Aesti: Encyclopedia - Aesti

Aesti

The Roman historian Tacitus in his book Germania describes a people known as the Aesti or Aestii. According to his account, the Aesti speak a language related to that spoken in Britain. They worship a deity known as the 'mother of the gods', as well as the wild boar commonly found in the region; for weapons they use wooden clubs and occasionally iron implements. They are also the only people to gather and trade amber.

Most scholars identify the Aesti as ancient inhabitants of Prussia, speakers of a Baltic language closely related to modern Latvian and Lithuanian.

This identification is based primarily on their association with amber, a popular luxury item during the life of Tacitus, with known sources at the southeastern coast of the Baltic Sea. The Baltic amber trade, which appears to have extended to the Mediterranean Sea, has been traced by archaeologists back to the Nordic Bronze Age; its major center was located in the region of Sambia.

Some historians think that the term Aesti may refer to all of the peoples living by the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea, including the Estonians, who speak a language of the Finnic group. Tacitus mentions another people known as the Fenni (probably Sami), living in close proximity to the Aesti; this could be an indication that the Aesti were forerunners of the Estonians rather than a linguistically Baltic people.

Whatever the case, it seems that the word was eventually applied specifically to Estonians and is the origin of the modern national name of Estonia, called Eistland in ancient Scandinavian Sagas and Estia, Hestia and Estonia in early Latin sources.

Category: Ancient peoples

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Aesti", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki