Hello to all-

This first post is a bit long, but it gives a good if slightly outdated
overview of our subject.
Rick

Germanic peoples
also called TEUTONIC PEOPLES, any of the Indo-European speakers of Germanic
languages.
The origins of the Germanic peoples are obscure. During the late Bronze Age,
they are believed to have inhabited southern Sweden, the Danish peninsula,
and northern Germany between the Ems River on the west, the Oder River on
the east, and the Harz Mountains on the south. The Vandals, Gepidae, and
Goths migrated from southern Sweden [note: this is no longer certain or even
widely believed] in the closing centuries BCE and occupied the area of the
southern Baltic coast roughly between the Oder on the west and the Vistula
River on the east. At an early date there was also migration toward the
south and west at the expense of the Celtic peoples who then inhabited much
of western Germany: the Celtic Helvetii, for example, who were confined by
the Germanic peoples to the area that is now Switzerland in the 1st century
BC, had once extended as far east as the Main River.

By the time of Julius Caesar, Germans were established west of the Rhine
River and toward the south had reached the Danube River. Their first great
clash with Romans came at the end of the 2nd century BC, when the Cimbri and
Teutoni (Teutones) invaded southern Gaul and northern Italy and were
annihilated by Gaius Marius in 102 and 101. Although individual travelers
from the time of Pytheas onward had visited Teutonic countries in the north,
it was not until the 1st century BCE was well advanced that the Romans
learned to distinguish precisely between the Germans and the Celts, a
distinction that is made with great clarity by Julius Caesar. It was Caesar
who incorporated within the frontiers of the Roman Empire those Germans who
had penetrated west of the Rhine, and it is he who gave the earliest extant
description of Germanic culture. In 9 BC the Romans pushed their frontier
eastward from the Rhine to the Elbe, but in AD 9 a revolt of their subject
Germans headed by Arminius ended in the withdrawal of the Roman frontier to
the Rhine. In this period of occupation and during the numerous wars fought
between Rome and the Germans in the 1st century AD, enormous quantities of
information about the Germans reached Rome, and, when Tacitus published in
AD 98 the book now known as the Germania, he had reliable sources of
information on which to draw. The book is one of the most valuable
ethnographic works in existence; archaeology has in many ways supplemented
the information Tacitus gives, but in general it has tended only to confirm
his accuracy and to illustrate his insight into his subject.

Tacitus relates that according to their ancient songs the Germans were
descended from the three sons of Mannus, the son of the god Tuisto, the son
of Earth. Hence they were divided into three groups--the Ingaevones, the
Herminones, and the Istaevones--but the basis for this grouping is unknown.
Tacitus records a variant form of the genealogy according to which Mannus
had a larger number of sons, who were regarded as the ancestors of the
Suebi, the Vandals, and others. At any rate, the currency of these songs
suggests that in Tacitus' time the various Germanic peoples were conscious
of their relationship with one another. While individual Germans in Roman
service would sometimes refer to themselves as Germani, the free Germans
beyond the Rhine had no collective name for themselves until the 11th
century AD, when the adjective diutisc (modern German deutsch, "of the
people") came into fashion. The meaning of the word Germani and the language
to which it belongs are unknown.

The principal Germanic peoples were distributed as follows in the time of
Tacitus. The Chatti lived in what is now Hesse. The Frisii inhabited the
coastlands between the Rhine and the Ems. The Chauci were at the mouth of
the Weser, and south of them lived the Cherusci, the people of Arminius. The
Suebi, who have given their name to Schwaben, were a group of peoples
inhabiting Mecklenburg, Brandenburg, Saxony, and Thuringia; the Semnones,
living around the Havel and the Spree rivers, were a Suebic people, as were
the Langobardi (Lombards), who lived northwest of the Semnones. Among the
seven peoples who worshiped the goddess Nerthus were the Angli (Angles),
centred on the peninsula of Angeln in eastern Schleswig. As for the Danubian
frontier of the Roman Empire, the Hermunduri extended from the neighbourhood
of Regensburg northward through Franconia to Thuringia. The Marcomanni, who
had previously lived in the Main valley, migrated during the last decade BC
to Bohemia (which had hitherto been occupied by a Celtic people called the
Boii), where their eastern neighbours were the Quadi in Moravia. On the
lower Danube were a people called the Bastarnae, who are usually thought to
have been Germans. The Goths, Gepidae, and Vandals were on the southern
Baltic coast. Tacitus mentions the Suiones and the Sitones as living in
Sweden. He also speaks of several other peoples of less historical
importance, but he knows nothing of the Saxons, the Burgundians, and others
who became prominent after his time.

By the end of the 3rd century AD important changes had taken place. East of
the Rhine there were three great confederacies of peoples unknown to
Tacitus. The Roman frontier on the lower Rhine faced the Franks. The Main
valley was occupied from about 260 by the Burgundians, while the Agri
Decumates (of the Black Forest region) were held by the Alemanni. The
Burgundians appear to have been immigrants from eastern Germany. The Franks
and the Alemanni may have been confederacies of peoples who had lived in
these respective areas in Tacitus' day, though perhaps with an admixture of
immigrants from the east. The peoples whom Tacitus mentions as living on the
Baltic coast had moved southeastward in the second half of the 2nd century.
Thus the Goths now controlled the Ukraine and much of what is now Romania;
the Gepidae were in the mountains north of Transylvania with the Vandals as
their western neighbours.

By the year 500, the Angles and Saxons were in England and the Franks
controlled northeastern Gaul. The Burgundians were in the Rhône valley with
the Visigoths as their western neighbours. The Ostrogoths were established
in Italy and the Vandals in Africa. In 507 the Franks expelled the Visigoths
from most of the Gallic possessions, which had stretched from the Pyrenees
to the Loire River, and the Visigoths thereafter lived in Spain until their
extinction by the Muslims in 711. In 568 the Lombards entered Italy and
lived there in an independent kingdom until they were overthrown by
Charlemagne (774). The areas of eastern Germany vacated by the Goths and
others were filled up by the Slavs, who extended westward as far as Bohemia
and the basin of the Elbe. After the 8th century the Germans recovered
eastern Germany, lower Austria, and much of Styria and Carinthia from the
Slavs.