Heritage P1

Lithuanians are descendants of Indo-Europeans who settled on the southeastern shores of the Baltic Sea during the great migration approximately 3,000 BC. The language is one of Europe’s oldest living tongues.
Lithuania for centuries was primarily an agricultural society. Images and themes resulting from this involvement with the land thoroughly penetrated all forms of artistic expression and even recur today in contemporary Lithuanian art.
In the 13th century, under the rule of King Mindaugas, Lithuania flourished as a powerful state. In the 15th century Lithuania was one of the largest countries in Europe with borders extending from the Baltic to the Black Sea.
Internal weaknesses and the growing strength of Russia gradually caused the collapse of the independent state of Lithuania. From 1795 to 1915, the country was under the rule of the Russian czars.
Lithuania regained its independence in 1918, and on September 1, 1921 was admitted into the League of nations. In 1940 as a result of a secret agreement between Nazi Germany and Communist Russia, Lithuania was occupied by the Soviet Union. Many fled for their lives to the West. Those left behind suffered through Stalin’s mass deportations which left an irreparable scar on the country.
On March 11, 1990, Lithuania was the first of the Soviet-occupied countries to reassert its independence from Moscow.

Lithuanians, having settled away form the well-established trade routes, were pagans; for centuries, veneration of the heavens and forces of nature, i.e., thunder, lightning, and all the gods of fields and forests, persisted. The ruling nobility accepted Christianity in the 13th and 14th centuries, but the commoner’s religious beliefs were a combination of Christ and “Perkunas”, the Thunder god, and both had the same worshipers.