Andrew Andersen

GERMANY: EARLY HISTORY

(Maps: Putzgers, F.W., Historischer Schul-Atlas, Bielefeld, 1929)

Click on the map to see the full-screen image	It is pretty hard to say for sure when exactly did the ancestors of modern Germans appeared in Europe and where they came from. It is definitely clear though that at least around 500 B.C., Germanic-speaking tribes inhabited southern part of Scandinavia and northern part of Central Europe slowly advancing westwards, southwards and eastwards. Germanic expansion to the west of Rhine and to the south of the Alps was accompanied by the wars against the Roman Empire. At the beginning of the 1^st century B.C., Romans under Julius Caesar managed to defeat the Germans (the Suebians) and started Roman advance into German-inhabited lands. However, the defeat of Romans at the Teutoburg Forest in A.D. 9, marked the end of Roman domination of Europe and the beginning of the collapse of the empire	Click on the map to see the full-screen image
	The following three hundred years were marked by the agony of Rome and the beginning of the great migrations of Germanic tribes resulting in their spread all over Europe and even further to northern Africa. The fall of Rome in A.D. 476 was the end of ancient history and the beginning of new era of Western history and new European civilization that amalgamated ^classical” Roman and “barbarian” Germanic features

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