Balts

Medieval German chronicler Adam of Bremen in the latter part of the 11th century AD was the first writer to use the term "Baltic" in reference to the sea of that name.Bojtár page 9.Adam of Bremen reports that he followed the local use of balticus from baelt ("belt") because the sea stretches to the east "in modum baltei" ("in the manner of a belt"). This is the first reference to "the Baltic or Barbarian Sea, a day's journey from Hamburg. Bojtár cites Bremensis I,60 and IV,10. Before him various ancient places names, such as Balcia,Balcia, Abalcia, Abalus, Basilia, Balisia. However, apart from poor transcription, there are known {{sic}} linguistic rule whereby these words, including Balcia, might become "Baltia." were used in reference to a supposed island in the Baltic Sea.

In Germanic languages there was some form of the toponym East Sea until after about the year 1600, when maps in English began to label it as the Baltic Sea. By 1840, German nobles of the Governorate of Livonia adopted the term "Balts" to distinguish themselves from Germans of Germany. They spoke an exclusive dialect, Baltic German, which was regarded by many as the language of the Balts until 1919.Bojtár page 10.{{cite book|title=The New Eastern Europe|url=https://archive.org/details/neweasterneurop00unkngoog|first=Ralph|last=Butler|year=1919|pages=[https://archive.org/details/neweasterneurop00unkngoog/page/n13 3], 21, 22, 2 24|publisher=Longmans, Green and Co.|location=London}}

In 1845, Georg Heinrich Ferdinand Nesselmann proposed a distinct language group for Latvian, Lithuanian, and Old Prussian, which he termed Baltic.{{cite journal|first=William R. |last=Schmalstieg |title=A. Sabaliauskas. Mes Baltai (We Balts) |journal=Lituanus |volume=33 |date=Fall 1987 |publisher=Lituanus Foundation Incorporated |url=http://www.lituanus.org/1987/87_3_09.htm |access-date=2008-09-06 |issue=3 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080907231232/http://www.lituanus.org/1987/87_3_09.htm |archive-date=7 September 2008 |url-status = live}} Book review. The term became prevalent after Latvia and Lithuania gained independence in 1918. Up until the early 20th century, either "Latvian" or "Lithuanian" could be used to mean the entire language family.Bojtár page 11.

[[File:Baltic cultures 600-200 BC SVG.svg|thumb|275px|right|Baltic archaeological cultures in the Iron Age from 600 BC to 200 BC

{{legend|#4E9A06|Sambian-Nothangian group}}

{{legend|#73D216|Western Masurian group (Galindians?)}}

{{legend|#8AE234|Eastern Masurian group (Yotvingians)}}

{{legend|#729FCF|Lower Neman and West-Latvian group (Curonians)}}

{{legend|#FCAF3E|Brushed Pottery culture}}

{{legend|#F57900|Milograd culture}}

{{legend|#CE5C00|Plain-Pottery culture, AKA Dnepr-Dvina culture}}

{{legend|#EDD400|Pomeranian culture}}

{{legend|#FCE94F|Bell-shaped burials group}}]]

The Balts or Baltic peoples, 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 the lower Vistula and southeast shore of the Baltic Sea and upper Daugava and Dnieper rivers. The Baltic languages, especially Lithuanian, retain a number of conservative or archaic features, perhaps because the areas in which they are spoken are geographically consolidated and have low rates of immigration.{{cite journal |last1=PIECHNIK |first1=IWONA |date= 22 December 2014|title=FACTORS INFLUENCING CONSERVATISM AND PURISM IN LANGUAGES OF NORTHERN EUROPE (NORDIC, BALTIC, FINNIC) |url=https://core.ac.uk/reader/229233000 |journal= Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis |volume=2014 |issue=131, 4 |pages=395–419 |doi=10.4467/20834624SL.14.022.2729 |access-date=April 21, 2024}}

Some of the major authorities on Balts, such as Kazimieras Būga, Max Vasmer, Vladimir Toporov and Oleg Trubachyov,{{citation needed|date=February 2014}} 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. According to Vladimir Toporov and Oleg Trubachyov, the eastern boundary of the Balts in the prehistoric times were the upper reaches of the Volga, Moskva, and Oka rivers, while the southern border was the Seym river.{{Cite book |last1=Ramat |first1=Anna Giacalone |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=F7a5CAAAQBAJ |title=The Indo-European Languages |last2=Ramat |first2=Paolo |date=2015-04-29 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-92186-7 |pages=456 |language=en}} This information is summarized and synthesized by Marija 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 Berlin, Warsaw, Kyiv, 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.{{Citation needed|date=April 2022}}

However, other scholars such as Endre Bojt (1999) reject the presumption that there ever was such a thing as a clear, single "Baltic Urheimat":{{Cite book |last1=Bojt |first1=Endre |date=1999 |title=Foreword to the Past: A Cultural History of the Baltic People |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Er1_CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA81 |location=Budapest |publisher=Central European University Press |pages=81, 113 |isbn=9789639116429 |access-date=1 April 2022}}

'The references to the Balts at various Urheimat locations across the centuries are often of doubtful authenticity, those concerning the Balts furthest to the West are the more trustworthy among them. (...) It is wise to group the particulars of Baltic history according to the interests that moved the pens of the authors of our sources.'

