About 4-5 thousand years ago, Indo-European tribes came to the Baltic states and the North Sea coast. At that time, representatives of some other ethnic group lived there, whose origin is still unknown to science. As a result of the mixing of aliens with the indigenous inhabitants of these territories, the German people arose. Over time, the tribes began to leave their ancestral home and settled almost throughout Europe. The very word “Germans”, which first appeared in the writings of Roman authors in the 4th century. BC e., has Celtic roots. The Germans drove the Celts out of Western Europe and settled their lands themselves.
Ancient Germanic tribes: areas of settlement
Researchers identify three main branches of Germanic tribes:
- North Germanic. They lived in the north of the Scandinavian Peninsula. They are the ancestors of modern Norwegians, Danes and Swedes.
- West German. This group of tribes, which included the Lombards, Angles, Saxons, Teutons and many others, populated the Rhine basin.
- East German. The tribes included the Goths, Vandals and Burgundians. This group occupied the expanses from the Baltic to the Black Seas.
The Great Migration of Peoples and the Formation of Barbarian Kingdoms
In the 4th century, formidable hordes of Huns under the leadership of Attila began to advance from the Asian steppes towards the fertile lands of Southern Europe. The impending threat set the entire population of Eurasia in motion. Entire peoples and tribes moved west to avoid confrontation with the Turkic nomads. These events went down in history as the Great Migration of Peoples. The Germans played one of the key roles in this process. Moving west, they inevitably had to collide with the Roman Empire. Thus began a long struggle between barbarians and Romans, which ended in 476 with the fall of Rome and the emergence of numerous barbarian kingdoms on the territory of the empire. The most significant of them include:
- Vandal in North Africa;
- Burgundian in Gaul;
- Frankish on the Rhine;
- Lombard in Northern Italy.
The appearance of the first rudiments of statehood among the ancient Germans dates back to the 3rd century. This phenomenon was characterized by the destruction of the tribal system, increased property inequality and the formation of large tribal unions. This process was suspended due to the invasion of the Huns, but after the nomadic threat had passed, it continued with renewed vigor in the fragments of the Roman Empire. It should be noted that the number of former Roman citizens significantly exceeded the number of conquerors. This became the reason for the fairly peaceful coexistence of representatives of the two civilizations. The barbarian kingdoms grew out of a synthesis of ancient and Germanic traditions. Many Roman institutions were preserved in the kingdoms, and due to the lack of literate people in the barbarian environment, the Roman elite occupied not the last place in government.
The heterogeneity and immaturity of the barbarian kingdoms led to the death of most of them. Some of them were subjugated by the powerful Byzantine Empire, and some became part of the influential kingdom of the Franks.
Life and social structure
The ancient Germans lived mainly by hunting and robberies. The head of the tribe was the leader - the king, however, he always coordinated important decisions with his military squad, elders and the people's assembly. All free members of the community who were able to bear arms had the right to participate in the meeting (in some tribes this could also be women). As the tribal elite became richer, the first estates began to emerge among the Germans. Society was divided into noble, free and semi-free. Slavery among the Germans also existed, but it was patriarchal in nature. Slaves were not the property of their owners without rights, as in Rome, but rather junior members of the family.
Until the 2nd-3rd centuries, the Germans led a predominantly nomadic lifestyle, however, they had to coexist next to the then powerful Roman Empire. Any attempts to penetrate beyond the Roman border ramparts were harshly suppressed. As a result, in order to feed themselves, the Germans had to switch to sedentism and arable farming. Land ownership was collective and belonged to the community.
The cultural influence of the Celts and sedentism contributed to the development of crafts. The Germans learned to mine metal and collect amber, make weapons, and tan leather. Archaeologists have found many ceramics, jewelry and wooden crafts made by German craftsmen.
As Rome weakened and discipline weakened in the border garrisons, the Germans began to increasingly penetrate into the territory of the empire. Strong ties (mainly economic) began to emerge between the two cultures. Many Germans even went to serve in the Roman army.
After the emergence of the barbarian kingdoms, the basis of social and land relations became feudal ties, which grew out of the relationship between warriors and the former king (and now the king). Later, these connections would become the basis of social life in medieval Europe.
