The changes of consonants in PG language were first formulated in terms of a phonetic law that is also known as the First or Proto-Germanic consonant shift in the early 19th c.Who introduced this law?How many acts does it include?Present the changes that happened in each of the act in the form of a table.Give your own examples.
The law of Grimma, or the law of Rask - Grimma (other names - the first [all-German] movement [first shift, stoppage] of consonants), is a phonetic process in the history of the Prague Germanic language, consisting in the change of Indo-European confidential consonants. First described in 1814 (sometimes called 1818 year) by the Danish linguist Rasmus Rask, and in 1822 was fully formulated and researched by the German philologist Jacob Grimm, whose name he ultimately received. Sam Grimm used the term “movement of consonants” (him. Lautverschiebung). Law of Grimm ( aryadu with Werner's law) is considered one of the most well-known phonetic laws komparativistike.V science there is no established opinion about the causes of the first consonant in a Teutonic yazyke.Na Currently there are four theories:
Psychological theory. It belongs to Grimm himself. In his opinion, the movement of consonants is explained by the special character of the Germans, their love of freedom. At the moment, the theory of followers does not have.
Geographical theory. The Germans settled for some time in the mountains, where rarefied air influenced breathing and consequently the pronunciation of consonants. The theory enjoyed some popularity in the XIX century, now has practically no supporters. And psychological and geographical theories do not correspond to modern ideas about the causes of phonetic processes .
The theory of pre-German substratum. According to this theory, some features of Germanic languages, including the law of Grimm, are caused by the action of the substrate language spoken by the defeated and German-assimilated people.
Glottal theory. According to this theory, a system of stochastic for post-Indo-European language, different from the traditional one (glottalized consonants are placed in place of ringed occlusive ones), Germanic languages converted the Indo-European system of confidants not by movement of consonants as such, but by a number of other processes: 1) loss of glottalized systems a sign of glottalization, 2) spirantization of ringing aspirations in the middle of a word and the loss of an additional sign of aspiration at the beginning of a word, 3) spirantization of deaf people dyhatelnyh.Soglasno glottal theory Germanic languages retain more archaic consonant system than most other Indo-European yazykov.Nemetsky scientist F. Kluge considers the duration of the Grimm's Law to the II millennium BC. e. His compatriot A. Bach also dates the beginning of the operation of the law and believes that by 500 BC. e. The process has already ended. A. Meie dates the process of the last centuries BC.
The first movement is reflected in the following borrowings from Latin and Celtic languages into Germanic languages:
lat Graecus "Greek"> Gothic. krekos, dr.-v.-it. kriahha;
lat Volca "Volk"> dr.-v.-it. walh, dr.-eng. wealh;
celtic rīg- "king"> Gothic. reiks.
However, the value of this evidence for the chronology of the first movement of consonants is disputed by those scientists who believe that in this case we are dealing with the substitution of foreign sounds when borrowing.
French scientist J. Fourke, based on the reflection of the law of Grimm in the inscription on the helmet from Negau, relates the operation of the law to 500 BC. e. Almost analogous movement of consonants occurred in Proto-Armenian language:
Latin Ancient Sanscrithe
Similar processes are found in some Chinese dialects and Chadian languages.
A similar movement of consonants distinguishes the southern group of Bantu languages from their northern neighbors:
Proto-BantuKosaSoto
"twist" * kamakhamaxama
"three" * tatuthathuraru
"give" * paphaφa
22. "Complete the table presenting the information about geographical distribution and the number of speakers of each language: Modern Germanic languages
East Germanic branch
West Germanic branch
North Germanic branch "
The West Germanic languages include the three most widely spoken Germanic languages: English with around 360-400 million native speakers; German, with over 100 million native speakers; and Dutch, with 24 million native speakers. Other West Germanic languages include Afrikaans, an offshoot of Dutch, with over 7.1 million native speakers; Low German, considered a separate collection of unstandardizeddialects, with roughly 0.3 million native speakers and probably 6.7–10 million people who can understand it (at least 5 million in Germany and 1.7 million in the Netherlands);Yiddish, once used by approximately 13 million Jews in pre-World War II Europe and Scots, both with 1.5 million native speakers; Limburgish varietieswith roughly 1.3 million speakers along the Dutch–Belgian–German border; and the Frisian languages with over 0.5 million native speakers in the Netherlands and Germany.
