Distribution of the Baltic tribes, circa 1200 CE. The Eastern Balts are shown in brown hues while the Western Balts are shown in green. The boundaries are approximate.

The Balts or Baltic peoples (Latvian: balti; Lithuanian: baltai; Latgalian: bolti), 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.

History

Prehistory

The 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. 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 Dniepr region in the 6th century CE 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 millennium BC near the upper and middle Dniepr river in modern Ukraine, which is thought to have been settled by a hypothetical Balto-Slavic community; that is, a population ancestral both 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 Pasłęka and Neman rivers. It is not likely that this migration gave birth to the Baltic tribes.

Several scholars, such as Būga, 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, Galindians, Scalovians, and Curonians), as well as Eastern Balts (Lithuanians, Semigallians, and Latgalians).

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 CE.

Invasions

In 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. The last of the Old 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.

Genetic research and a possible Finno-Ugric origin

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 largely 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.

Baltic peoples and tribes

Map of the Baltic Sea

• Lithuanians
• Latvians (Letts)
• Latgalians
• Curonians (Kursi) ^†
• Curonians (Kursenieki)
• Curonian Kings ^†
• Old Prussians ^†
• Prussian Lithuanians
• Samogitians
• Semigallians (Zemigalians) ^†
• Yotvingians ^†
• Selonians ^†
• Nadruvians ^†
• Scalovians ^†
• Eastern Galindians ^†
• Dniepr (Eastern) Balts ^†
• Pomeranian (Western) Balts ^†

^† Extinct

See also

Aesti

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. 
• Gimbutas, Marija (1963). The Balts. London: Thames & Hudson. 
• (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). 

External links

• Marija Gimbutas' "The Balts" e-book
• Pages and Forums on the Lithuanian History
• Who were the Balts?
• The origin of the Baltic, German and Slavic people. The iceland ages
• 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.bat-smg:Baltā

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