1.
World tree
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The world tree is a motif present in several religions and mythologies, particularly Indo-European religions, Siberian religions, and Native American religions. The world tree is represented as a tree which supports the heavens, thereby connecting the heavens, the terrestrial world, and, through its roots. It may also be connected to the motif of the tree of life. In Norse mythology, Yggdrasil is the world tree, Yggdrasil is attested in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson. In both sources, Yggdrasil is an ash tree that is central and considered very holy. The Æsir go to Yggdrasil daily to hold their courts, creatures live within Yggdrasil, including the harts Dáinn, Dvalinn, Duneyrr and Duraþrór, the giant in eagle-shape Hraesvelgr, the squirrel Ratatoskr and the wyrm Níðhöggr. Scholarly theories have proposed about the etymology of the name Yggdrasil, the potential relation to the trees Mímameiðr and Læraðr. The world tree is represented in the mythologies and folklore of Northern Asia and Siberia. In the mythology of the Samoyeds, the world tree connects different realities together, in their mythology the world tree is also the symbol of Mother Earth who is said to give the Samoyed shaman his drum and also help him travel from one world to another. The symbol of the tree is also common in Tengriism. The world tree is visible in the designs of the Crown of Silla, Silla being one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea and this link is used to establish a connection between Siberian peoples and those of Korea. Among pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, the concept of trees is a prevalent motif in Mesoamerican mythical cosmologies. The Temple of the Cross Complex at Palenque contains one of the most studied examples of the tree in architectural motifs of all Mayan ruins. Among the Maya, the world tree was conceived as, or represented by. The trunk of the tree could also be represented by an upright caiman, directional world trees are also associated with the four Yearbearers in Mesoamerican calendars, and the directional colors and deities. Mesoamerican codices which have this association outlined include the Dresden, Borgia and it is supposed that Mesoamerican sites and ceremonial centers frequently had actual trees planted at each of the four cardinal directions, representing the quadripartite concept. World trees are depicted with birds in their branches. The central world tree has also interpreted as a representation of the band of the Milky Way
2.
Modern Paganism
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Although they do share similarities, contemporary Pagan religious movements are diverse and no single set of beliefs, practices, or texts are shared by them all. Not all members of faiths or beliefs regarded as Neopagan self-identify as Pagan, academic research has placed the Pagan movement along a spectrum, with Eclecticism on one end and Polytheistic Reconstructionism on the other. Polytheism, animism, and pantheism are common features in Pagan theology, rituals take place in both public and in private domestic settings. The Pagan relationship with Christianity is often strained, contemporary Paganism has sometimes been associated with the New Age movement, with scholars highlighting both similarities and differences. From the 1990s onward, scholars studying the modern Pagan movement have established the field of Pagan studies. There is considerable disagreement as to the definition and proper usage of the term modern Paganism. Even within the field of Pagan studies, there is no consensus regarding how contemporary Paganism can best be defined. Most scholars describe modern Paganism as an array of different religions rather than a singular religion in itself. Thus, he expressed the view that although a diverse phenomenon. However, while viewing different forms of Paganism as distinct religions in their own right, the various Pagan religions have been academically classified as new religious movements, with the anthropologist Kathryn Rountree describing Paganism as a whole as a new religious phenomenon. A number of academics, particularly in North America, have considered modern Paganism to be a form of nature religion. Some practitioners eschew the term Pagan altogether, choosing not to themselves as such. This is because the term Pagan has its origins in Christian terminology, alternately, many practitioners within these regions view Native Faith as a category that exists within modern Paganism but which does not encompass all Pagan religions. Other terms sometimes favored by Pagans are traditional religion, indigenous religion, nativist religion, Further, they have suggested that all of these could be defined under the banner of paganism or Paganism. This approach has received critically by many specialists in religious studies. Many scholars have favored the use of Neopaganism to describe this phenomenon, with the prefix neo- serving to distinguish the modern religions from their ancient. Some Pagan practitioners also prefer Neopaganism, believing that the prefix conveys the nature of the religion, including for instance its rejection of superstition. Accordingly, to avoid causing offense many scholars in the English-speaking world have begun using the modern or contemporary rather than neo
3.
Ethnic religion
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Ethnic religion, alongside indigenous religion, is a term used within religious studies to describe various expressions of religion associated with a particular ethnic group. Ethnic religions are often distinguished from religions which claim to not be limited in ethnic or national scope, ethnic religions do not have to be excluded to independent religions. A number of terms have been used instead of ethnic or indigenous religions. The term primal religion was coined by Andrew Walls in the University of Aberdeen in the 1970s to provide a focus on forms of religion as found in Africa, Asia. Cox prefers to use the indigenous religion. Another term that is used is folk religion. While ethnic religion and folk religion have overlapping uses, the term implies the appropriation of religious beliefs. Ethnic religions are distinctive in their relationship with an ethnic group. Some ethnic religions can be strong, for instance Hinduism of the Indians, Judaism of the Jews, Shenism of the Han Chinese. Some ancient ethnic religions, such as those found in pre-modern Europe, have found new vitality in neopaganism. Moreover, non-ethnic religions such as Christianity have been known to assume ethnic traits to an extent that they serve a role as an important ethnic identity marker, animism Ancestor worship Endogamy List of ethnic religions List of Neopagan movements National god Shamanism Totemism
4.
Balts
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One of the features of Baltic languages is the number of conservative or archaic features retained. German medieval chronicler Adam of Bremen in the part of the 11th century CE was the first writer to use the term Baltic in its modern sense to mean the sea of that name. This is the first reference to the Baltic or Barbarian Sea, the Germanics, however, preferred some form of East Sea until after about 1600, when they began to use forms of Baltic Sea. Around 1840 the German nobles of the Governorate of Livonia devised the term Balts to mean themselves and they spoke an exclusive dialect, Baltic German. For all practical purposes that was the Baltic language until 1919, scandinavians begin settling in Western Baltic lands in Lithuania and Latvia during Vendel Age and with interruptions their presence in Baltic lands continued most of Viking Age. In 1845 Georg Heinrich Ferdinand Nesselmann proposed a language group for Latvian and Lithuanian to be called Baltic. It found some credence among linguists but was not generally adopted until the creation of the Baltic states as part of the settlement of World War I in 1919, estonia and Finland, however, also became counted among the Baltic states in the geopolitical sense. Because the thousands of lakes and swamps in this area contributed to the Balts geographical isolation and it is possible that around 3, 500–2,500 B. C. there was massive migration of peoples representing the Corded Ware culture. They came from the southeast and spread all across Eastern and Central Europe and it is believed that Corded Ware culture peoples were Indo-European ancestors of many Europeans, including Balts. It is thought that those Indo-European newcomers were quite numerous and in the Eastern Baltic assimilated earlier indigenous cultures, over time the new people formed the Baltic peoples and they spread in the area from the Baltic sea in the west to the Volga in the east. This information is summarized and synthesized by Marija Gimbutas in The Balts to obtain a likely proto-Baltic homeland, a possible early reference to a Baltic people occurs in 98 CE, when Tacitus names a tribe living near the Baltic Sea as the Aesti and describes them as amber gatherers. However, it is not clear if the Aesti mentioned by Tacitus were, a Baltic people, or, the Aesti appear to have inhabited the Sambian peninsula (in or near the present Kaliningrad Oblast. Over time, the area of Baltic habitation shrank, due to assimilation by other groups, finally, according to Slavic chronicles of the time, they warred with Slavs, and perhaps, were defeated and assimilated some time in the 11th to 13th centuries. Balts became differentiated into Western and Eastern Balts in the late centuries BCE, the eastern Baltic region was inhabited by ancestors of the Western Balts, Brus/Prūsa, Sudovians/Jotvingians, Scalvians, Nadruvians, and Curonians. The Eastern Balts, including the hypothesised Dniepr Balts, were living in modern-day Belarus, Ukraine, many other Eastern and Southern Balts either assimilated with other Balts, or Slavs in the 4th–7th centuries and were gradually slavicized. Gradually Old Prussians became Germanized or some Lithuanized during period from the 15th to the 17th centuries, the cultures of the Lithuanians and Latgalians/Latvians survived and became the ancestors of the populations of the modern countries of Latvia and Lithuania. Old Prussian was closely related to the other extinct Western Baltic languages and it is more distantly related to the surviving Eastern Baltic languages, Lithuanian and Latvian. Compare the Prussian word seme, the Latvian zeme, the Lithuanian žemė, Old Prussian contained a few borrowings specifically from Gothic and even North Germanic
5.
Lithuanian mythology
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Lithuanian mythology is a type of Baltic mythology, developed by Lithuanians throughout the centuries. Surviving information about Baltic paganism in general is incomplete, most of the early written accounts are very brief and made by foreigners, usually Christians, who disapproved of pagan traditions. Some academics regard some texts as inaccurate misunderstandings or even fabrications, in addition many sources list many different names and different spellings, thus sometimes it is not clear if they are referring to the same thing. The Evangelical religion, established in Prussia by Albert of Brandenburg-Prussia, promised to preach to people in their own language, duke Albert established the Albertina University in Königsberg, where languages of the neighboring countries were taught and the first books in those languages were printed. The last conceptions of the old religion survived approximately until the beginning of the 19th century, however, as it was the tradition, they were never documented by followers of the religions themselves, and all known facts are from documents left by outsiders. Although the pre-Christian religions in Lithuania died out later than in any other European country, actual information on Lithuanian mythology is scattered. Interest in it has increased since the beginning of the 19th century, the relics of the old religions were interwoven with other stories of folkloric mythology, and were subsequently documented quite well, including many testimonies written by storytellers themselves. However, the more syncretic character of this mythology raised some uncertainties and, subsequently, hypotheses and discussions, because of this view, many scholars preferred to write their own reconstructions of Lithuanian mythology, based also on historical, archaeological, and ethnographic data. The first such reconstruction was written by the Polish-speaking Lithuanian historian Theodor Narbutt at the beginning of the 19th century, two well-known attempts at reconstruction have been attempted more recently by Marija Gimbutas and Algirdas Julien Greimas. This method of reconstruction is thorny, and none of the attempts has been satisfactory, the most modern academics exploring Lithuanian mythology in the second half of the 20th century were Norbertas Vėlius and Gintaras Beresnevičius. Their works are considered as the most objective and they are very critical and careful about mythological sources. On the other hand, individual elements have much in common with other mythological systems, there is a Finnic Mordvin/Erza thunder god named Pur’ginepaz which in folklore has themes resembling Lithuanian Perkunas. Sparks fly from the cartwheels and the hooves of fiery-red horses of Pur’ginepaz, the Erza thunder god, in several mythical songs the thunder god Pur’ginepaz marries an earthly girl Litova These also closely resemble the Vedic Parjanya. It is reflected in folk tales, such as Jūratė and Kastytis, the next period of Lithuanian mythology started in the 15th century, and lasted till approximately the middle of the 17th century. The myths of this period are mostly heroic, concerning the founding of the state of Lithuania, many stories of this kind reflect actual historical events. In general, these myths are coloured by patriotism, the third period began with the growing influence of Christianity and the activity of the Jesuits, roughly since the end of the 16th century. The earlier confrontational approach to the pre-Christian Lithuanian heritage among common people was abandoned and this also led to the inclusion of Christian elements in mythic stories. The last period of Lithuanian mythology began in the 19th century, when the importance of the old cultural heritage was admitted, not only by the upper classes, but by the nation more widely
6.
