TEUTONIC PEOPLES also called Germanic peoples, any of the Indo-European speakers of Germanic languages.
The origins of the Germanic peoples are obscure. During the late Bronze Age, they are believed to have inhabited southern Sweden, the Danish peninsula, and northern Germany between the Ems River on the west, the Oder River on the east, and the Harz Mountains on the south. The Vandals, Gepidae, and Goths migrated from southern Sweden in the closing centuries Bcand occupied the area of the southern Baltic coast roughly between the Oder on the west and the Vistula River on the east. At an early date there was also migration toward the south and west at the expense of the Celtic peoples who then inhabited much of western Germany: the Celtic Helvetii, for example, who were confined by the Germanic peoples to the area that is now Switzerland in the 1st century BC, had once extended as far east as the Main River.