On the origin of Germanic

The Germanic languages are, naturally, the language of Germany and it's closest relatives (Low German, Dutch, Flemish, etc.) but also English, the Scandinavian languages, and the now extinct languages of the Eastern Germanic tribes like the Goths, Vandals, and the Burgundians, which featured so prominently in the Migration Period and the Fall of the Roman Empire.  In part, because of the spread of English as the globalist lingua franca, arguably Germanic is one of the most important language groups in the world today, and as a native English speaker and red-blooded American of traditional Anglo-Scottish Heritage American stock, English is my language and an important part of my cultural inheritance.  And since English is a subset of the Germanic group, I'm naturally curious about its origins and roots.

Although fallen out of favor due to political correctness for many decades, many linguistic, archaeological, anthropological and historical details that were commonly assumed prior to the World Wars have actually somewhat quietly crept back into the mainstream.  The notion that the Nazis loved of some kind of "purity" of the Germanic peoples is not one of them; in fact, the Germanic peoples are a fusion people, if you will; a combination of several populations, and their genetic history as well as some tantalizing details of their language and culture have always hinted at this.  Another early (albeit controversial) theory was the Germanic substrate hypothesis.  Much of the evidence for it specifically has started to slip away, and few now believe that Germanic formed as a creole language, but there's little doubt that a probable substrate influenced the language in some ways.  In fact, there were most likely two substrates in Germanic from pre-history, and others in the late para-history.  Let's see if we can sort them out by working backwards and forwards as necessary.

First off, it's obvious that the Germanic languages spread from an area that was previously more constrained.  The first recorded evidence of the Germanic peoples comes to us from the Romans during and in the aftermath of their conquest of Gaul.  Reports of the spread of Germanic peoples and the pressing of them on formerly Celticized lands reached the Romans, and it appears that the Germanic peoples spread initially from southern Scandinavia (including Denmark and southern Sweden and parts of what is now northern Germany had come in several waves; the map to the side shows this progression.  The red shows the original home of the Nordic Bronze Age, before 750 BC.  Orange is the probable position of Germanic speaking peoples by 500 BC (the date at which the Grimm's Law sound change is supposed to have happened, and whatever Germanic parent language varieties were spoken had fully evolved into proto- or Common Germanic).  By 250 BC, the yellow areas were Germanicized, and the green areas are at the meridian of time.  After that, the migrations are largely historical; the spread of the Goths, the Lombards and others into northern Italy, for instance, the decimation of the big eastern confederation by the Huns, the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons on the Saxon shores of Britannia, the rise of the Franks, etc.

Prior to this spread of Germanic into the orange, yellow and green areas noted above, earlier Indo-European languages were mostly spoken in those areas, but not Germanic.  It's not completely clear what they were, although many of the areas were clearly formerly Celtic, based on their earlier rapid spread across the north of of the continent.  Nordwestblock and Belgic, if that is really a separate language and not a variety of Celtic, would have been absorbed, and probable proto-Balto-Slavic of some kind further east as well.  In the even farther eastern portions, Germanic would have interacted in some way probably with Dacian, Scythian, and more.  But it's obvious that Germanic without an interaction of some kind over another language developed in the more constrained "red" area, which corresponds to the Nordic Scandinavian pre-Roman Iron Age and the Jastorf material cultures.  And those are clear developments archaeologically of the Nordic Bronze Age, which was even more constrained geographically, although not by much. (I should note that some scholars actually expand the radius of the Nordic Bronze Age to include some sites in what are today northern Germany, Pomerania and Estonia.  So the full extent of the area in which Germanic evolved is not for sure; but the more constrained picture is more secure.) So it's here that we should look for the genesis of the Germanic languages.

