Balts

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 as well as the Prussians, Yotvingians and Curonians, whose languages were extinct in the Middle Ages.

History

Several scholars, such as Buga, Vasmer, Toporov and Trubachov, in conducting etymological studies of eastern European river names, were able to identify certain regions of specifically Baltic provenience, 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 be 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 1st millennium, the Baltic tribes settled the area between Vistula and Dvina. 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, Curonians and 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 Baltic culture that remained in the Dneper area, although bore significant resemblance to its Baltic counterpart, was also similar to culture of other peoples inhabitating the forests of Eastern Europe and became almost completely Slavicised between 7th and 10th centuries.

In 12th and 13th centuries, internal struggles, as well as 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 16th century, after the Reformation in Prussia. Remaining cultures of Lithuanians and Latvians survived and became the ancestors of modern countries of Latvia and Lithuania.

In addition, and to great extent in contradiction to research on the basis of linguist 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 Polish have considerably lesser genetic similarity. This lead some scientists to believe that the people known today as Balts were initially to great extent of Finno-Ugric origin. Thus, the language spoken today by them is a takeover.

Baltic peoples and tribes

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

External link

• Pages and Forums on the Lithuanian History