Beliefs
Historians have been able to piece together the most complete picture only about the religious beliefs of the North German tribes, since their myths have survived to this day in written sources. At the head of the pagan pantheon of the northern Germans was the god of war and wisdom - Odin. Other gods were of secondary, but also very important, importance, including: the goddess of fertility Freya, the embodiment of the sea element - Njord, the god of cunning Loki and the god of thunder Thor.
Other tribes, obviously, had a pantheon quite similar to the Scandinavian one. Initially, leaders and elders were engaged in cult practices, but as religious views and social structure became more complex, a priestly class arose among the Germans. According to Roman authors, the Germans performed all important ceremonies - prayers, sacrifices (including human ones), fortune telling - in their sacred groves. Long before the fall of Rome, the population of Europe began to rapidly become Christianized. However, Christian dogmas were mixed with pagan views, which caused the distortion of Christian teaching and the emergence of heresies.
In ancient times, the Germans lived on the coast of the Baltic Sea. Scandinavian and Jutland peninsulas. But then, due to the deterioration of the climate, they began to move south. In the first centuries AD, the Germans occupied the lands between the Rhine, Oder and Danube rivers. From the writings of the Roman historian Tacitus we learn about how they lived.
The Germans settled at the edges of forests and along river banks. Over time, they began to surround their villages with a rampart and a ditch. The Germans raised livestock, and later mastered agriculture. They also hunted, fished and gathered. The Germans knew how to smelt iron and forge tools and weapons from it. Craftsmen made carts, boats and ships. Potters made dishes. The Germans have long traded with the Romans.
The Germans lived in families. Families formed a clan. Several clans united into a tribe, and tribes into tribal unions. All members of the tribe were free people, equal to each other. During the war, all the men of the tribe capable of fighting formed the people's militia.
The tribe was initially governed by a popular assembly, which included all adult men of the tribe. At the call of the elders, they gathered to decide whether to declare war, whether to make peace, who to choose as a military leader, how to resolve a dispute between relatives. But then the Germans developed nobility - dukes: elders of clans and military leaders, who began to play the main role at public meetings. They lived in fortified estates, had more livestock and arable land, and took most of the military booty for themselves.
Noble people recruited permanent military detachments - squads. The warriors swore an oath of allegiance to the leader and were obliged to fight for him without sparing their lives. Experienced and skilled warriors, the Germans often raided the Roman Empire. War booty increased the wealth of the nobility, who used the labor of captive slaves. The slave had his own plot of land, from which he gave part of the harvest to his master.
From the end of the 4th century. The Great Migration began. Entire Germanic tribes were removed from their homes and set off to conquer new lands. The impetus for the resettlement was the invasion of the nomadic Huns from the depths of Asia. Under the leadership of the leader Attila, the Huns in the middle of the 5th century. devastated Europe and moved towards Gaul.
In 378, near the city of Adrianople, the Roman army, led by Emperor Valens himself, was completely destroyed by the Visigoths, one of the Germanic tribes. The Empire was never able to recover from this defeat.
It became increasingly difficult for a weakened Rome to restrain the onslaught of the barbarians: the population of the empire was depleted by the exactions of officials and state taxes. Crafts, trade, and the entire economy of the Roman Empire gradually fell into decline. To protect their borders, the Romans began to resort
at the service of mercenaries - the same Germans. But there was little hope for them. In 410, Rome was taken by the Visigoth leader Alaric. True, in 451, in the battle on the Catalaunian fields, the Romans and their allies managed to defeat the army of the Hunnic leader Attila. However, this could no longer save the empire. In 476, as a result of a rebellion raised by the Roman barbarian commander Odoacer, the Western Roman Empire fell.
By the beginning of the 6th century. The Germans settled throughout the Western Roman Empire: in North Africa - the Vandals, in Spain - the Visigoths, in Italy - the Ostrogoths, in Gaul - the Franks, in Britain - the Angles and Saxons and founded their states on these lands.
