Who were the Germani and where did they come from? page 2

Who were the Germani and where did they come from?

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To a Roman, the home of the Germani, these unknown expanses stretching to the North and the East beyond the Rhine and the Danube, was a nightmarish wilderness. The uncivilized inhabitants lived in humble huts and practiced their primitive agriculture, made yet more laborious by forests, swamps, and the cold. Time and again the people in this unattractive land were forced to migrate, moving families, clans and tribes in pursuit of better living conditions. However, when Tacitus called the Germani indigenous, he was not entirely incorrect. Archaeologists have identified a large Germani settlement of villages and farms that lasted for many centuries. This settlement lies between the northern edge of the low German mountain range and southern Scandinavia.

We must rely on archaeological evidence for information about prior ages, the Stone Age ending about 2000 BCE, the Bronze Age up to about 500 BCE, and the subsequent Iron Age. There is no written testimony about these Central and Northern Europeans. The megalithic builders appeared in the 3rd Millennium BCE. They buried their dead in large stone structures and built monumental temple areas. A new migration brought a culture that we identify by their remarkable banded ceramics and famous battle axes. These new immigrants dominated the existing settlements and their descendants were in their prime about 1000 BCE, during the Bronze Age. It was an age marked by prosperity and extensive trade. But they eventually reached a period of impoverishment, during the Iron Age, around 500 BCE at the latest. To this group we must include the people of the Jastorf culture, who lived in the area between the Elbe and the Oder. It is here that archaeologists place the immediate ancestors of the Germani.

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