Balts

Balts

Total population
c. 5.2 million
Regions with significant populations
Lithuania 2,561,000  Latvia 1,188,000
Languages
Baltic languages
Related ethnic groups
Slavs (mostly Poles, Belarusians, Kashubians, Pomeranians and Northern Russians)

Part of a series on
Indo-European topics
show Languages List of Indo-European languages Extant Albanian Armenian Balto-Slavic Baltic Slavic Celtic Germanic Hellenic Greek Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Italic Romance Extinct Anatolian Tocharian Paleo-Balkan Dacian Illyrian Liburnian Messapian Mysian Paeonian Phrygian Thracian Reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language Phonology: Sound laws, Accent, Ablaut Hypothetical Daco-Thracian Graeco-Armenian Graeco-Aryan Graeco-Phrygian Indo-Hittite Italo-Celtic Thraco-Illyrian Grammar Vocabulary Root Verbs Nouns Pronouns Numerals Particles Other Proto-Albanian Proto-Anatolian Proto-Armenian Proto-Germanic (Proto-Norse) Proto-Celtic Proto-Italic Proto-Greek Proto-Balto-Slavic (Proto-Slavic) Proto-Indo-Iranian (Proto-Iranian)
show Philology Hittite texts Hieroglyphic Luwian Linear B Rigveda Avesta Homer Behistun Gaulish epigraphy Latin epigraphy Runic epigraphy Ogam Gothic Bible Armenian Bible Slanting Brahmi Old Irish glosses
show Origins Homeland Proto-Indo-Europeans Society Religion Mainstream Kurgan hypothesis Indo-European migrations Eurasian nomads Alternative and fringe Anatolian hypothesis Armenian hypothesis Beech argument Indigenous Aryans Baltic homeland Paleolithic Continuity Theory
show Archaeology Chalcolithic (Copper Age) Pontic Steppe Domestication of the horse Kurgan Kurgan culture Steppe cultures Bug–Dniester Sredny Stog Dnieper–Donets Samara Khvalynsk Yamnaya Mikhaylovka culture Novotitorovka culture Caucasus Maykop East Asia Afanasievo Eastern Europe Usatovo Cernavodă Cucuteni Northern Europe Corded ware Baden Middle Dnieper Bronze Age Pontic Steppe Chariot Yamnaya Catacomb Multi-cordoned ware Poltavka Srubna Northern/Eastern Steppe Abashevo culture Andronovo Sintashta Europe Globular Amphora Corded ware Beaker Unetice Trzciniec Nordic Bronze Age Terramare Tumulus Urnfield Lusatian South Asia BMAC Yaz Gandhara grave Iron Age Steppe Chernoles Europe Thraco-Cimmerian Hallstatt Jastorf Caucasus Colchian India Painted Grey Ware Northern Black Polished Ware
show Peoples and societies Bronze Age Anatolian peoples (Hittites) Armenians Mycenaean Greeks Indo-Iranians Iron Age Indo-Aryans Indo-Aryans Iranians Iranians Persians Medes Parthians Scythians Saka Sarmatians Massagetae Alans East Asia Wusun Yuezhi Europe Celts Gauls Celtiberians Insular Celts Cimmerians Hellenic peoples Italic peoples Germanic peoples Paleo-Balkan/Anatolia Thracians Dacians Illyrians Paeonians Phrygians Middle Ages East Asia Tocharians Europe Albanians Balts Slavs Norsemen/Medieval Scandinavians Medieval Europe Indo-Aryan Medieval India Iranian Greater Persia
show Religion and mythology Reconstructed Proto-Indo-European mythology Proto-Indo-Iranian religion Ancient Iranian religion Historical Hittite Indo-Aryan Vedic Hinduism Buddhism Jainism Sikhism Iranian Persian Zoroastrianism Kurdish Yazidism Yarsanism Scythian Ossetian Others Armenian Europe Paleo-Balkan (Albanian · Illyrian · Thracian · Dacian) Greek Roman Celtic Irish Scottish Breton Welsh Cornish Germanic Anglo-Saxon Continental Norse Baltic Latvian Lithuanian Slavic Practices Fire sacrifice Horse sacrifice Sati Winter solstice/Yule
show Indo-European studies Scholars Marija Gimbutas J. P. Mallory Institutes Copenhagen Studies in Indo-European Publications Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture The Horse, the Wheel and Language Journal of Indo-European Studies Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch Indo-European Etymological Dictionary
v t

The Balts or Baltic people (Lithuanian: baltai, Latvian: balti) are a group of Indo-European peoples primarily characterized as speakers of the Baltic languages.

One of the features of Baltic languages is the number of conservative or archaic features retained.^[1] Among the Baltic peoples are modern-day Lithuanians and Latvians (including Latgalians) — all Eastern Balts — as well as the Old Prussians, Yotvingians and Galindians — the Western Balts — whose languages and cultures are now extinct.