The Germans as a people formed in northern Europe from Indo-European tribes who settled in Jutland, the lower Elbe and southern Scandinavia in the 1st century BC. The ancestral home of the Germans was Northern Europe, from where they began to move south. At the same time, they came into contact with the indigenous inhabitants - the Celts, who were gradually forced out. The Germans differed from the southern peoples in their tall stature, blue eyes, reddish hair color, and warlike and enterprising character.
The name "Germans" is of Celtic origin. Roman authors borrowed the term from the Celts. The Germans themselves did not have their own common name for all tribes. A detailed description of their structure and way of life is given by the ancient Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus at the end of the 1st century AD.
Germanic tribes are usually divided into three groups: North Germanic, West Germanic and East Germanic. Part of the ancient Germanic tribes - the northern Germans - moved along the ocean coast to the north of Scandinavia. These are the ancestors of modern Danes, Swedes, Norwegians and Icelanders.
The most significant group is the West Germans. They were divided into three branches. One of them is the tribes that lived in the Rhine and Weser regions. These included the Batavians, Mattiacs, Chatti, Cherusci and other tribes.
The second branch of the Germans included the tribes of the North Sea coast. These are the Cimbri, Teutons, Frisians, Saxons, Angles, etc. The third branch of the West German tribes was the cult union of the Germinons, which included the Suevi, Lombards, Marcomanni, Quadi, Semnones and Hermundurs.
These groups of ancient Germanic tribes conflicted with each other and this led to frequent disintegrations and new formations of tribes and alliances. In the 3rd and 4th centuries AD. e. numerous individual tribes united into large tribal unions of the Alemanni, Franks, Saxons, Thuringians and Bavarians.
The main role in the economic life of the German tribes of this period belonged to cattle breeding, which was especially developed in areas abounding in meadows - Northern Germany, Jutland, Scandinavia.
The Germans did not have continuous, closely built-up villages. Each family lived in a separate farm, surrounded by meadows and groves. Kinship families formed a separate community (mark) and jointly owned the land. Members of one or more communities came together and held public assemblies. Here they made sacrifices to their gods, resolved issues of war or peace with their neighbors, dealt with litigation, judged criminal offenses and elected leaders and judges. Young men who reached adulthood received weapons from the people's assembly, which they never parted with.
Like all uneducated peoples, the ancient Germans led a harsh lifestyle, dressed in animal skins, armed themselves with wooden shields, axes, spears and clubs, loved war and hunting, and in peacetime indulged in idleness, dice games, feasts and drinking bouts. Since ancient times, their favorite drink was beer, which they brewed from barley and wheat. They loved the game of dice so much that they often lost not only all their property, but also their own freedom.
Caring for the household, fields and herds remained the responsibility of women, old people and slaves. Compared to other barbarian peoples, the position of women among the Germans was better and polygamy was not widespread among them.
During the battle, women were behind the army, they looked after the wounded, brought food to the fighters and reinforced their courage with their praise. Often the Germans, put to flight, were stopped by the cries and reproaches of their women, then they entered the battle with even greater ferocity. Most of all, they feared that their wives would not be captured and become slaves to their enemies.
The ancient Germans already had a division into classes: noble (edshzings), free (freelings) and semi-free (lassas). Military leaders, judges, dukes, and counts were chosen from the noble class. During wars, leaders enriched themselves with booty, surrounded themselves with a squad of the bravest people, and with the help of this squad acquired supreme power in their fatherland or conquered foreign lands.
The ancient Germans developed crafts, mainly weapons, tools, clothing, utensils. The Germans knew how to mine iron, gold, silver, copper, and lead. The technology and artistic style of handicrafts have undergone significant Celtic influences. Leather dressing and wood processing, ceramics and weaving were developed.
Trade with Ancient Rome played a significant role in the life of the ancient Germanic tribes. Ancient Rome supplied the Germans with ceramics, glass, enamel, bronze vessels, gold and silver jewelry, weapons, tools, wine, and expensive fabrics. Agricultural and livestock products, livestock, leather and skins, furs, as well as amber, which was in special demand, were imported into the Roman state. Many Germanic tribes had a special privilege of intermediary trade.
