The Cherusci were a Germanic tribe that inhabited parts of the plains and forests of northwestern Germania in the area of the Weser River and present-day Hanover during the first centuries BC and AD. Roman sources reported they considered themselves kin with other Irmino tribes and claimed common descent from an ancestor called Mannus. During the early Roman Empire under Augustus, the Cherusci first served as allies of Rome and sent sons of their chieftains to receive Roman education and serve in the Roman army as auxiliaries. The Cherusci leader Arminius led a confederation of tribes in the ambush that destroyed three Roman legions in the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9. He was subsequently kept from further damaging Rome by disputes with the Marcomanni and reprisal attacks led by Germanicus. After rebel Cherusci killed Arminius in AD 21, infighting among the royal family led to the highly Romanized line of his brother Flavus coming to power. Following their defeat by the Chatti around AD 88, the Cherusci do not appear in further accounts of the German tribes, apparently being absorbed into the late classical groups such as the Saxons, Thuringians, Franks, Bavarians, and Allemanni.
The Quadi were a Germanic people during the Roman era, who were prominent in Greek and Roman records from about 20 AD to about 400 AD. By about 20 AD they had a kingdom centred in the area of present-day western Slovakia, north of the Roman border on the Danube river. After probably first settling near the Morava river the Quadi expanded their settlements eastwards over time until they also stretched into present day Hungary. This was part of the bigger region which had been partly vacated a generation earlier by the Celtic Boii. They were the easternmost of a series of four related Suebian kingdoms that established themselves near the river frontier after 9 BC, during a period of major Roman invasions into both western Germania to the northwest of it, and Pannonia to the south of it. The other three were the Hermunduri, Naristi, and the Quadi's powerful western neighbours the Marcomanni. Despite frequent difficulties with the Romans, the Quadi survived to become an important cultural bridge between the peoples of Germania to the north, the Roman Empire to the south, and the Sarmatian peoples who settled in the same period to their east in present day Hungary.
The Rugii, Rogi or Rugians, were one of the smaller Germanic peoples of Late Antiquity who are best known for their short-lived 5th-century kingdom upon the Roman frontier, near present-day Krems an der Donau in Austria. This kingdom, like those of the neighbouring Heruli and Scirii, first appears in records after the death of Attila in 453. The Rugii, Heruli, Scirii and others are believed to have moved into this region from distant homelands under pressure from the Huns, and become part of Attila's Hunnic empire which also moved and came to be based in this region. The Rugii were subsequently part of the alliance which defeated Attila's sons and the Ostrogoths at the Battle of Nedao in 454, giving their kingdom independence. In 469 they were part of a similar alliance who lost to the Ostrogoths at the Battle of Bolia, weakening their kingdom significantly.
The Teutons were an ancient northern European tribe mentioned by Roman authors. The Teutons are best known for their participation, together with the Cimbri and other groups, in the Cimbrian War with the Roman Republic in the late second century BC.
Germania, also more specifically called Magna Germania, Germania Libera, or Germanic Barbaricum to distinguish it from the Roman provinces of Germania Inferior and Germania Superior, was a historical region in north-central Europe during the Roman era, which was associated by Roman authors with the Germanic peoples. According to Roman geographers, this region stretched roughly from the Rhine in the west to the Vistula in the east, and to the Upper Danube in the south, and the known parts of southern Scandinavia in the north. Archaeologically, these people correspond roughly to the Roman Iron Age of those regions.
The Sicambri, also known as the Sugambri or Sicambrians, were a Germanic people who during Roman times lived on the east bank of the river Rhine, in what is now Germany, near the border with the Netherlands. They were first reported by Julius Caesar, who described them as Germanic (Germani), though he did not necessarily define this in terms of language.
The Sciri, or Scirians, were a Germanic people. They are believed to have spoken an East Germanic language. Their name probably means "the pure ones".
The Varini, Warni or Warini were one or more Germanic peoples who originally lived in what is now northeastern Germany, near the Baltic Sea.
