Baltic origins - Persée

BALTIC ORIGINS

BY

W. К. MATTHEWS.

I

Like the study of other ethnie origins , where this is pursued sufficiently far back, the study of Baltic origins is largeły conjecture. The approach is twofold : archaeologicat and linguistic; and the íírst, though the more tangible, is the less iłluminating of the two. Unfortunately nothing but surmise сап connect the íindings of the archaeologist and the linguist : the shards and bones are not labelled with the names of their ancient possessors, and linguistic palaeontology is concerned not with objects, but with words or labels, which are notoríously subject to change of reference. Here tberefore one approach, viz. the linguistic, will- be made in preference and without prejudice to the other, and tbere will be no attempt, even by implication, to bridge the unbridgeable.

At the outset historical record, so far as it goes, may be laid under contribution. The earliest reference to the Baltic by name is in the younger Pliny's Naturalis historia, where the author quotes the testimony of two Greeks, Xenophon of Lampsacus and Pytheas, to the existence of large island called Balcia (Basilia) in the Scythian Sea (1l A form Ballia® is also mentioned and, if genuine, may be plausibly compared with N. H. G. beltemer (Baltic Sea). The next reference is ten centuries after Pliny in Adam van Břemen 's Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Ponlificum (107З), where Mare

Revue det Etudes slaves, t. XXIV, 19/18, fuse. 1-А.