The basis of the political structure of the ancient Germans was the tribe. The People's Assembly, in which all armed free members of the tribe participated, was the highest authority. It met from time to time and resolved the most significant issues: the election of a tribal leader, the analysis of complex intra-tribal conflicts, initiation into warriors, the declaration of war and the conclusion of peace. The issue of relocating the tribe to new places was also decided at the tribe meeting.
At the head of the tribe was a leader who was elected by the people's assembly. In ancient authors it was designated by various terms: principes, dux, rex, which corresponds to the common German term könig - king.
A special place in the political structure of ancient Germanic society was occupied by military squads, which were formed not by clan, but on the basis of voluntary loyalty to the leader.
The squads were created for the purpose of predatory raids, robberies and military raids into neighboring lands. Any free German with a penchant for risk and adventure or profit, and with the abilities of a military leader, could create a squad. The law of life of the squad was unquestioning submission and devotion to the leader. It was believed that to emerge alive from a battle in which a leader fell was dishonor and disgrace for life.
The first major military clash of the Germanic tribes with Rome associated with the invasion of the Cimbri and Teutons, when in 113 BC. The Teutons defeated the Romans at Norea in Noricum and, devastating everything in their path, invaded Gaul. In 102-101. BC The troops of the Roman commander Gaius Marius defeated the Teutons at Aquae Sextiae, then the Cimbri at the Battle of Vercellae.
In the middle of the 1st century. BC Several Germanic tribes united and set out together to conquer Gaul. Under the leadership of the king (tribal leader) Areovists, the German Suevi tried to gain a foothold in Eastern Gaul, but in 58 BC. were defeated by Julius Caesar, who expelled Ariovist from Gaul, and the union of tribes disintegrated.
After Caesar's triumph, the Romans repeatedly invade and conduct military operations in German territory. An increasing number of Germanic tribes find themselves in the zone of military conflicts with Ancient Rome. These events are described by Gaius Julius Caesar in
Under Emperor Augustus, an attempt was made to expand the borders of the Roman Empire east of the Rhine. Drusus and Tiberius conquered the tribes in the north of modern Germany and built camps on the Elbe. In the 9th year AD. Arminius - the leader of the German Cherusci tribe defeated the Roman legions in the Teutonic forest and for some time restored the former border along the Rhine.
The Roman commander Germanicus avenged this defeat, but soon the Romans stopped further conquest of German territory and established border garrisons along the Cologne-Bonn-Ausburg line to Vienna (modern names).
At the end of the 1st century. the border was determined - "Roman Frontiers"(lat. Roman Lames) separating the population of the Roman Empire from the diverse “barbarian” Europe. The border ran along the Rhine, Danube and Limes, which connected these two rivers. It was a fortified strip with fortifications along which troops were stationed.
Part of this line from the Rhine to the Danube, 550 km long, still exists and, as an outstanding monument of ancient fortifications, was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1987.
But let's go back to the distant past to the ancient Germanic tribes, which united when they began wars with the Romans. Thus, several strong peoples gradually formed - the Franks on the lower reaches of the Rhine, the Alemanni to the south of the Franks, the Saxons in Northern Germany, then the Lombards, Vandals, Burgundians and others.
The easternmost Germanic people were the Goths, who were divided into Ostrogoths and Visigoths - eastern and western. They conquered the neighboring peoples of the Slavs and Finns, and during the reign of their king Germanaric they dominated from the Lower Danube to the very banks of the Don. But the Goths were driven out from there by the wild people who came from beyond the Don and Volga - the Huns. The invasion of the latter was the beginning The Great Migration of Peoples.
Thus, in the diversity and diversity of historical events and the seeming chaos of inter-tribal alliances and conflicts between them, treaties and clashes between the Germans and Rome, the historical foundation of those subsequent processes that formed the essence of the Great Migration emerges →
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Etymology of the ethnonym Germans
“The word Germany is new and has recently come into use, for those who were the first to cross the Rhine and drive out the Gauls, now known as the Tungrians, were then called Germans. Thus, the name of the tribe gradually prevailed and spread to the entire people; At first everyone, out of fear, referred to him by the name of the victors, and then, after this name took root, he himself began to call himself Germans.”
