Kingdoms of the Germanic Tribes

In the first century AD, vast areas of central, northern, and Eastern Europe were dark and unknown lands full of savage Germanic barbarians - at least according to the Romans. Little detail is known about many of those savage Germanic barbarians, but brief windows are opened onto their lives and organisation at various points during the existence of the Roman empire in Europe, while other Germanic groups went on to play major roles in the extinction of that empire.

The Indo-European Germanic ethnic group began as a division of the western edge of late proto-Indo-European dialects around 3300 BC. This particular division migrated as part of the Yamnaya horizon to reach the southern coastline of the Early Baltics, seemingly as part of the territorially-extensive Corded Ware culture. From there, over the course of a millennium or more, elements of them entered southern Scandinavia (see feature link for more detail).

By the time in which Germanic tribes were becoming key players in Western European politics in the last two centuries BC, the previously dominant Celts were on the verge of being conquered by Rome (see map link for general tribal locations). Strabo says that the Romans introduced the name 'Germani' for these 'new' barbarians because their tribes were the 'authentic Celts', seeming to mean that they were what the Celts used to be - strong, aggressive, and bold.

Once they had begun to migrate southwards out of Northern Europe's farther reaches, Germanic tribes carved out homelands between the Rhine and the Pripet Marshes (modern Belarus). They slowly consolidated their positions (although migrations still occurred) until they had formed tribal kingdoms which eventually threatened the Roman empire itself.

The Baemi (alternatively shown as Baimoi or Bamoi) are only known through their mention in Ptolemy's Geography. He placed them to the north of the Danube, and south of the Luna forest and iron mines which may in part have been worked by the Peucini. That tribe may have been vassals of the Quadi who lived to the farther north, in Moravia and western Slovakia, on the eastern edges of Germania.

To the west of the Baemi were the Adrabaecampi. They had the Sudini to their north, while the great Marcomanni tribe occupied a broad swathe across the northern flanks of this mix of smaller tribes. Ptolemy's positioning would seem to place the Baemi in or around Slovakia, Moravia, and Lower Austria. But where specifically within that large area could the Baemi have lived?

According to Ptolemy, the Luna forest was on the north bank of the Danube, downstream from the Gabreta forest but located before reaching the southwards bend of that river in Hungary where it met a river from the north which flowed through the forest. According to the Slovak 'quango' for old mines, many of those mines are located in forested regions.

Slovakia has such a forested area with old mines through which a river flows southward to the Danube. It comes in the form of the town of Nitra in south-western Slovakia, on the River Nitra which flows into the Danube at Komarno, around seventy-two kilometres to the south of the town. The town itself is known for its archaeological findings, with the first Hallstatt settlements there being dated to about 500 BC. Prior to the arrival of Germanic tribes, this area would in part have been part of the Harii homeland, with Celtic peasantry no doubt being absorbed into the Baemi social order.

It was after the Marcomanni settlement of the Boii homeland - and therefore likely after the Baemi had similarly settled - that the Quadi pushed their way into the area, to the north of the iron mines. The largest Germanic settlement from the migration period in Slovakia was unearthed in Nitra-Párovské Háje, Parovske-Haje, a few miles to the south-west of Nitra.

The first Slavs arrived in Slovakia at the end of the fifth century and into the early sixth. They settled mainly in the lowlands near the water flows, both Nitra and Komarno, in common with Bratislava which lays in the Danubian lowland. The highest settlement density for them is documented in the immediate area of Nitra, which probably still contained the bulk of its naturalised Celto-Germanic population.

Later, as the Avars expanded their territory into Slovakia in the later part of the seventh century and early eighty, the border between Slavic and Slavo-Avaric territory shifted towards Nitra. A cemetery in Nitra-Dolné Krškany lay on the northern border of what was by now a mixed settlement area.

The best calculations for a specific core territory for the Baemi tribe places it around or within the vicinity of Nove Zamky, which is also on the River Nitra, halfway between Nitra and Komarno. Both Slavic and Avar burial sites have been found here, but prior to their arrival it would have been the Baemi who were here, to the south of the Quadi and east of Adrabaecampi. They should not be confused with the Bainochamai tribe which lived farther north, in what is now Germany.

European Kingdoms

Germanic Tribes

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