Re: An Italic Europe?

> > > It would explain those 'western Wend-' names.
> >
> > See W. Hazlitt, _The Classical Gazetteer_ [1851], s.v. Veneti:
> >
> > "... It is to be observed, that the various peoples in

Paphlagonia,

> > Italy, Gaul, and Germany, who were anciently called Veneti or
> > Heneti, all occupied the same description of country -- marshy
> > districts on the coast. ..."
> >
> > That is, the various peoples known as Veneti, or

*Weneto:s 'Beloved

> > Ones' vel sim., occupied marginal areas in protohistorical

times;

> > this is consistent with the relics of the Bell-Beaker expansion

at

> > the end of the 3rd mill. BCE, mostly superseded and assimilated

by

> > later expansions.
>
> One should reconsider partly the designation of those areas as

relic

> areas; it would be possible in those times, where cultures were
> separated by forests, to maintain an identity based on seafaring
> between those relic areas (cf. the geography of the former British
> Empire). In the long run, such water-based cultures were only safe
> in very wide swampy areas or on islands. The occurrence of the
> Wend- name in southern Brittany, north of the Limfjord (the safe
> passageway to the Baltic for small unsteady craft)
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limfjord
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendsyssel
> and at the mouth of the Odra makes me suspect a trading network is
> involved. I read somewhere that the Vandals in Andalusia were the
> only one of the migrating peoples who had a navy (which is why they
> defeated the Romans).
>

Apparently that idea of their society as sea-borne, and the tactics
that followed from it, was how the Veneti saw themselves, cf tyhe
account of their war with the Romans:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veneti_%28Gaul%29
For some odd reason, as the Veneti and Aestii were neighbors on the
Baltic, the Veneti and Osismii
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osismii
were neighbors in Brittany, to the point of being allies against the
Romans.


Torsten