In the late Iron Age, a tribe of Germans lived in the northeast of Iberia, but most historians consider them to be Celts. Linguist Yu. Kuzmenko believes that their name is associated with the region from which they migrated to Spain, and which later passed on to the Germans.
According to known data, the term “Germans” was first used by Posidonius in the 1st half of the 1st century. BC e. for the name of a people who had the custom of washing down fried meat with a mixture of milk and undiluted wine. Modern historians suggest that the use of the word in earlier times was the result of later interpolations. Greek authors, who were little interested in the ethnic and linguistic differences of the “barbarians,” did not distinguish between the Germans and the Celts. Thus, Diodorus Siculus, who wrote his work in the middle of the 1st century. BC e. , refers to the Celts as tribes that already in his time the Romans (Julius Caesar, Sallust) called Germanic.
Truly an ethnonym " Germans"came into circulation in the 2nd half of the 1st century. BC e. after the Gallic wars of Julius Caesar to designate the peoples living east of the Rhine and north of the upper and lower Danube, that is, for the Romans it was not only an ethnic, but also a geographical concept.
However, in the German language itself there is also a consonant name (not to be confused with Roman) (German Hermann - a modified Harimann / Herimann, a two-basic name of ancient Germanic origin, formed by adding the components heri / hari - “army” and mann - “man”).
Origin of the Germans
Indo-Europeans. IV-II millennium BC e.
According to modern ideas, 5-6 thousand years ago, in the zone from Central Europe and the Northern Balkans to the northern Black Sea region, there was a single ethnolinguistic formation - tribes of Indo-Europeans who spoke a single or at least close dialects of a language, called the Indo-European language - the basis from which All modern languages of the Indo-European family then developed. According to another hypothesis, which today has a limited number of supporters, the Indo-European proto-language originated in the Middle East and was carried throughout Europe by migrations of related tribes.
Archaeologists identify several early cultures at the turn of the Stone and Bronze Ages associated with the spread of Indo-Europeans and with which different anthropological types of Caucasians are associated:
By the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e. From the ethnolinguistic community of Indo-Europeans, tribes of Anatolians (the peoples of Asia Minor), Aryans of India, Iranians, Armenians, Greeks, Thracians and the most eastern branch - the Tocharians, emerged and developed independently. North of the Alps in central Europe, the ethnolinguistic community of ancient Europeans continued to exist, which corresponds to the archaeological culture of burial mounds (XV-XIII centuries BC), which passed into the culture of the fields of burial urns (XIII-VII centuries BC) .
The south of Scandinavia represents a region where, unlike other parts of Europe, there is a unity of place names belonging only to the Germanic language. However, it is here that a gap is revealed in archaeological development between the relatively prosperous culture of the Bronze Age and the more primitive culture of the Iron Age that replaced it, which does not allow us to draw an unambiguous conclusion about the origin of the Germanic ethnos in this region.
Jastorf culture. 1st millennium BC e.
In the 2nd half of the 1st millennium BC. e. throughout the entire coastal zone between the mouths of the Rhine and Elbe, and especially in Friesland and Lower Saxony (traditionally classified as primordially Germanic lands), a single culture was widespread, which differed from both the contemporaneous La Tène (Celts) and Jastorf (Germans). The ethnicity of its Indo-European population, which became Germanic in our era, cannot be classified:
“The language of the local population, judging by toponymy, was neither Celtic nor German. Archaeological finds and toponymy indicate that the Rhine was not a tribal border before the arrival of the Romans, and related tribes lived on both sides.”
Linguists made the assumption that the Proto-Germanic language was separated from the Proto-Indo-European language at the very beginning of the Iron Age, that is, at the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. e., versions also appear about its formation much later, until the beginning of our era:
“It was in recent decades, in the light of understanding the new data coming to the disposal of the researcher - material from ancient Germanic toponymy and onomastics, as well as runology, ancient Germanic dialectology, ethnology and history - in a number of works it was clearly emphasized that the isolation of the Germanic linguistic community from the Western the area of the Indo-European languages took place at a relatively late time and that the formation of separate areas of the Germanic linguistic community dates back only to the last centuries before and the first centuries after our era.”
