Save for the northwestern German tribes of the Anglo-Frisian and Saxon type, which appear to be genuinely Germanic...

Save for the northwestern German tribes of the Anglo-Frisian and Saxon type, which appear to be genuinely Germanic, most other western German tribes were of Celtic descend. Before the imperial days of Rome, Celts were stronger than Germanics. They were more civilised if you disregard their cruel human sacrificing which happened on a frequent basis. That is why Celts were said to possess an extensive religion which they took very serious, through the caste of druids who let the blood flow. Still they had villages, cities, forts and respected individual privacy. Germanics lived in a commune, meaning that there were houses but they were common good. This means that you are obliged to receive visitors, give them food and shelter for as long as they want, and you can do the same to others. Although they also practiced human sacrifice on a frequent basis, their religion was simpler and fate played a great role. They practiced a form of divination practically identical with the I Ching.

The closest description of a Germanic tribes I could find that resembles the modern German character were the Chatti from the region Hesse. Citing Tacitus' Germania:

>[The Chatti's] settlements begin at the Hercynian forest, where the country is not so open and marshy as in the other cantons into which Germany stretches. They are found where there are hills, and with them grow less frequent, for the Hercynian forest keeps close till it has seen the last of its native Chatti.

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scribd.com/doc/13082475/Celto-Slavic-Similarities
jassa.org/?p=1565
jassa.org/?p=5870
jassa.org/?p=6252
jassa.org/?p=5964
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>Hardy frames, close-knit limbs, fierce countenances, and a peculiarly vigorous courage, mark the tribe. For Germans, they have much intelligence and sagacity; they promote their picked men to power, and obey those whom they promote; they keep their ranks, note their opportunities, check their impulses, portion out the day, intrench themselves by night, regard fortune as a doubtful, valour as an unfailing, resource; and what is most unusual, and only given to systematic discipline, they rely more on the general than on the army.


>Their whole strength is in their infantry, which, in addition to its arms, is laden with iron tools and provisions. Other tribes you see going to battle, the Chatti to a campaign. Seldom do they engage in mere raids and casual encounters. It is indeed the peculiarity of a cavalry force quickly to win and as quickly to yield a victory. Fleetness and timidity go together; deliberateness is more akin to steady courage.


Naturally these Chatti, just like their neighbours the Tencteri, Usipetes, Chattuari and Ubii have tribal names derived from Gaulish. The Chatti were populous and there were splits due to internal feuds more than once. The Chattuari, who along with the Tencteri (aka Tungri), Usipetes (aka Assipetes) and Ubii became part of the Franks in the 3rd century, literally means 'those who used to be Chatti". And not long after Caesar conquered Gaul, another group split off and settled on an island at the mouth of the Rhine in the Netherlands, the Batavi, who became very close with the Romans. We know that they spoke Gaulish as late as the 4rd century from archeological findings. Settlements like Noviomagus (N. Batavorum = Nijmegen (NL), N. Veromanduorum = Noyon (F) and N. Treverorum = Neumagen (DE)) are clearly derived from Gaulish.

This means that the Chatti and the others named were of noble Belgic stock, as the Belgae were defined as mostly Celtisized Germans and Celto-Germanics (by intermarrying).

It is this stock that always delivered the greatest both of the Gaulish and Germanic world, up to Charlemagne, born in Herstal, of the noble Belgae stock.

Also it is interesting to note that amongst the Celts the Belgae were already considered the most brave and most fierce.

So basically Germans are mostly Celts and Wends (West-Slavs). In my humble opinion the Germanic minority in the north (Saxony) should just go back to Scandinavia.

The Greeks knew, they always stubbornly referred to the Germans as Keltoi, even in late imperial days.

Cassius Dio in the 3rd century and the Fragmenta Valesiana refer to the same people as "Chattoi", and specifically name them a "Celtic people".

