Germanic tribes

The term Germanic tribes (or Teutonic tribes) applies to the ancient Germanic peoples of Europe.

History

Origin

Regarding the question of ethnic origins, evidence developed by both archaeologists and linguists suggests that a people or group of peoples sharing a common material culture dwelt in northern Germany and southern Scandinavia during the late European Bronze Age (1000 BC-500 BC). This culture group is called the Nordic Bronze Age and spread from southern Scandinavia into northern Germany. The long presence of Germanic tribes in southern Scandinavia (an Indo-European language had probably arrived by 2000 BC) is also evidenced by the fact that no pre-Germanic place names have been found in this area.

Related Topics:
Germany - Scandinavia - Bronze Age - 1000 BC - 500 BC - Nordic Bronze Age - Indo-European - 2000 BC

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Linguists, working backwards from historically-known Germanic languages, suggest that this group spoke proto-Germanic, a distinct branch of the Indo-European language family. Cultural features at that time included small, independent settlements, and an economy strongly based on the keeping of livestock.

Related Topics:
Germanic languages - Proto-Germanic - Indo-European

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The southward movement was probably influenced by a deteriorating climate in Scandinavia ca 600 BC - ca 300 BC. The warm and dry climate of southern Scandinavia (2-3 degrees warmer than today) deteriorated considerably, which not only dramatically changed the flora, but forced people to change their way of living and to leave settlements.

Related Topics:
600 BC - 300 BC

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At around this time, this culture discovered how to extract bog iron from the ore in peat bogs. Their technology for gaining iron ore from local sources may have helped them expand into new territories.

Related Topics:
Bog iron - Ore - Peat bogs - Iron ore

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The Germanic culture grew to the southwest and southeast, without sudden breaks, and it can be distinguished from the culture of the Celts inhabiting the more southerly Danube and Alpine regions during the same period.

Related Topics:
Celts - Danube

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The details of the expansion are known only generally, but it is clear that the forebears of the Goths were settled on the southern Baltic shore by 100 AD. According to some scholars, along the lower and middle Rhine, previous local inhabitants seem to have come under the leadership of Germanic figures from outside.

Related Topics:
Goths - Baltic - 100 AD - Rhine - Local inhabitants

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Collision with Rome

By the late 2nd century, B.C., Roman authors recount Gaul, Italy, and Spain were invaded by migrating Germanic tribes, culminating in military conflict with the armies of the Roman Empire. Six decades later, Julius Caesar invoked the threat of such attacks as one justification for his annexation of Gaul to Rome.

Related Topics:
Gaul - Italy - Spain - Roman Empire - Julius Caesar

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As Rome advanced her borders to the Rhine and Danube, incorporating many Celtic societies into the Empire, the tribal homelands to the north and east emerged collectively in the records as Germania, whose peoples were sometimes at war with the Empire, but who also engaged in complex and long-term trade relations, military alliances, and cultural exchanges with their neighbors to the south.

Related Topics:
Rome - Rhine - Danube - Celt - Germania

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The wars against the Cimbri and Teutoni whose military incursion into Roman Italy was thrust back in 101 BC were written up by Caesar and others as historical prototypes of a Northern danger for the Empire to be controlled. In the Augustean period there was - as a result of Roman activity as far as the Elbe River - a first definition of the "Germania magna": from Rhine and Danube in the West and South to the Vistula and the Baltic Sea in the East and North.

Related Topics:
Cimbri - Teutoni

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Caesar's ethnographic excurses finally established the term Germania. The initial purpose of the Roman campaigns was to protect Gaul by controlling the area between the Rhine and the Elbe. In 9 AD a revolt of their subject Germanics headed by Arminius (decisive defeat of Quintilius Varus in the Teutoburg Forest) ended in the withdrawal of the Roman frontier to the Rhine. At the end of the 1st century two provinces west of the Rhine called Germania inferior and Germania superior were established. Important medieval cities like Aachen, Cologne, Trier, Mainz, Worms and Speyer were part of these Roman structures.

Related Topics:
Arminius - Varus - Teutoburg Forest - Germania inferior - Germania superior - Aachen - Cologne - Trier - Mainz - Worms - Speyer

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Migration Period

:Main article: Migration Period

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During the 5th century, as the Roman Empire drew toward its end, numerous Germanic tribes, under pressure from invading Asian peoples and/or population growth and climate change, began migrating en masse in far and diverse directions, taking them to England and as far south through present day Continental Europe to the Mediterranean and northern Africa. Over time, this wandering meant intrusions into other tribal territories, and the ensuing wars for land escalated with the dwindling amount of unoccupied territory. Wandering tribes then began staking out permanent homes as a means of protection. Much of this resulted in fixed settlements from which many, under a powerful leader, expanded outwards. A defeat meant either scattering or merging with the dominant tribe, and this continued to be how nations were formed. In Denmark the Jutes merged with the Danes, in Sweden the Geats merged with the Swedes. In England, for example, we now most often refer to the Anglo-Saxons rather than the two separate tribes.

Related Topics:
5th century - Climate change - England - Continental Europe - Mediterranean - Africa - Nation - Denmark - Jutes - Danes - Sweden - Geats - Swedes - Anglo-Saxons

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Role of the Germanics in the Fall of Rome

Some of the Germanic tribes are frequently blamed in popular conceptions for the fall of the Roman Empire in the late 5th century. Professional historians and archaeologists have since the 1950s shifted their interpretations in such a way that the Germanic peoples are no longer seen as invading a decaying empire but as being co-opted into helping defend territory the central government could no longer adequately administer. Individuals and small groups from Germanic tribes had long been recruited from the territories beyond the limes (i.e., the regions just outside the Roman Empire), and some of them had risen high in the command structure of the army. Then the Empire recruited entire tribal groups under their native leaders as officers. Assisting with defense eventually shifted into administration and then outright rule, as Roman traditions of government passed into the hands of Germanic leaders. Odoacer, who deposed Romulus Augustulus, is the penultimate example.

Related Topics:
Fall of the Roman Empire - 5th century - Historians - Archaeologists - 1950s - Limes - Odoacer - Romulus Augustulus

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The presence of successor states controlled by a nobility from one of the Germanic tribes is evident in the 6th century - even in Italy, the former heart of the Empire, where Odoacer was followed by Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths, who was regarded by Roman citizens and Gothic settlers alike as legitimate successor to the rule of Rome and Italy.

Related Topics:
State - Nobility - 6th century - Odoacer - Theodoric the Great - Ostrogoths - Rome - Italy

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