Thus, according to linguists and archaeologists, the formation of the Germanic ethnic group on the basis of Indo-European tribes dates back to approximately the period of the 6th-1st centuries. BC e. and occurred in areas adjacent to the lower Elbe, Jutland and southern Scandinavia. The formation of a specifically Germanic anthropological type began much earlier, in the early Bronze Age, and continued in the first centuries of our era as a result of the migrations of the Great Migration of Peoples and the assimilation of non-Germanic tribes related to the Germans within the framework of the ancient European community of the Bronze Age.
In the peat bogs of Denmark, well-preserved mummies of people are found, the appearance of which does not always coincide with the classical description by ancient authors of the tall race of Germans. See articles about a man from Tollund and a woman from Elling, who lived on Jutland in the 4th-3rd centuries. BC e.
Genotype of the Germans
Although in the Germanic lands it is possible to classify weapons, brooches and other things by style as Germanic, according to archaeologists they go back to Celtic examples of the La Tène period.
Nevertheless, the differences between the settlement areas of the Germanic and Celtic tribes can be traced archaeologically, primarily by the higher level of material culture of the Celts, the spread of oppidums (fortified Celtic settlements), and burial methods. The fact that the Celts and Germans were similar, but not related, peoples is confirmed by their different anthropological structure and genotype. In terms of anthropology, the Celts were characterized by a diverse build, from which it is difficult to choose a typically Celtic one, while the ancient Germans were predominantly dolichocephalic in their skull structure. The genotype of the population in the area of origin of the Germanic ethnic group (Jutland and southern Scandinavia) is represented mainly by haplogroups R1b-U106, I1a and R1a-Z284.
Classification of Germanic tribes
Separately, Pliny also mentions the Gillevions living in Scandinavia and other Germanic tribes (Batavians, Canninephates, Frisians, Frisiavones, Ubii, Sturii, Marsacians), without classifying them.
According to Tacitus the names " ingevons, hermions, istevons"Derived from the names of the sons of the god Mann, the progenitor of the Germanic tribes. Later than the 1st century, these names are not used, many names of Germanic tribes disappear, but new ones appear.
History of the Germans
Ancient Germans until the 4th century.
The ancient world for a long time knew nothing about the Germans, separated from them by the Celtic and Scythian-Sarmatian tribes. The Germanic tribes were first mentioned by the Greek navigator Pytheas from Massalia (modern Marseille), who during the time of Alexander the Great (2nd half of the 4th century BC) traveled to the shores of the North Sea, and even presumably the Baltic.
The Romans encountered the Germans during the formidable invasion of the Cimbri and Teutons (113-101 BC), who, during the resettlement from Jutland, devastated Alpine Italy and Gaul. Contemporaries perceived these Germanic tribes as hordes of northern barbarians from unknown distant lands. In the descriptions of their morals made by later authors, it is difficult to separate fiction from reality.
The earliest ethnographic information about the Germans was reported by Julius Caesar, who conquered by the middle of the 1st century. BC e. Gaul, as a result of which he reached the Rhine and clashed with the Germans in battles. Roman legions by the end of the 1st century. BC e. advanced to the Elbe, and in the 1st century works appeared that described in detail the settlement of Germanic tribes, their social structure and customs.
The wars of the Roman Empire with the Germanic tribes began from their earliest contact and continued with varying intensity throughout the first centuries AD. e. The most famous battle was the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in the year 9, when rebel tribes destroyed 3 Roman legions in central Germany. Rome managed to subjugate only a small part of the territories inhabited by the Germans beyond the Rhine; in the 2nd half of the 1st century, the empire went on the defensive along the Rhine and Danube rivers and the Upper German-Rhaetian Limes, repelling the raids of the Germans and making punitive campaigns into their lands. Raids were carried out along the entire border, but the most threatening direction was the Danube, where the Germans settled on its left bank during their expansion to the south and east.
