Jaga,
Europe in my view due to it's location in the world as a continent which is connected by land to Asia, and by the narrow Strait of Gibraltar close to Africa, is multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-lingual in nature.
From the West- and North-Germanic people in the North-east corner of Europe to the large slavic group of West-Slavs in Central-Europe, the Eastern-Slavs in Eastern-Europe, the Baltic states and the Ural (Caucacus),
and the Southern-Slavs in the Balkan region in the South-East of Southern-Europe. The Baltic people are a different ethnic group, no slavs, no Germanic people, no latin (romanesque) people, but their own kind.
The Celtic Hallstatt culture was the predominant Central European culture in the 8th to 6th centuries. The Celts from there spread to part of Easter-, Western and Southern-Europe. I don't know if the Celts mixed or
melted with people that came after them after the Migration Period, also known as the period of the "Barbarian" invasions or of the Völkerwanderung ("migration of peoples" in German) in the early middle ages.
The Celts finally moved the the Altantic West Coast area of France, parts of Great-Britain (Wales, Scotland) and Ireland. The Celts were probably driven out of large parts of England by the incoming Germanic Angles
from the Baltic shore of what is now Schleswig-Holstein in Germany and the Germanic Saxons, the Germanic ethnic group of the Frisians and the Germanic people the Jutes, coming from northern Denmark, Jutland.
The Celts in Europe
Invasions of the Roman EmpireThe Hungarians are people who migrated from the Ural. Ethnic Hungarians are a mix of the Finno-Ugric Magyars and various assimilated Turkic, Slavic, and Germanic peoples.
The Etruscans, an ancient people of Etruria, Italy, between the Tiber and Arno rivers west and south of the Apennines, whose urban civilization reached its height in the 6th century bce are part of the Italian gene next to the Romans, Semitic arabs which infuence is visible in the Sicilian people, the Greek, Spanish and other people. Many features of Etruscan culture were adopted by the Romans, their successors to power in the peninsula. (Upuntil today historians don't know exactly where the Etruscans came from?)
Goths
Goth, member of a Germanic people whose two branches, the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths, for centuries harassed the Roman Empire. According to their own legend, reported by the mid-6th-century Gothic historian Jordanes, the Goths originated in southern Scandinavia and crossed in three ships under their king Berig to the southern shore of the Baltic Sea, where they settled after defeating the Vandals and other Germanic peoples in that area. Tacitus states that the Goths at this time were distinguished by their round shields, their short swords, and their obedience toward their kings. Jordanes goes on to report that they migrated southward from the Vistula region under Filimer, the fifth king after Berig and, after various adventures, arrived at the Black Sea.
Tartar invasions
1237 marked the beginning of a period of decline for the Rus', as both a culture and as a people. The first through Fourth Crusade, which effectively halted trade with the Byzantine Empire and cut off the Middle Eastern trade routes, began the decline of Kievan importance. The Mongol invasion of 1237 also helped mark the passing of free Kievian society. The Tatars sacked Kiev and all major towns; their practice of total destruction led to the dismemberment of the Kievian princedom and an end to Russian society as their people knew it. With the annihilation of Kiev and every city west of it all the way into Central Europe (Poland, Lithuania), Russian trade with the west and south was curtailed. With the destruction of its trade base and its trade routes curtailed, Kiev's role as an important seat of power ended. The people found it necessary to move to the northeast where they found a new home in the princedoms of the upper Volga River and Oka River.
As the invading Mongols ravaged the countryside, entire populations were wiped out. The peasant and serf classes were nearly destroyed en totalium; the continuation of the historical family commune social structure was broken and proved ineffective for large-scale governmental control. Most of the minor princedoms were destroyed. Most[citation needed] cities in the Rus' were razed and the population found it necessary to flee to the northeast in hopes of escaped the wrath of the Golden Horde.
Some Poles believe they have Tartar blood and there is a tiny Polish Tartar Muslim minority in Poland.
Probably in the early middle ages via the Ural and Caucacus Asian travelers, merchants (trade people) might have reached Europe and some of them might have stayed, like the Khazar people.
www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/316553/KhazarIn Southern-Europe we ofcourse have the Moorish influence, of people of Arab, Berber and African origin, who were Muslim and ruled, lived and worked and spread their culture and genetic material in Spain and Portugal in the years. Al-Andalus, the Moorish Iberia or Islamic Iberia, was a medieval Muslim state in parts of what are today Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar, Andorra, and France and existed from 711 until 1492. In the Latin or romanesque Spanish people you clearly see a mix of Latin (Southern-European), Berber and Arab influences. In Spanish the Arab influence is visible.
The Roma and Sinti people (also called Gypsies in Europe) came from Northern-India and came to Europe via the Arab Peninsual, Persia, Egypt, Turkey and Greece. They spread over Europe and settled themselves especially in Hungary and Rumania, but also in the Ukraine, Poland, Slovakia, Bohemia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain and later also the USA and Canada.
European nations had colonies in Africa, Asia and Southern-America and therefor people from the colonies arrived in the motherland of the colonizer too. There were mixed marriages and that created the Mestizo, a person whose ancestors were both European and American Indians only; and the mulatto of mixed white European and Black African heritage, and the Indo-Europeans from Indonesia, Indochine (Vietnam) and other places. So, yes Europe has a great variety of colors and people, from the darkest of dark to the whitest of white.
Cheers,
Pieter
(somebody wrote about it but I could not believe since blue eyes are caused by a recessive gene)......and I found this very interesting info:
(somebody wrote about it but I could not believe since blue eyes are caused by a recessive gene)......and I found this very interesting info:
