Editing Proto-Germanic language (section)

==Archaeology and early historiography==
{{Germanic tribes (750 BC – 1 AD)}}
[[File:Oksywie Wielbark Przeworsk.gif|thumb|The early [[East Germanic]] expansion (1st and 2nd centuries AD):<br />
{{legend striped|#0099FF|#66CCFF| [[Jastorf culture]]}}
{{legend|#FF0000| [[Oksywie culture]]}}
{{legend striped|#FFFF00|#FFCC00| [[Przeworsk culture]]}}
{{legend striped|#FF9999|#FFCC00|Eastward expansion of the [[Wielbark culture]]}}]]

Proto-Germanic developed out of [[Germanic parent language|pre-Proto-Germanic]] during the [[Pre-Roman Iron Age]] of Northern Europe. According to the [[Germanic substrate hypothesis]], it may have been influenced by non-Indo-European cultures, such as the [[Funnelbeaker culture]], but the sound change in the Germanic languages known as [[Grimm's law]] points to a non-substratic development away from other branches of Indo-European.{{clarify|date=October 2022}}<!--Why? Why couldn't it have happened in the presence of a substrate, or possibly even due to its influence?-->{{refn|group=note|It is open to debate whether the bearers of the [[Neolithic Europe|Neolithic]] [[Funnelbeaker culture]] or the [[Pitted Ware culture]] should also be considered Indo-European<ref>{{cite book |title=The Penguin atlas of world history |first=Hermann |last=Kinder |author2=Werner Hilgemann |translator=Ernest A. Menze |others=Harald and Ruth Bukor (Maps) |location=Harmondsworth |publisher=Penguin Books |isbn=0-14-051054-0 |year=1988 |volume=1 |url=https://archive.org/details/penguinatlasofwo00kind |page=[https://archive.org/details/penguinatlasofwo00kind/page/109 109] }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Andrew |last=Villen Bell |year=2000 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TYGiyYO9JioC&pg=PP1 |title=The Role of Migration in the History of the Eurasian Steppe: Sedentary Civilization vs. 'Barbarian' and Nomad |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] }}</ref><!--Does this suggest that Indo-European culture and language may have arrived at Scandinavia through these cultures? If so, which source says so?-->}} Proto-Germanic itself was likely spoken after {{circa|500&nbsp;BC}},{{sfn|Ringe|2006|p=67}} and [[Proto-Norse]], from the second century AD and later, is still quite close to reconstructed Proto-Germanic, but other common innovations separating Germanic from [[Proto-Indo-European]] suggest a common history of pre-Proto-Germanic speakers throughout the [[Nordic Bronze Age]].

The Proto-Germanic language developed in southern Scandinavia (Denmark, south Sweden and southern Norway) and the northern-most part of Germany in Schleswig Holstein and northern Lower Saxony, the {{lang|de|[[Urheimat]]}}) (original home) of the Germanic tribes.<ref>{{cite book |editor-first=Andrew |editor-last=Bell-Fialkoll |title=The Role of Migration in the History of the Eurasian Steppe: Sedentary Civilization v. "Barbarian" and Nomad |year=2000 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |isbn=0-312-21207-0 |page=117}}</ref> It is possible that Indo-European speakers first arrived in southern Scandinavia with the [[Corded Ware culture]] in the mid-3rd millennium BC, developing into the [[Nordic Bronze Age]] cultures by the early second millennium BC.{{citation needed|date=September 2019}} According to Mallory, Germanicists "generally agree" that the ''[[Urheimat]]'' ('original homeland') of the Proto-Germanic language, the ancestral idiom of all attested Germanic dialects, was primarily situated in an area corresponding to the extent of the [[Jastorf culture]].{{sfn|Mallory|1989|p=89}}{{sfn|Polomé|1992|p=51}}{{sfn|Ringe|2006|p=85}}{{refn|group=note|{{harvp|Ringe|2017|p=85}}: "Early [[Jastorf culture|Jastorf]], at the end of the seventh century BCE, is almost certainly too early for the last common ancestor of the attested languages; but later Jastorf culture and its successors occupy so much territory that their populations are most unlikely to have spoken a single dialect, even granting that the expansion of the culture was relatively rapid. It follows that our reconstructed PGmc was only one of the dialects spoken by peoples identified archeologically, or by the Romans, as 'Germans'; the remaining Germanic peoples spoke sister dialects of PGmc."<br />{{harvp|Polomé|1992|p=51}}: "...if the Jastorf culture and, probably, the neighboring Harpstedt culture to the west constitute the Germanic homeland (Mallory 1989: 87), a spread of Proto-Germanic northwards and eastwards would have to be assumed, which might explain both the archaisms and the innovative features of North Germanic and East Germanic, and would fit nicely with recent views locating the homeland of the Goths in Poland."}}

Early Germanic expansion in the [[Pre-Roman Iron Age]] (fifth to first centuries BC) placed Proto-Germanic speakers in contact with the [[Continental Celtic]] [[La Tène culture|La Tène horizon]]. A number of Celtic loanwords in Proto-Germanic have been identified.{{sfn|Ringe|2006|p=296}} By the first century AD, Germanic expansion reached the [[Danube]] and the [[Upper Rhine]] in the south and the [[Germanic peoples]] first entered the [[Roman historians|historical record]]. At about the same time, extending east of the [[Vistula]] ([[Oksywie culture]], [[Przeworsk culture]]), Germanic speakers came into contact with early [[Slavs|Slavic]] cultures, as reflected in early Germanic [[proto-Slavic borrowings#Slavic and Germanic|loans in Proto-Slavic]].

By the third century, Late Proto-Germanic speakers had expanded over significant distance, from the [[Rhine]] to the [[Dniepr]] spanning about {{cvt|1200|km|-2}}. The period marks the breakup of Late Proto-Germanic and the beginning of the (historiographically recorded) [[Germanic migrations]].

The earliest available complete sentences in a Germanic language are variably dated to the 2nd century AD,<ref>{{cite book |last=Beekes |first=Robert S. P. |year=2011 |title=Comparative Indo-European Linguistics. An Introduction |edition=2nd |page=28 }}</ref> around 300 AD<ref>{{cite book |last1=Mallory |first1=J.P. |author2=D.Q. Adams |year=2006 |title=The Oxford introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Indo-European world |page=22 }}</ref> or the first century AD<ref>{{cite book |last=Fortson |first=[[ |year=2010 |title=Indo-European Language and Culture |edition=2nd |pages=349–350 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |editor1-last=Bandle |editor1-first=Oskar |display-editors=etal |year=2002 |title=The Nordic Languages. An International Handbook of the History of the North Germanic Languages |page=xiv }}</ref> in [[runic inscriptions]] (such as the [[Tune Runestone]]). The language of these sentences is known as [[Proto-Norse]], although the delineation of Late Common Germanic from Proto-Norse at about that time is largely a matter of convention. The first coherent text recorded in a Germanic language is the [[Gothic Bible]], written in the later fourth century in the East Germanic variety of the [[Thervingi]] [[Gothic Christians]], who had escaped [[Gothic persecution of Christians|persecution]] by moving from Scythia to [[Moesia]] in 348. Early West Germanic text is available from the fifth century, beginning with the [[Frankish language|Frankish]] [[Bergakker inscription|Bergakker runic inscription]].