The Ethno-Cultural Heritage of Modern France
This map made by European Origins aims to showcase the diverse origin of the modern French nation. Although France takes its name from the Germanic Franks, the area now occupied by France was originally predominantly a Celtic region, as is attested most prominently in Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic Wars. The inhabitants of most of…
Keep readingShort “Documentary” about the Indo-European Language Family
Hello! It’s been a while since the last post on the website but I’m happy to inform you that I’ve been busy working on other platforms. First of all I’d like to introduce yourself to European Origins on Instagram: We are close to 18,000 followers and the page has been growing rapidly. Secondly, I’ve started…
Keep reading
Continental West Germanic Dialect Continuum
The Continental West Germanic Dialect Continuum. Today Dutch and German are thought of as distinct languages and justly so. But in actuality there was a fluent transition between what is considered Dutch and what is considered German today for most of history and in some places in the border area this still holds true today.…
Keep reading
A Neanderthal in Suite and Tie
What if Neanderthals hadn’t become extinct? This is a question the curators of a Museum in Germany must have asked themselves when they created this exhibit: A Neanderthal in a suit and tie. As many of you may know, research in Archaeogenetics has relatively recently revealed that all human beings north of the Sahara Desert…
Keep reading
Y-DNA Haplogroups in the German Empire
The Haplogroup distribution across the German Empire prior to WW1 according to FTDNA and Robert Gabel. Haplogroup I is the oldest of them and probably resembles remnants of Hunter-Gatherer lineages whilst R1b and R1a are connected to Celto-Germanic and Slavic peoples.
Keep reading
The Etruscans
The Etruscans were one of the many historic peoples inhabiting the Italian Peninsula before the Rise of Rome and influencing the Empire from within after their subjugation. It is thought that the Romans incorporated some of the Etruscan deities in their own pantheon and that even the Latin language underwent some phonetical changes as a…
Keep reading
The Migration of the Cimbri and Teutons
The migration of the Cimbri and the Teutons from Jutland across Central and Western Europe and into Northern Italy. The Cimbri and Teutons were the first Germanic people mentioned in history, although the term Teuton itself may in fact be of Celtic origin.
Keep reading
Fenrir and Tyr
Fenrir bites off Tyr’s hand. Illustration from a 17th century Icelandic manuscript.Tyr is the god of war and justice in Norse mythology, and the etymology of his name suggests that he once was at the top of the Germanic pantheon, although he had been replaced by Odin/Wodan relatively early.Fenrir is one of the children of…
Keep reading
The German Eastward Expansion
Map showing the German Eastward Expansion, starting in the early Middle Ages at the zenith of Charlemagne’s Frankish Empire. Although first German settlements east of the river Elbe in modern Eastern Germany started relatively early, it wasn’t until the 10th and 11th centuries, that larger amounts of Germans moved eastward and assimilated most of the…
Keep reading
The Loulan Beauty – A Tarim Mummy
One of the Tarim mummies from the Tarim basin in northwestern China in the province of Xinjiang, dated to 1800 BC. These mummies are frequently associated with speakers of the Indo-European Tocharian language which since has gone extinct due to assimilation into the Uyghur population at the end of the first millennium AD. It took…
Keep readingLoading…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
Get new content delivered directly to your inbox.
European Origins 