Let's stop working backwards, jump backwards a considerable amount, and then work forwards towards the formation of the Nordic Bronze Age.  A number of stone age material cultures cover this specific area that almost certainly predate the spread of Indo-European languages, as can be determined by their genetics (most notably the lack of R1 Y-DNA lineages and steppe admixture.)  The Maglemosian culture (9,000-6,000 BC) was a Mesolithic culture, derived ultimately from the Ahrensburgian and Swiderian cultures further south that seems to be the first to colonize Scandinavia following the de-glaciation of Europe.  At the time of the Maglemosian, Scandinavia was connected to Great Britain due to lower sea levels, and the Baltic Sea was a landlocked freshwater lake called Ancylus Lake.  This hunter-gatherer culture was nomadic, and lived near wetlands and shores, and seems to have eaten a fair amount of fish.  Some technological changes as well as a more land-locked hunting economy transitioned the Maglemosian to the Kongemose culture (6,000-5,200 BC).  These cultures were somewhat isolated, and seem to be particularly heavy in the I1 Y-DNA haplogroup, although some I2 is also found here (more commonly associated today with the Balkans).  They are part of the cline between Western Hunter Gatherers (WHG) and Eastern Hunter Gatherers (EHG) known as Scandinavian Hunter Gatherers (SHG).  Although phenotype data is difficult to come by (and sometimes difficult to trust the results of anyway) it seems likely that pale skin, blondism and probably blue eyes were already present if not necessarily dominant in the area at this point.

Ertebølle followed Kongemose, (5,300-3,950 BC) and although not a Neolithic culture itself, it borders on the Neolithic Linear Pottery Culture, and obviously had some interactions with them.  This culture is during the Atlantic, or the warmest period of the modern age known so far (warmer than today, so suck it, Green Cult climate alarmists) which meant that the Ancylus Lake was gone, sea levels were higher than today, and climate temperate bands also went further north than they do today too.  Ertebølle is probably related to the neighboring Ellerbeck, maybe the Swifterbant, the Zedmar and Narva cultures, and possibly the Nøstvet and Lihult cultures as well, which almost makes a circum-Baltic (minus the far northern areas) horizon of these hunter-gatherers.  The physical type is beginning to change, although genetic evidence still isn't available (that I'm aware of) which suggests that possibly some admixture from Neolithic EEF farmers from the south was starting to take place.

But it wasn't until the Funnelbeaker (or Trichterbecherkultur, TRB) (4,300-2,800 BC)  that the Neolithic arrived in the area.  The TRB was bigger than the territory covered by the Ertebølle, even if we include the other cultures listed above as part of the same complex, and represents a demic shift and the arrival of relatively large numbers of EEF farmers, originally from Anatolia, who had been spreading up through the Balkans into the rest of Europe for some time, bringing with them the G2 Y-DNA haplogroup.  Although common in the Neolithic, today the signal of this haplogroup is relatively sparse, and most common in the Alps.  J2 also came with them, and it is also a weakly present haplogroup.  Curiously, although the economy obviously changed, the population didn't do so nearly as much and the hunter-gatherer DNA seems to have remained dominant in the Scandinavian region, at least, of this culture.  Part of the TRB seems to have become the Globular Amphora Culture (GAC) (3,400-2,800 BC) although mostly in the region south of our area of particular interest right now.  GAC seems to have been more thoroughly EEF in its ancestry (between 60-75%) and was curiously warlike and violent.  Mass graves, evidence of ritualistic cannibalism and headhunting, etc. are found among them, which was interesting, because they held at bay, for a time, the steppe expansions of the Corded Ware Horizon.

Evidence of climate deterioration as well as a possible black plague epidemic seems to have been the primary source of clearing the way for the Corded Ware Horizon to spread across northern Europe, however.  The GAC and the TRB disappeared, under a wave of Yamnaya genetics, although in the farthest north, and over time, it is evident that some of the TRB and GAC genetics was absorbed by the Corded Ware (often because they took TRB and GAC women).  In Scandinavia in particular, local Y-DNA lineages persisted even as the culture became the Corded Ware variants known as Single Grave (more southern) and Battle Axe (more northern) respectively, indicating that many menfolk were not killed off and in fact were absorbed into the new culture.  While the Corded Ware was a rich source of R1a Y-DNA lineages, in the area that became later the Germanic languages, both I1 and R1a remained important.  In fact, the I1 lineages seem to be more prevalent than the R1a, even though the material culture (and presumably the language) at this point are Corded Ware and Indo-European.  This wasn't necessarily as true across the entire Corded Ware horizon, where differing substrates (and differing levels of absorption of the substrate) created cultural and dialectical variation over time, which is why as Fatyanova-Balenova and Abashevo in the east eventually became Sintashta and Andronovo and Indo-Iranian, for example, whereas the Single Grave culture of southern Scandinavia, north Germany and the Rhenish area eventually became the Bell Beakers with their widespread colonization of much of Europe.