The area of Baltic habitation shrank due to assimilation by other groups, and invasions. According to one of the theories which has gained considerable traction over the years, one of the western Baltic tribes, the Galindians, Galindae, or Goliad, migrated to the area around modern-day Moscow, Russia around the fourth century AD.{{Cite journal|url=https://www.academia.edu/37147068|title=Балты в миграциях Великого переселения народов // Исторический формат. № 3-4 (11-12). 2017. С. 95-124.|first=Илья Тарасов Ilia M.|last=Tarasov|date=January 1, 2017|journal=Исторический формат, №3-4|via=www.academia.edu}}

Over time the Balts became differentiated into West and East Balts. In the fifth century AD parts of the eastern Baltic coast began to be settled by the ancestors of the Western Balts: Brus/Prūsa ("Old Prussians"), Sudovians/Jotvingians, Scalvians, Nadruvians, and Curonians. The East Balts, including the hypothesised Dniepr Balts, were living in modern-day Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.{{Citation needed|date=April 2022}}

Germanic peoples lived to the west of the Baltic homelands; by the first century AD, the Goths had stabilized their kingdom from the mouth of the Vistula, south to Dacia. As Roman domination collapsed in the first half of the first millennium CE in Northern and Eastern Europe, large migrations of the Balts occurred — first, the Galindae or Galindians towards the east, and later, East Balts towards the west. In the eighth century, Slavic tribes from the Volga regions appeared.{{cite book |last1=Engel |first1=Barbara Alpern |last2=Martin |first2=Janet |title=Russia in World History |date=2015 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-023943-5 |page=16 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uMEfCAAAQBAJ&pg=PT16 |language=en |quote=Slavic tribes had reached the territories of the Finns and Balts in the eighth century.}}{{cite book |last1=Gleason |first1=Abbott |title=A Companion to Russian History |date=2014 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |isbn=978-1-118-73000-3 |page=106 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AXxBAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA106 |language=en |quote=moved ... to the Baltic in the eighth-ninth centuries}}{{cite book |last1=Gimbutas |first1=Marija |title=The Slavs (Ancient Peoples and Places, Vol. 74) |date=1971 |publisher=Thames and Hudson |isbn=0500020728 |page=97 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CC07UaXfR74C |language=en |quote=no finds of Slavic character can be identified before the eighth century}} By the 13th and 14th centuries, they reached the general area that the present-day Balts and Belarusians inhabit. Many other Eastern and Southern Balts either assimilated with other Balts, or Slavs in the fourth–seventh centuries and were gradually slavicized.{{Citation |last=Bell-Fialkoff |first=Andrew |title=The Slavs |date=2000 |work=The Role of Migration in the History of the Eurasian Steppe: Sedentary Civilization vs. “Barbarian” and Nomad |pages=133–149 |editor-last=Bell-Fialkoff |editor-first=Andrew |url=https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-61837-8_8 |access-date=2024-08-31 |place=New York |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan US |language=en |doi=10.1007/978-1-349-61837-8_8 |isbn=978-1-349-61837-8|url-access=subscription }}

File:Baltic Tribes c 1200.svg ({{Circa|1200 AD}}). The East Balts are shown in brown hues while the West Balts are shown in green. The boundaries are approximate. Baltic territory was extensive inland.]]

In the 12th and 13th centuries, internal struggles and 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.{{citation needed|date=February 2014}} Gradually, Old Prussians became Germanized or Lithuanized between the 15th and 17th centuries, especially after the Reformation in Prussia.{{citation needed|date=February 2014}} The cultures of the Lithuanians and Latgalians/Latvians survived and became the ancestors of the populations of the modern-day countries of Latvia and Lithuania.{{Citation needed|date=April 2022}}

Old Prussian was closely related to the other extinct Western Baltic languages, Curonian, Galindian and Sudovian. It is more distantly related to the surviving Eastern Baltic languages, Lithuanian and Latvian. Compare the Prussian word seme (zemē),Mikkels Klussis. Bāziscas prûsiskai-laîtawiskas wirdeîns per tālaisin laksikis rekreaciônin [https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20081218125558/http://donelaitis.vdu.lt/prussian/Lie.pdf Donelaitis.vdu.lt] (Lithuanian version of [https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20081218125908/http://donelaitis.vdu.lt/prussian/Engl.pdf Donelaitis.vdu.lt).] Latvian zeme, the Lithuanian žemė (land in English).{{Citation needed|date=April 2022}}

