East Germanic

The expansion of the Germanic tribes 750 BC – AD 1 (after the Penguin Atlas of World History 1988):       Settlements before 750 BC       New settlements by 500 BC       New settlements by 250 BC       New settlements by AD 1

The Germanic tribes referred to as East Germanic constitute a wave of migrants who may have moved from Scandinavia into the area between the Oder and Vistula rivers between 600 - 300 BC. Later they went to the south. Unlike the Northern and Western tribes , they did not successfully preserve their ethnicity and were primarily assimilated into Western Germanic tribes and Romans.

The east Germanic tribes, related to the North Germanic tribes, had migrated from Scandinavia into the region east of the Elbe (Vandals, Burgundians, Goths, Rugians and others).^[1]

Groups

Groups identified as East Germanic tribes include:

• Bastarnae
• Burgundians
• Goths
  • Thervings
  • Greuthungs
  • Visigoths
  • Ostrogoths
  • Crimean Goths
  • Gepids
• Rugians
• Scirii
• Vandals
• Heruli

Territories inhabited by East Germanic tribes between 100 BC and AD 300.

Language

The East Germanic languages are contrasted with North and West Germanic. However, the East Germanic languages shared many characteristics with North Germanic, perhaps because of the later migration date.

All the East Germanic languages are extinct as living languages. However, there have been recent attempts by Germanic tribal polytheists to reconstruct a form of neo-Gothic as a common community language.^{[citation needed]} This is primarily based on the academic publications of a small number of scholars who have studied what remains of the written records of the Gothic dialects within Italia, the Iberian peninsula, and old Anatolia. Whether their efforts will succeed has yet to be proven conclusively since the reconstruction of elder Germanic tribal belief systems is a rather young research field, dating by most accounts to the last quarter of the 19th century.

See also

Ancient Germanic culture portal

• North Germanic tribes
• West Germanic tribes

Notes and references

1. ^ The Penguin atlas of world history / Hermann Kinder and Werner Hilgemann ; translated by Ernest A. Menze ; with maps designed by Harald and Ruth Bukor. Harmondsworth : Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-051054-0 1988, Volume 1. p.109.

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