The main North Germanic languages areDanish, Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish, which have a combined total of about 20 million speakers.
The East Germanic branch included Gothic, Burgundian, and Vandalic, all of which are now extinct. The last to die off was Crimean Gothic, spoken until the late 18th century in some isolated areas of Crimea.
23. Present the main reasons of Great migration of peoples in the form of a diagram.
The Great Migration was the relocation of more than 6 million African Americans from the rural South to the cities of the North, Midwest and West from about 1916 to 1970. Driven from their homes by unsatisfactory economic opportunities and harsh segregationist laws, many blacks headed north, where they took advantage of the need for industrial workers that first arose during the First World War. During the Great Migration, African Americans began to build a new place for themselves in public life, actively confronting racial prejudice as well as economic, political and social challenges to create a black urban culture that would exert enormous influence in the decades to come.
Before the Great Migration.After the Civil War and the Reconstruction era, white supremacy was largely restored across the South in the 1870s, and the segregationist policies known as “Jim Crow” soon became the law of the land.
Southern blacks were forced to make their living working the land due to black codes and the sharecropping system, which offered little in the way of economic opportunity, especially after a boll weevil epidemic in 1898 caused massive crop damage across the South.
And while the Ku Klux Klan had been officially dissolved in 1869, the KKK continued underground after that, and intimidation, violence and even lynching of black southerners were not uncommon practices in the Jim Crow South.
Did you know? Around 1916, when the Great Migration began, a factory wage in the urban North was typically three times more than what blacks could expect to make working the land in the rural South.
He spent many years in the Roman provinces of Low and High Germany. He wrote a book called “Natural History”. He was the first who enumerated and classified the military tribes. Germanic tribes in the form of a table.
Germanic tribes in the 1st c. A.D. consisted of the following groups:
The great historian Pliny spent many years in the Roman provinces of Low and High Germany. He wrote a book called “Natural History”. He was the first who enumerated and classified the military tribes. It was proved by many scientists. According to Pliny there were several Germanic tribes:
1. The Vindili.They lived in the eastern part of the territory inhabited by the Germanic tribes (GT – Germanic territory). They consisted of the Goths, the Burgundians and the Vandals.
2. The Ingvaeons. They lived in the north-western part of the GT. They inhabited the Jutland peninsula and the coast of the North Sea. The tribes of Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians were formed later of this group.
3.The Istkveoni.They lived on the Rhine. Later they formed a very powerful tribal union of Franconians. In the early Middle Ages they were powerful group of West Germans.
4. The Pekvini or Bastarni. They lived closed to the place, which is now called Ruminia. Mostly this group is included to the first group of Germanic tribes.
5.The Germioni. They lived in the centre of Germany and later the German nation was formed of these tribes.
6. The Gellivioni. They were isolated from other Germanic tribes. They inhabited Scandinavia.
Compare the classifications of the ancient Germanic languages by Pliny the Elder and F. Engels with the traditional three-part classification, determine the similarities. Present it in the form of a table.
Classification of the ancient Germanic tribes. The question of the ancient Germanic languages and their classification is inextricably linked with the issue of tribes - the carriers of these languages, with the question of the classification of these tribes from the point of view of historical science.
The first classification of the Germanic tribes gave Pliny the Elder. He divides all the numerous Germanic tribes into six main groups:
The Ingweons (or Ingevons), which included the tribes of the Cimbri, Teuton, and Hawk. They also included the Angles, Saxons, Utes, friezes and many others. They lived in the northwestern part of the German territory, on the North Sea coast, and on the Jutland peninsula.
