The Iron Age cultures ancestral to the Germanic peoples, I'd say, evolved from Neolithic and Bronze Age longhouse societies.

In the Neolithic era, Europeans lived in clan-based agricultural societies, where patrilocal clan chiefs controlled farms near resources like flint and fertile soil, leading to conflicts between rival clans (Violence in the Neolithic: https://t.me/thechadpastoralist/2268?single)

By the Nordic Bronze Age, longhouses were central to society, and technological advancements like bronze weaponry, long-distance trade with Greece and Mesopotamia, and seafaring vessels only strengthened the power of local chiefs.

This societal structure in the North European Plain and Scandinavia persisted through the Pre-Roman Iron Age and into the Viking Age, with Viking royal dynasties likely emerging from Vendel era warlords expanding their territories after returning home from their service in the Roman Foederati.

What's the deal with patrilineality in ancient Europe, and how can we see it in the archaelogical record?

Patrilineality is a kinship system whereby an individual's family membership derives from the father's direct paternal lineage. A bit like today where you have your dad's last name!

Well, we can tell that our ancestors were patrilineal by their burials and DNA. One of the most exemplary examples of this comes from Neolithic Ireland, with the Newgrange megalithic tomb. The man buried inside belonged to Y-DNA lineage I2a, a Western Hunter-Gatherer lineage.

Despite the Newgrange elite's overall autosomal ancestry being inherited from Anatolian Farmers and roughly a quarter from the Western Hunter-Gatherers, his phenotypic traits (specifically his complexion) resembled that of his hunter-gatherer ancestors due to him being the result of an incestuous relationship as a means of preserving this archaic trait.

We see this in Neolithic Denmark as well, with sample NEO792 from the Allentoft paper (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06862-3) being 85% Western Steppe Herder in overall ancestry but his Y-DNA lineage was I2a-S2703. A Funnelbeaker Early European Farmer subclade of Western Hunter-Gatherer origin.

NEO792 was buried in a megalithic tomb, not a burial mound, and carried mt-DNA U2e2a1, a Western Steppe Herder derived female lineage. This means that despite NEO792 indirectly inheriting the majority of his overall ancestry from Western Steppe Herders, he was likely aware of his direct paternal heritage going back to his Funnelbeaker farmer male ancestors, and was given a special megalithic tomb in the same way.

This would be like a guy today who is 85% French and 15% Danish with a Danish male line, specifically choosing to be buried with a Danish burial rite and having a Danish identity and culture. Fascinating, isn't it? As more work is done to uncover the archaelogical history of ancient Europe, it is becoming increasingly more complex (See more on this here: https://t.me/thechadpastoralist/2610)

ᚠ Lombards(Longbeards) were a Germanic tribe that originated from Scandinavia. We know that they lived in Denmark and Northern Germany until they would migrate south during the Migration Period, when the winters grew colder and widespread famine became common throughout Scandinavia.

The Lombards would become known for their successful invasion of the Roman Empire and conquering Italy, forming the Lombard Kingdom of Italy. Their reign would become loved by both it’s Germanic but also it’s Roman inhabitants. Even today the mark of the Lombards can be noticed in Italy, specifically in Northern Italy where one of their northern regions(Lombardy) is named after the Lombards as well as Germanic DNA and Germanic features being alot more frequent in Northern Italy.

They are also credited for the early development of the artstyle that would combine both Germanic and Roman artstyles, ”Romanesque”. Which in turn would evolve into Gothic, which is one of the most famous, loved and iconic artstyles of Europe.