Regarding the Salian Franks, who found the Merovingian royalty line, were first formed from these Celto-Germanic tribes mixed with what appear to be Frisian stock. They were associated with the terms Vrank, Vrij and Vries (Frank, Free and Frisian), and today Vrank en Vrij is still the Flemish motto. The Flemish tongue is directly derived from the language of the Franks (Lower Frankish). In the 3rd century the Frankish tribes crossed the Rhine, first absorbing the Batavi (who still had their autonomous island settlement at the mouth of the Rhine and provided the imperial guards of Rome), and later when they settled in the land of the Eburones (aka Toxandrii), Toxandria, where the Tencteri (aka Tungri) already had settlements. They absorbed the Belgae tribes and from there the conquest of Gaul began.

In the days of the great migrations in the early 5th century, the tribes crossing the Rhine (Vandals, Quadi...) were not able to plunder the Salian land (pretty much modern Belgium). The other Celto-Germanic tribes also organised themselves as Ripuarian Franks, that is also the time that the Chatti are last mentioned in the annals. So very likely they became part of the Franks too.

By then the Germanic language had become lingua franca in those parts, by the 6th century Gaulish had pretty much vanished.

Another term for Belgium in later antiquity/early middle ages was Nedergallië (Nethergaul), which aptly points at the Gaulish character of the southern parts of the Lowlands.

So if people readily accept that the German nation existed before Bismarck, nation here meaning the cultural and ethnic union, surely the Belgian/Nethergallic nation should be recognized, and its fundamental role in the rebuilding of the West-Roman world in a Christian sense.

Preach on Brotha

...

Thanks, read it all and agree. This whole concept of "germanic" reall needs to be done away with honestly. German is more of a culture than an ethnic group. If somebody says "i'm full blooded german xDD" that person is a retard. My family is from baden württemberg (BW), and although culturally german, ethnically its quite clear these are a celtic people to the bone. All alone the rhine its the same type, up into belgium as well. Austrians, bavarians, all similar. Only in the very north of germany do you see people who look more like Scandinavians. So they should just be called nordic, and do away with the term "germanic" altogether

>genuinely Germanic

Absolute rubbish. You got to realize that "Germani" is totally bullshit grouping, can't take anyone seriously who is trying to assign ancient peoples a "Germanic" character. It means nothing more or less than "those weirdoes over the Rhine from us Gauls/Romans". Similarly "Slavic" means sweet fuck all when applied to antique peoples, it's medieval term. You can't know with confidence whether ancient peoples spoke Germanic or Slavic tongues or both or something else, and you sure as fuck can't trust what Romans and Greeks were calling them to inform you as to their origins. Romans and Greeks didn't know shit, they were ignorant about these people until they had no other choice because ignorant was the way they liked it. They were barbarian scum and that's all that matters. Trying to pick and mix ancient barbarian groups to modern European nationalities is a colossal fools errand.

often on wikipedia when looking up ancient cities there will be celtic "colonies" does anyone know to what extent these were colonies and not just migrations.

Interestingly that your pic mentions the Nemetes (Niemets, Niemcy issue). I agree that the common Slavic habit of referring to Germans like this, also shared by the Hungarians,
német(ek), and Romanian, nemți/neamț, may well be derived from this easternmost Belgic ""Germanic"" tribe.

I used brackets because the Nemetes were clearly Celtic, at least culturally. Not only is their tribal name derived from the Gaulish nemos "sky" and nemeton "sacred grove" (the Celtic root nemeto-, commonly referring to sacred spaces), its main town Noviomagus Nemetorum, meaning noviios 'new' and magos 'plain', 'market' (cf. Old Irish mag 'plain'), is clearly Gaulish. Other nearby settlements carried the names Borbetomagus, Brocomagus and Mogontiacus (Celtic dieties Mogons and Mogontia), which is clear additional proof.

When one draws a line from Hamburg to Venice, that is where the Celtic world touches the Wendic (West-Slavic) world. The Elbe would also suit as a natural border. Genetically, we see that the amount of haplogroup R1a* crossing this line jumps from

Also earlier Greek historians mentioned a tribe called the Keltoskythae.