In his work “On the History of the Ancient Germans” F. Engels accepts Pliny's classification with minor amendments, believing that it reflects the real picture of the settlement of Germanic tribal groups and basically agrees with the linguistic classification that was established many centuries later when studying the monuments of the Old German writing . His amendment to this classification is that he does not single out the singers and bastarnas into a separate tribal group, but unites them with the Goths and other tribes into the Vindil group, since, in all likelihood, they were ready to join the tribesmen. subsequently into the gothic kingdom.
Classification of ancient Germanic tribal languages. Monuments of Old German writing, the study of which made it possible to classify Germanic languages, were created in the era of the formation of the barbarian kingdoms, in the era of the Christianization of the Germans and the spread of the Latin alphabet and Latin alphabet. Different ethnic groups are not attached to the culture of the letter of letters at the same time, and this explains the fact that the first written monuments of the Germans recorded the state of languages at different levels of their development.
Based on the study of the monuments of ancient Germanic writing, the following language groups are distinguished:
The Ingweons — Teutons, Hawks, Friezes, Angles, Saxons, Utes, etc., and Eastwones — Frankish tribes, herminons — Alemanni, Bavarians, Langobards, and others. Were native speakers of West Germanic languages.
Compare the classifications of the ancient Germanic languages by Pliny the Elder and the traditional three-part classification. Determine the similarities and differences between them in the form of a table
| Classification of ancient Cermanic tribes languages | Classification of Pliny by Elder |
| 1. Eastern, represented by the monuments of the Gothic language, dating back to 4 - 6 centuries. With the destruction of the kingdom of the Ostrogoths, writing in Gothic language disappeared. | Vindyly - Goths, Burgundians, etc. were native speakers of East Germanic languages. |
| 2. Northern (Scandinavian) group, up to 10 century. represented by the monuments of runic writing; from 10th c. it distinguishes between Old Danish, Old Swedish, Old Norse and Old Norse. | The Ingweons — the Teutons, the Hawks, the friezes, the Angles, the Saxons, the Utes, and others; |
| 3. The Western group, represented (from the 7th century onwards) by monuments in Old English, Old Frisian, Old Saxon, Old Low German and Old High German. | Gilleviony - Scandinavian tribes spoke North German languages. |
Classification of ancient Germanic tribal languages. Monuments of Old German writing, the study of which made it possible to classify Germanic languages, were created in the era of the formation of the barbarian kingdoms, in the era of the Christianization of the Germans and the spread of the Latin alphabet and Latin alphabet. Different ethnic groups are not attached to the culture of the letter of letters at the same time, and this explains the fact that the first written monuments of the Germans recorded the state of languages at different levels of their development.
But especially valuable are the information of Pliny the Elder, the natural scientist (years of life - 23-79 AD), as well as Tacitus, historian (years of life - 58-117 AD). In his works, Annals and Germany, the latter gives important information not only about the existing classification of the tribes, but also about their life, culture, and social structure. Tacitus distinguishes 3 groups: istevones, hermions and ingevones. Pliny the Elder also mentioned the same groups, but attributed the Teutons and Cimbrians to the Indevons. This classification, apparently, quite accurately reflects the division in the 1st century AD. e. Germanic tribes.
29. Identify the prerequisites for the development of CHM (comparative-historical method) and name the two main stages of the development of comparativistics. On the example of scientific works of world scientists, justify and explain this method. Present your findings in the form of a diagram
Comparative- historical method is a set of methods and procedures of historical and genetic research og language families and groups, as well as individual languages, used in comparative historical linguistics to establish the historical patters of language development. The perresentatives are F. Bopp, R.Rask, J.Grimm( the beginning of the nineteenth century). Historical linguistics distinguishes the method of international reconstrustion( diachronic, interlinguistic) and the method of external reconstruction (diachronic, Intralinguistic) .
