Balts

History

Origins

The Balts or Baltic peoples, defined as speakers of one of the Baltic languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family, are descended from a group of Indo-European tribes who settled the area between the lower Vistula and southeast shore of the Baltic Sea and upper Daugava and Dnieper rivers. The Baltic languages, especially Lithuanian, retain a number of conservative or archaic features, perhaps because the areas in which they are spoken are geographically consolidated and have low rates of immigration.

Some of the major authorities on Balts, such as Kazimieras Būga, Max Vasmer, Vladimir Toporov and Oleg Trubachyov, in conducting etymological studies of eastern European river names, were able to identify in certain regions names of specifically Baltic provenance, which most likely indicate where the Balts lived in prehistoric times. According to Vladimir Toporov and Oleg Trubachyov, the eastern boundary of the Balts in the prehistoric times were the upper reaches of the Volga, Moskva, and Oka rivers, while the southern border was the Seym river. This information is summarized and synthesized by Marija Gimbutas in The Balts (1963) to obtain a likely proto-Baltic homeland. Its borders are approximately: from a line on the Pomeranian coast eastward to include or nearly include the present-day sites of Berlin, Warsaw, Kyiv, and Kursk, northward through Moscow to the River Berzha, westward in an irregular line to the coast of the Gulf of Riga, north of Riga.

However, other scholars such as Endre Bojt (1999) reject the presumption that there ever was such a thing as a clear, single "Baltic Urheimat":

'The references to the Balts at various Urheimat locations across the centuries are often of doubtful authenticity, those concerning the Balts furthest to the West are the more trustworthy among them. (...) It is wise to group the particulars of Baltic history according to the interests that moved the pens of the authors of our sources.'

Proto-history

The time period from the 2nd century to the 5th century AD were a golden age for the Balts. East Prussia and Lithuania had become trade hubs with the Roman Empire and Germanic Tribes, while also growing through increasing industry and agriculture into a cultural center that influenced all of northeast Europe. The era saw the proliferation of Bronze and Iron tools, which had previously been concentrated around the Amber Road, to the whole of the Baltic peoples. Trade routes lead north and east to the Finno-Ugric areas in Livonia, Finland, Northern Russia, and Eastern Russia, passed through the territory occupied by the Baltic tribes. At this time the Baltic peoples territory was second only to that of the Romans.

Germanic peoples lived to the west of the Baltic homelands; by the first century AD, the Goths had stabilized their kingdom from the mouth of the Vistula, south to Dacia. As Roman domination collapsed in the first half of the first millennium CE in Northern and Eastern Europe, large migrations of the Balts occurred — first, the Galindae migrated to around modern day Moscow in the 4th century, and later, East Balts towards the west. In the eighth century, Slavic tribes from the Volga regions appeared. Around the year 400 AD there is evidence of some sort of war which devastated the Northern Balts, many destroyed villages have been found and trade between the Balts and Finno-Ugrians appears to have stopped.

The period from the 5th century to the 9th century, called the Middle Iron Age saw two major events for the Balts. The Slavic migrations began encroaching on the Balts eastern territory starting around 400 AD and Swedish Expansion into the western coasts of Baltic territory starting around 650 AD. These events put pressure on some tribes but overall the Balts continued to develop as a people. Among the Baltic tribes the Prussians and Curonians continued to play leading roles. When the Goths had left the lower Vistula area, Prussians took it over, firmly established their territory where they remained there until the invasion of the Teutonic Order in the thirteenth century. Sudovians and Lithuanians continued in their preexisting lands. With their ornaments and pottery dating from the 2nd to the 10th century are found in present northern Poland as far south as the lower Bug, and the upper Pripet swamps. By the sixth to seventh centuries the Latgalians had expanded into northern Latvia, which previously had been occupied by the western Finno-Ugric tribes. The fall of the Roman Empire saw disruptions to southern trade, including the Amber Road closing for a century until the rule of Theodoric, but they did continue. With letters from Theodoric the great showing the Ostrogoths had good relations with the Prussians.

Over time the Balts became differentiated into West and East Balts. In the fifth century AD parts of the eastern Baltic coast began to be settled by the ancestors of the Western Balts: Brus/Prūsa ("Old Prussians"), Sudovians/Jotvingians, Scalvians, Nadruvians, and Curonians. The East Balts, including the hypothesised Dniepr Balts, were living in modern-day Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.

Middle Ages

In the 12th and 13th centuries, internal struggles and invasions by Ruthenians and Poles, and later the expansion of the Teutonic Order, resulted in an almost complete annihilation of the Galindians, Curonians, and Yotvingians. Gradually, Old Prussians became Germanized or Lithuanized between the 15th and 17th centuries, especially after the Reformation in Prussia. The cultures of the Lithuanians and Latgalians/Latvians survived and became the ancestors of the populations of the modern-day countries of Latvia and Lithuania.

By the 13th and 14th centuries, they reached the general area that the present-day Balts and Belarusians inhabit. Many other Eastern and Southern Balts either assimilated with other Balts, or Slavs in the fourth–seventh centuries and were gradually slavicized.

Modern era

In the modern era, the Balts — primarily Lithuanians and Latvians — have sustained a unique cultural and linguistic identity along the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, speaking the only surviving Eastern Baltic languages, Lithuanian and Latvian, which are among the most conservative Indo‑European tongues and retain archaic features from their Proto‑Indo‑European roots. Following nearly five decades of Soviet rule, Lithuania and Latvia restored their independence in 1990–1991 and subsequently pursued integration with Western institutions, culminating in accession to both the European Union and NATO in 2004. In the 21st century, these two Baltic nations have established stable democracies with parliamentary systems, preserved local languages and traditions, and address common economic, political and cultural priorities.

Culture

The Balts originally practiced Baltic religion. They were gradually Christianized as a result of the Northern Crusades of the Middle Ages. Baltic peoples such as the Latvians, Lithuanians and Old Prussians had their distinct mythologies. The Lithuanians have close historic ties to Poland, and many of them are Roman Catholic. The Latvians have close historic ties to Northern Germany and Scandinavia, and many of them are irreligious. In recent times, the Baltic religion has been revived in Baltic neopaganism.

Genetics

The Balts are included in the "North European" gene cluster together with the Germanic peoples, some Slavic groups (the Poles and Northern Russians) and Baltic Finnic peoples.

Saag et a. (2017) detected that the eastern Baltic in the Mesolithic was inhabited primarily by Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHGs). Their paternal haplogroups were mostly types of I2a and R1b, while their maternal haplogroups were mostly types of U5, U4 and U2. These people carried a high frequency of the derived HERC2 allele which codes for light eye color and possess an increased frequency of the derived alleles for SLC45A2 and SLC24A5, coding for lighter skin color.

Baltic hunter-gatherers still displayed a slightly larger amount of WHG ancestry than Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherers (SHGs). WHG ancestry in the Baltic was particularly high among hunter-gatherers in Latvia and Lithuania. Unlike other parts of Europe, the hunter-gatherers of the eastern Baltic do not appear to have mixed much with Early European Farmers (EEFs) arriving from Anatolia.

During the Neolithic, increasing admixture from Eastern Hunter-Gatherers (EHGs) is detected. The paternal haplogroups of EHGs was mostly types of R1a, while their maternal haplogroups appears to have been almost exclusively types of U5, U4, and U2.

The rise of the Corded Ware culture in the eastern Baltic in the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age is accompanied by a significant infusion of steppe ancestry and EEF ancestry into the eastern Baltic gene pool. In the aftermath of the Corded Ware expansion, local hunter-gatherer ancestry experienced a resurgence.

Haplogroup N reached the eastern Baltic only in the Late Bronze Age, probably with the speakers of the Uralic languages.

Modern-day Balts have a lower amount of EEF ancestry, and a higher amount of WHG ancestry, than any other population in Europe.

List of Baltic peoples

Modern-day Baltic peoples

• Eastern Baltic peoples
  • Latvians
    • Latgalians
  • Lithuanians
    • Aukštaitians ("highlanders")
    • Samogitians ("lowlanders")