14th centuries. Many other eastern and Southern Balts either assimilated with other Balts or contributed to the formation of the Slavs in the 4th-7th centuries, and later gradually were slavicized.
InvasionsIn the 12th and the 13th centuries, internal struggles, as well as invasions by Ruthenians and Poles and later the expansion of the Teutonic Order resulted in an almost complete annihilation of the Galindians, Curonians, and Yotvingians. Gradually Old Prussians became Germanized or some Lithuanized during 15 -17 c., especially 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.
Baltic peoples and tribes
†Extinct
See alsoAesti
External links-
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- An article by Ilze Loze.
- The English summary of book by Norbertas Velius.
- The article by Algirdas Sabaliauskas.
- The article by Vytautas Straižys and Libertas Klimka.
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