Lithuanians
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Lithuanians are a Baltic ethnic group, native to Lithuania, where they number around 2,561,300 people. Another million or more make up the Lithuanian diaspora, largely found in such as the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Russia, United Kingdom. Their native language is Lithuanian, one of two surviving members of the Baltic language family. Most Lithuanians belong to the Roman Catholic Church, while the Lietuvininkai who lived in the part of East Prussia prior to World War II, were mostly Evangelical Lutherans. The territory of the Balts, including modern Lithuania, was inhabited by several Baltic tribal entities, as attested by ancient sources. The last Pagan peoples in Europe, they were converted to Christianity in 1387. The subsequent imperial Russian occupation accelerated this process, it pursued a policy of Russification and it was believed by some at the time that the nation as such, along with its language, would become extinct within a few generations. At the end of the 19th century a Lithuanian cultural and linguistic revival occurred, Lithuania declared independence after World War I, which helped its national consolidation. A standardised Lithuanian language was approved, however, the eastern parts of Lithuania, including the Vilnius Region, were annexed by Poland, while the Klaipėda Region was taken over by Nazi Germany in 1939. In 1940, Lithuania was invaded and occupied by the Soviet Union, the Germans and their allies attacked the USSR in June 1941, and from 1941—1944, Lithuania was occupied by Germany. The Germans retreated in 1944, and Lithuania fell under Soviet rule once again, the long-standing communities of Lithuanians in the Kaliningrad Oblast were almost destroyed as a result. The Lithuanian nation as such remained primarily in Lithuania, few villages in northeastern Poland, southern Latvia, some indigenous Lithuanians still remain in Belarus and the Kaliningrad Oblast, but their number is small compared to what they used to be. Lithuania regained its independence in 1990, and was recognized by most countries in 1991 and it became a member of the European Union on May 1,2004. Among the Baltic states, Lithuania has the most homogeneous population, Poles are mostly concentrated in the Vilnius Region. Especially large Polish communities are located in the Vilnius District Municipality and this concentration allows Electoral Action of Poles in Lithuania, an ethnic minority-based political party, to exert political influence. Due to the excessive pro-Pole political agenda, the party is known to cause friction between Lithuanians and Poles, however, it has only held 1 or 2 seats in the parliament of Lithuania for the past decade. Thus, it is active in local politics by having a majority in a few minor municipality councils. Russians, even though they are almost as numerous as Poles, are more evenly scattered
7.
Christianization of Lithuania
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The Christianization of Lithuania occurred in 1387, initiated by King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania Władysław II Jagiełło and his cousin Vytautas. It signified the official adoption of Christianity by Lithuanians, the last pagan nation in Europe and this event ended one of the most complicated and lengthiest processes of Christianization in European history. Lithuanians contacts with the Christian religion predated the establishment of the Duchy of Lithuania in the 12th century, as the dukes of Lithuania extended their dominion eastwards, the influence of the Slavic states on their culture increased. Their subordinates and the people followed their example, borrowing, for instance and this borrowing became increasingly widespread among the pagan population in Aukštaitija, though much less so in Samogitia. In addition, the Lithuanian words for church, baptism and fast are classed as loanwords from Russian rather than Polish, the emergence of a monastic state of the Livonian Order around the Lithuanian borders made it rather urgent to choose a state religion. The first Lithuanian Grand Duke to adopt Western Christianity was Mindaugas, although his nephew and rival Tautvilas had done that earlier, the first translations of Catholic prayers from German were made during his reign and have been known since. In 1250 or 1251, Mindaugas agreed to baptism and relinquish control over some lands in western Lithuania. Mindaugas and his family were baptised in the Catholic rite in 1250 or 1251, on July 17,1251 Pope Innocent IV issued a papal bull proclaiming Lithuania as Kingdom and the state was placed under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome. Mindaugas and his wife Morta were crowned at some time during the summer of 1253, even after becoming a Catholic, King Mindaugas did not cease sacrificing to his own gods. After Mindaugas repudiated Christianity and expelled all the Christians from Lithuania in 1261, Mindaugas successors did not express enough interest in following in his footsteps. There were decades of vacillation between the Latin and the Orthodox options, for Gediminas and Algirdas, retention of paganism provided a useful diplomatic tool and weapon. That allowed them to use promises of conversion as a means of preserving their power, Grand Duke Algirdas had pursued an option of dynamic balance. Throughout his reign he teased both Avignon and Constantinople with the prospects of a conversion, several attempts were made to negotiate the conversion of Lithuania. Algirdas willingly remained aside of the business and dealt with the order in the Ruthenian part of the state, the intermediary in the negotiations, Polish King Casimir III, made an unexpected assault on Volhynia and Brest in October 1349 that ruined Kęstutis plan. Kęstutis confirmed the agreement by performing a ritual to convince the other side. In fact, Kęstutis had no intentions to abide the agreement, by the 14th century, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania had emerged as a successor to Kievan Rus in the western part of its dominions. Although its sovereign was pagan, the majority of the population was Slavic, to legitimize their rule in these areas, the Lithuanian royalty frequently married into the Orthodox Rurikid aristocracy of Eastern Europe. As a result, some Lithuanian rulers were baptised into Eastern Orthodoxy either as children or adults, the first one was Vaišelga, son and heir of Mindaugas, who took monastic vows at an Orthodox monastery in Lavrashev near Novgorodok and later established a convent there
8.
Polytheism
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Polytheism is the worship of or belief in multiple deities, which are usually assembled into a pantheon of gods and goddesses, along with their own religions and rituals. Polytheism is a type of theism, within theism, it contrasts with monotheism, the belief in a singular God, in most cases transcendent. Polytheists do not always worship all the gods equally, but they can be henotheists, other polytheists can be kathenotheists, worshiping different deities at different times. Polytheism was the form of religion during the Bronze Age and Iron Age up to the Axial Age and the development of Abrahamic religions. Important polytheistic religions practiced today include Chinese traditional religion, Hinduism, Japanese Shinto, the term comes from the Greek πολύ poly and θεός theos and was first invented by the Jewish writer Philo of Alexandria to argue with the Greeks. When Christianity spread throughout Europe and the Mediterranean, non-Christians were just called Gentiles or pagans or by the pejorative term idolaters. The modern usage of the term is first revived in French through Jean Bodin in 1580, a central, main division in polytheism is between soft polytheism and hard polytheism. Hard polytheism is the belief that gods are distinct, separate, real divine beings, hard polytheists reject the idea that all gods are one god. Hard polytheists do not necessarily consider the gods of all cultures as being equally real, Polytheism cannot be cleanly separated from the animist beliefs prevalent in most folk religions. The gods of polytheism are in cases the highest order of a continuum of supernatural beings or spirits. In some cases these spirits are divided into celestial or chthonic classes, since divinity is intellectual, and all intellect returns into itself, this myth expresses in allegory the essence of divinity. Myths may be regarded physically when they express the activities of gods in the world, the psychological way is to regard the activities of the soul itself and or the souls acts of thought. The material is to regard material objects to actually be gods, for example, to call the earth Gaia, ocean Okeanos, Some well-known historical polytheistic pantheons include the Sumerian gods and the Egyptian gods, and the classical-attested pantheon which includes the ancient Greek religion and Roman religion. Post-classical polytheistic religions include Norse Æsir and Vanir, the Yoruba Orisha, the Aztec gods, an example of a religious notion from this shared past is the concept of *dyēus, which is attested in several distinct religious systems. In many civilizations, pantheons tended to grow over time, deities first worshipped as the patrons of cities or places came to be collected together as empires extended over larger territories. Conquests could lead to the subordination of the elder cultures pantheon to a one, as in the Greek Titanomachia. Most ancient belief systems held that gods influenced human lives, epicurus believed that these gods were material, human-like, and that they inhabited the empty spaces between worlds. Though it is suggested that Hestia stepped down when Dionysus was invited to Mount Olympus, robert Graves The Greek Myths cites two sources that obviously do not suggest Hestia surrendered her seat, though he suggests she did
9.
Veneration of the dead
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The veneration of the dead, including ones ancestors, is based on love and respect for the deceased. In some cultures, it is related to beliefs that the dead have a continued existence, the social or non-religious function of ancestor veneration is to cultivate kinship values, such as filial piety, family loyalty, and continuity of the family lineage. Ancestor veneration occurs in societies with every degree of social, political, and technological complexity, ancestor reverence is not the same as the worship of a deity or deities. In some Afro-diasporic cultures, ancestors are seen as being able to intercede on behalf of the living, as spirits who were once human themselves, they are seen as being better able to understand human needs than would a divine being. In other cultures, the purpose of ancestor veneration is not to ask for favors, some cultures believe that their ancestors actually need to be provided for by their descendants, and their practices include offerings of food and other provisions. Others do not believe that the ancestors are even aware of what their descendants do for them, most cultures who practice ancestor veneration do not call it ancestor worship. In English, the word usually refers to the reverent love. However, in cultures, this act of worship does not confer any belief that the departed ancestors have become some kind of deity. Rather, the act is a way to respect, honor, in this regard, many cultures and religions have similar practices. Some may visit the graves of their parents or other ancestors, leave flowers and pray to them in order to honor and remember them, however, this would not be considered as worshipping them since the term worship shows no such meaning. This is consistent with the meaning of the veneration in English. Although there is no accepted theory concerning the origins of ancestor veneration. Although some historians claim that ancient Egyptian society was a “death cult” because of its tombs and mummification rituals. The philosophy that “this world is but a vale of tears” and this was not to say that they were unacquainted with the harshness of life, rather, their ethos included a sense of continuity between this life and the next. Tombs were housing in the Hereafter and so they were constructed and decorated. Mummification was a way to preserve the corpse so the ka of the deceased could return to receive offerings of the things s/he enjoyed while alive, if mummification was not affordable, a “ka-statue” in the likeness of the deceased was carved for this purpose. The Blessed Dead were collectively called the akhu, or “shining ones” and they were described as “shining as gold in the belly of Nut and were indeed depicted as golden stars on the roofs of many tombs and temples. If the heart was in balance with the Feather of Maat, at this point only was the ka deemed worthy to be venerated by the living through rites and offerings
10.
Daina (Lithuania)
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Daina is the traditional name of vocal folk music in the Baltic languages, and is preserved in Lithuania and Latvia. Lithuanian dainos are often noted not only for their mythological content, most Lithuanian folk music is based around various types of dainos, which include romantic songs, wedding songs, as well as work songs, and archaic war songs. These dainos are performed solo, or in groups. There are three ancient styles of singing in Lithuania connected with ethnographical regions, monophony, multi-voiced homophony, heterophony and polyphony, monophony mostly occurs in southern, southwest and eastern parts of Lithuania. Multi-voiced homophony is widespread in the entire Lithuania, it is most archaic in the western part, polyphonic songs are common in the renowned sutartinės tradition of Aukštaitija, occurring only sporadically in other regions. A large number of Lithuanian dainos are performed in the minor key, parts of Igor Stravinskys The Rite of Spring are based on Lithuanian dainos, as are works by Lithuanian composer Juozas Naujalis. Cf. Celtic Gaelic duan song, Romanian doină, daină folk song, Lithuania is home to many folk music festivals. The Dainų šventė a state-supported festival is perhaps the most famous, it was first held in 1924, the Baltica International Folklore Festival is held in one of the Baltic states every year. The tradition of mass Song Fests was inscribed in the UNESCO list of Masterpieces of the Oral, sutartinės are unique examples of folk music. They are an ancient form of two and three voiced polyphony, based on the oldest principles of multivoiced vocal music, heterophony, parallelism, canon and free imitation. Most of the sutartinės were recorded in the 19th and 20th centuries, recognizing their uniqueness and value, UNESCO inscribed sutartinės into the representative list of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2010. The topics and functions of sutartinės encompass almost all known Lithuanian folk song genres—work, calendar cycle ritual, wedding, family, wartime, historic, melodies of sutartinės are not complex, containing two to five pitches. The melodies are symmetrical, consisting of two parts, rhythms are typically syncopated, and the distinctly articulated refrains give them a driving quality. Folk singers categorize sutartinės into three groups according to performance practices and function, Dvejinės are sung by two singers or two groups of singers. Trejinės are performed by three singers in strict canon, keturinės are sung by two pairs of singers. Sutartinės are a phenomenon, found in the northeastern and eastern parts of Lithuania. They were sung by women, but men performed instrumental versions on the kanklės, on horns, and on the skudučiai, the rich and thematically varied poetry of the sutartinės attests to their importance in the social fabric. Sutartinės were sung at festivals, gatherings, weddings, and while performing various chores, the poetic language is not complex, but it is very visual, expressive and sonorous
11.
