Taranis
Elite member
There was a big settlement of Celts/prot-celts/or Italic in Bohemia in first millennium BC. We know there was a celtic influence in culture and pottery where poland is now in same time. I suspect there could have been farthest reaching east celtic tribe, possibly called Veneti, that ruled for some time there over local (whatever they were). With time they must have gotten slavonized, with ever stronger slavic influence. It's possible that remnants of Veneti tribe survived till 1 000 AD as Vieleti that settled in Polabia, north of Berlin, eventually getting Germanized.
In regard for Bohemia, in my opinion the area was Celtic-speaking, and became only Germanicized between the 2nd century BC and the 1st century AD. The main Celtic tribe of this area was the Boii (which actually means "Cattle", not "Battle" as how-yes-no asserted), from which the names "Bohemia" ("Boiohaemum" - "Boii home") and "Bavaria" also derive. It seems likely to me that the pressure of Germanic migrations from the north caused the Boii to eventually abandon their homeland and migrate southwards:
- There were Boii who settled in the Pannonian basin, and were present there as late as the 1st century AD.
- Parts of the Boii participated in the invasion of Greece and became part of the Galatians in Anatolia later on.
- Parts of the Boii invaded northern Italy, seizing Etruscan lands and renaming the city of Felsina into Bononia (modern Bologna).
- Strabo (1st century BC) refers to the areas north of the Danube as the "Boiian desert" (ie, the areas deserted by the Boii), and says that "Boiohaemum" has become occupied by the Germanic Markomanni.
- Caesar refers to a small fraction of Boii that were affiliated with the Helveti and invaded Gaul in the 1st century BC.
- Even by the 1st/2nd century AD, however, there were Celtic remnants living in Germania. Ptolemy lists many towns which have readily identifiable Celtic names, some as far north and east as Silesia.
- One undoubtly Celtic tribe that persisted in Germania was the Cotini (or "Gotini"), of which Tactitus says that they spoke the Gaulish language, which lived in the approximate area of modern-day Slovakia.
From what I know, there is however no Celtic evidence towards the northeast beyond Silesia or the western Carpathians.
Tacitus says the britonic is similar to the finnic and the finnic was the language of the aesti
http://books.google.com.au/books?id...Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=tacitus on finnic&f=false
Where do you take from that the Aesti spoke Finnic? I do not know if the Aesti and the Estonians were actually related.
I think they could have been related prior to the VeneDI becoming slavitized. When did the slavs migrate there?
I also agree that the venedi of the baltic area which ended up being slavitized where no longer related to the adriatic veneto, but, I was wanting to know how they got there, because the original people of the veneto where the euganei and east of them where the carni. Homer traces them to the black sea area, a city called enete ( later called amisus and now Samsun).
There is simply no reason to assume that the Venedi of the Baltic spoke the same language as the Adriatic Veneti.
The original venedi of the baltics where initially not slavic as you would know.
The Venedi, as stated before, were not a homogenous group. Ptolemy is very clear about that.
I am guessing then that you believe that the Eneti originated from the black sea. My issue is that I cannot find hittite script on them, yet find script on the trojans.
I didn't say that. Why are you implying that I believe certain things without me having ever said them? The idea that the Eneti originated from Anatolia (black sea shores) was a Roman one, but I don't know how accurate it is.
"Tacitus says the britonic is similar to the finnic and the finnic was the language of the aesti
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=...finnic&f=false"
One likely interepretation is that Aestii was the name used by Tacitus to refer to all tribes who lived East(Aesti)ward of the Suiones (Scandinavians). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesti)
According to this interpretation the Latin word Aestii is similar to an Old German word (sorry I don't know it) meaning East, which was used by Germanic tribes to refer 'Eastward' tribes. It should be remembered that Tacitus himself only recorded information he had obtained from others and it is quite likely that Aestii is a descriptive name rather than original name of the tribe as they had been referring to themselves in their own language.
These generic Aestii were composed of pre Baltic (later Lithuanian, Latvian, Prussian and other) and also Finnic (later Estonian, Finnish, Sami) tribes. Their languages were very different as they are now, Finnic not belonging to IE language group, but genetically the peoples are very similar.
Regarding similarity of Britonic to Aestii this is a bit puzzling. It might be that the languages were similar in their rhythm, or in some similar words and grammar retained from PIE... For instant Taranis compared the word Tauta (peoples) in Gothic, Pre Germanic, Gaulish which was very similar to Baltic, too. So at that time were could have been many similarities between many IE languages.
Again, Tacitus wasn’t there to judge and the only Aestii word he gives is for amber “an apparently Latinised form, glesum (cf. Latvian glīsas). This is the only word of their language recorded from antiquity, but seems to be Germanic in origin (from Gothic glas).[3]”
If we agree to this interpretation of Tacitus, then Aestii included both Finnic who spoke finnic languages and also Baltic people, who spoke pre-baltic languages.
Great points there, Dagne. I think I find it pretty compelling that the Venedi spoke Baltic (or-Pre-Baltic, if you will - given the time-frame this is entirely possible), or Finnic languages. Given how the ethnic makeup looks like later on (Baltic, Finnic people). However, it is also possible that some of the Venedi living to the south and east (away from the Baltic Sea) actually spoke early Slavic. That we do not know.
I also think that this didn't preclude the German people much later on from applying the term "Venedi" to the Slavs who had settled up to the Elbe. In fact, the term "Wendland" is informally still used today for an area of northern Germany (roughly corresponding with eastern Lower Saxony, northern Saxony-Anhalt, northwestern Brandenburg and Mecklemburg).
Where I am not so sure is with the etymology of "Aestii" as "Eastern Ones". In Gothic for instance, the word for "east" was "austr".