Now about the East-Germanic tribes, these may have been North-Germanic in origin (and thanks to the Gothic Bible by Wulfila we know that their language was very close to North-Germanic), after their settlements of 4 centuries in todays Poland and Ukraine, by then they had absorbed enough Wends and Scytho-Sarmatians that essentially they became ethnically very Slavic. When we want to find genetic traces of the migrating East-Germanic tribes in Southern Europe, we do it most efficiently by concentrating on West-Slavic R1a* subclades. These peak for example in the Spanish region of Cantabria (Visigoths) and Sardinia (Vandals).

Goths first came from the small island of Gotland, where 1/3th of the population moved across the Baltic Sea to the Polish coast. Burgundians did the same but they came from the island of Bornholm and were an even smaller group that crossed the sea in makeshift vessels from hollow tree trunks, this is described in Germanic lore.

Interestingly the Gothic language used a Slavic loanword for the verb "to dance": plinsjan (Polish pląsać, Slovene plesati). Something that likely preceded the intermarrying part.

Eastward to the previously mentioned Nemetes lands there are a number of places called Döhlau or Görau. What's suspicious: a Döhlau is always situated in a valley and a Görau is on a hill. Now compare to modern Czech/Polish words: dolina = lowlands, valley; hora/góra = hill, mountain.

And interestingly one place in Oberbayern that is called Döhlau also has the name Kautendorf. (Gautendorf -> Goth village)

I certainly agree that us Celto-Germanics should embrace and accentuate our ethnic and cultural Celtic heritage more, which constitutes the bulk of Western Germany. There are good reasons why Gaulish disappeared and Germanic became the most influencal language in the late imperial age. First to consider is that Gauls adopted Latin rather fast, especially in the cities, in sofar that by the second century AD the Gaulish language, once spoken by the aristocracy as far north as the Kimbri and Teutones in todays Denmark, was by then mostly confined to the peasantry of rural areas. Gauls (and Britons) were more and more looked down upon, called weak and lazy, oversaturated by the Roman life of luxury. Belgic tribes like the Nervii (who before Caesar's conquest banned all import of wine and luxury goods from Rome) and Treveri began claiming Germanic descent to all those that wanted to hear according to Tacitus.

Also important is that Gaulish was closer to Latin than it is to the modern Celtic languages, so that the Romans, when they wanted to speak privately in the presence of Gauls, used to speak Greek. And vice versa, the natives adopting Germanic was equally advantageous towards unwanted Roman ears.

Before the imperial era of Rome, Celts had a higher culture than (North-)Germanics. Although they never seem to have invented any new ideas, they professed an extraordinary aptitude for picking up ideas from the different peoples with whom war or commerce brought them into contact. Enamelling was unknown to the classical nations till they learned from the Celts. So late as the 3rd century AD it was still strange to the classical world, as we learn from the reference of Philostratus:

>"They say that the barbarians who live in the ocean [Britons] pour these colours upon heated brass, and that they adhere, become hard as stone, and preserve the designs that are made upon them."

The enamel workshops of Bibracte, with their furnaces, crucibles, moulds, polishing-stones, and with the crude enamels in their various stages of preparation, have been excavated from the ruins of the city.

The ancient Greek geographers prior to Pytheas (~300 BC) know nothing of them, and assign all the territories now known as Germanic to various Celtic tribes.

The explanation given by de Jubainville, and based by him on various philological considerations, is that the Germans were a subject people, comparable to those "un-free tribes " who existed in Gaul and in ancient Ireland. They lived under the Celtic dominion, and had no independent political existence. De Jubainville finds that all the words connected with law and government and war which are common both to the Celtic and Teutonic languages were borrowed by the latter from the former. Chief among them are the words represented by the modern German Reich, empire, Amt, office, and the Gothic reiks, a king, all of which are of unquestioned Celtic origin. De Jubainville also numbers among loan words from Celtic the words Bann, an order ; Frei, free; Geisel a hostage; Erbe, an inheritance ; Werth, value; Weih, sacred; Magus, a slave (Gothic) ; Wini, a wife (Old High German); Skalks, Schalk. A slave (Gothic); Hathu, battle (Old German); Helith, Held, a hero, from the same root as the word Celt; Heer, an army (Celtic choris) ; Sieg, victory; Beute, booty ; Burg, a castle; and many others.