In the 250-270s, the Roman-German wars called into question the very existence of the empire. In 251, Emperor Decius died in a battle with the Goths, who settled in the northern Black Sea region, followed by their devastating land and sea raids into Greece, Thrace, and Asia Minor. In the 270s, the empire was forced to abandon Dacia (the only Roman province on the left bank of the Danube) due to the increased pressure of Germanic and Sarmatian tribes. Due to pressure from the Alemanni, the Upper German-Rhaetian Limes was abandoned, and the Danube-Iller-Rhine Limes, more convenient for defense, became the new border of the empire between the Rhine and the Danube. The empire survived, consistently repelling the attacks of the barbarians, but in the 370s, the Great Migration began, during which Germanic tribes penetrated and gained a foothold in the lands of the Roman Empire.
The Great Migration of Peoples. IV-VI centuries
The Germanic kingdoms in Gaul demonstrated their strength in the war against the Huns. Thanks to them, Attila was stopped in the Catalaunian fields in Gaul, and soon the Hunnic empire, which included a number of East Germanic tribes, collapsed. Emperors in Rome itself in 460-470. They were appointed by German military leaders, first the Suevians Ricimer, then the Burgundian Gundobad. In fact, they ruled on behalf of their proteges, overthrowing those if the emperors tried to act independently. In 476, German mercenaries, who made up the army of the Western Empire led by Odoacer, deposed the last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustus. This event is formally considered the end of the Roman Empire.
Social structure of the ancient Germans
Social system
According to ancient historians, ancient Germanic society consisted of the following social groups: military leaders, elders, priests, warriors, free members of the tribe, freedmen, slaves. The highest power belonged to the people's assembly, to which all the men of the tribe appeared in military weapons. In the first centuries A.D. e. The Germans had a tribal system at its late stage of development.
“When a tribe is waging an offensive or defensive war, then officials are elected who bear the responsibilities of military leaders and have the right to dispose of life and death [of members of the tribe] ... When one of the leading persons in the tribe declares in the national assembly his intention to lead [in a military enterprise ] and calls on those who want to follow him to express their readiness for this - then those who approve of both the enterprise and the leader rise up, and, welcomed by those gathered, promise him their help.”
The leaders were supported by voluntary donations from tribe members. In the 1st century, the Germans began to have kings who differed from leaders only in the possibility of inheriting power, which was very limited in times of peace. As Tacitus noted: " They choose kings from the most noble, leaders from the most valiant. But even their kings do not have unlimited and undivided power.»
Economic relations
Language and writing
It is believed that these magical signs became the letters of the runic script. The name of the rune signs is derived from the word secret(Gothic runa: secret), and the English verb read(read) comes from the word guess. The Futhark alphabet, the so-called “senior runes,” consisted of 24 characters, which were a combination of vertical and inclined lines, convenient for cutting. Each rune not only conveyed a separate sound, but was also a symbolic sign carrying semantic meaning.
There is no single point of view on the origin of Germanic runes. The most popular version is that of the runologist Marstrander (1928), who suggested that the runes developed on the basis of an unidentified Northern Italic alphabet, which became known to the Germans through the Celts.
In total, about 150 items are known (weapon parts, amulets, tombstones) with early runic inscriptions of the 3rd-8th centuries. One of the earliest inscriptions ( raunijaz: "tester") on a spearhead from Norway dates back to ca. 200 year. , an even earlier runic inscription is considered to be an inscription on a bone comb preserved in a swamp on the Danish island of Funen. The inscription translates as harja(name or epithet) and dates back to the 2nd half of the 2nd century.
Most inscriptions consist of a single word, usually a name, which, in addition to the magical use of runes, results in the inability to decipher about a third of the inscriptions. The language of the oldest runic inscriptions is closest to the Proto-Germanic language and more archaic than Gothic, the earliest Germanic language recorded in written monuments.
Due to its predominantly cultic purpose, runic writing in continental Europe fell out of use by the 9th century, supplanted first by Latin, and then by writing based on the Latin alphabet. However, in Denmark and Scandinavia, runes were used until the 16th century.
Religion and Beliefs
Tacitus, writing approximately 150 years after Caesar at the end of the 1st century, records a marked progress in Germanic paganism. He reports the great power of priests within Germanic communities, as well as the gods to whom the Germans make sacrifices, including human ones. In their view, the earth gave birth to the god Tuiston, and his son, the god Mann, gave birth to the Germans. They also honor the gods, whom Tacitus called by the Roman names of Mercury
Before considering the very essence of the history of the ancient Germans, it is necessary to define this section of historical science.
