User:Andrew Lancaster/Germanic peoples drafting

July 2019 structure:
 * 1	Ethnonym
 * 1.1	Germanic
 * 1.2	Teutonic
 * 2	Classification
 * 3	Linguistics
 * 4	History
 * 4.1	Origins
 * 4.2	Early Iron Age
 * 4.3	Pytheas
 * 4.4	Bastarnae
 * 4.5	Collision with Rome
 * 4.6	Roman Empire period
 * 4.7	Migration Period
 * 4.8	Role in the Fall of Rome
 * 4.9	Early Middle Ages
 * 4.10	Post-migration ethnogeneses
 * 6	Genetics
 * 7	Later Germanic studies and their influence
 * 7	Later Germanic studies and their influence

Lead work
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Lead 20 July 2021
The historical Germanic peoples (from ) are a category of ancient northern European tribes, first mentioned by Graeco-Roman authors. They are also associated with Germanic languages, which originated and dispersed among them and which inform one of the several approaches to defining the historical Germanic peoples.

Julius Caesar (100–44 BCE) described them as peoples who were moving south and west in his time, threatening Gaul and Italy. Later Roman authors defined Germania roughly between the Rhine in the west and the Vistula in the east. They distinguished them from other broad categories of peoples better known to Rome, especially the Celtic Gauls to their west, and "Scythian" Sarmatians to their east and southeast. Greek writers, in contrast, consistently categorized the Germanic peoples from east of the Rhine as Gauls. And with the possible exception of some groups near the Rhine, there is no evidence that "Germanic" was an endonym. Latin and Greek writers report centuries of historical interactions with Germanic peoples on the Rhine and Danube River border regions, but from about 400, several long-established Germanic peoples on the Middle Danube were replaced by newcomers migrating from the further north or east of Europe, and after this the term "Germanic" was mainly restricted to groups in the Rhine region, especially the Franks, and sometimes also the Alamanni.

Broader modern definitions of the Germanic peoples include peoples who were not known as Germani or Germanic peoples in their own time, but who are treated as one group of cultures, mostly because of their use of Germanic languages. Thus, in modern writing, "Germanic peoples" is a term which commonly includes peoples who were not referred to as Germanic by their contemporaries, and spoke distinct languages, only categorized as Germanic in modern times. Examples include the Goths of the Late Roman Empire, and the Norse-speaking Vikings from Scandinavia.

Apart from language and geography, proposed connections between the diverse Germanic peoples described in different periods by classical and medieval sources, archaeology, and linguistics are the subject of ongoing debate among scholars. For example there is doubt about whether the earliest Germani spoke Germanic languages, and whether the Germanic-speaking peoples of the Late Roman Empire were unified by any single shared culture, collective consciousness, or even language. For example, the tradition of describing late Roman Germanic language speakers as a single collective enemy of Rome has been criticized by some modern scholars, because it implies a single coordinated group.

Similarly, there is debate concerning the extent to which any definitively Germanic traditions apart from language survived after the Roman era, when new political entities formed in Europe following the Fall of the Western Roman Empire. Some of these new entities are seen as precursors of European nation states that have survived into the modern era, such as England and France. The proposed connections back to medieval and classical barbarian nations have been important to many of the Romanticist nationalist movements, which developed across Europe in the modern era. The most notable of these movements has been "Germanicism", which saw Germans especially as direct heirs of a single Europe-conquering "Germanic race" and culture. It became a popular narrative in the late 19th-early 20th century and, associated with the idea of a "Nordic race", helped inspire Nazism. In contrast, more complex proposals about continuity today, such as those proposed by Reinhard Wenskus, tend to focus on the possibility of more limited "kernels" of cultural traditions, which could be carried by relatively small groups with, or without, large-scale migrations.



Lead drafting starting July 2021
The historical Germanic peoples lived north of the Roman empire, in the large geographical region which came to be called Germania, between the Rhine and Vistula rivers and stretching into southern Scandinavia. Graeco-Roman writers also believed that some Germanic peoples had moved outside this area before coming into contact with Mediterranean cultures. West of the Rhine were the so-called Germani cisrhenani, and east of the Carpathians were the Bastarnae and Peucini.

Latin and Greek writers reported centuries of historical interactions with Germanic peoples on the Rhine and Danube River border regions, but from about 400, several long-established Germanic peoples on the Middle Danube were replaced by newcomers migrating from the further north or east of Europe, and after this the term "Germanic" was mainly restricted to groups in the Rhine region, especially the Franks, and sometimes also the Alamanni.

Julius Caesar (100–44 BCE), who was the first author to use the term Germani as a broad category which contrasted with the previously used term, "Gauls", consistent with how the term "Germanic peoples" is used today. He distinguished the peoples of Germania as more dangerous and less civilized than those Gauls who lived closer to Rome, and were under his governorship at the time.

Since the 19th century, modern scholars have also associated the Germanic peoples with Germanic languages, which are named after them, and are distinct from the Celtic languages associated with the Gauls. These Germanic languages were spoken among the Germanic peoples, and as a result the term "Germanic peoples" is now often used to refer to Germanic-speaking peoples from a range of periods and regions, in ways which vary between fields of study. However, there is no consensus among scholars today about exactly when, where and how Germanic-speaking peoples began dispersing, and to what extent the speakers of these languages continued to perceive themselves as sharing a single ethnicity.

It was traditionally believed by scholars, and continues to be debated, that a meaningfully distinct and shared Germanic culture may have continued to exist into the period known as "late antiquity" (approximately 250-700) or the "Early Middle Ages" (approximately 500-900). By this time contemporary authors had ceased using the term "Germanic peoples" in Caesar's way, while on the other hand written records of Germanic languages start to become more available, and show that they had come to be spoken by peoples who were very culturally and linguistically remote from the Franks and Alamanni, such as the Goths north of the Black sea, and the Norse-speaking Vikings from Scandinavia.


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