Vilnius
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Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania and its largest city, with a population of 542,664 as of 2015. Vilnius is located in the southeast part of Lithuania and is the second largest city in the Baltic states, Vilnius is the seat of the main government institutions of Lithuania as well as of the Vilnius District Municipality. Vilnius is classified as a Gamma global city according to GaWC studies and its Jewish influence until the 20th century has led to it being described as the Jerusalem of Lithuania and Napoleon named it the Jerusalem of the North as he was passing through in 1812. In 2009, Vilnius was the European Capital of Culture, together with the Austrian city of Linz, the name of the city originates from the Vilnia River. The city has also known by many derivate spellings in various languages throughout its history. The most notable names for the city include, Polish, Wilno, Belarusian, Вiльня, German, Wilna, Latvian, Viļņa, Russian, Вильнюс, Yiddish, ווילנע , Czech. A Russian name from the time of the Russian Empire was Вильна/Вильно, the name Vilna is still used in Finnish, Portuguese, Spanish, and Hebrew. Wilna is still used in German, along with Vilnius, the neighborhoods of Vilnius also have names in other languages, which represent the languages spoken by various ethnic groups in the area. Historian Romas Batūra identifies the city with Voruta, one of the castles of Mindaugas, during the reign of Vytenis a city started to emerge from a trading settlement and the first Franciscan Catholic church was built. These letters contain the first unambiguous reference to Vilnius as the capital, According to legend, Gediminas dreamt of an iron wolf howling on a hilltop and consulted a pagan priest for its interpretation. He was told, What is destined for the ruler and the State of Lithuania, is thus, the Iron Wolf represents a castle and a city which will be established by you on this site. This city will be the capital of the Lithuanian lands and the dwelling of their rulers, the location offered practical advantages, it lay within the Lithuanian heartland at the confluence of two navigable rivers, surrounded by forests and wetlands that were difficult to penetrate. The duchy had been subject to intrusions by the Teutonic Knights, Vilnius was the flourishing capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the residence of the Grand Duke. Gediminas expanded the Grand Duchy through warfare along with strategic alliances and marriages, at its height it covered the territory of modern-day Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Transnistria, and portions of modern-day Poland and Russia. His grandchildren Vytautas the Great and Jogaila, however, fought civil wars, during the Lithuanian Civil War of 1389–1392, Vytautas besieged and razed the city in an attempt to wrest control from Jogaila. The two later settled their differences, after a series of treaties culminating in the 1569 Union of Lublin, the rulers of this federation held either or both of two titles, Grand Duke of Lithuania or King of Poland. In 1387, Jogaila acting as a Grand Duke of Lithuania and King of Poland Władysław II Jagiełło, the city underwent a period of expansion. The Vilnius city walls were built for protection between 1503 and 1522, comprising nine city gates and three towers, and Sigismund August moved his court there in 1544
12.
Gediminas' Tower
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Gediminas Tower is the remaining part of the Upper Castle in Vilnius, Lithuania. The first wooden fortifications were built by Gediminas, Grand Duke of Lithuania, the first brick castle was completed in 1409 by Grand Duke Vytautas. The three-floor tower was rebuilt in 1930 by Polish architect Jan Borowski, some remnants of the old castle have been restored, guided by archaeological research. It is possible to climb to the top of the hill on foot or by taking a funicular, the tower houses a museum exhibiting archaeological findings from the hill and the surrounding areas. The museum has models of Vilnius castles from the 14th to the 17th centuries, armament and it is also an excellent vantage point, from where the panorama of Vilnius Old Town can be admired. Gediminas Tower is an important state and historic symbol of the city of Vilnius and it was depicted on the former national currency, the litas, and is mentioned in numerous Lithuanian patriotic poems and folk songs. A reconstruction of the Royal Palace of Lithuania was completed in 2009, long ago, the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas was hunting in the woods of Sventaragis valley. The hunting was a success, but very tiring, the duke stayed there and spent a night. Gediminas had a dream that on top of the hill, where he had hunted down a taurus that day, the Duke asked the mage Lizdeika to explain the dream. He explained that this was an omen indicating that he should build a city in this place, Gediminas, obeying the will of the gods, began to build the future capital city, and a castle in the center of it. The city was named Vilnius after the nearby river Vilnia, Gediminas Tower is one part of the castle, which was built by Gediminas. Three Crosses Pilies Street Cathedral Square, Vilnius Gothic architecture in Lithuania Photo history of the tower
13.
Australia
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Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the worlds sixth-largest country by total area, the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east, and New Zealand to the south-east. Australias capital is Canberra, and its largest urban area is Sydney, for about 50,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who spoke languages classifiable into roughly 250 groups. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades, and by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored, on 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia has since maintained a liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy comprising six states. The population of 24 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard, Australia has the worlds 13th-largest economy and ninth-highest per capita income. With the second-highest human development index globally, the country highly in quality of life, health, education, economic freedom. The name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis a name used for putative lands in the southern hemisphere since ancient times, the Dutch adjectival form Australische was used in a Dutch book in Batavia in 1638, to refer to the newly discovered lands to the south. On 12 December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted, in 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia. The first official published use of the term Australia came with the 1830 publication of The Australia Directory and these first inhabitants may have been ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, were originally horticulturists, the northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited sporadically by fishermen from Maritime Southeast Asia. The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent, are attributed to the Dutch. The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken captained by Dutch navigator, Willem Janszoon. He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, the Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent New Holland during the 17th century, but made no attempt at settlement. William Dampier, an English explorer and privateer, landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688, in 1770, James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain. The first settlement led to the foundation of Sydney, and the exploration, a British settlement was established in Van Diemens Land, now known as Tasmania, in 1803, and it became a separate colony in 1825. The United Kingdom formally claimed the part of Western Australia in 1828. Separate colonies were carved from parts of New South Wales, South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, the Northern Territory was founded in 1911 when it was excised from South Australia
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Canada
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Canada is a country in the northern half of North America. Canadas border with the United States is the worlds longest binational land border, the majority of the country has a cold or severely cold winter climate, but southerly areas are warm in summer. Canada is sparsely populated, the majority of its territory being dominated by forest and tundra. It is highly urbanized with 82 per cent of the 35.15 million people concentrated in large and medium-sized cities, One third of the population lives in the three largest cities, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Its capital is Ottawa, and other urban areas include Calgary, Edmonton, Quebec City, Winnipeg. Various aboriginal peoples had inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years prior to European colonization. Pursuant to the British North America Act, on July 1,1867, the colonies of Canada, New Brunswick and this began an accretion of provinces and territories to the mostly self-governing Dominion to the present ten provinces and three territories forming modern Canada. With the Constitution Act 1982, Canada took over authority, removing the last remaining ties of legal dependence on the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy, with Queen Elizabeth II being the head of state. The country is officially bilingual at the federal level and it is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many other countries. Its advanced economy is the eleventh largest in the world, relying chiefly upon its abundant natural resources, Canadas long and complex relationship with the United States has had a significant impact on its economy and culture. Canada is a country and has the tenth highest nominal per capita income globally as well as the ninth highest ranking in the Human Development Index. It ranks among the highest in international measurements of government transparency, civil liberties, quality of life, economic freedom, Canada is an influential nation in the world, primarily due to its inclusive values, years of prosperity and stability, stable economy, and efficient military. While a variety of theories have been postulated for the origins of Canada. In 1535, indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct French explorer Jacques Cartier to the village of Stadacona, from the 16th to the early 18th century Canada referred to the part of New France that lay along the St. Lawrence River. In 1791, the area became two British colonies called Upper Canada and Lower Canada collectively named The Canadas, until their union as the British Province of Canada in 1841. Upon Confederation in 1867, Canada was adopted as the name for the new country at the London Conference. The transition away from the use of Dominion was formally reflected in 1982 with the passage of the Canada Act, later that year, the name of national holiday was changed from Dominion Day to Canada Day
15.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
16.
England
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England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west, the Irish Sea lies northwest of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east, the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain in its centre and south, and includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly, and the Isle of Wight. England became a state in the 10th century, and since the Age of Discovery. The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the worlds first industrialised nation, Englands terrain mostly comprises low hills and plains, especially in central and southern England. However, there are uplands in the north and in the southwest, the capital is London, which is the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland through another Act of Union to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain, the name England is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means land of the Angles. The Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages, the Angles came from the Angeln peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea. The earliest recorded use of the term, as Engla londe, is in the ninth century translation into Old English of Bedes Ecclesiastical History of the English People. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars, it has been suggested that it derives from the shape of the Angeln peninsula, an angular shape. An alternative name for England is Albion, the name Albion originally referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus, specifically the 4th century BC De Mundo, in it are two very large islands called Britannia, these are Albion and Ierne. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, the word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins. Albion is now applied to England in a poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England, Lloegr, the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximately 780,000 years ago. The oldest proto-human bones discovered in England date from 500,000 years ago, Modern humans are known to have inhabited the area during the Upper Paleolithic period, though permanent settlements were only established within the last 6,000 years
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Norway
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The Antarctic Peter I Island and the sub-Antarctic Bouvet Island are dependent territories and thus not considered part of the Kingdom. Norway also lays claim to a section of Antarctica known as Queen Maud Land, until 1814, the kingdom included the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland. It also included Isle of Man until 1266, Shetland and Orkney until 1468, Norway has a total area of 385,252 square kilometres and a population of 5,258,317. The country shares a long border with Sweden. Norway is bordered by Finland and Russia to the north-east, Norway has an extensive coastline, facing the North Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea. King Harald V of the Dano-German House of Glücksburg is the current King of Norway, erna Solberg became Prime Minister in 2013, replacing Jens Stoltenberg. A constitutional monarchy, Norway divides state power between the Parliament, the Cabinet and the Supreme Court, as determined by the 1814 Constitution, the kingdom is established as a merger of several petty kingdoms. By the traditional count from the year 872, the kingdom has existed continuously for 1,144 years, Norway has both administrative and political subdivisions on two levels, counties and municipalities. The Sámi people have an amount of self-determination and influence over traditional territories through the Sámi Parliament. Norway maintains close ties with the European Union and the United States, the country maintains a combination of market economy and a Nordic welfare model with universal health care and a comprehensive social security system. Norway has extensive reserves of petroleum, natural gas, minerals, lumber, seafood, the petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of the countrys gross domestic product. On a per-capita basis, Norway is the worlds largest producer of oil, the country has the fourth-highest per capita income in the world on the World Bank and IMF lists. On the CIAs GDP per capita list which includes territories and some regions, from 2001 to 2006, and then again from 2009 to 2017, Norway had the highest Human Development Index ranking in the world. It also has the highest inequality-adjusted ranking, Norway ranks first on the World Happiness Report, the OECD Better Life Index, the Index of Public Integrity and the Democracy Index. Norway has two names, Noreg in Nynorsk and Norge in Bokmål. The name Norway comes from the Old English word Norðrveg mentioned in 880, meaning way or way leading to the north. In contrasting with suðrvegar southern way for Germany, and austrvegr eastern way for the Baltic, the Anglo-Saxon of Britain also referred to the kingdom of Norway in 880 as Norðmanna land. This was the area of Harald Fairhair, the first king of Norway, and because of him
18.
