Germanic people
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Germanic people are an Indo-European ethnolinguistic group whose languages and cultures have shaped much of Northern Europe and beyond. They matter historically because their migrations, kingdoms, and cultural developments significantly influenced the formation of modern European nations and the English language.
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Roman bronze statuette dated to the late 1st century – early 2nd century CE, representing a Germanic man with his hair in a Suebian knot
The Germanic peoples were tribal groups who lived in Northern Europe during Classical antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. In modern scholarship, they typically include the Roman-era Germani who lived in both Germania and parts of the Roman Empire, and all Germanic speaking peoples from this era, irrespective of where they lived, most notably the Goths. Another term, ancient Germans, is considered problematic by many scholars because it suggests identity with present-day Germans. Although the first Roman descriptions of Germani involved tribes west of the Rhine river, their homeland of Germania was portrayed as stretching east of the Rhine, to southern Scandinavia and the Vistula in the east, and to the upper Danube in the south. Other Germanic speakers, such as the Bastarnae and Goths, lived further east in what is now Moldova and Ukraine. The term Germani is generally only used to refer to historical peoples from the 1st to 4th centuries CE.