[gothic-l] Re: The Scandinavian Origin of the Goths and Other Germanic Peoples

[dirk at SMRA.CO.UK]

Thinking and reading about your statement below, I find that it is not
very likely that

"a branch of the speakers of the Common Indo-European
language,
> spreading gradually from their original home on the steppes of south
Russia,
> invaded the south of Scandinavia and became its ruling class, very
many
> centuries BC"

I read a few papers and I think that the currently accepted wisdom is
that Proto-Germanic people came to Scandinavia via the Jutland route
about 700 BC, until than a Finnic/Baltic culture with a Finnic/Baltic
language occupied the Scandinavian peninsula proper. These people were
gradually driven to the far north and east by the Germanic settlers.
Over the next centuries these settlers developed into various tribes
probably including the Goths, who than around 100 BC left Scandinavia
to settle at the mounth of the Vistula.

Dirk



--- In gothic-l at egroups.com, "Anthony Appleyard" <MCLSSAA2 at f...>
wrote:
> From: dirk at s... wrote:-
> > ... but it is more likely that proto-Germans moved to
> > Scandinavia (before Gothic and other tribal identities were
formed). ...
>
> Or the speakers of the ancestor of the Common Germanic language did
so.
> Likeliest, a branch of the speakers of the Common Indo-European
language,
> spreading gradually from their original home on the steppes of south
Russia,
> invaded the south of Scandinavia and became its ruling class, very
many
> centuries BC. Over a few centuries they imposed their language and
suppressed
> whatever language the natives spoke before.
>
> Those natives would themselves have had to come in from outside, a
long time
> before that, when or after the first Homo sapiens came to the area.
The
> characteristic features of Nordic peoples would have evolved in the
area:-
>   I saw an experiment on TV once that showed that blue eyes see
better in
> faint light and brown eyes see better in glare.
>   People need Vitamin D to avoid rickets. The body can make its own,
but one
> stage needs ultraviolet light. Thus the skin had to evolve as pale
as possible
> to let enough sun through it despite clouds and clothes and dull
weather.
> In hotter sunnier lands further south, such things did not keep the
sun off
> the skin so much.


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