From the linguistic point of view, the Germanic people constitute an archaic branch of the Indo-European family. The earliest Germanic culture that archaeologists identify as such is the so-called Jastorf culture, a cultural province of northern Europe in the Early Iron Age (c. 600 BCE) covering present-day Holstein, Jutland, northeast Saxony, and western Mecklenburg. When Germanic tribes entered into written history in the works of classical authors such as Caesar and Tacitus, they had spread south towards the Rhine and the wooded hills of southern Germany, so that their closest neighbors were the Celts in Gaul. To the east their neighbors were the Balts and the Scythians and Sarmatians, Iranian tribes that roamed the plains of Russia. To the north they were in contact with the Sámi and the Finns. Although the Germanic people were primarily pastoralists, they also practiced agriculture and hunting. Their social organization...