The method of external reconstruction established the primary sourse of all related languages and dialects of a given group or family by consistently comparing phonological, lexical and morphological phenomena of relted languages.
The method of internal reconstruction is the comparison of the same phenomena of one language at different stages of historical change.
The development of the comparative-historical method is divided into 2 parts. 1. Comparative historical appeared after the discovery by Europeans of Sanskrit, the literary language of ancient India.
At the beginning of the 19th century, independently of one another, various scholars from different countries began exploring the kinship relations of languages within a given family and achieved remarkable results.
On the example of scientific works of world scientists to justify and explain this method.
Franz Bopp investigated by comparative method conjugation of the main verbs in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and Gothic, comparing both roots and inflections. On the large material studied, Bopp proved the declarative thesis of William Jones and in 1833 wrote the first “Comparative Grammar of Indo-Germanic (Indo-European) Languages”.
The Danish scholar Rasmus-Christian Rask emphasized in every possible way that grammatical correspondences are much more important than lexical ones, because the borrowings of inflection, and in particular inflections, "never happens." Rask compared the Icelandic language with the Greenlandic, Basque, Celtic languages and refused them to be related (Rasker later changed his mind about Celtic languages). Then Rask compared the Icelandic language with Norwegian, then with other Scandinavian languages (Swedish, Danish), then with other Germanic, and, finally, with Greek and Latin.
Identify the sociocultural, sociolinguistic and historical factors that influenced the origin of Germanic languages. What events influenced the origin of this group of languages? Presentyourfindingsintheformof a diagram
The history of the German language originates in the early Middle Ages, when the languages of the ancient Germans began to contact each other, creating the soil for the formation of a common language. The earlier development of the German language is directly related to the development of the pre-Germanic language derived from the hypothetical Proto-Indo-European language. The process of development of the Old High German language, which is the first step towards the German modern, is associated with the second movement of consonants, which took place in the 6th century.
The first stage of development, which lasted from the beginning of the 7th century until 1050, is called the Old High German period. About three centuries after that (until 1350) the Middle High German period lasts. In the period from 1350 to 1650 the development of the early High German language began, from 1650 the development of the High German language continues to develop today. The exact dating of the periods of development of the German language cannot be determined, therefore the framework is conditional. In addition, the development of the German language did not take place in the same way, which predetermined many differences that exist at the level of dialects.
| West Germanic language group This branch includes the following languages ;English Deutsch; Dutch;Flemish (is a dialect of the Dutch language);Frisian (common in the Netherlands and northwest Germany);Yiddish (the language of German Jews);Afrikaans (South Africa). |
| North Germanic language group This branch of Indo-European is also called Scandinavian. It includes: Swedish; Danish; Norwegian; Icelandic; Faroese (distributed in the Faroe Islands and Denmark). |
| The eastern languages are extinct in the first millennium. This is Burgundy, Vandal, Gothic. |
The kinship terms in Indo-European languages exactly correspond to each other, for example, the name of “mother”, “father”, “brother”. Schematically explain this correspondence. Exclude the process of borrowing lexical elements by languages that are so remote from each other in space and time. Giveyourownexamples
Kinship Terms in Indo-European Languages
The following kinship terms are originally present in Russian and other Indo-European languages:
| Russian | Proto-Slavonic | Aryan | Ancient Germanic |
| mother-in-law | * svekry | * svasru | * swehra- |
| father-in-law | * svek (ъ) rъ | * suasura | * swéhuraz |
| Devere | * Dever | * Devdr | * taikuraz |
Danish
Swedish
Faroese
Danish alphabet, uses latin font, counts 29 letters (those same most, what and norwegian; см. Датско-norwegian alphabet). Feature danish alphabet are letters ææ, øø, åå. Letters qq, ww, zz meet only in foreign words.