The Corded Ware is technically a Neolithic culture, but it quickly upgraded itself to Chalcolithic and then Early Bronze Age.  The Bell Beakers are a Bronze Age phenomena, and it's unclear exactly what they represent; it almost looks like they were a network of traders and/or bandits that wandered all over Europe, originating in the Rhenish Single Grave variant of the Corded Ware, and picking up a lot of genetic admixture as they wandered around (especially because they picked up a lot of women from the locals wherever they went.  Although we don't yet know the degree to which they replaced other cultures everywhere, in the British Isles, they seem to have replaced 90% of all of the genetics, male and female, that was there before, and in Iberia they seem to have replaced 100% of the male lineages and married themselves off (or taken captive as slaves/wives) local girls.  There's a lot of uncertainty about the Bell Beakers, who they were, and even what languages they may have spoken (although it was always assumed some kind of late western Proto-Indo-European or dividing Indo-European, some of them may have been Basque speakers, for instance.)  They also seem to have picked up a fair bit of Yamnaya derived DNA from the Pannonian and Balkan region.  By the time they settle down a bit and part of the central European Bell Beaker network becomes the Unetice culture (2,300-1,600 BC), they are rich in R1b Y-DNA markers, and are generally assumed to be speaking a dividing Indo-European dialect that would later emerge as Celtic, Italic and Germanic.  That said, Unetice bordered on but did not overlap with the Germanic homeland at this point, although Unetice material culture artifacts are widely scattered across much of Europe, including Scandinavia, and it's obvious that some contacts were maintained, probably of trade and/or raid.

The prevailing opinion is that as the Unetice culture started breaking up (leading to the Tumulus culture over much of the Central European heartland) what was leftover from the old Corded Ware Scandinavia and Unetice influence evolved into the Nordic Bronze Age (1,700-500 BC).  Of course, since the NBA was non-literate, we don't know that they were Germanic, but given that it later evolved into the Jastorf and Nordic Iron Age, which are known to be Germanic, without any evidence of migration or displacement into the area, most likely they were a very early phase of what we would consider Germanic at this point (although keep in mind that it's only at the end of the period that it can technically be called Germanic, because that's the timing of the Grimm's Law sound shift.)  Scandinavia was a late adopter of Bronze Age technology, and most of the bronze and gold and other metals was imported from Central Europe, implying some kind of contact there, although it was usually worked locally.  Their metallurgy industry is high quality, and wool and wooden objects, tumuli and rock carvings are common through this area (although don't confuse them with the Tumulus culture further south.)  The rock carvings often depict boats and ships, so some level of sea-faring, probably going back all the way to the Ertebølle if not older, remained a feature of the local cultures.

For much of the Nordic Bronze Age, the climate was milder than today, although in the last centuries of this period, it started cooling, which may have prompted the early migrations noted above.  There was a relatively high population density and even viticulture in Scandinavia during this phase.  The genetics show that rather than being "pure" the Germanic languages are a hybrid of ancient hunter-gatherer DNA, minor components of Neolithic farmer DNA (although much of that came with the Unetice and Bell Beaker complexes, who were themselves a pretty mixed bag genetically), layer of Corded Ware R1a and overtop all of that, a thick layer of Unetice-based R1b.  The mixture across Scandinavia today is about 40% I1, 40% R1b and 20% R1a, although the rest of the Germanic settlement area has picked up admixture from other groups over which it claimed territory (most often formerly Celtic or Romanized Celtic territory, including my own ancient homeland of England, for instance.)