Before 500 BC central and western Europe was occupied by groups of culturally similar barbarians, those in the France and southern Germany identifiable as Celts, those further north and east including early Germans.
Later centuries saw the development among the Celts of towns (oppida), local hierarchies and a strong taste for the luxuries of the Mediterranean world, whereas the society of their neighbours, the Germanic tribes of Germany, the Low Countries and Scandinavia, continued to resemble that of their ancestors.
They lived in small farming settlements of long houses and were loosely organized politically. Leadership depended mainly on an individual's power to attract a following and warfare was the main field in which the prowess of the individual was displayed, agriculture often being left to women and those too young or too old to fight.
Like the Celts, Germanic groups sometimes migrated over long distances in search mainly of plunder.
From 120 BC, a confederacy of Germanic tribes led by the Cimbri and Teutones invaded Noricum and Gaul, destroying Roman armies sent against them and only falling to the great Roman general Marius in 102 BC. This campaign left its legacy in the great horror the Romans felt of the Germanic tribes on their north-western border.
