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.… Read More Continental West Germanic Dialect Continuum
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… Read More A Neanderthal in Suite and Tie
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.
The maximum expansion of 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… Read More The Etruscans
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. They left their Northern European homeland for unknown reasons and made their track… Read More The Migration of the Cimbri and Teutons
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mythology, and the etymology of his name suggests that he once was at the top of the Germanic pantheon, although he had been replaced by Odin/Wodan relatively early.Fenrir is one of the children of… Read More Fenrir and Tyr
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… Read More The German Eastward Expansion
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… Read More The Loulan Beauty – A Tarim Mummy
One of the fundamental issues within philosophy is that of human consciousness. What is consciousness, what does it mean to be aware of oneself? In the past it has been identified as a defining trait of humanity to be able to reflect on one’s own thoughts and actions, on that which we call “I” or… Read More On Consciousness, Perspective, Constructivism and Morality
The Samnites were an Italic civilisation who lived in Samnium, a region of Southern Italy that includes the present-day Abruzzo, Molise and Campania.… Read More The Ancient Samnites
‘Barbarian’ and ‘barbaric’ are nowadays commonly used to describe somebody or something behaving in a particularly uncivilized or – to the observer – foreign way, and in this regards differs surprisingly little from it’s ancient counterpart. This article seeks to examine the meaning and history of the term in short.… Read More The Greco-Roman Concept of the Barbarian
This is just a little update on the blog and what’s been happening with it over the last few weeks. After running European Origins for almost a year and having had a blog prior to this I decided to dedicate to this website, more so than I have done in the past. I purchased the… Read More Thank You!
A report about my personal experience working remotely for the Smithsonian Transcription center.… Read More Volunteering at the Smithsonian Transcription Center
How useful is Living DNA to determine your ancestry? This review deals with German autosomal admixture in particular, featuring Baltic, Tuscan and Germanic components.… Read More Living DNA Review
Many people are understandably intrigued by the relatively new service of personal ancestry tests to determine their own origins. But how reliable are they really?… Read More Do Ancestry DNA Tests Work?
Just a quick update in regards to the promised post about the origin of the Elder Futhark. Work on this project has finished last month and I’m currently waiting for the permission to publish it here. The essay will most likely be posted in three chunks due to the amount of content. In the meantime… Read More 2020 Update
European Origins 