Etymology[]

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.^[2][3] Before him various ancient places names, such as Balcia,^[4] were used in reference to a supposed island in the Baltic Sea.^[2]

Adam, a speaker of German, connected Balt- with belt, a word with which he was familiar. However, linguistics has since established that Balt carried the sense of "white."^{[citation needed]} Many Baltic words contain the stem balt- "white",^[5] which may also refer to shallow bodies of water like marshes.^{[citation needed]}

In Germanic languages there was some form of the toponym East Sea until after about the year 1600, when maps in English began to labeled 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.^[6][7]

In 1845, Georg Heinrich Ferdinand Nesselmann proposed a distinct language group for Latvian, Lithuanian, and Old Prussian, which he termed Baltic.^[8] 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.^[9]

History[]

Map of the area of distribution of Baltic hydronyms. This area is considered the urheimat of the Balts.

Origins[]

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. Because the thousands of lakes and swamps in this area contributed to the Balts' geographical isolation, the Baltic languages retain a number of conservative or archaic features.

Some of the major authorities on Balts, such as Kazimieras Būga, Max Vasmer, Vladimir Toporov and Oleg Trubachyov,^{[citation needed]} 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 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.

Proto-history[]

Baltic archaeological cultures in the Iron Age from 600 BC to 200 BC

  Sambian-Nothangian group

  Western Masurian group (Galindians?)

  Eastern Masurian group (Yotvingians)

  Lower Neman and West-Latvian group (Curonians)

  Brushed Pottery culture

  Milograd culture

  Plain-Pottery culture, AKA Dnepr-Dvina culture

  Pomeranian culture

  Bell-shaped burials group

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 4th century AD.^[10]

Over time the Balts became differentiated into Western and Eastern Balts. In the 5th 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 Eastern Balts, including the hypothesised Dniepr Balts, were living in modern-day Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.

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, Eastern Balts towards the west. In the seventh century, Slavic tribes from the Volga regions appeared. 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 4th–7th centuries and were gradually slavicized.^{[citation needed]}

Middle Ages[]

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]} Gradually, Old Prussians became Germanized or Lithuanized between the 15th and 17th centuries, especially after the Reformation in Prussia.^{[citation needed]} 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.

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),^[11] the Latvian zeme, the Lithuanian žemė (land in English).

Culture[]

Part of a series on
Baltic religion
show Mythology Prussian Lithuanian Latvian Indo-European
show Deities Panbaltic Perkūnas Velnias Dievas Saulė Prussian Patollo Peckols Potrimpo Aušlavis Kurka Latvian Ūsiņš Ceroklis Jumis Auseklis Laima Lauma Māra Mahte Lithuanian Gabija Žemyna Laima Medeina/ Laumė/ Aušrinė Bangpūtys/ Miscellaneous Aitvaras Lauksargiai/Žemėpačiai
show Festivals Užgavėnės/Meteņi / /Lieldienas Joninės/Jāņi /Māras / Kūčios/ /Ziemassvētki
show Concepts Alka Romuva Sacred grove Kriwe-Kriwajto
show Contemporary Baltic neopaganism Romuva Vydūnas Jonas Trinkūnas Inija Trinkūnienė Dievturība Ernests Brastiņš Valdis Celms
Religion portal  Mythology portal
v t

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.

Genetics[]

The Balts are included in the "North European" gene cluster together with the Germanic peoples, some Slavic groups (the Poles and Nothern Russians) and Baltic Finnic peoples.^[12]

Recent genetic research show that the eastern Baltic in the Mesolithic was inhabited primarily by Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHGs).^[13] Their paternal haplogroups were mostly types of I2a and R1b, while their maternal haplogroups were mostly types of U5, U4 and U2.^[14] These people carried a high frequency of the derived HERC2 allele which codes for light eye color.

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.^[15] 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.^[16]

During the Neolithic, increasing admixture from Eastern Hunter-Gatherers (EHGs) is detected. The paternal haplogroups of EHGs was mostly types of R1b and R1a, while their maternal haplogroups appears to have been almost exclusively types of U5, U4, and U2.

Baltic tribes before the coming of the Teutonic Order (ca. 1200 AD). The Eastern Balts are shown in brown hues while the Western Balts are shown in green. The boundaries are approximate. Baltic territory was extensive inland.

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.^[16][13][17] In the aftermath of the Corded Ware expansion, local hunter-gatherer ancestry experienced a resurgence.^[15]

Haplogroup N did not appear in the eastern Baltic until the late Bronze Age, perhaps as part of a westward migration of speakers of Uralic languages.^[15]

Modern-day Balts have a lower amount of EEF ancestry, and a higher amount of WHG ancestry, than any other population in Europe.^[18][a]

In accordance with the 2008 research results of Russian and Estonian geneticists, the Nothern Russians (a subethnic group) genetically are very similar to the Balts.^[12]

List of Baltic peoples[]

Modern-day Baltic peoples

• Eastern Baltic peoples
  • Latvians
    • Latgalians
  • Lithuanians
    • Aukštaitians ("highlanders")
    • Samogitians ("lowlanders")

See also[]

• Eastern Baltic languages
• Western Baltic languages

Notes[]

References[]

Sources[]

English language[]