The Gutones were a Germanic people who were reported by Roman era writers in the 1st and 2nd centuries to have lived in what is now Poland. The most accurate description of their location, by the geographer Ptolemy, placed them east of the Vistula River.
The Dębczyn culture is an archeological culture in Pomerania from the third to sixth centuries. It was derived from the neighboring Wielbark culture with influences from the Elbe region. The culture was superseded as the result of the later migrations of West Slavs, in particular of the Pomeranians.
Germanische Altertumskunde Online, formerly called Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, is a German encyclopedia of the study of Germanic history and cultures, as well as the cultures that were in close contact with them.
Elbe Germanic, also called Irminonic or Erminonic, is a term introduced by the German linguist Friedrich Maurer (1898–1984) in his book, Nordgermanen und Alemanen, to describe the unattested proto-language, or dialectal grouping, ancestral to the later Lombardic, Alemannic, Bavarian and Thuringian dialects. During late antiquity and the Middle Ages, its supposed descendants had a profound influence on the neighboring West Central German dialects and, later, in the form of Standard German, on the German language as a whole.
Weser–Rhine Germanic is a proposed group of prehistoric West Germanic dialects, which includes both Central German dialects and Low Franconian, the ancestor of Dutch. The term was introduced by the German linguist Friedrich Maurer as a replacement for the older term Istvaeonic, with which it is essentially synonymous. The term Rhine–Weser Germanic is sometimes preferred.
After the glaciers of the Ice Age in the Early Stone Age withdrew from the area, which since about 1000 AD is called Pomerania, in what are now northern Germany and Poland, they left a tundra. First humans appeared, hunting reindeer in the summer. A climate change in 8000 BC allowed hunters and foragers of the Ertebølle-Ellerbek culture to continuously inhabit the area. These people became influenced by farmers of the Linear Pottery culture who settled in southern Pomerania. The hunters of the Ertebølle-Ellerbek culture became farmers of the Funnelbeaker culture in 3000 BC. The Havelland culture dominated in the Uckermark from 2500 to 2000 BC. In 2400 BC, the Corded Ware culture reached Pomerania and introduced the domestic horse. Both Linear Pottery and Corded Ware culture have been associated with Indo-Europeans. Except for Western Pomerania, the Funnelbeaker culture was replaced by the Globular Amphora culture a thousand years later.
The Gustow group is an archaeological culture of the Roman Iron Age in Western Pomerania. The Gustow group is associated with the Germanic tribe of the Rugii.
The Rugini were a pagan tribe living in or near present day northern Germany in the 9th century. They were only mentioned once, in a list of pagan tribes drawn up by the English monk Bede in his Historia ecclesiastica of the early 8th century:
Sunt autem Fresones, Rugini, Danai, Hunni, Antiqui Saxones, Boructuari; sunt alii perplures hisdem in partibus populi paganis adhuc ritibus servientis.
The Latin name Abnoba Mons is the name of a mountain range that was already known to ancient authors Pliny and Tacitus. The name has been traditionally, primarily associated in historical research with the Black Forest. Ptolemy used the toponym in his A.D. 150 publication, Geographia, as a mountain range lying within Germania magna (ὄρη) with its southern extent at 31° 49' and its northern extremity at 31° 52'. The geographer clearly did not restrict this name to present day Black Forest, but to an entire mountain chain.
The Elbe Germans or Elbe Germanic peoples were Germanic tribes whose settlement area, based on archaeological finds, lay either side of the Elbe estuary on both sides of the river and which extended as far as Bohemia and Moravia, clearly the result of a migration up the Elbe river from the northwest in advance of the main Migration Period until the individual groups ran into the Roman Danube Limes around 200 AD.
The Gambrivii were a Germanic tribe. They are first mentioned by Strabo in Geographica as the Gamabrivii. He writes that they were connected to the Chatti, the Chattuari and the Cherusci. This means that they probably lived near the Weser.
