Editing Balts (section)

==History==
===Origins===
[[File:Baltic cultures 600-200 BC SVG.svg|thumb|275px|right|Baltic archaeological cultures in the Iron Age from 600 BC to 200 BC
{{legend|#4E9A06|[[Sambians|Sambian]]-Nothangian group}}
{{legend|#73D216|Western Masurian group ([[Galindians]]?)}}
{{legend|#8AE234|Eastern Masurian group ([[Yotvingians]])}}
{{legend|#729FCF|Lower Neman and West-Latvian group ([[Curonians]])}}
{{legend|#FCAF3E|[[Brushed Pottery culture]]}}
{{legend|#F57900|[[Milograd culture]]}}
{{legend|#CE5C00|Plain-Pottery culture, AKA Dnepr-Dvina culture}}
{{legend|#EDD400|[[Pomeranian culture]]}}
{{legend|#FCE94F|Bell-shaped burials group}}]]
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.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=PIECHNIK |first1=IWONA |date= |title=FACTORS INFLUENCING CONSERVATISM AND PURISM IN LANGUAGES OF NORTHERN EUROPE (NORDIC, BALTIC, FINNIC) |url=https://core.ac.uk/reader/229233000 |journal= Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis |doi=10.4467/20834624SL.14.022.2729 |access-date=April 21, 2024}}</ref>

Some of the major authorities on Balts, such as [[Kazimieras Būga]], [[Max Vasmer]], [[Vladimir Toporov]] and [[Oleg Trubachyov]],{{citation needed|date=February 2014}} 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 (river)|Moskva]], and [[Oka (river)|Oka]] rivers, while the southern border was the [[Seym (river)|Seym river]].<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Ramat |first1=Anna Giacalone |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=F7a5CAAAQBAJ |title=The Indo-European Languages |last2=Ramat |first2=Paolo |date=2015-04-29 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-92186-7 |pages=456 |language=en}}</ref> 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 [[Pomerania]]n 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]].{{Citation needed|date=April 2022}} 

However, other scholars such as Endre Bojt (1999) reject the presumption that there ever was such a thing as a clear, single "Baltic ''[[Urheimat]]''":<ref name="Bojt">{{Cite book |last1=Bojt |first1=Endre |date=1999 |title=Foreword to the Past: A Cultural History of the Baltic People |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Er1_CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA81 |location=Budapest |publisher=Central European University Press |pages=81, 113 |isbn=9789639116429 |access-date=1 April 2022}}</ref> <blockquote>'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.'<ref name="Bojt" /></blockquote>

===Proto-history===
The area of Baltic habitation shrank due to assimilation by other groups, and invasions. According to one of the theories which has gained considerable traction over the years, one of the western Baltic tribes, the [[Galindians]], Galindae, or Goliad, migrated to the area around modern-day Moscow, Russia around the fourth century AD.<ref>[https://www.academia.edu/37147068/%D0%91%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%82%D1%8B_%D0%B2_%D0%BC%D0%B8%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%86%D0%B8%D1%8F%D1%85_%D0%92%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE_%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%8F_%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%B2._%D0%93%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B4%D1%8B_%D0%98%D1%81%D1%82%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D1%84%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BC%D0%B0%D1%82_3-4_2017._%D0%A1._95-124 Tarasov I. The balts in the Migration Period. P. I. Galindians, pp. 96, 100-112.]</ref>

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: [[Old Prussians|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.{{Citation needed|date=April 2022}}

[[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]] or Galindians towards the east, and later, East Balts towards the west. In the eighth century, Slavic tribes from the Volga regions appeared.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Engel |first1=Barbara Alpern |last2=Martin |first2=Janet |title=Russia in World History |date=2015 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-023943-5 |page=16 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uMEfCAAAQBAJ&pg=PT16 |language=en |quote=Slavic tribes had reached the territories of the Finns and Balts in the eighth century.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Gleason |first1=Abbott |title=A Companion to Russian History |date=2014 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |isbn=978-1-118-73000-3 |page=106 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AXxBAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA106 |language=en |quote=moved ... to the Baltic in the eighth-ninth centuries}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Gimbutas |first1=Marija |title=The Slavs (Ancient Peoples and Places, Vol. 74) |date=1971 |publisher=Thames and Hudson |isbn=0500020728 |page=97 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CC07UaXfR74C |language=en |quote=no finds of Slavic character can be identified before the eighth century}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Citation |last=Bell-Fialkoff |first=Andrew |title=The Slavs |date=2000 |work=The Role of Migration in the History of the Eurasian Steppe: Sedentary Civilization vs. “Barbarian” and Nomad |pages=133–149 |editor-last=Bell-Fialkoff |editor-first=Andrew |url=https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-61837-8_8 |access-date=2024-08-31 |place=New York |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan US |language=en |doi=10.1007/978-1-349-61837-8_8 |isbn=978-1-349-61837-8}}</ref>

===Middle Ages===
[[File:Baltic Tribes c 1200.svg|thumb|275px|right|Baltic tribes before the coming of the [[Teutonic Order]] ({{Circa|1200 AD}}). The East Balts are shown in brown hues while the West Balts are shown in green. The boundaries are approximate. Baltic territory was extensive inland.]]
In the 12th and 13th centuries, internal struggles and invasions by [[Ruthenians]] and [[Polish people|Poles]], and later the expansion of the [[Teutonic Order]], resulted in an almost complete annihilation of the Galindians, Curonians, and Yotvingians.{{citation needed|date=February 2014}} Gradually, Old Prussians became [[Germanization|Germanized]] or Lithuanized between the 15th and 17th centuries, especially after the [[Protestant Reformation|Reformation]] in [[Prussia]].{{citation needed|date=February 2014}} 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]].{{Citation needed|date=April 2022}}

Old Prussian was closely related to the other extinct Western [[Baltic language]]s, [[Curonian language|Curonian]], [[Galindian language|Galindian]] and [[Sudovian language|Sudovian]]. It is more distantly related to the surviving Eastern [[Baltic language]]s, [[Lithuanian language|Lithuanian]] and [[Latvian language|Latvian]]. Compare the Prussian word ''seme'' (''zemē''),<ref name="Lie">Mikkels Klussis. ''Bāziscas prûsiskai-laîtawiskas wirdeîns per tālaisin laksikis rekreaciônin'' [https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20081218125558/http://donelaitis.vdu.lt/prussian/Lie.pdf Donelaitis.vdu.lt] (Lithuanian version of [https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20081218125908/http://donelaitis.vdu.lt/prussian/Engl.pdf Donelaitis.vdu.lt).]</ref> Latvian ''zeme'', the Lithuanian ''žemė'' (''land'' in English).{{Citation needed|date=April 2022}}