Baltic neopaganism
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Baltic Neopaganism is a category of autochthonous religious movements which have revitalised within the Baltic people. One of the first ideologues of the revival was the Prussian Lithuanian poet, Dievturi is a Latvian Pagan revival, also present among Latvian Canadian and Latvian American expatriate communities. It is characterised by a theological approach to Baltic paganism viewing all the gods. A common view is that the Dievs is at the time the transcendent fountain of reality, the matter-energy substrate. The movement was started in 1925 by Ernests Brastiņš with the publication of the book entitled Revival of Latvian Dievturity, after the annexation of Latvia to the Soviet Union the Dievturis were repressed, but the movement continued to operate among exiles. Since the 1990s, Dievturi was re-introduced to Latvia and began to again, in 2011 there were about 663 official members. Druwi is a Baltic Neopagan revival religion claiming Old Prussian origins, adherents uphold that it is distinct from Romuva, and that more carefully speaking Romuva could be considered as a specific form of Druwi. The religion is primarily represented institutionally by the Kurono Academy of Baltic Priesthood founded in 1995 and it trains morally mature men and women from the age of 18, into the Darna, as priests of the Baltic people. Like the Romuvans, they recognise Vydūnas as their founding father, Romuva is a modern revival of the traditional ethnic religion of the Baltic peoples, reviving the religious practices of the Lithuanians before their Christianization. Romuva claims to continue living Baltic pagan traditions which survived in folklore, Romuva primarily exists in Lithuania but there are also congregations of adherents in Australia, Canada, the United States, and England. There are also Romuvans in Norway, Baltic diaspora and the rise of Neo-Paganism. Revival of the ancient Baltic religions
19.
East Prussia
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East Prussia was a province of Prussia from 1773–1829 and from 1878–1945. East Prussia was the part of the region of Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Coast. East Prussia enclosed the bulk of the lands of the Baltic Old Prussians. During the 13th century, the native Prussians were conquered by the crusading Teutonic Knights, the indigenous Balts who survived the conquest were gradually converted to Christianity. Because of Germanization and colonisation over the centuries, Germans became the dominant ethnic group, while Poles. From the 13th century, East Prussia was part of the state of the Teutonic Knights. After the Second Peace of Thorn in 1466 it became a fief of the Kingdom of Poland, in 1525, with the Prussian Homage, the province became the Duchy of Prussia. The Old Prussian language had become extinct by the 17th or early 18th century, because the duchy was outside of the core Holy Roman Empire, the prince-electors of Brandenburg were able to proclaim themselves King of Prussia beginning in 1701. Between 1829 and 1878, the Province of East Prussia was joined with West Prussia to form the Province of Prussia, the Kingdom of Prussia became the leading state of the German Empire after its creation in 1871. Following Nazi Germanys defeat in World War II in 1945, war-torn East Prussia was divided at Joseph Stalins insistence between the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of Poland, the capital city Königsberg was renamed Kaliningrad in 1946. The German population of the province was evacuated during the war or expelled shortly thereafter in the expulsion of Germans after World War II. An estimated 300,000 died either in war time bombings raids or in the battles to defend the province. Upon the invitation of Duke Konrad I of Masovia, the Teutonic Knights took possession of Prussia in the 13th century, local Old-Prussian and Polish toponyms were gradually Germanised. Its defeat was formalised in the Second Treaty of Thorn in 1466 ending the Thirteen Years War, together with Warmia it formed the province of Royal Prussia. Eastern Prussia remained under the Knights, but as a fief of Poland,1466 and 1525 arrangements by kings of Poland were not verified by the Holy Roman Empire as well as the previous gains of the Teutonic Knights were not verified. The Teutonic Order lost eastern Prussia when Grand Master Albert of Brandenburg-Ansbach converted to Lutheranism, Albert established himself as the first duke of the Duchy of Prussia and a vassal of the Polish crown by the Prussian Homage. Walter von Cronberg, the next Grand Master, was enfeoffed with the title to Prussia after the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, in 1569 the Hohenzollern prince-electors of the Margraviate of Brandenburg became co-regents with Alberts son, the feeble-minded Albert Frederick. The Administrator of Prussia, the grandmaster of the Teutonic Order Maximilian III, when Maximilian died, Alberts line died out, and the Duchy of Prussia passed to the Electors of Brandenburg, forming Brandenburg-Prussia
20.
Romuva (temple)
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Romuva or Romowe was an alleged pagan worship place in western part of Sambia, one of the regions of the pagan Prussia. In contemporary sources the temple was mentioned once by Peter von Dusburg in 1326. According to his account, Kriwe, the chief priest or pagan pope, lived at Romuva, according to Simon Grunau the temple was central to Prussian mythology. Even though there are doubts whether such a place actually existed. According to Peter von Dusburg, the name Romuva is derived from the word Rome and he further describes the Kriwe as a powerful priest who was held in high regard by the Prussians, Lithuanians, and Balts of Livonia. His messengers were recognized from a rod or other insignia. He guarded the flame and could look into the destiny of the deceased followers. He received one third of any booty taken by pagan warriors and this early account was further enhanced by Simon Grunau in the 16th century. He described eternal sacred fire, a green oak with idols representing pagan trinity. The place was guarded by priests and vestales, images appeared based on this description and became very popular with romantic historians. Grunau also changed the name for the place to Rickoyoto and invented the term Kriwe of Kriwes, however, no other sources support such statements. The author suggests that pagan cult had hierarchy and internal organization, if the Kriwe was such an influential person he must have been mentioned in some political accounts of the region. The supposed location was never found either by the Teutonic Knights, some details in the descriptions have similarities with other sources. For example, the Treaty of Christburg prohibits converted Prussians from having Tulissones vel Ligaschones at the funerals to see into the journey of the deceaseds soul. Another document by the Teutonic Knights speaks of the blûtekirl who collected a third of the booty from Samogitian warriors as an offering to the gods. Since the concept of a pagan pope became very popular during the times of romantic nationalism and very little is known about the temple. Rowell suggests that Peter von Dusburg invented the place to make the Baltic religion appear like counter-church, there are many similarities between Romuva and Christian church, in a place called after Rome lived a man treated as pope with his own messengers and insignia. Romuva might have been a place, also known as alkas
21.
Baltic languages
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The Baltic languages belong to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. Baltic languages are spoken by the Balts, mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe, scholars usually regard them as a single language family divided into two groups, Western Baltic, and Eastern Baltic. The range of the Eastern Balts once reached to the Ural mountains, Old Prussian, a Western Baltic language that became extinct in the 18th century, ranks as the most archaic of the Baltic languages. Although related, the Lithuanian, the Latvian, and particularly the Old Prussian vocabularies differ substantially from one another and are not mutually intelligible, the Baltic languages are generally thought to form a single family with two branches, Eastern and Western. However, these two branches are sometimes classified as independent branches of Balto-Slavic, galindian † Old Prussian † Sudovian †. Key evidence of Baltic language presence in these regions is found in hydronyms that are characteristically Baltic, the use of hydronyms is generally accepted to determine the extent of a cultures influence, but not the date of such influence. Though included among the Baltic states due to its location, the language of Estonia, Estonian, is a Uralic language and is not related to the Baltic languages, which are Indo-European. It is believed that the Baltic languages are among the most archaic of the currently remaining Indo-European languages, Lithuanian was first attested in a hymnal translation in 1545, the first printed book in Lithuanian, a Catechism by Martynas Mažvydas was published in 1547 in Königsberg, Prussia. Latvian appeared in a hymnal in 1530 and in a printed Catechism in 1585, during the years of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, official documents were written in Polish, Ruthenian and Latin. However, linguists have had a time establishing the precise relationship of the Baltic languages to other languages in the Indo-European family. Several of the extinct Baltic languages have a limited or nonexistent written record, their existence being known only from the records of ancient historians, all of the languages in the Baltic group were first written down relatively late in their probable existence as distinct languages. These two factors combined with others have obscured the history of the Baltic languages, leading to a number of theories regarding their position in the Indo-European family. The Baltic languages show a relationship with the Slavic languages. This family is considered to have developed from a common ancestor, later on, several lexical, phonological and morphological dialectisms developed, separating the various Balto-Slavic languages from each other. The traditional view is that the Balto-Slavic languages split into two branches, Baltic and Slavic, with each branch developing as a common language for some time afterwards. Proto-Baltic is then thought to have split into East Baltic and West Baltic branches, however, more recent scholarship has suggested that there was no unified Proto-Baltic stage, but that Proto-Balto-Slavic split directly into three groups, Slavic, East Baltic and West Baltic. Under this view, the Baltic family is paraphyletic, and consists of all Balto-Slavic languages that are not Slavic and this would imply that Proto-Baltic, the last common ancestor of all Baltic languages, would be identical to Proto-Balto-Slavic itself, rather than distinct from it. Finally, there is a minority of scholars who argue that Baltic descended directly from Proto-Indo-European and they argue that the many similarities and shared innovations between Baltic and Slavic are due to several millennia of contact between the groups, rather than shared heritage
22.
Mesolithic
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In archaeology, the Mesolithic is the culture between Paleolithic and Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic is often used for areas outside northern Europe, Mesolithic has different time spans in different parts of Eurasia. It was originally post-Pleistocene, pre-agricultural material in northwest Europe about 10,000 to 5000 BC, in the archaeology of Northern Europe, for example for archaeological sites in Great Britain, Germany, Scandinavia, Ukraine, and Russia, the term Mesolithic is almost always used. In the archaeology of other areas, the term Epipaleolithic may be preferred by most authors, in the New World, neither term is used. Other authors use the term Mesolithic for a variety of Late Paleolithic cultures subsequent to the end of the last glacial period whether they are transitional towards agriculture or not, conversely, those that are in course of transition toward artificial food production are assigned to the Mesolithic. Therefore, care must be taken in translating Mesolithic as Middle Stone Age, subdivisions of earlier and later were added to the Stone Age by Thomsen and especially his junior colleague and employee Jens Jacob Asmussen Worsaae. John Lubbock kept these divisions in his work Pre-historic Times in 1865 and he saw no need for an intermediate category. When Hodder Westropp introduced the Mesolithic in 1866, as an intermediate between Paleolithic and Neolithic, a storm of controversy immediately arose around it. A British school led by John Evans denied any need for an intermediate, the ages blended together like the colors of a rainbow, he said. A European school led by Louis Laurent Gabriel de Mortillet asserted that there was a gap between the earlier and later, edouard Piette claimed to have filled the gap with his discovery of the Azilian Culture. Knut Stjerna offered an alternative in the Epipaleolithic, a continuation of the use of Paleolithic technology, the start and end dates of the Mesolithic vary by geographical region. Childes view prevails that the term covers the period between the end of the Pleistocene and the start of the Neolithic. If the Mesolithic is more similar to the Paleolithic it is called the Epipaleolithic, the Paleolithic was an age of purely hunting and gathering while in the Neolithic domestication of plants and animals had occurred. Some Mesolithic peoples continued with intensive hunting, others were practising the initial stages of domestication. The type of remains the diagnostic factor, The Mesolithic featured composite devices manufactured with Mode V chipped stone tools. The Paleolithic had utilized Modes I–IV and the Neolithic mainly abandoned the chipped microliths in favor of polished, not chipped, the first period, known as Mesolithic 1, followed the Aurignacian or Levantine Upper Paleolithic periods throughout the Levant. By the end of the Aurignacian, gradual changes took place in stone industries, small stone tools called microliths and retouched bladelets can be found for the first time. The microliths of this period differ greatly from the Aurignacian artifacts
23.
