Germanic Peoples

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Key Terms

 * Germania -Roman term for the geographical area in north-central Europe inhabited mainly by Germanic peoples.

Key Facts

 * Proto-Germanic Peoples are believed to have emerged during the Nordic Bronze Age, which developed out of the Battle Axe culture in south Scandinavia.
 * By 750 BC, Germanic peoples had spread from the Netherlands to what is now Poland.


 * Five Distinct groups of peoples:
 * North Germanic: Southern Scandinavia.
 * North Sea Germanic: Regions along North Sea and what is now the Jutland Penninsula.
 * Rhine-Wesser Germanic: Along the middle of the Rhine and Wesser rivers.
 * Elbe Germanic: Along the Elbe River.
 * Eastern Germanic: Near the middle of the Oder and Vistula Rivers.
 * A group of these Germanic people called the Basternae were the first to come into contact with the Romans. They lived east of the Carpathian mountains by the Black Sea.
 * Germanic Peoples eventually made their way into the Crumbling Western Roman Empire during the 5th Century.
 * Ostrogoths, Visigoths and Lombards made it into Italy.
 * Vandals, Burgundians, Franks, and Visigoths made into Gaul(modern day France and Benelux)
 * Vandals and Visigoths also pushed into modern-day Spain(then called Hispania).
 * The Alamanni establish some presence in the Alps and Middle Rhine.
 * In Denmark, the Jutes merged with the Danes.
 * The Geats and Gutes merged with the Swedes in what is now Sweden.
 * The Angles merged with the Saxons to create the Anglo-Saxons(now called the English) in modern-day England.
 * Odoacer was the commander of the Germanic Mercenaries in Italy, deposed of the last Western Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, in 476 AD.

Quiz on Germanic Peoples