The Swedish alphabet is Latin, with the letters Å, Ä, and Ö (in that order at the end of the alphabet), and also. Until 2006, the letter W was considered not an independent letter, but an analogue of V, and was used only in names of foreign origin and borrowings. In 2006, W was included in the alphabet. With a wide variety of dialects and dialects, written Swedish is uniform and standardized.
The Faroese alphabet is based, like the alphabets of other Germanic languages (except Yiddish and Gothic), in Latin and consists of 29 letters [27]:
Aa, Áá, Bb, Dd, Р , Ee, Ff, Gg, Hh, Ii, Jí, Jj, Kk, Ll, Mm, Nn, Oo, ó, Pp, Rr, Ss, Tt, Uu, ú, Vv, Yy, Ýý, Ææ, Øø [28].
Ð, ð never occur at the beginning of a word. The capital letter is found in contexts that require all capital letters, for example, on maps: SUURUROY “Suri” (literally: “South Island”).
Instead Ø, ø can be met ö, for example, Föroyar "Faroe Islands".
Non-alphabetical letters may appear in personal names, for example, Lützen, Müller, Winther, Zacharias.
Gothic
Vandalic
Burgundian
Known mainly for written records of the 4th — 6th centuries, the most important of which is the translation of the Bible attributed to the Visigothic Bishop of Wulfill — the alleged creator of the Gothic alphabet. Starting from the 6th century, the Gothic language began to gradually go out of use, being supplanted by the Romanesque languages in Italy and Spain, and also in the Greek language - in the Crimea. The language finally disappeared, probably by the beginning of the 9th century.
2) Phonology and sound-change Edit
The phonological features of Vandalic are similar to the ones of Gothic.
The Proto-Germanic long vowel *ē is often preserved in Vandalic names (Gunthimer, Geilimer), but it could become i when it was unstressed: Geilamir, Vitarit. The Proto-Germanic short vowel *e turned into i in Vandalic when it was not preceded by */r, h or w/, Sigisteun contains -i because g precedes the vowel, but Beremut retains the *e because r precedes the vowel. The Proto-Germanic *z is also preserved in the language but is written as s in the Latin names (Gaisericus).
3) The Burgundians (Latin: Burgundiōnes, Burgundī; Old Norse: Burgundar; Old English: Burgendas; Greek: Βούργουνδοι) were a large East Germanic (possibly Vandal) tribe or group of tribes that lived in the area of what is now Poland in the time of the Roman Empire.
54) Complete the table about the West Germanic languages, indicate grammatical features of them:
# The West Germanic languages Grammatical category Word order
1 English
2 German
3 Afrikaans
A group of articles on the grammatical categories of the English language: time, number, gender, degree, mood, voice.
54) Afrikaans Dutch English
Ek is ik ben I am
The Great Migration movement may be divided into two phases. The first phase was between 300 and 500 A.D., the second phase was between 500 and 700 AD. Indicate the reasons and consequences of the Great migration of Germanic peoples into the table.
Majority researchers call in quality reasons great resettlements care from оскудевших and adverse regions in search more attractive land for stay. One from main reasons it became general cold snap climate, in connection with than population territories with continental climate rushed in areas with more soft climate. Peak relocation fell on period sharp cold snap 535-536 years [source not specified 3470 days]. Frequent were crop failures, grew morbidity, children's and старческая mortality. Storm and floods led to loss part sushi on coast northern sea and in south england. In italy in vi century н. э. marked frequent floods.
60.Dutch belongs to the West Germanic group and it is spoken by 20 million people. Define the geographical distribution of this language around the world.
The changes of consonants in PG language were first formulated in terms of a phonetic law that is also known as the First or Proto-Germanic consonant shift in the early 19th c.Who introduced this law?How many acts does it include?Present the changes that happened in each of the act in the form of a table.Give your own examples.
The law of Grimma, or the law of Rask - Grimma (other names - the first [all-German] movement [first shift, stoppage] of consonants), is a phonetic process in the history of the Prague Germanic language, consisting in the change of Indo-European confidential consonants. First described in 1814 (sometimes called 1818 year) by the Danish linguist Rasmus Rask, and in 1822 was fully formulated and researched by the German philologist Jacob Grimm, whose name he ultimately received. Sam Grimm used the term “movement of consonants” (him. Lautverschiebung). Law of Grimm ( aryadu with Werner's law) is considered one of the most well-known phonetic laws komparativistike.V science there is no established opinion about the causes of the first consonant in a Teutonic yazyke.Na Currently there are four theories:
Psychological theory. It belongs to Grimm himself. In his opinion, the movement of consonants is explained by the special character of the Germans, their love of freedom. At the moment, the theory of followers does not have.
Geographical theory. The Germans settled for some time in the mountains, where rarefied air influenced breathing and consequently the pronunciation of consonants. The theory enjoyed some popularity in the XIX century, now has practically no supporters. And psychological and geographical theories do not correspond to modern ideas about the causes of phonetic processes .
The theory of pre-German substratum. According to this theory, some features of Germanic languages, including the law of Grimm, are caused by the action of the substrate language spoken by the defeated and German-assimilated people.
Glottal theory. According to this theory, a system of stochastic for post-Indo-European language, different from the traditional one (glottalized consonants are placed in place of ringed occlusive ones), Germanic languages converted the Indo-European system of confidants not by movement of consonants as such, but by a number of other processes: 1) loss of glottalized systems a sign of glottalization, 2) spirantization of ringing aspirations in the middle of a word and the loss of an additional sign of aspiration at the beginning of a word, 3) spirantization of deaf people dyhatelnyh.Soglasno glottal theory Germanic languages retain more archaic consonant system than most other Indo-European yazykov.Nemetsky scientist F. Kluge considers the duration of the Grimm's Law to the II millennium BC. e. His compatriot A. Bach also dates the beginning of the operation of the law and believes that by 500 BC. e. The process has already ended. A. Meie dates the process of the last centuries BC.
The first movement is reflected in the following borrowings from Latin and Celtic languages into Germanic languages:
lat Graecus "Greek"> Gothic. krekos, dr.-v.-it. kriahha;
lat Volca "Volk"> dr.-v.-it. walh, dr.-eng. wealh;
celtic rīg- "king"> Gothic. reiks.
However, the value of this evidence for the chronology of the first movement of consonants is disputed by those scientists who believe that in this case we are dealing with the substitution of foreign sounds when borrowing.
French scientist J. Fourke, based on the reflection of the law of Grimm in the inscription on the helmet from Negau, relates the operation of the law to 500 BC. e. Almost analogous movement of consonants occurred in Proto-Armenian language:
Latin Ancient Sanscrithe
Similar processes are found in some Chinese dialects and Chadian languages.
A similar movement of consonants distinguishes the southern group of Bantu languages from their northern neighbors:
Proto-BantuKosaSoto
"twist" * kamakhamaxama
"three" * tatuthathuraru
"give" * paphaφa
22. "Complete the table presenting the information about geographical distribution and the number of speakers of each language: Modern Germanic languages
East Germanic branch
West Germanic branch
North Germanic branch "
The West Germanic languages include the three most widely spoken Germanic languages: English with around 360-400 million native speakers; German, with over 100 million native speakers; and Dutch, with 24 million native speakers. Other West Germanic languages include Afrikaans, an offshoot of Dutch, with over 7.1 million native speakers; Low German, considered a separate collection of unstandardizeddialects, with roughly 0.3 million native speakers and probably 6.7–10 million people who can understand it (at least 5 million in Germany and 1.7 million in the Netherlands);Yiddish, once used by approximately 13 million Jews in pre-World War II Europe and Scots, both with 1.5 million native speakers; Limburgish varietieswith roughly 1.3 million speakers along the Dutch–Belgian–German border; and the Frisian languages with over 0.5 million native speakers in the Netherlands and Germany.
