The number of disappeared ancient civilizations and peoples who once inhabited our planet exceeds all your expectations. There are several thousand such peoples in Europe alone. They were subjugated by their neighbors, assimilated, genocide, etc. One way or another, we will never see them again in the form in which they originally existed. This article will look at some of these nations.
Prussians
The Prussians, or B altic Prussians, were a people from among the B altic tribes that inhabited the region of Prussia. This region gave its name to the later state of Prussia. It was located on the southeastern coast of the B altic Sea between the Vistula Lagoon in the west and the Curonian Lagoon in the east. The people spoke what is now known as Old Prussian and practiced a peculiar version of paganism.
You can hear the sound of Old Prussian in the video below.
In the XIII century, the ancient Prussian tribes were conquered by the Teutonic Knights. Formerthe German state of Prussia got its name from the B altic Prussians, although it was inhabited by the Germans - the descendants of the Teutons.
The Teutonic Knights and their troops drove the Prussians out of southern Prussia into the north. Many representatives of this disappeared people were also killed in the Crusades initiated by Poland and the Popes. Many were also assimilated and converted to Christianity. The Old Prussian language disappeared either in the 17th century or at the beginning of the 18th century. Many Prussians emigrated to other countries to escape the Teutonic Crusades.
Territory
The land of the Prussians was much larger before the arrival of the Poles. After 1945, the territory of Old Prussia geographically corresponded to the modern areas of the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship (in Poland), the Kaliningrad Region (in Russia) and the South Klaipeda Region (Lithuania).
Ducks
The Dacians were a Thracian people who inhabited the region of Dacia, located near the Carpathian Mountains and west of the Black Sea. This area includes the modern countries of Romania and Moldova, as well as part of Ukraine, Eastern Serbia, Northern Bulgaria, Slovakia, Hungary and Southern Poland. The Dacians spoke Dacian but were culturally influenced by neighboring Scythians and Celtic invaders in the 4th century BC.
State of Dacia
Divided into separate tribes, the Thracians failed to form a stable political organization. A strong Dacian state appeared in the 1st century BC during the reign of King Burebista. Including the Illyrians, the highlands were home to various peoples who were considered warlike and ferocious, while the peoples of the plains were more peaceful.
Thracians
The Thracians inhabited parts of the ancient provinces of Thrace, Moesia, Macedonia, Dacia, Scythia Minor, Sarmatia, Bithynia, Mysia, Pannonia and other regions of the Balkans and Anatolia. This area extended over most of the Balkan region, including the lands of the Getae north of the Danube, as far as the Bug, as well as Panonia in the west. In total, there were about 200 Thracian tribes, but they all disappeared forever.
Illyrians
The Illyrians were a group of Indo-European tribes that inhabited part of the western Balkans. The territory inhabited by the Illyrians became known as Illyria thanks to the Greek and Roman authors, who named the territory corresponding to present-day Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Montenegro, part of Serbia and most of central and northern Albania, between the Adriatic Sea in the west, the river Drava in the north, by the Morava River in the east, and by the mouth of the Aoos River in the south. They are the ancestors of modern Albanians, who are confused with the extinct Caucasian Albanians, which brings the Illyrians closer to the disappeared peoples of the Caucasus.
Name
The name "Illyrians" in the lexicon of the ancient Greeks, when referring to their northern neighbors, could mean a wide, ill-defined group of disappeared peoples, and today it is not clear to what extent they were linguistically and culturallyhomogeneous. Illyrian origins have been and still are attributed to several ancient peoples in Italy, as they are believed to have followed the Adriatic coastline to the Apennine Peninsula.
The Illyrian tribes never collectively considered themselves Illyrians. Their name was originally a generalization of the name of a certain Illyrian tribe that first came into contact with the ancient Greeks during the Bronze Age, which led to their name being applied equally to all vanished peoples with similar language and customs.
Vascones
The Vascones were a Paleo-European people who, upon the arrival of the Romans in the 1st century, inhabited the area stretching between the upper reaches of the Ebro River and the southern edge of the western Pyrenees - a region that coincides with modern Navarre, western Aragon and the northeastern edge of La Rioja in the Iberian Peninsula. The Vascons are considered the ancestors of the modern Basques, to whom they left their name.
Resettlement
Descriptions of the territory inhabited by the Vascones in ancient times are found in the texts of classical authors who lived between the 1st and 2nd century AD, such as Livy, Strabo, Pliny the Elder and Ptolemy. Although these texts have been studied as sources, some authors have pointed to an apparent lack of uniformity, as well as inconsistencies in the texts, in particular those by Strabo.