The history of the ancient Germans is a section of historical science that studies and tells the history of the Germanic tribes. This section covers the period from the creation of the first German states to the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
History of the ancient Germans
Origin of the ancient Germans
The ancient Germanic peoples as an ethnic group formed on the territory of Northern Europe. Their ancestors are considered to be Indo-European tribes who settled in Jutland, southern Scandinavia and in the Elbe River basin. Roman historians began to identify them as an independent ethnic group; the first mentions of the Germans as an independent ethnic group date back to monuments of the first century BC. From the second century BC, the tribes of the ancient Germans began to move south. Already in the third century AD, the Germans began to actively attack the borders of the Western Roman Empire.
Having first met the Germans, the Romans wrote about them as northern tribes distinguished by their warlike disposition. Much information about the Germanic tribes can be found in the works of Julius Caesar. The great Roman commander, having captured Gaul, moved west, where he had to engage in battle with the Germanic tribes. Already in the first century AD, the Romans collected information about the settlement of the ancient Germans, about their structure and morals.
During the first centuries of our era, the Romans waged constant wars with the Germans, but they were never able to completely conquer them. After unsuccessful attempts to completely capture their lands, the Romans went on the defensive and carried out only punitive raids.
In the third century, the ancient Germans were already threatening the existence of the empire itself. Rome gave some of its territories to the Germans, and went on the defensive in more successful territories. But a new, even greater threat from the Germans arose during the great migration of peoples, as a result of which hordes of Germans settled on the territory of the empire. The Germans never stopped raiding Roman villages, despite all the measures taken.
At the beginning of the fifth century, the Germans, under the command of King Alaric, captured and plundered Rome. Following this, other Germanic tribes began to move, they fiercely attacked the provinces, and Rome could not protect them, all forces were thrown into the defense of Italy. Taking advantage of this, the Germans captured Gaul, and then Spain, where they founded their first kingdom.
The ancient Germans also performed well in alliance with the Romans, defeating Attila’s army on the Catalaunian fields. After this victory, the Roman emperors began to appoint German leaders as their military commanders.
It was the Germanic tribes led by King Odoacer who destroyed the Roman Empire, deposing the last emperor, Romulus Augustus. On the territory of the captured empire, the Germans began to create their own kingdoms - the first early feudal monarchies of Europe.
Religion of the ancient Germans
All Germans were pagans, and their paganism was different, in different regions, it was very different from each other. However, most of the pagan deities of the ancient Germans were common, they were only called by different names. So, for example, the Scandinavians had a god Odin, and to the West Germans this deity was represented by the name Wotan.The priests of the Germans were women, as Roman sources say, they were gray-haired. The Romans say that the pagan rituals of the Germans were extremely cruel. The throats of prisoners of war were cut, and predictions were made on the decomposed entrails of prisoners.
The ancient Germans saw a special gift in women and also worshiped them. In their sources, the Romans confirm that each Germanic tribe could have its own unique rituals and its own gods. The Germans did not build temples for the gods, but dedicated any land to them (groves, fields, etc.).
Activities of the ancient Germans
Roman sources say that the Germans were mainly engaged in cattle breeding. They mainly raised cows and sheep. Their craft was only slightly developed. But they had high quality stoves, spears, and shields. Only selected Germans, that is, the nobility, could wear armor.The clothing of the Germans was mainly made from animal skins. Both men and women wore capes; the richest Germans could afford pants.
To a lesser extent, the Germans were engaged in agriculture, but they had fairly high-quality tools, they were made of iron. The Germans lived in large long houses (from 10 to 30 m), next to the house there were stalls for domestic animals.
Before the great migration of peoples, the Germans led a sedentary way of life and cultivated the land. The Germanic tribes never immigrated of their own free will. On their lands they grew grain crops: oats, rye, wheat, barley.
The migration of peoples forced them to flee their native territories and try their luck in the ruins of the Roman Empire.
