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The list of early Germanic peoples is a register of ancient Germanic cultures, tribal groups, and other alliances of Germanic tribes and civilisations in ancient times. This information comes from various ancient historical documents, beginning in the 2nd century BC and extending into late antiquity .
Several ancient sources list subdivisions of the Germanic tribes. Writing in the first century CE, Pliny the Elder lists five Germanic subgroups: the Vandili, the Inguaeones, the Istuaeones (living near the Rhine), the Herminones (in the Germanic interior), and the Peucini Basternae (living on the lower Danube near the Dacians). [57]
Roman bronze statuette dated to the late 1st century – early 2nd century CE, representing a Germanic man praying. Germanic religion was polytheistic in nature, with some underlying similarities to other European and Indo-European religions. Despite the unique practices of some tribes, there was a degree of cultural uniformity among the ...
Germanic culture is a term referring to the culture of Germanic peoples, and can be used to refer to a range of time periods and nationalities, but is most commonly used in either a historical or contemporary context to denote groups that derive from the Proto-Germanic language, which is generally thought to have emerged as a distinct language after 500 BC.
A century later, Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History (written 77–79 AD) distinguished the Chatti and Suebi but grouped them together with the Hermunduri and the Cherusci, calling this group the Hermiones, which is a nation of Germanic tribes also mentioned by Tacitus as living in inland Germany. [8]
Adam of Bremen, writing in the 11th century, compared the shape of Old Saxony to a triangle, and estimated from angle to angle the distance was eight days journey. In area Old Saxony was the greatest of the German tribal duchies. It included the entire territory between the lower Elbe and Saale rivers almost to the Rhine.
These Germani were first described by Julius Caesar, who was writing specifically about tribes near the Meuse river, who had settled among the Belgae before Roman intrusion into the area. Tribes who Caesar named as being among the Germani cisrhenani included the Eburones , the Condrusi , the Caeraesi , the Segni and the Paemani .
The approximate positions of some Germanic peoples reported by Graeco-Roman authors, Suevian peoples in red, and other Irminones in purple. The Irminones, also referred to as Herminones or Hermiones (Ancient Greek: Ἑρμίονες), were a large group of early Germanic tribes settling in the Elbe watershed and by the first century AD expanding into Bavaria, Swabia, and Bohemia.