The oldest document is by Livy, who, in a brief excerpt from his work on the Sertorian War for 76 B. C. e. tells how aftercrossing the river Ebro and the city of Calagurris, they crossed the plains of Vasconum until they reached the border of their nearest neighbors, the Berons. Comparing other sections of the same document, historians have concluded that this border was located to the west, while the southern neighbors of the Vascons were the Celtiberians.
Vascon religion
Epigraphic and archaeological evidence has allowed experts to identify some of the religious practices that have been present among the Vascones since the arrival of the Romans and the introduction of writing. According to studies conducted on the subject, religious syncretism continued until the 1st century. From that moment until the adoption of Christianity between the 4th and 5th centuries, Roman mythology was predominant among this people.
Vasconian theonyms have been found on tombstones and altars, further proving the syncretism between pre-Christian Roman belief systems and Vasconian religions. Two altars have been found at Wuyue, one dedicated to Lacubegi, the god of the underworld, and the other dedicated to Jupiter, although there is still no way to date them. Two tombstones dedicated to the deity Stelaytse and dated to the 1st century were found in Lerat and Barbarina.
Vandals - the disappeared people of the white race of North Africa
On the territory of modern Tunisia in the middle of the first millennium of our era there was a kingdom of Vandals and Alans. It was created by people from the Germanic times of the same name, comfortably located in the North African territories once occupied by Rome. This kingdom is known for the fact that its warriors repeatedly attackedRome in the 7th century AD, completely ruining it.
Aquitanians
The Aquitanians or Occitans were a people living in what today corresponds to southern Aquitaine and the southwestern Pyrenees (France). Classical authors such as Julius Caesar and Strabo clearly distinguish them from other peoples of Gaul and note their similarity to the tribes that lived in the Iberian Peninsula.
In the process of Romanization, they gradually adopted the Latin language (Vulgar Latin) and Roman civilization. Their old language, Aquitaine, was the forerunner of Basque and the basis for the dialect of French spoken in Gascony.
Basque connection
The presence on late Romano-Aquitanian tombstones of names of deities or people bearing distinctly Basque names has led many philologists and linguists to conclude that the Aquitanian language was closely related to an older form of Basque. Julius Caesar draws a clear line between the Aquitanians, who live in present-day southwestern France and speak Aquitaine, and the neighboring Celts, who live to the north.
Iberians
The Iberians were a collection of peoples that Greek and Roman authors (Hecataeus of Miletus, Avien, Herodotus and Strabo) identified with the ancient population of the Iberian Peninsula. Roman sources also use the term "Hispani" to refer to the Iberians. No list of disappeared peoples is possible without this mysterious nation.
The term "Iberian", used by ancient authors,had two different meanings. One, more general, refers to all populations of the Iberian Peninsula without regard to ethnic differences (Paleo-Europeans, Celts and non-Celtic Indo-Europeans). Another, more limited ethnic sense refers to the peoples living on the eastern and southern coasts of the Iberian Peninsula, who by the 6th century BC absorbed the cultural influence of the Phoenicians and Greeks. This pre-Indo-European cultural group spoke the Iberian language from the 7th to the 1st century BC.
Other peoples possibly related to the Iberians are the Vascones, although they are much more related to the Aquitanians. The rest of the peninsula, in the northern, central, northwestern, western and southwestern regions, was inhabited by groups of Celts or Celtiberians and possibly pre-Celtic or proto-Celtic peoples - Lusitanians, Vettones and Turdetans.
Avars
The Pannonian Avars were a Eurasian people of unknown origin who lived in what is now Hungary. They probably arrived from the territory of modern central Russia. If not for the migration to Europe, the Avars could fill up the history of the disappeared peoples of Siberia.
Perhaps they are best known for their invasions and destruction in the Avar-Byzantine wars from 568 to 626.
The name of the Pannonian Avars (after the area in which they eventually settled) is used to distinguish them from the Avars of the Caucasus, a separate people with whomthe Pannonian Avars may or may not have been related.
They founded the Avar Khaganate, which covered the Pannonian basin and large areas of Central and Eastern Europe from the end of the 6th to the beginning of the 9th century. Disappeared peoples, books about which are very popular, are often mentioned in the context of the disappearance of the Avars, a powerful people who died out for unknown reasons.
