Ethnolinguistic Character
During the Middle Ages the region was inhabited by people speaking Old Prussian, a now-extinct Baltic language.
It has been argued that the Veneti were a centum Indo-European people, rather than Baltic-speakers. Zbigniew Gołąb considers that the hydronyms of the Vistula and Odra river basins had a North-West Indo-European character with close affinities to the Italo-Celtic branch, but different from the Germanic branch, and show resemblances to those attested in the area of the Adriatic Veneti (in Northeastern Italy) as well as those attested in the Western Balkans that are attributed to Illyrians, which suggests points to a possible connection between these ancient Indo-European peoples. However, according to Steinacher, the Adriatic Veneti, the Veneti of Gaul and the North Balkan/Paphlagonian Enetoi mentioned by Herodotus and Appian were not related to each other, nor to the Veneti/Venedi mentioned by Tacitus, Pliny and Ptolemy.
Read more about this topic: Vistula Veneti
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“When one walks, one is brought into touch first of all with the essential relations between one’s physical powers and the character of the country; one is compelled to see it as its natives do. Then every man one meets is an individual. One is no longer regarded by the whole population as an unapproachable and uninteresting animal to be cheated and robbed.”
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