Tomenable
Regular Member
- Messages
- 5,419
- Reaction score
- 1,337
- Points
- 113
- Location
- Poland
- Ethnic group
- Polish
- Y-DNA haplogroup
- R1b-L617
- mtDNA haplogroup
- W6a
How do you know Ossi, Peucini and Venedae were Baltic speakers?
Exactly. There is no any direct or obvious evidence that the Venedae were originally Baltic-speakers. But it is possible - even quite certain - that some part of the Venedae were assimilated into the Baltic peoples. Moreover - the Venedae and peoples of very similar names could be found in several parts of Europe (and even in Asia Minor), where Balts were clearly not present. Such Venedic tribes lived at the Adriatic Sea, in Asia Minor, in the Balkans, in Gaul, along the Baltic Sea and in Central and Eastern Europe. There are various theories about the ethno-linguistic affiliation of those peoples. Some scholars think that they were Pre-Indo-Europeans. But more frequent are opinions that they were Indo-Europeans. There is also no agreement whether all peoples of this name belonged originally to the same language family, or maybe they belonged to several different families, but closely related (which explains similarity of names). A popular opinion is that this ethnonym (Venedae and similar names) comes from terms: "to love", "love", "family", "kinship", "friend". Another opinion is that it meant something like "people who live near water". Obviously the term itself had common linguistic origin. No matter who had been the original Venedic peoples, it is quite obvious that they eventually got assimilated by various ethnic groups. Some of the Venedae got assimilated by Balts, some by Slavs (probably that's why West Slavs were called Wends by Medieval Germanic-speakers; also Jordanes mentioned Venedi as one of three main sub-divisions of early historical Slavs), some by Celts, some by Italic peoples, etc. Considering how dispersed in Europe were the Venedic peoples, they could be either some very mobile IE-speakers or maybe they were an Indo-European name for some category of Pre-Indo-European populations. Maybe this is how Indo-European migrants called those of Pre-Indo-European tribes which were their allies and friends?
On the other hand, it could be an Indo-European name used by some part of Indo-Europeans to describe themselves.
After all for example "Slavs" means either "we famous people" or "speakers of our language". "Deutschen" means "we belonging to the people".
"Swedes" also means "we our people" and "Swede" means "a person belonging to us" (from PIE root "swobho" - our).
These are common meanings of Indo-European ethnonyms.
So, "Venedae" could mean "we who are friends to each other", or something like this. Not that much different.
BTW - Ptolemy has "Venedae" as one peoples, and then he has "Greater Venedae" as numerous tribes.
Peucini
Peucini were rather Celtic or Germanic (could be also Germanized Celts). See Tacitus.
=================================
Boundaries according to Ptolemy (before Ptolemy western border of Sarmatia was considered to be more to the west):