The etymological history of some of these words is interesting. Amt, for instance, that word of so much significance in modern German administration, goes back to an ancient Celtic ambhactos, which is compounded of the words ambi, about, and actos, a past participle derived from the Celtic root AG, meaning to act.

Good thread

so according to this thread germanics are minority in the sea of celts and slavs?

culture matters more than blood for the most part anyhow.
Turks are only 20% Turkic while also being 40%Semitic and 40% south European

gppd threads.

they did not practice human sacrifice

Source?

his headcanon

Germanics are closely related with Celts to begin with.

Danish Barbed Wire Beaker culture is seen as the ancestor of Germanics and it was the product of Beaker people from southern Germany dominating over local Corded Ware.

>scribd.com/doc/13082475/Celto-Slavic-Similarities
Interesting, so there must've been a contact. That means that Germania wasn't only populated by Germanics like Germans would wish it to be. That would also mean that "pripet marshes and depopulated central europe" isn't a good theory.

So who was living in these Pripet marshes before Slavs?

Finns maybe?

Who knows, maybe they were already divided in west and east slavs is too much of a coincidence to shit on it completely.

I don't even get why Poles are so buttmad about the Pripet marsh theory when the real Poland(Second Polish Republic) encompassed most of the area.

I think it's just a deep aversion to the reality of being Eastern European and a dream of having a homeland together with Germans in the good Europe.

I'm not Polish. I just don't like Germanic supremacy theories. There is too much of a coincidence and evidence to simply ingore it and agree that Slavs crawled out and claimed empty land.

It's bullshit not backed up by anything. No one knows what language the Suevi spoke and yet they magically became Suebi during German nationalism to make them similiar to Schwaben.

The Slavs are in some ways a mystery.

The largest ethnos in Europe, some claim that they appeared on the world stage suddenly, seemingly taking a huge swath of land previously occupied by “others” in a remarkably short period of time. These others disappeared, melded away or left for southern climes.

But is that really what happened?

Others have seen the Slavs as progeny of earlier tribes whose presence in Central Europe has been historically attested.

It is true that recent, though as yet limited, DNA data obtained from ancient skeletal remains also indicate that today’s inhabitants of some Slav lands are genetically indistinguishable from prior denizens of Slav countries. Studies of this type have been carried out in Poland and are likely to continue elsewhere.

So are Slavs simply a remnant of Celts, Vandals or Ostrogoths who have adopted the “Slavic” language of a conquering Hunnic, Alanic or Avar horde? Indeed, the few words that we know of Hunch appear to sound vaguely Slavic. Or is the case that none of these Celts, Vandals or Goths really lived in Slavic countries for any significant period of time?

Is the name “Slavs” (pronounced Suavs in western Slavic languages) simply a new designation for a people that are a straight-line continuation of earlier tribes known to ancient Greek and Roman geographers. Here the so-called Veneti come to mind first and foremost but others such as the Suevi/Suavi have been suggested (here we have our “Twelve Questions” on this topic as well as Daniewski’s article on the similarity/identity of these two names).

But if Suevi, a “Germanic” nation were in fact the ancestors of the Slavs then the whole picture of ancient Germania turns on its head.