The main North Germanic languages areDanish, Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish, which have a combined total of about 20 million speakers.
The East Germanic branch included Gothic, Burgundian, and Vandalic, all of which are now extinct. The last to die off was Crimean Gothic, spoken until the late 18th century in some isolated areas of Crimea.
23. Present the main reasons of Great migration of peoples in the form of a diagram.
The Great Migration was the relocation of more than 6 million African Americans from the rural South to the cities of the North, Midwest and West from about 1916 to 1970. Driven from their homes by unsatisfactory economic opportunities and harsh segregationist laws, many blacks headed north, where they took advantage of the need for industrial workers that first arose during the First World War. During the Great Migration, African Americans began to build a new place for themselves in public life, actively confronting racial prejudice as well as economic, political and social challenges to create a black urban culture that would exert enormous influence in the decades to come.
Before the Great Migration.After the Civil War and the Reconstruction era, white supremacy was largely restored across the South in the 1870s, and the segregationist policies known as “Jim Crow” soon became the law of the land.
Southern blacks were forced to make their living working the land due to black codes and the sharecropping system, which offered little in the way of economic opportunity, especially after a boll weevil epidemic in 1898 caused massive crop damage across the South.
And while the Ku Klux Klan had been officially dissolved in 1869, the KKK continued underground after that, and intimidation, violence and even lynching of black southerners were not uncommon practices in the Jim Crow South.
Did you know? Around 1916, when the Great Migration began, a factory wage in the urban North was typically three times more than what blacks could expect to make working the land in the rural South.
What scientists is our knowledge of old Germanic barbarian tribes (Teutons) based on? Determine their finding regarding ancient Germanic tribes and present it in the form of a table.
As far as the English language belongs to the Germanic group of languages, this group makes a part of the history of the English Language.
Our knowledge of old Germanic barbarian tribes (Teutons) is based on testimonies by Greek and Roman authors:
- Pytheas (4th c. B.C.) – a Greek historian and geographer, the work “An Account of a Sea Voyage to the Baltic Sea”.
- Julius Caesar (1st c. B.C.) – a roman Emperor, the work “Commentaries on the Gallic War”.
- Pliny the Elder (1st c. A.D.) – a Roman scientist and writer, the work “Natural History” (contained the classification of the Germanic tribes).
- Tacitus (1st c. A.D.) – a Roman historian, the work “Life and Customs of the Ancient Germans”.
At the beginning of the new era Germanic tribes occupied vast territories in Western, Central and Northern Europe.
The Roman general Julius Caesar devoted several chapters to the Germanic tribes in his “Commentaries on the war in Gall” (1044 B.C.). Caesar fought with them on the Rhine. He took two expeditions against the Germanic tribes and the Romans defeated the Germans in both expeditions. Caesar stated that the Germans lived in tribes and tribal unions. He also wrote that the Teutons were nomads.
One of the best-known descriptions about life of Germanic tribes is that written by Tacitus in AD 98, called Germania.
Tacitus describes the Germanic tribes as living in scattered settlements in the woody and marshy country of north-western Europe. He says that they do not build cities and keep their houses far apart, living in wooden buildings. They keep flocks, and grow grain crops, but their agriculture is not very advanced. The family plays a large part in their social organization. They have kings, chosen for their birth, and chiefs, chosen for their courage, but in major affairs the whole community consults together. In the head of each tribe there was a chief who was called ‘kuning’. The whole tribe had the name of the Chief. The physical type is everywhere the same: blue eyes, reddish hair and huge bodies. The normal dress is the short cloak, though the skins of animals are also worn. Very few of the men have breastplates or helmets, and they have very little iron. They worship Mercury, sometimes with human sacrifices, and sacrifice animals to Hercules and Mars.
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