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Page 3 of 7 NeolithicThe next stage for the population of Europe came with the Neolithic when farming replaced hunting and gathering. The farming way of life, which came to Europe, was crafted in southwestern Asia by Mediterranoid people. It appears to have entered Europe on two fronts about eight thousand years ago, with both fronts spreading northward to reach the shores of the North and Baltic Seas about six thousand years ago. A common form of spread was by colonies, which could have just pushed the aboriginal people aside. It does appear, however, that aboriginals often were generously absorbed as servants or slaves because, as agriculture advanced, the Mediterranoid element became diluted until, by the time agriculture reached the shores of the northern seas, many, if not most, of the farmers were more like the aboriginal people than the original Mediterranoid farmers. Another form of spread, sometimes important, occurred when some aboriginal groups came to understand the fundamentals of the new way of life and elected to embrace it. The western agriculture advance entered Europe through Italy out of northern Africa and spread thence to France, the British Isles, and north along the shores of the Atlantic and the North Sea all the way to southern Sweden. The people involved are called the Atlantic Farmers. The eastern advance entered Europe through Greece out of Asia Minor and expanded north along the Danube and over the mountains to the Baltic Sea as well as eastward into central Eurasia. The people of this advance could be called the European Farmers. The two advances were separated more or less by the Alps and the middle Rhine and undoubtedly their people spoke very different languages from one another but may not have been otherwise very different. When the light of history reached central Europe, the European Farmers from the Baltic Sea south to Greece and eastward were all speaking Indo-European languages. If they earlier had spoken some other languages, as has been argued (Gimbutas, 1991), those languages have disappeared without a known trace. Against that possibility is the fact that the toponyms (names of rivers and mountains) all across central Europe are all quite Indo-European (Krahe, 1951, 1954) and it is well known that the toponyms of original settlers (farmers) widely persist even when new languages inundate an area. By contrast, the earliest historic accounts in Atlantic Europe find intrusive Indo-European speakers advancing everywhere. Little may be known about the Atlantic languages themselves but the people who spoke them can be named. The Indo-European Italic people, for example, overran lands occupied by Ligurians whom the Italics treated rather like the Europeans treated native Americans. The Ligurians were, in fact, very much absorbed into the later Italic population. Sardinians and Secals were probably related to the Ligurians. West of the Rhone and across Iberia the native population was called Iberian. Actual inscriptions in the Iberian language are known and whatever it was the language was not Basque. The Romans reported Celts in the northwest of Iberia while in the center the Celts were mixing with the Iberians such that the Romans called the people there Celtibrians. Further north, Caesar reported the population speaking Celtic but the land was called Gaul (Gallica). Apparently the original Gauls had been assimilated by the invading Celts. The language in southern England was a related form of Celtic (Cambrog) but the Romans called the land Britannia. The original Britons were still quite in evidence in the north where the Romans called them Picts for the blue tattoos all over their bodies. The Celts of Gaul and of southern Britain represented a second wave of Celts, the first wave surviving in Spain and Ireland. Caesar called Ireland Hibernia (Iber-land) but the language there was Gaelic (Celtic). Perhaps the use of “Iber” here reflects some awareness of a relationship with the Ibers further south. Finally, the people of the most northern parts of Atlantic settlement were called Germans by the Celts, which is thought to mean “neighbors”. The German language, like Celtic, is regarded to be Indo-European and is the focus of this study.
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Germanic Origins 