{{Baltic religion}}

{{Further|Baltic mythology}}

The Balts originally practiced Baltic religion. They were gradually Christianized as a result of the Northern Crusades of the Middle Ages. Baltic peoples such as the Latvians, Lithuanians and Old Prussians had their distinct mythologies. The Lithuanians have close historic ties to Poland, and many of them are Roman Catholic. The Latvians have close historic ties to Northern Germany and Scandinavia, and many of them are irreligious. In recent times, the Baltic religion has been revived in Baltic neopaganism.Hanley, Monika. (2010-10-21). [https://www.baltictimes.com/news/articles/27265/ "Baltic diaspora and the rise of Neo-Paganism"]. The Baltic Times.Naylor, Aliide. (May 31, 2019). [https://religionnews.com/2019/05/31/with-soviet-power-gone-baltic-countries-historic-pagan-past-re-emerges/ "Soviet power gone, Baltic countries' historic pagan past re-emerges"]. Religion News Service.

{{See also|Kunda culture#Genetics|Narva culture#Genetics|Pit–Comb Ware culture#Genetics|Zvejnieki burial ground#Archaeogenetics}}

The Balts are included in the "North European" gene cluster together with the Germanic peoples, some Slavic groups (the Poles and Northern Russians) and Baltic Finnic peoples.{{sfn|Balanovsky|Rootsi|2008|pp=236–250}}

Saag et a. (2017) detected that the eastern Baltic in the Mesolithic was inhabited primarily by Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHGs).{{sfn|Saag|2017}} Their paternal haplogroups were mostly types of I2a and R1b, while their maternal haplogroups were mostly types of U5, U4 and U2.{{sfn|Mathieson|2018}} These people carried a high frequency of the derived HERC2 allele which codes for light eye color and possess an increased frequency of the derived alleles for SLC45A2 and SLC24A5, coding for lighter skin color.{{sfn|Mittnik|2018}}

Baltic hunter-gatherers still displayed a slightly larger amount of WHG ancestry than Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherers (SHGs). WHG ancestry in the Baltic was particularly high among hunter-gatherers in Latvia and Lithuania.{{sfn|Mittnik|2018}} Unlike other parts of Europe, the hunter-gatherers of the eastern Baltic do not appear to have mixed much with Early European Farmers (EEFs) arriving from Anatolia.{{sfn|Jones|2017}}

During the Neolithic, increasing admixture from Eastern Hunter-Gatherers (EHGs) is detected. The paternal haplogroups of EHGs was mostly types of R1a, while their maternal haplogroups appears to have been almost exclusively types of U5, U4, and U2.{{Citation needed|date=April 2022}}

The rise of the Corded Ware culture in the eastern Baltic in the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age is accompanied by a significant infusion of steppe ancestry and EEF ancestry into the eastern Baltic gene pool.{{sfn|Jones|2017}}{{sfn|Saag|2017}}{{sfn|Malmström|2019}} In the aftermath of the Corded Ware expansion, local hunter-gatherer ancestry experienced a resurgence.{{sfn|Mittnik|2018}}

Haplogroup N reached the eastern Baltic only in the Late Bronze Age, probably with the speakers of the Uralic languages.{{sfn|Mittnik|2018}}

Modern-day Balts have a lower amount of EEF ancestry, and a higher amount of WHG ancestry, than any other population in Europe.{{sfn|Lazaridis|2014}}{{Efn|"Baltic populations carry the highest proportion of WHG ancestry of all Europeans, supporting the theory that the hunter-gatherer population of this region left a lasting genetic impact on subsequent populations."{{sfn|Mittnik|2018}} }}

{{Main|List of ancient Baltic peoples and tribes}}

Modern-day Baltic peoples

• East Baltic peoples{{Cite web |last=Kessler |first=P. L. |title=Kingdoms of Eastern Europe - Lithuania |url=https://www.historyfiles.co.uk/KingListsEurope/EasternLithuania.htm#top |access-date=2023-06-08 |website=The History Files |language=en}}
• Latvians
• Latgalians
• Lithuanians
• Aukštaitija ("highlanders")
• Samogitians ("lowlanders")

{{Portal|Latvia|Lithuania}}

• East Baltic languages
• West Baltic languages
• Baltic studies
• Baltic Unity Day

{{notelist}}

{{reflist}}

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• {{cite book|url=http://www.vaidilute.com/books/gimbutas/gimbutas-contents.html |first=Marija |last=Gimbutas |author-link=Marija Gimbutas |title=The Balts |year=1963 |publisher=Thames & Hudson, Gabriella |location=London, New York |access-date=2008-09-06 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080820232804/http://www.vaidilute.com/books/gimbutas/gimbutas-contents.html |archive-date=20 August 2008 |url-status = dead}} E-book of the original.
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{{Baltic ethnic groups}}

{{Latvia topics}}

{{Lithuania topics}}

{{Authority control}}

Category:Indo-European peoples