THE BEGINNINGS OF GERMAN HISTORY

The area now known as Germany shows evidence of settlement since prehistoric times: Neanderthal man is a well-known archaeological find, and there are traces of stone, bronze and iron-age settlements right across central Europe. The Roman Empire extended across the western and southern parts of what is now known as Germany, and there are Roman foundations and remains in many German towns, such as Trier, Augsburg, Mainz, Cologne, Regensburg and Passau. A frontier fortification (essentially a ditch and bank) known as the limes can still be seen between the rivers Main and Danube. The Roman Empire had considerable impact on those parts which it occupied. Beyond it lay what the Romans called ‘barbarians’ (meaning foreigners). The Roman author Tacitus (c. ad 55–116) gives us an intriguing, if not entirely reliable, glimpse of the Germanic tribes in his Germania. He describes their social and political organisation, their modes of warfare, concepts of crime and punishment, styles of housing, dress and hairstyle, their marriage practices, funerals, agricultural techniques, and habits of drinking, banqueting, quarrelling and sloth. Apart from praise for the chastity of German women, Tacitus' description of Germany and the Germans is not entirely flattering: the Germans must be a native people, not immigrants from elsewhere, for ‘who would … [want] to visit Germany, with its unlovely scenery, its bitter climate, its general dreariness to sense and eye, unless it were his home?’