Marija Gimbutas
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After the 1917 Russian Revolution, Gimbutas parents founded the first Lithuanian hospital in the capital. When I was four or five years old, I would sit in Basanavičiuss easy chair, and later, throughout my entire life, Basanavičiuss collected folklore remained extraordinarily important for me. In 1931, Gimbutas settled with her parents in Kaunas, the capital of Lithuania. After her parents separated that year, she lived with her mother and brother, Vytautas, five years later, her father died suddenly. At her fathers deathbed, Gimbutas pledged that she would study to become a scholar, All of a sudden I had to think what I shall be, I had been so reckless in sports—swimming for miles, skating, bicycle riding. I changed completely and began to read, in 1941, she married architect Jurgis Gimbutas. During the Second World War, Gimbutas lived under both Soviet and German occupations from 1940 to 1941 and 1941 to 1943, respectively. In her reflection of this turbulent period, Gimbutas remarked, Life just twisted me like a little plant, while holding a postdoctoral fellowship at Tübingen the following year, Gimbutas gave birth to her second daughter, Živilė. She did postgraduate work at the University of Heidelberg and the University of Munich in 1947 to 1949, the Gimbutas family left Germany and relocated to the United States in 1949. Her third daughter, Rasa Julija, was born August 1954 in Boston She died in Los Angeles, soon afterwards, she was interred in Kaunass Petrašiūnai Cemetery. From 1936, she participated in expeditions to record traditional folklore and studied Lithuanian beliefs. She graduated with honors from Aušra Gymnasium in Kaunas in 1938 and enrolled in the Vytautas Magnus University the same year and she then attended the University of Vilnius to pursue graduate studies in archaeology, linguistics, ethnology, folklore and literature. In 1942 she completed her masters thesis, Modes of Burial in Lithuania in the Iron Age and she received her Master of Arts degree from the University of Vilnius, Lithuania, in 1942. After arriving in the United States, Gimbutas immediately went to work at Harvard University translating Eastern European archaeological texts and she then became a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology. In 1955 she was made a Fellow of Harvards Peabody Museum and this hypothesis, and the act of bridging the disciplines, has had a significant impact on Indo-European studies. It was the Slavs who did the colonizing, according to her interpretations, gynocentric societies were peaceful, honored women, and espoused economic equality. The androcratic, or male-dominated, Kurgan peoples, on the hand, invaded Europe. The library includes Gimbutas extensive collection on the topics of archaeology, mythology, folklore, art, the Gimbutas Archives house over 12,000 images personally taken by Gimbutas of sacred figures, as well as research files on Neolithic cultures of Old Europe
24.
Proto-Indo-European religion
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The hypothesized reconstructions below are based on linguistic evidence using the comparative method. Archaeological evidence is difficult to match to any specific culture in the period of early Indo-European culture in the Chalcolithic, other approaches to Indo-European mythology are possible, such as the trifunctional hypothesis of Georges Dumézil. Linguists are able to reconstruct the names of deities in the Proto-Indo-European language from many types of sources. Some of the proposed deity names are more accepted among scholars than others. The term for a god was *deiwos, reflected in Hittite, sius, Latin, deus, divus, Sanskrit, deva, Avestan, daeva, Welsh, duw, Irish, dia, Old Norse, tívurr, Lithuanian, Dievas, Latvian, Dievs. The supreme ruler of the Proto-Indo-European pantheon was the god *Dyḗus Pḥɑtḗr and he is believed to have been worshipped as the god of the daylit skies. He is, by far, the most well-attested of all the Proto-Indo-European deities, the Greek god Zeus, the Roman god Jupiter, and the Illyrian god Dei-Pátrous all appear as the head gods of their respective pantheons. The Norse god Týr, however, seems to have been demoted to the role of a minor war-deity, *Dyḗus Pḥɑtḗr is also attested in the Rigveda as Dyáus Pitā, a minor ancestor figure mentioned in only a few hymns. The names of the Latvian god Dievs and the Hittite god Attas Isanus do not preserve the exact translation of the name *Dyḗus Pḥɑtḗr. *Hɑéusōs has been reconstructed as the Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn, derivatives of her found throughout various Indo-European mythologies include the Greek goddess Eos, the Roman goddess Aurōra, the Vedic goddess Uṣás, and the Lithuanian goddess Auštrine. The form Arap Ushas appears in Albanian folklore, but as a name for the Moon, an extension of the name may have been *H2eustro, but see also the form *as-t-r, with intrusive -t- in northern dialects. *Seh2ul and *Meh1not are reconstructed as the Proto-Indo-European goddess of the Sun, *Meh1not is reconstructed based off the Norse god Máni, the Hittite god Myesyats, and the Lithuanian god *Meno, or Mėnuo. They are often seen as the children of various deities. The usual scheme is one of these celestial deities is male. The original Indo-European lunar deity appears to have masculine, with feminine lunar deities like Selene, Minerva. Even in these traditions, remnants of male deities, like Menelaus. The word *prihxeha-, meaning wife has been reconstructed based off the Sanskrit word priyā, meaning wife, the Old Norse word frī, meaning beloved, and the Old English word frēo, meaning woman. The name of the Norse goddess Frigg is derived from this root, Analysis of different Indo-European tales indicate the Proto-Indo-Europeans believed there were two progenitors of mankind, *Manu- and *Yemo-, his twin brother
25.
Annals of Quedlinburg
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The Annals of Quedlinburg were written between 1008 and 1030 in the convent of Quedlinburg Abbey. In recent years a consensus has emerged that the annalist was a woman, the annals are mostly dedicated to the history of the Holy Roman Empire, they also contain the first written mention of the name of Lithuania, dated to March,1009. The original document has disappeared, surviving only as a 16th-century copy held in Dresden, the city of Quedlinburg, Germany, was first mentioned in writing in a document dated to 922. Saint Mathilda founded a community for women at its abbey. The abbey became an educational institution for the female nobles of Saxony. The city served as an imperial palatinate of the Saxon emperors, where Henry the Fowler, Quedlinburg was situated not far from Magdeburg, the Royal Assembly of the empire, and its annalists could therefore rely on genuine information from the royal house and obtain eyewitness accounts. The Annals open with a chronicle of history from the time of Adam to the Third Council of Constantinople in 680-681, based on chronicles by Jerome, Isidore. The narrative is largely borrowed from older sources until the year 1002. Beginning in 993, the narrative begins including events which represent the annalists own eyewitness testimony concerning events at and it has been suggested that the annalist temporarily abandoned the project between 1016 and 1021. The exact reasons for suspension of the work are unknown. Work on the project continued between 1021 and 1030, when its authors were able to report a victory against Mieszko II. The primary task of the annalists was to record the heritage of the Ottonian dynasty, the Annals incorporate the stories of a number of historic and legendary figures such as Attila the Hun, King Dietrich of the Goths, and others. The historian Felice Lifshitz has suggested that the amount of saga material integrated into its narrative is without parallel, the Annals of Quedlinburg became an important research source, during the 12th century they were used by at least five contemporary historians. Felice Lifshitz asserts that the Annals of Quedlinburg played a key role in shaping the ways in which influential Germans of the 19th and 20th centuries saw their medieval past. They continue to be analyzed in other contexts, by scholars of Beowulf discussing its use of the term Hugones to mean Franks, by climatologists, the first written occurrence of Lithuanias name has been traced to the Quedlinburg Annals and dated to 9 March 1009. The passage reads, From other sources that describe Bruno of Querfurt, it is clear that this attempted to Christianize the pagan king Netimer. However, Netimers brother, refusing to accept Christianity, killed Bruno, the historian Alfredas Bumblauskas has suggested that the story records the first baptismal attempt in the history of Lithuania. The Annals of the Holy Roman Empire, translated and annotated by Grzegorz Kazimierz Walkowski ISBN 978-83-930932-6-7
26.
Bruno of Querfurt
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He is also called the second Apostle of the Prussians. Bruno was from a family of Querfurt. He is rumored to have been a relative of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III, at the age of six, he was sent to be educated in Magdeburg, seat of Adalbert of Magdeburg, the teacher and namesake of Saint Adalbert. While still a youth, he was made a canon of the Cathedral of Magdeburg, the fifteen-year-old Otto III made Bruno a part of his royal court. Bruno spent much time at the monastery where Adalbert had become a monk, later, Bruno entered a monastery near Ravenna that Otto had founded, and underwent strict ascetic training under the guidance of Saint Romuald. Otto III hoped to open a monastery between the Elbe and the Oder to help convert the population into Christianity. In 1003 Pope Sylvester II appointed Bruno, at the age of 33, owing to a regional conflict between the Holy Roman Emperor Henry II and Duke Boleslaus I of Poland he delayed the plans for the monastery, and so Bruno set out for Hungary. There he went to the places that Saint Adalbert of Prague had attended, Bruno elected to gracefully exit the region after he first finished his book, the famous Life of St. Adalbert, a literary memorial of much worth giving a history of the conversion of the Hungarians. Bruno spent five months there and baptized some thirty adults and he helped to bring about a peace treaty between them and the ruler of Kiev. Before leaving for Poland, Bruno consecrated a bishop for the Pechenegs, while in Poland he consecrated the first Bishop of Sweden and is said to have sent emissaries to baptize the king of Sweden, whose mother had come from Poland. Bruno found out that his friend Benedict and four companions had killed by robbers in 1003. Bruno took eyewitness accounts and wrote down a touching history of the so-called Five Martyred Brothers, yotvingia was a Prussian region, then subordinate to Kievan Rus, that intersected the borders of what was then Prussia, Kievan Rus and the Duchy of Lithuania. Saint Bruno was beheaded on February 14,1009, whereas most of his companions were hanged the same day by Zebeden, Duke Boleslaus the Brave brought the bodies to Poland. The Annals of Magdeburg, Thietmar of Merseburgs Chronicle, various works of Magdeburg Bishops, soon after his death, Bruno and his companions were venerated as martyrs and Bruno was soon after canonized. It was said that Braunsberg was named after St Bruno, lithuania’s Millennium –Millennium Lithuaniae Or What Lithuania Can Tell the World on this Occasion. Lithuanias Millennium – Millennium Lithuaniae Catholic Encyclopedia, St. Bruno of Querfurt Saint Bruno Querfurt
27.
