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:''"Prussians" redirects here. "Prussians" may also refer to citizens of the former German state Prussia.'' The Old Prussians or Baltic Prussians ((ドイツ語:Pruzzen) or ''Prußen''; (ラテン語:Pruteni); (ラトビア語:Prūši); (リトアニア語:Prūsai); (ポーランド語:Prusowie); ) were an ethnic group of indigenous Baltic tribes that inhabited Prussia, the lands of the southeastern Baltic Sea in the area around the Vistula and Curonian Lagoons. They spoke a language now known as Old Prussian and followed pagan Prussian mythology. During the 13th century, the Old Prussians were conquered by the Teutonic Knights. The former German state of Prussia took its name from the Baltic Prussians, although it was led by Germans. The Teutonic Knights and their troops had transferred Prussians from Southern Prussia to northern Prussia, killed and got killed in crusades requested by Poland and the popes, and assimilated many of the Old Prussians, who were converted to Christianity; the old Prussian language was extinct by the 17th or early 18th century.〔Encyclopædia Britannica entry 'Old Prussian language'〕 Many Old Prussians emigrated due to Teutonic crusades.〔()〕 Old Prussians, who emigrated to surrounding areas, later returned. The land of the Old Prussians was larger before arrival of Polans, then consisted approximately of central and southern East Prussia and West Prussia, after 1945 the present-day Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship of Poland, the Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia, and the southern Klaipėda Region of Lithuania.〔The territory was inhabited by Scalovians, a tribe related to the Prussians, Curonians, as well as Eastern Balts〕 ==Etymology== The names of the Baltic Prussian tribes all reflected the theme of landscape. Most of the names were based on water, an understandable convention in a land dotted with thousands of lakes, streams, and swamps (the Masurian Lake District). To the south, the terrain runs into the Pripet Marshes at the headwaters of the Dnieper River; these have been an effective barrier over the millennia. The original pre-Baltic settlers generally named their settlements after the streams, lakes, seas, or forests by which they settled. The clan or tribal entities into which they were organized then took the name of the settlement. This root is perhaps the one used in the very name of ''Prusa'' (Prussia), for which an earlier ''Brus-'' is found in the map of the Bavarian Geographer. In Tacitus' ''Germania'', the Lugii Buri are mentioned living within the eastern range of the Germans. Lugi may descend from Pokorny's '' *leug-'' (2), "black, swamp" (Page 686), while ''Buri'' is perhaps the "Prussian" root. The name of ''Pameddi'' (Pomesania) tribe is derived from the words ''pa'' ("by" or "near") and ''meddin'' ("forest") or ''meddu'' ("honey").〔''Meddu'' can be traced to the Proto-Indo-European root '' *medhu-''.〕 Nadruvia and may be a compound of the words ''na'' ("by" or "on") and ''drawē'' ("wood") or ''nad'' ("above") and the root '' *reu-'' ("flow" or "river"). The name of the Bartians, a Prussian tribe, and the name of the Bārta river in Latvia are possibly cognates. In the 2nd century AD, the geographer Claudius Ptolemy listed some ''Borusci'' living in European Sarmatia (in his ''Eighth Map of Europe''), which was separated from Germania by the ''Vistula Flumen''. His map is very confused in that region, but the Borusci seem further east than the Prussians, which would have been under the ''Gythones'' (Goths) at the mouth of the Vistula. The Aesti (Easterners), recorded by Tacitus, were 450 years later recorded by Jordanes as part of the Gothic Empire. Folk etymology led to the belief that each Prussian tribe was named after a tribal leader or his wife, such as the mythical leader Warmo ruling the Warmians. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Old Prussians」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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