Archaeologically backwards? Or what do you mean? Clearly the Germanics were better at the only thing that mattered in the era.
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I remember the Celts had proto-cities, constructed trade routes etc. The Germans were living in small communities in the woods with just a little agriculture and animal husbandry.
That's not true at all. The germans had fairly large settlements, and even road networks. (just like the celts)
Please tell me more about those.
AFAIK there were no towns in "Germanic Germany" until the early middle ages. The only pre-medieval town I know, of which doesn't trace its root (as a town) to the Romans, is Haithabu.
In the books I read, until the middle ages the Germanic people only built "Haufendörfer" i.e. villages consisting of a loose collection of something like one or two dozen houses at most. (Of course different conditions prevailed where they conquered ex Roman lands.)
During the celtic period / Bronze age, on the other hand, you had forts and little towns surrounding those forts, with an archeological record attesting to rich aristocrats living in those forts.
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Did it even exist before early 800s? AFAIK the first mention of Hedeby comes from the time when Godfred of Denmark resettled there merchants from ruined Obodrite city of Reric.
It's debatable whether Goths actually were at lower Vistula. It makes much more sense for them to live at the mouth of Daugava and then move along it into the Dneper drainage. Assuming that Goths traveled long rivers, it just doesn't sound feasible to "jump" from Vistula drainage into Dneper or Dnester drainages, since they are separated by rather difficult terrain.
The mouth of Vistula was, according to Ptolemy, settled by Ouletai. Ouletai are very likely the same tribe that latter reappeared in more or less the same area as Veletes.
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This is the first time I ever hear something like that. Is that some kind of nationalistic theory, to prove that "Poland" was always inhabited only by Poles, and certainly not by the pesky Germans who dared to lay claim to the mighty Polish Gdansk?
Veletes weren't the ancestors of Poles to begin with and were themselves of diverse origin with Baltic and Germanic elements clearly observable. So whatever you want to imply to me, you are wrong. Also Gdańsk was founded in 10th century, well after the migration period.
It wasn't me who first proposed the Daugava - Dneper route. Like almost everything relating to the Goths it's a conjecture, albeit a well grounded one. It highlights the difficulty of migration between the Vistula drainage into the East with either Pripyat marshes or Carpathians along the way.
It wasn't me who first proposed the Daugava - Dneper route. Like almost everything relating to the Goths it's a conjecture, albeit a well grounded one. It highlights the difficulty of migration between the Vistula drainage into the East with either Pripyat marshes or Carpathians along the way.
To accurately place a tribe far from the Roman border only based on Graeco-Roman sources would not be a good idea. What can be said for sure is that the Wielbark culture were present at Vistula, and it is likely that the Wielbark culture has links to the Goths given that they practiced the same burial rites (after AD 100) and used similar clothing for women. Which tribes, other than the Goths, that adopted the Wielbark culture is however not known, and I think it is unlikely that we will ever know for sure.