Yotvingians
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Yotvingians or Sudovians were a Baltic people with close cultural ties in the 13th century to the Lithuanians and Prussians. The Yotvingian language was a Western Baltic language nearest to Prussian and they were referred to in regional historical records into the 19th century. The Yotvingian lived in the area of Sudovia and Dainava, southwest from the upper Neman, today this area corresponds mostly to the Podlaskie Voivodeship of Poland, portions of Lithuania and a part of Hrodna Province of Belarus. The territory was later the Marijampolė and Merkinė, Slonim and Kobryn, and Białystok, and Lyck. Vytautas the Great wrote about terra Sudorum, in a letter to King Sigismund of March 11,1420, the name Sūduva, according to Vytautas Mažiulis, derives from a local hydronym *Sūdvā, in turn derived from a Baltic verbal root *sū-, to flow, pour. According to The Histories of Herodotus, the Neuri Νέυροι were a living beyond the Scythian cultivators, one of the nations along the course of the river Hypanis. This was roughly the area of modern Belarus and Eastern Poland by the Narew river, ptolemy in the 2nd century AD called the people Galindai kai Soudinoi. Peter von Dusburg called them Galindite and Suduwite, in the Hypatian Codex the spellings are changing, Jatviagy, Jatviezie, Jatviažin, zemlia Jatveskaja, na zemliu Jatviažs´kuju and more. Polish sources also used Russian spellings, Jazviagi, Iazvizite, Jazvizite, Yazvizite, in the treaty with the Teutonic Knights in 1260, the region is called terre Getuizintarum. This name was taken by the administration, terra Jatwesouie, Gretuesia, Gzestuesie. The Knights called this tribe Sudowite, Sudowia, in qua Sudowit, in the sentence of Breslau of the emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg to the Order of Livland from 1325, this area is called Suderlandt alias Jetuen. In two dotations of Mindaugas I, a new name was recorded, Dainava, Deynowe, Dainowe, Denowe, the forests were named Deinova Jatvež. Yotvingians also had a warrior culture and were generally well known as great warriors and hunters. Skalmantas, leader of the Yotvingians was responsible for single-handedly raiding Pinsk in the Principality of Turov, a census by the clergy of the Belarus Grodno area in 1860 had as many as 30,929 inhabitants identifying as Yatviags. Skalmantas, leader of Sudovians, took part in the Prussian uprisings, Yotvingian / Sudovian language Yotvingia Marija Gimbutas, The Balts. London, Thames and Hudson, Ancient peoples and places 33,1963, Мoskva,1990, pp 186–189 Mažiulis, V. Baltic languages. V. Toporov, Prusskij jazyk, Slovar, A - L, Moskva, V. Mažiulis, Prūsų kalbos etimologijos žodynas, Vilnius, t. Archäologie der UDSSR, Die Finno-Ugrier und die Balten im Mittelalter, Teil II, Balten, S. 411-419, Moskau 1987 Lepa, Gerhard, Die Sudauer, in Tolkemita-Texte Nr
28.
Name of Lithuania
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The first known record of the name of Lithuania is in a 9 March 1009 story of Saint Bruno recorded in the Quedlinburg Chronicle. The Chronicle recorded a Latinized form of the name Lietuva, Litua, although it is clear the name originated from a Baltic language, scholars still debate the meaning of the word. During the 13th century the Duchy of Lithuania was bordered by Slavic lands, the Slavs did not create the name, they used the existing Lithuanian ethnonym. The Lithuanian diphthong -ie- has, in Slavic languages, shifted to the vowel -i- and this is evidence that the Slavs borrowed this ethnonym from Lithuanians a long time ago. During the next century, Lithuanias name was recorded in languages, including German. In early German chronicles Lithuanias name was spelled as Lettowen, in this form the German letter -e- is used to denote the Lithuanian diphthong -ie-, while -owen denotes the Lithuanian hydronymic suffix -uva. The traditional Lithuanian root -liet- is encountered in various German usages of the era, such as Lettowen, in Rus chronicles Lithuanias name was written as Литъва, alongside a shortened version, Литва, where -i- was already used instead of the diphthong -ie. All of these names clearly originated from *Lētuvā > Lietuva, forms used by Lithuanians to identify their lands, despite ample historic and linguistic evidence with regard to the names usage in different languages, there is a certain degree of debate about the etymology of the name. There have been attempts to associate Lietuva with Celtic toponyms, and with Latin or Italian words. According to a popular belief, the word Lietuva originated from the Lithuanian words lyti. However, there is no scientific support for this theory. Since the word Lietuva has a suffix, the word should have no suffix. Because many Baltic ethnonyms originated from hydronyms, linguists have searched for its origin among local hydronyms, usually such names evolved through the following process, hydronym → toponym → ethnonym. A small river not far from Kernavė, the area of the early Lithuanian state. This rivers original name is Lietava, as time passed, the suffix -ava could have changed into -uva, as the two are from the same suffix branch. However, the river is small and some find it improbable that such a small. On the other hand, such a fact is not unprecedented in world history and it is very unlikely for the name to have derived from a Slavic language, since the Slavic -i- could never be transliterated into the Lithuanian diphthong -ie-. Among other etymologies of the name of Lithuania there is A. Dubonis hypothesis, that Lietuva relates to the word *leičiai
29.
Sacred grove
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For particular sacred groves, and for other meanings, see Sacred grove. A sacred grove or sacred woods are any grove of trees that are of religious importance to a particular culture. Sacred groves feature in various cultures throughout the world, examples of sacred groves include the Greco-Roman temenos, the Norse hörgr, and the Celtic nemeton, which was largely but not exclusively associated with Druidic practice. During the Northern Crusades, there was a practice of building churches on the sites of sacred groves. The Lakota and various other North American tribes consider particular forests or other landmarks to be sacred. Ancient holy trees still exist in the English and Estonian countryside and are mentioned often in folklore, there are two mentions on this tradition in the Bible, Abraham planted a grove in Beersheba, and called there the name of God. —Genesis 21,33 and where the women wove hangings for the grove, —II Kings 23,7 Excavations at Labraunda have revealed a large shrine assumed to be that of Zeus Stratios mentioned by Herodotus as a large sacred grove of plane trees sacred to Carians. In Syria, there was a sacred to Adonis at Afqa. The most famous sacred groves in mainland Greece was the oak grove at Dodona, outside the walls of Athens, the site of the Academy was a sacred grove of olive trees, still recalled in the phrase the groves of Academe. In central Italy, the town of Nemi recalls the Latin nemus Aricinum, or grove of Ariccia, a small town a quarter of the way around the lake. A sacred grove behind the House of the Vestal Virgins on the edge of the Roman Forum lingered until its last vestiges were burnt in the Great Fire of Rome in 64 CE. The Bosco Sacro in the garden of Bomarzo, Italy, lends its associations to the uncanny atmosphere, lucus Pisaurensis, the Sacred Grove of Pesaro, Italy was discovered by Patrician Annibale degli Abati Olivieri in 1737 on property he owned along the Forbidden Road, just outside Pesaro. This Sacred Grove is the site of the Votive Stones of Pesaro and was dedicated to Salus, the city of Massilia, a Greek colony, had a sacred grove so close by it that Julius Caesar had it cut down to facilitate his siege. Sacred groves have survived in the Baltic states longer than in parts of Europe. The main Baltic Prussian sanctuary, which is considered a sacred grove was Romowe. An important wave of destruction of sacred groves was carried out in the lands of present-day Lithuania after its Christianization in 1387, however, some groves, such as in Šventybrastis, still survive in Lithuania. A sacred grove is known as alka in Lithuanian and svētbirzs in Latvian, conversely, in Estonia numerous sacred groves have survived to the present day and have recently been protected by the government of the country. Sacred groves feature prominently in Scandinavia, the most famous sacred grove of Northern Europe was at the Temple at Uppsala in Old Uppsala, where every tree was considered sacred - described by Adam of Bremen
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Northern Crusades
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The crusades took place mostly in the 12th and 13th centuries and resulted in the conversion and baptism of indigenous peoples. Most notable campaigns were Livonian and Prussian crusades, some of these wars were called crusades during the Middle Ages, but others, including most of the Swedish ones, were first dubbed crusades by 19th-century romantic nationalist historians. And 1293, Livonians, Latgallians, Selonians, and Estonians, Semigallians and Curonians, the campaigns started with the 1147 Wendish Crusade against the Polabian Slavs of what is now northern and eastern Germany. The crusade occurred parallel to the Second Crusade to the Holy Land, the Swedish crusades were campaigns by Sweden against Finns, Tavastians, and Karelians during period from 1150 to 1293. The Danes are known to have made two crusades to Finland in 1191 and in 1202, the latter one was led by the Bishop of Lund Anders Sunesen with his brother. The difference in creeds was one of the reasons they had not yet been effectively converted. During a period of more than 150 years leading up to the arrival of German crusaders in the region, Estonia was attacked thirteen times by Russian principalities, Estonians for their part made raids upon Denmark and Sweden. There were peaceful attempts by some Catholics to convert the Estonians, starting with missions dispatched by Adalbert, however, these peaceful efforts seem to have had only limited success. Although the crusaders won their first battle, Bishop Berthold was mortally wounded, in 1199, Albert of Buxhoeveden was appointed by the Archbishop Hartwig II of Bremen to Christianise the Baltic countries. By the time Albert died 30 years later, the conquest and formal Christianisation of present-day Estonia, although he landed in the mouth of the Daugava in 1200 with only 23 ships and 500 soldiers, the bishops efforts ensured that a constant flow of recruits followed. The first crusaders usually arrived to fight during the spring and returned to their homes in the autumn, to ensure a permanent military presence, the Livonian Brothers of the Sword were founded in 1202. The founding by Bishop Albert of the market at Riga in 1201 attracted citizens from the Empire, at Alberts request, Pope Innocent III dedicated the Baltic countries to the Virgin Mary to popularize recruitment to his army and the name Marys Land has survived up to modern times. This is noticeable in one of the given to Livonia at the time. In 1206, the crusaders subdued the Livonian stronghold in Turaida on the bank of Gauja River. In order to control over the left bank of Gauja. By 1211, the Livonian province of Metsepole and the mixed Livonian-Latgallian inhabited county of Idumea was converted to the Roman Catholic faith, the last battle against the Livonians was the siege of Satezele hillfort near to Sigulda in 1212. The Livonians, who had been paying tribute to the East Slavic Principality of Polotsk, had at first considered the Germans as useful allies, the first prominent Livonian to be christened was their leader Caupo of Turaida. As the German grip tightened, the Livonians rebelled against the crusaders and the christened chief, Caupo of Turaida remained an ally of the crusaders until his death in the Battle of St. Matthews Day in 1217
31.
Mindaugas
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Mindaugas was the first known Grand Duke of Lithuania and the only King of Lithuania. Little is known of his origins, early life, or rise to power, he is mentioned in a 1219 treaty as an elder duke, the contemporary and modern sources discussing his ascent mention strategic marriages along with banishment or murder of his rivals. He extended his domain into regions southeast of Lithuania proper during the 1230s and 1240s, during the summer of 1253 he was crowned King of Lithuania, ruling between 300,000 and 400,000 subjects. While his ten-year reign was marked by various state-building accomplishments, Mindaugass conflicts with relatives and other dukes continued and his gains in the southeast were challenged by the Tatars. He broke peace with the Livonian Order in 1261, possibly renouncing Christianity and his three immediate successors were assassinated as well. The disorder was not resolved until Traidenis gained the title of Grand Duke c, although his reputation was unsettled during the following centuries and his descendants were not notable, he gained standing during the 19th and 20th centuries. Mindaugas was the only King of Lithuania, while most of the Lithuanian Grand Dukes from Jogaila onward also reigned as Kings of Poland, in the 1990s the historian Edvardas Gudavičius published research supporting an exact coronation date –6 July 1253. This day is now a national holiday, Statehood Day. Contemporary written sources about Mindaugas are very scarce, much what is known about his reign is obtained from the Livonian Rhymed Chronicle and the Hypatian Codex. Both of these chronicles were produced by enemies of Lithuania and thus have anti-Lithuanian bias and they are also incomplete, both of them lack dates and locations even for the most important events. For example, the Livonian Rhymed Chronicle devoted 125 poetry lines to Mindaugas coronation, other important sources are the papal bulls regarding baptism and coronation of Mindaugas. The Lithuanians did not produce any surviving records themselves, except for a series of acts granting lands to the Livonian Order, due to lack of sources, some important questions regarding Mindaugas and his reign cannot be answered. Because written sources covering the era are scarce, Mindaugas origins and his year of birth, sometimes given as c. 1200, is at times left as a question mark. His father is mentioned in the Livonian Rhymed Chronicle as a powerful duke, Dausprungas, mentioned in the text of a 1219 treaty, is presumed to have been his brother, and Dausprungas sons Tautvilas and Gedvydas his nephews. He is thought to have had two sisters, one married to Vykintas and another to Daniel of Halych, Vykintas and his son Treniota played major roles in later power struggles. In addition to Vaišvilkas and his sister, two sons, Ruklys and Rupeikis, are mentioned in written sources, the latter two were assassinated along with Mindaugas. Information on his sons is limited and historians continue to discuss their number and he may have had two other sons whose names were later conflated by scribes into Ruklys and Rupeikis
32.
Gediminas
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Gediminas was Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1315 or 1316 until his death. He is credited with founding this political entity and expanding its territory which, at the time of his death, Gediminas was born in about 1275. Because written sources of the era are scarce, Gediminas ancestry, early life, various theories have claimed that Gediminas was either his predecessor Grand Duke Vytenis son, his brother, his cousin, or his hostler. For several centuries only two versions of his origins circulated, another version introduced in the Lithuanian Chronicles, which also appeared long after Gediminas death, proclaimed that Gediminas was Vytenis son. However, the two men were almost the age, making this relationship unlikely. Recent research indicates that Gediminias ancestor may have been Skalmantas and this discovery led to the belief that Skalmantas was the long-sought ancestor of the Gediminids. Ochmański posited that the poem skipped the generation represented by Butvydas, baranauskas disagrees, believing Skalmantas was Butvydas brother rather than his father, and that Vytenis and Gediminas were therefore cousins. Gediminas became the Grand Duke in 1316 at the age of 40 and he inherited a vast domain, comprising not only Lithuania proper, but also Samogitia, Navahradak, Podlasie, Polotsk and Minsk. However, these possessions were all environed by the Teutonic Knights and the Livonian Order, Gediminas allied himself with the Tatars against the Teutonic order in 1319. Gediminas also asked that legates should be dispatched to him in order to be baptized and this action was supported by the Archbishop of Riga, Frederic Lobestat. Following these events, peace between the Duchy and the Livonian order was conducted on 2 October 1323. The immigrants were to choose their own settlements and be governed by their own laws, priests and monks were also invited to come and build churches at Vilnius and Navahradak. A compact was then signed at Vilnius, in the name of the whole Christian World, thus his raid upon Dobrzyń, the latest acquisition of the knights on Polish soil, speedily gave them a ready weapon against him. Nevertheless, disregarding the censures of the church, the Order resumed the war with Gediminas by murdering one of his delegates sent to welcome the Grand Master for his arrival to Riga in 1325. Thus in about 1339-40 he executed two Franciscan friars from Bohemia, Ulrich and Martin, who had gone beyond the authority granted them and had publicly preached against the Lithuanian religion, Gediminas ordered them to renounce Christianity, and had them killed when they refused. Five more friars were executed in 1369 for the same offence, despite Gediminas chief goal to save Lithuania from destruction at the hands of the Germans, he still died as a pagan reigning over semi-pagan lands. Also, he was bound to his pagan kinsmen in Samogitia, to his Orthodox subjects in Belarus. Therefore, it is unclear whether the letters sent to the Pope were an actual request for conversion or simply a diplomatic maneuver
33.
Grand Duchy of Lithuania
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The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a European state from the 13th century until 1795. The state was founded by the Lithuanians, one of the polytheistic Baltic tribes from Aukštaitija, the Grand Duchy later expanded to include large portions of the former Kievan Rus and other Slavic lands, including territory of present-day Belarus, parts of Ukraine, Poland and Russia. At its greatest extent in the 15th century, it was the largest state in Europe and it was a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional state with great diversity in languages, religion, and cultural heritage. Consolidation of the Lithuanian lands began in the late 12th century, Mindaugas, the first ruler of the Grand Duchy, was crowned as Catholic King of Lithuania in 1253. The pagan state was targeted in the crusade by the Teutonic Knights. The multi-ethnic and multi-confessional state emerged only at the reign of Gediminas. The reign of Vytautas the Great marked both the greatest territorial expansion of the Grand Duchy and the defeat of the Teutonic Knights in the Battle of Grunwald in 1410 and it also marked the rise of the Lithuanian nobility. After Vytautass death, Lithuanias relationship with the Kingdom of Poland greatly deteriorated, Lithuanian noblemen, including the Radvila family, attempted to break the personal union with Poland. However, the unsuccessful Muscovite–Lithuanian Wars with the Grand Duchy of Moscow forced the union to remain intact, eventually, the Union of Lublin of 1569 created a new state, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In this federation, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania maintained its political distinctiveness and had separate government, laws, army, shortly after, the unitary character of the state was confirmed by adopting the Reciprocal Guarantee of Two Nations. The newly reformed Commonwealth was invaded by Russia in 1792 and partitioned between the neighbours, with a truncated state remaining only nominally independent, after the Kościuszko Uprising, the territory was partitioned among the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia, and Austria in 1795. The Statutes of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania name the name of the state as Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Ruthenia and Samogitia. The title of Grand Duchy was consistently applied to Lithuania from the 14th century onward, in the 12th century, Slavic chronicles refer to Lithuania as one of the areas attacked by the Rus. Pagan Lithuanians initially paid tribute to Polotsk, but they grew in strength. The sudden spark of military raids marked consolidation of the Lithuanian lands in Aukštaitija, the Livonian Order and Teutonic Knights, crusading military orders, were established in Riga in 1202 and in Prussia in 1226. The Christian orders posed a significant threat to pagan Baltic tribes, the peace treaty with Galicia–Volhynia of 1219 provides evidence of cooperation between Lithuanians and Samogitians. This treaty lists 21 Lithuanian dukes, including five senior Lithuanian dukes from Aukštaitija, although they had battled in the past, the Lithuanians and the Žemaičiai now faced a common enemy. Likely Živinbudas had the most authority and at least several dukes were from the same families, the formal acknowledgment of common interests and the establishment of a hierarchy among the signatories of the treaty foreshadowed the emergence of the state
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Nomad
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A nomad is a member of a community of people who live in different locations, moving from one place to another. Among the various ways nomads relate to their environment, one can distinguish the hunter-gatherer, as of 1995, there were an estimated 30–40 million nomads in the world. Nomadic hunting and gathering, following seasonally available wild plants and game, is by far the oldest human subsistence method, pastoralists raise herds, driving them, or moving with them, in patterns that normally avoid depleting pastures beyond their ability to recover. Nomadism is also a lifestyle adapted to regions such as steppe, tundra, or ice and sand. For example, many groups in the tundra are reindeer herders and are semi-nomadic and these nomads sometimes adapt the use of high technology such as solar photovoltaics to reduce their dependence on diesel fuel. These groups are known as peripatetic nomads, a nomad is a person with no settled home, moving from place to place as a way of obtaining food, finding pasture for livestock, or otherwise making a living. The word Nomad comes from a Greek word that one who wanders for pasture. Most nomadic groups follow an annual or seasonal pattern of movements and settlements. Nomadic peoples traditionally travel by animal or canoe or on foot, today, some nomads travel by motor vehicle. Most nomads live in tents or other portable shelters, Nomads keep moving for different reasons. Nomadic foragers move in search of game, edible plants, the Australian Aborigines, Negritos of Southeast Asia, and San of Africa, for example, traditionally move from camp to camp to hunt and to gather wild plants. Some tribes of the Americas followed this way of life, Pastoral nomads make their living raising livestock, such as camels, cattle, goats, horses, sheep, or yaks. These nomads travel to find more camels, goats, and sheep through the deserts of Arabia, the Fulani and their cattle travel through the grasslands of Niger in western Africa. Some nomadic peoples, especially herders, may move to raid settled communities or avoid enemies. Nomadic craftworkers and merchants travel to find and serve customers and they include the Lohar blacksmiths of India, the Romani traders, and the Irish Travellers. Most nomads travel in groups of families called bands or tribes and these groups are based on kinship and marriage ties or on formal agreements of cooperation. A council of adult males makes most of the decisions, though some tribes have chiefs, in the case of Mongolian nomads, a family moves twice a year. These two movements would generally occur during the summer and winter, the winter location is usually located near mountains in a valley and most families already have their fixed winter locations
35.
Sami people
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The Sami people are an indigenous Finno-Ugric people inhabiting the Arctic area of Sápmi, which today encompasses parts of far northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula of Russia. The Sami are the indigenous people of Scandinavia recognized and protected under the international conventions of indigenous peoples. Sami ancestral lands are not well-defined and their traditional languages are the Sami languages and are classified as a branch of the Uralic language family. Traditionally, the Sami have pursued a variety of livelihoods, including fishing, fur trapping. Their best-known means of livelihood is semi-nomadic reindeer herding, currently about 10% of the Sami are connected to reindeer herding, providing them with meat, fur, and transportation. 2,800 Sami people are involved in herding on a full-time basis. For traditional, environmental, cultural, and political reasons, reindeer herding is legally reserved only for Sami people in regions of the Nordic countries. The Sámi are often known in other languages by the exonyms Lap, Lapp, some Sami regard these as pejorative terms, while others do not. Finn was the originally used by Norse speakers to refer to the Sami, as attested in the Icelandic Eddas. As Old Norse gradually developed into the separate Scandinavian languages, Swedes apparently took to using Finn exclusively to refer to inhabitants of Finland, Finnish immigrants to Northern Norway in the 18th and 19th centuries were referred to as Kvens to distinguish them from the Sami Finns. Ethnic Finns are a group from Sami. In fact, Saxo never explicitly connects the Sami with the two Laplands, there is another suggestion that it originally meant wilds. In Finland and Sweden, Lapp is common in names, such as Lappi, Lappeenranta and Lapinlahti in Finland. As already mentioned, Finn is an element in Norwegian place names. In the North Sámi language, láhppon olmmoš means a person who is lost, Sámi refer to themselves as Sámit or Sápmelaš, the word Sámi being inflected into various grammatical forms. It has been proposed that Sámi, Häme, and perhaps Suomi are of the origin and ultimately borrowed from the Baltic word *žēmē. The Baltic word is cognate with Slavic земля, which means land. The Sámi institutions—notably the parliaments, radio and TV stations, theatres, etc. —all use the term Sámi, including when addressing outsiders in Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, or English
36.
Indo-European language
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The Indo-European languages are a language family of several hundred related languages and dialects. There are about 445 living Indo-European languages, according to the estimate by Ethnologue, the most widely spoken Indo-European languages by native speakers are Spanish, English, Hindustani, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, and Punjabi, each with over 100 million speakers. Today, 46% of the population speaks an Indo-European language as a first language. The Indo-European family includes most of the languages of Europe, and parts of Western, Central. It was also predominant in ancient Anatolia, the ancient Tarim Basin and most of Central Asia until the medieval Turkic migrations, all Indo-European languages are descendants of a single prehistoric language, reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European, spoken sometime in the Neolithic era. Several disputed proposals link Indo-European to other language families. In the 16th century, European visitors to the Indian subcontinent began to notice similarities among Indo-Aryan, Iranian, in 1583, English Jesuit missionary Thomas Stephens in Goa wrote a letter to his brother in which he noted similarities between Indian languages and Greek and Latin. Another account to mention the ancient language Sanskrit came from Filippo Sassetti, a merchant born in Florence in 1540, writing in 1585, he noted some word similarities between Sanskrit and Italian. However, neither Stephens nor Sassettis observations led to further scholarly inquiry and he included in his hypothesis Dutch, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Persian, and German, later adding Slavic, Celtic, and Baltic languages. However, Van Boxhorns suggestions did not become known and did not stimulate further research. Ottoman Turkish traveler Evliya Çelebi visited Vienna in 1665–1666 as part of a diplomatic mission, gaston Coeurdoux and others made observations of the same type. Coeurdoux made a comparison of Sanskrit, Latin and Greek conjugations in the late 1760s to suggest a relationship among them. Thomas Young first used the term Indo-European in 1813, deriving from the extremes of the language family. A synonym is Indo-Germanic, specifying the familys southeasternmost and northwesternmost branches, a number of other synonymous terms have also been used. Franz Bopps Comparative Grammar appeared between 1833 and 1852 and marks the beginning of Indo-European studies as an academic discipline, the classical phase of Indo-European comparative linguistics leads from this work to August Schleichers 1861 Compendium and up to Karl Brugmanns Grundriss, published in the 1880s. Brugmanns neogrammarian reevaluation of the field and Ferdinand de Saussures development of the theory may be considered the beginning of modern Indo-European studies. This led to the laryngeal theory, a major step forward in Indo-European linguistics. Isolated terms in Luwian/Hittite mentioned in Semitic Old Assyrian texts from the 20th and 19th centuries BC, Hittite texts from about 1650 BC, Armenian, writing known from the beginning of the 5th century AD
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Romanticism
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Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature, preferring the medieval rather than the classical. It was embodied most strongly in the arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, education. It elevated folk art and ancient custom to something noble, Romanticism assigned a high value to the achievements of heroic individualists and artists, whose examples, it maintained, would raise the quality of society. It also promoted the individual imagination as a critical authority allowed of freedom from classical notions of form in art, there was a strong recourse to historical and natural inevitability, a Zeitgeist, in the representation of its ideas. In the second half of the 19th century, Realism was offered as a polar opposite to Romanticism, the decline of Romanticism during this time was associated with multiple processes, including social and political changes and the spread of nationalism. Defining the nature of Romanticism may be approached from the point of the primary importance of the free expression of the feelings of the artist. The importance the Romantics placed on emotion is summed up in the remark of the German painter Caspar David Friedrich that the feeling is his law. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and others believed there were laws that the imagination—at least of a good creative artist—would unconsciously follow through artistic inspiration if left alone. As well as rules, the influence of models from other works was considered to impede the creators own imagination, so that originality was essential. The concept of the genius, or artist who was able to produce his own work through this process of creation from nothingness, is key to Romanticism. This idea is called romantic originality. Not essential to Romanticism, but so widespread as to be normative, was a strong belief, however, this is particularly in the effect of nature upon the artist when he is surrounded by it, preferably alone. Romantic art addressed its audiences with what was intended to be felt as the voice of the artist. So, in literature, much of romantic poetry invited the reader to identify the protagonists with the poets themselves. In both French and German the closeness of the adjective to roman, meaning the new literary form of the novel, had some effect on the sense of the word in those languages. It is only from the 1820s that Romanticism certainly knew itself by its name, the period typically called Romantic varies greatly between different countries and different artistic media or areas of thought. Margaret Drabble described it in literature as taking place roughly between 1770 and 1848, and few dates much earlier than 1770 will be found. In English literature, M. H. Abrams placed it between 1789, or 1798, this latter a very typical view, and about 1830, however, in most fields the Romantic Period is said to be over by about 1850, or earlier
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Teodor Narbutt
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Teodor Narbutt was a writer of Lithuanian descent, Romantic historian and military engineer in service of Russian Empire. He is best remembered as the author of a ten-volume Polish-language history of Lithuania from the early Middle Ages to the Union of Lublin, Teodor Narbutt was born in 1784 near Hrodna in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, to a notable szlachta family of Trąby coat of arms. Early in his youth his fatherland was partitioned between Russia, Austria and Prussia, after graduating from a Piarist college at Lyubeshiv, Narbutt entered the Vilna Academy, where in 1803 he graduated in engineering. He then moved to St. Petersburg, where he joined the Cadet Corps and he served in the Imperial Russian Army, where he became a captain in the field engineering corps. He took part in the 1807 and 1812 Russian campaigns against Napoleon Bonaparte, in 1809 he constructed the Bobruysk fortress, for which he was awarded the Order of Saint Anna. At the same time, since 1813 he became interested in archaeology and his passion for history, culture and folklore of the lands of former Grand Duchy was first shown after 1817, at which date he started to write historical articles for various Vilna-based newspapers. He also started to collect copies of documents related to the ancient history of Lithuania, among the most notable primary sources he published was the 16th-century Letopis of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, also known as the Bychowiec Chronicle, after its founder Aleksander Bychowiec. Between 1835 and 1841 he published a monumental, 10-volume history of Lithuania, although largely based on folk tales, dubious and often falsified sources, the book had a tremendous impact on both historiography of Lithuania, and later on Lithuanian national revival. Its Lithuanian translation became the first history of Lithuania written entirely from a Lithuanian perspective, paradoxically, the book underlined the Ruthenian past of Lithuania, and as such was highly acclaimed by Russian historians and authorities alike. For it, Narbutt was awarded by Tsar Nicholas I of Russia a gold ring set with a ruby, the Order of Saint Anne, in 1856, Narbutt published yet another collection of texts, comprising original primary sources and his own forgeries. Among the most popular of the latter was von Kyburgs Diary, throughout his life, Narbutt remained an active member of the Archaeological Commission of Vilna, as well as a notable engineer. Between 1847 and 1852 he constructed a church in Eišiškės. Although loyal to Imperial Russia, the anti-Russian January Uprising brought an end to his family and his wife, Krystyna Narbutt née Sadowska was sentenced to forced resettlement to Siberia and was not allowed to return until 1871. His older son, Ludwik Narbutt, became a commander of the Polish forces in the area of Lida and was killed in 1863 in fight against the Russians. The younger son Bolesław was sentenced to death by the Russian authorities, narbutts only daughter Teodora had to flee the country and was sentenced to forced labour in absentia. Narbutt himself died in 1864 in Vilna, jean Jacques Rousseau transl. by Teodor Narbutt. Wyborowe ody i kantaty Jana Babtysty Rousseau, dzieje narodu litewskiego w krótkości zebrane. Pomniejsze pisma historyczne szczególnie do historyi Litwy odnoszące się, Беларускі Гістарычны Зборнік – Białoruskie Zeszyty Historyczne
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Greek mythology
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It was a part of the religion in ancient Greece. Greek mythology is explicitly embodied in a collection of narratives. Greek myth attempts to explain the origins of the world, and details the lives and adventures of a variety of gods, goddesses, heroes, heroines. These accounts initially were disseminated in a tradition, today the Greek myths are known primarily from ancient Greek literature. The oldest known Greek literary sources, Homers epic poems Iliad and Odyssey, focus on the Trojan War, archaeological findings provide a principal source of detail about Greek mythology, with gods and heroes featured prominently in the decoration of many artifacts. Geometric designs on pottery of the eighth century BC depict scenes from the Trojan cycle as well as the adventures of Heracles, in the succeeding Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods, Homeric and various other mythological scenes appear, supplementing the existing literary evidence. Greek mythology has had an influence on the culture, arts. Poets and artists from ancient times to the present have derived inspiration from Greek mythology and have discovered contemporary significance and relevance in the themes, Greek mythology is known today primarily from Greek literature and representations on visual media dating from the Geometric period from c. Mythical narration plays an important role in every genre of Greek literature. Nevertheless, the only general mythographical handbook to survive from Greek antiquity was the Library of Pseudo-Apollodorus and this work attempts to reconcile the contradictory tales of the poets and provides a grand summary of traditional Greek mythology and heroic legends. Apollodorus of Athens lived from c, 180–125 BC and wrote on many of these topics. His writings may have formed the basis for the collection, however the Library discusses events that occurred long after his death, among the earliest literary sources are Homers two epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Other poets completed the cycle, but these later and lesser poems now are lost almost entirely. Despite their traditional name, the Homeric Hymns have no connection with Homer. They are choral hymns from the part of the so-called Lyric age. Hesiods Works and Days, a poem about farming life, also includes the myths of Prometheus, Pandora. The poet gives advice on the best way to succeed in a dangerous world, lyrical poets often took their subjects from myth, but their treatment became gradually less narrative and more allusive. Greek lyric poets, including Pindar, Bacchylides and Simonides, and bucolic poets such as Theocritus and Bion, additionally, myth was central to classical Athenian drama
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Celts
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The history of pre-Celtic Europe remains very uncertain. According to one theory, the root of the Celtic languages, the Proto-Celtic language, arose in the Late Bronze Age Urnfield culture of Central Europe. Thus this area is called the Celtic homeland. The earliest undisputed examples of a Celtic language are the Lepontic inscriptions beginning in the 6th century BC. Continental Celtic languages are attested almost exclusively through inscriptions and place-names, Insular Celtic languages are attested beginning around the 4th century in Ogham inscriptions, although it was clearly being spoken much earlier. Celtic literary tradition begins with Old Irish texts around the 8th century, coherent texts of Early Irish literature, such as the Táin Bó Cúailnge, survive in 12th century recensions. Between the 5th and 8th centuries, the Celtic-speaking communities in these Atlantic regions emerged as a cohesive cultural entity. They had a linguistic, religious and artistic heritage that distinguished them from the culture of the surrounding polities. By the 6th century, however, the Continental Celtic languages were no longer in wide use, Insular Celtic culture diversified into that of the Gaels and the Celtic Britons of the medieval and modern periods. A modern Celtic identity was constructed as part of the Romanticist Celtic Revival in Great Britain, Ireland, today, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton are still spoken in parts of their historical territories, and Cornish and Manx are undergoing a revival. The first recorded use of the name of Celts – as Κελτοί – to refer to a group was by Hecataeus of Miletus, the Greek geographer, in 517 BC. In the fifth century BC Herodotus referred to Keltoi living around the head of the Danube, the etymology of the term Keltoi is unclear. Possible roots include Indo-European *kʲel ‘to hide’, IE *kʲel ‘to heat’ or *kel ‘to impel’, several authors have supposed it to be Celtic in origin, while others view it as a name coined by Greeks. Linguist Patrizia De Bernardo Stempel falls in the group. Yet he reports Celtic peoples in Iberia, and also uses the ethnic names Celtiberi and Celtici for peoples there, as distinct from Lusitani, pliny the Elder cited the use of Celtici in Lusitania as a tribal surname, which epigraphic findings have confirmed. Latin Gallus might stem from a Celtic ethnic or tribal name originally and its root may be the Proto-Celtic *galno, meaning “power, strength”, hence Old Irish gal “boldness, ferocity” and Welsh gallu “to be able, power”. The tribal names of Gallaeci and the Greek Γαλάται most probably have the same origin, the suffix -atai might be an Ancient Greek inflection. Proto-Germanic *walha is derived ultimately from the name of the Volcae and this means that English Gaul, despite its superficial similarity, is not actually derived from Latin Gallia, though it does refer to the same ancient region
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