• Jones, Eppie R. (February 20, 2017). "The Neolithic Transition in the Baltic Was Not Driven by Admixture with Early European Farmers". Current Biology. Cell Press. 27 (4): 576–582. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2016.12.060. PMC 5321670. PMID 28162894.
• Balanovsky, Oleg; Rootsi, Siiri; et al. (January 2008). "Two sources of the Russian patrilineal heritage in their Eurasian context". American Journal of Human Genetics. 82 (1): 236–250. doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2007.09.019. PMC 2253976. PMID 18179905.
• Bojtár, Endre (1999). Foreword to the Past: A Cultural History of the Baltic People. Budapest and New York: Central European University Press. p. 9. ISBN 978-963-9116-42-9.
• Gimbutas, Marija (1963). The Balts. London: Thames & Hudson.
• Kropotkin, Peter Alexeivitch (1911). "Lithuanians and Letts" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. 16 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 789–791.
• Lazaridis, Iosif (September 17, 2014). "Ancient human genomes suggest three ancestral populations for present-day Europeans". Nature. Nature Research. 513 (7518): 409–413. arXiv:1312.6639. Bibcode:2014Natur.513..409L. doi:10.1038/nature13673. hdl:11336/30563. PMC 4170574. PMID 25230663.
• Malmström, Helena (October 9, 2019). "The genomic ancestry of the Scandinavian Battle Axe Culture people and their relation to the broader Corded Ware horizon". Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Royal Society. 286 (1912): 20191528. doi:10.1098/rspb.2019.1528. PMC 6790770. PMID 31594508.
• Mathieson, Iain (February 21, 2018). "The Genomic History of Southeastern Europe". Nature. Nature Research. 555 (7695): 197–203. Bibcode:2018Natur.555..197M. doi:10.1038/nature25778. PMC 6091220. PMID 29466330.
• Mittnik, Alisa (January 30, 2018). "The genetic prehistory of the Baltic Sea region". Nature Communications. Nature Research. 16 (1): 442. Bibcode:2018NatCo...9..442M. doi:10.1038/s41467-018-02825-9. PMC 5789860. PMID 29382937.
• Saag, Lehti (July 24, 2017). "Extensive Farming in Estonia Started through a Sex-Biased Migration from the Steppe". Current Biology. Cell Press. 27 (14): 2185–2193. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2017.06.022. PMID 28712569.

Polish language[]

• "Bałtowie". Encyklopedia Internetowa PWN (in Polish). Archived from the original on April 26, 2005. Retrieved May 25, 2005.
• ; 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 (in Polish). Olsztyn-Białystok: Pojezierze. ISBN 83-7002-001-1.
• Kosman, Marceli (1981). Zmierzch Perkuna czyli ostatni poganie nad Bałtykiem (in Polish). Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza.
• "Bałtowie". Wielka Encyklopedia PWN (in Polish) (1 ed.). 2001.
• Okulicz-Kozaryn, Łucja (1983). Życie codzienne Prusów i Jaćwięgów w wiekach średnich (in Polish). Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy.
• (2000). Historia litewskiej kultury etnicznej (in Polish). Kaunas, "Šviesa". ISBN 5-430-02902-5.

Further reading[]

• (in Lithuanian) E. Jovaiša, Aisčiai. Kilmė (Aestii. The Origin). Lietuvos edukologijos universiteto leidykla, Vilnius; 2013. ISBN 978-9955-20-779-5
• (in Lithuanian) E. Jovaiša, Aisčiai. Raida (Aestii. The Evolution). Lietuvos edukologijos universiteto leidykla, Vilnius; 2014. ISBN 9789955209577
• (in Lithuanian) E. Jovaiša, Aisčiai. Lietuvių ir Lietuvos pradžia (Aestii. The Beginning of Lithuania and Lithuanians). Lietuvos edukologijos universiteto leidykla, Vilnius; 2016. ISBN 9786094710520
• Nowakowski, Wojciech; Bartkiewicz, Katarzyna. "Baltes et proto-Slaves dans l'Antiquité. Textes et archéologie". In: Dialogues d'histoire ancienne, vol. 16, n°1, 1990. pp. 359–402. [DOI: https://doi.org/10.3406/dha.1990.1472];[www.persee.fr/doc/dha_0755-7256_1990_num_16_1_1472]
• Matthews, W. K. "Baltic origins." Revue des études slaves 24.1/4 (1948): 48–59.

External links[]

• Gimbutas, Marija (1963). The Balts. London, New York: Thames & Hudson, Gabriella. Archived from the original on 20 August 2008. Retrieved 2008-09-06. E-book of the original.
• Baranauskas, Tomas (2003). "Forum of Lithuanian History". Historija.net. Archived from the original on 6 September 2008. Retrieved 2008-09-06.
• Sabaliauskas, Algirdas (1998). "We, the Balts". Postilla 400. Samogitian Cultural Association. Archived from the original on 2008-04-02. Retrieved 2008-09-05.
• Straižys, Vytautas; (1997). "The Cosmology of ancient Balts". www.astro.lt. Retrieved 2008-09-05.