It only works to make Slavs look bad as the original ones would have been Central European and German who mixed with Eastern Europeans and dilluted their good blood away

Not my theory though

>The mainline historical teaching is basically as follows:
>Suevi occupied most of Germania
“No”

>After Suevi somehow disappeared, they were replaced almost inch for inch by a new tribe of Slavs
What the fuck? No, they didn’t “somehow” disappear, they migrated elsewhere. And the original Suebic settlements in modern eastern Germany were not replaced “inch for inch” by Slavs. The Slavs essentially settled no further west than the Elbe-Saale, while the Suebi historically occupied significant amounts of land west of the Elbe-Saale, which is literally shown in the first image of that infographic. And even after the Migration Period, the Thuringii (and to a degree, Saxons) remained occupying these lands west of the Elbe. So yes, there is continuity between the Suebi and the Germanic Thuringii.

>There should be plenty of different tribes … But there are only Slavs.
Wrong, see above. There were also Saxons and Thuringians.

It’s pretty hard to deny that the Suebi were Germanic. Their migration to modern day Swabia is well known and if Occam’s razor is to be used as the creator of that infographic proposes, it would make sense that they remained and became the Germanic Swabians. Also, the Suebi were referred to as the Alemanni by foreigners which became “Allemands” in French to refer to Germans, which suggests continuity between the Suebi and modern Germans.

Buttmad G*rm, just face it you do not have any history or identity so that's why you have to larp as Germanics and Romans all the time.

Pic related
>we wuz Weser and Main n shit

Semnones were Suevi FYI.

is this thread made by that "french are romano-trojans" autist?

Yes, but so are all the tribes coloured in purple

There is no evidence that Suevi spoke Germanic. None at all.
And FYI, they were called "SUEVI" not "Suebi" in majority of sources, especially those from antiquity.

So they were Celtic?

There is no evidence that they spoke Slavic either.

And there is more evidence for continuity with later Germanic tribes than Slavic ones, see . Are you really suggesting that Slavic tribes lived on the Weser and the Main at the time of Christ? If so, then where did the Irminones and their descendents (Swabians, Bavarians, Thuringians, etc) come from?

Also, please explain why the "Slavic" Lombards suddenly started speaking a West Germanic language.

>Also, please explain why the "Slavic" Lombards suddenly started speaking a West Germanic language.
Do the people of Lombardia speak Germanic language?
What happened with Spain and Portugal, are they Germanic?

>And there is more evidence for continuity with later Germanic tribes than Slavic ones
Not if you go with hydronyms, settlement names. There is more of a hint towards Slavic ones than Germanic. Even the river "Saale".

>Do the people of Lombardia speak Germanic language?
No, but there is Germanic/Lombardic influence in the Italian language and a number of Italian place names are of Lombardic origin. You are aware that enough is known about the Lombardic language to classify it as Elbe Germanic (i.e. Suebic), right?

>What happened with Spain and Portugal, are they Germanic?
Who cares, the invading Germanic tribes assimilated and their language was lost over time.

>There is more of a hint towards Slavic ones than Germanic. Even the river "Saale".
Show evidence of Slavic hydronyms and settlement names outnumbering Germanic ones as far west as the Weser, the Main and the Rhine where the Suebi settled.

Sorbs came to Germany from the Pripet marshes in the mid-late 1st millenium

No, they came from Asia. Which would be much better for germano-centric view of things than Belarus.
jassa.org/?p=1565
jassa.org/?p=5870
jassa.org/?p=6252
Enjoy. I'm not gonna copypaste all of it just for the sake of proving you wrong. Read and make up your own mind.

>Belarus

You mean the real Poland, as opposed to the fake modern Poland.
A real Pole is a Pripet marsh man whose ancestors never left it before settling in modern day fake western Poland.

All three links are primarily devoted to discussion of the Saale, which I've already told you is irrelevant. Show me significant evidence of Slavic toponyms along the Rhine, the Weser and the Main because that's as far west as the Suebi settled.

And not that it really makes a difference, but it's quite apparent that you're a Pole, despite you denying it earlier. I've seen you link to that site before on /int/, specifically this wewuzzing link if I remember correctly.
jassa.org/?p=5964

Also, you are yet to explain the Lombard issue that I brought up before.

Yeah, the same sorts of things can be seen going east as well, in western Slavic cultures like Czechs and poles.