Most Lithuanians belong to the Catholic Church, while the Lietuvininkai who lived in the northern part of East Prussia prior to World War II, were mostly Lutherans.

The territory of the Balts, including modern Lithuania, was once inhabited by several Baltic tribal entities (Sudovians, Lithuanians, Curonians, Semigallians, Selonians, Samogitians, Skalvians, Old Prussians (Nadruvians)), as attested by ancient sources and dating from prehistoric times.

Over the centuries, and especially under the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, some of these tribes consolidated into the Lithuanian nation, mainly as a defence against the marauding Teutonic Order and Eastern Slavs.

The Lithuanian state was formed in the High Middle Ages, with different historians dating this variously between the 11th and mid-13th centuries.

Thereafter, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania continued existing until 1795, however, since the Union of Lublin in 1569, it maintained its independence in the bi-confederal Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The subsequent imperial Russian occupation from 1795 until 1915, with some interpositions such as the French invasion of Russia in 1812, the Uprisings of 1831 and 1863, accelerated this process of Slavicization.

Some of the Polish- and Belarusian-speaking persons from the lands of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania expressed their affiliation with the modern Lithuanian nation in the early 20th century, including Michał Pius Römer, Stanisław Narutowicz, Oscar Milosz and Tadas Ivanauskas

In February 1918, while World War I was ongoing, the re-establishment of an independent Lithuanian state was declared, 122 years after it was destroyed.

In the lead-up to the World War II, the Klaipėda Region was occupied by Nazi Germany after the 1939 German ultimatum to Lithuania.

First of all, you made and announced a decision about the land of Samogitia, which is our inheritance and our homeland from the legal succession of the ancestors and elders.

The Lithuanian nation as such remained primarily in Lithuania, a few villages in northeastern Poland, southern Latvia and also in the diaspora of emigrants.

Before World War II, about 7.5% of the population was Jewish[citation needed]; they were concentrated in cities and towns and had a significant influence on crafts and business.

[citation needed] Almost all its Jews were killed during the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Lithuania, some 75,000 alone between the years 1941 – 1942,[31] while others later immigrated to the United States and Israel.

Y-chromosome SNP haplogroup analysis showed Lithuanians to be closest to Latvians, Estonians, Belarusians and southern Finns.

[38] Lithuanian Ashkenazi Jews display a number of unique genetic characteristics; the utility of these variations has been the subject of debate.

[39] One variation, which is implicated in familial hypercholesterolemia, has been dated to the 14th century, corresponding to the establishment of Ashkenazi settlements in response to the invitation extended by Vytautas the Great in 1388.

Užgavėnės (Shrove Tuesday) takes place on the day before Ash Wednesday, and is meant to urge the retreat of winter.

Other national foods include dark rye bread, cold beet soup (šaltibarščiai), and kugelis (a baked potato pudding).

[48] Locally brewed beer (alus), vodka (degtinė), and kvass (gira) are popular drinks in Lithuania.

[50] Thus, it is an important source for the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European language despite its late attestation (with the earliest texts dating only to c. 1500 A.D., whereas Ancient Greek was first written down in c. 1450 B.C.).

[51] There was fascination with the Lithuanian people and their language among the late 19th-century researchers, and the philologist Isaac Taylor wrote the following in his The Origin of the Aryans (1892): "Thus it would seem that the Lithuanians have the best claim to represent the primitive Aryan race, as their language exhibits fewer of those phonetic changes, and of those grammatical losses which are consequent on the acquirement of a foreign speech.

The first period of Lithuanian independence (1918–1940) gave them the opportunity to examine themselves and their characters more deeply, as their primary concerns were no longer political.

His many works include Dainavos šalies senų žmonių padavimai (Old Folks Tales of Dainava, 1912) and the historical dramas Šarūnas (1911), Skirgaila (1925), and Mindaugo mirtis (The Death of Mindaugas, 1935).

Keturi vėjai movement started with publication of The Prophet of the Four Winds by talented poet Kazys Binkis (1893—1942).

The theoretical basis of Keturi vėjai initially was futurism which arrived through Russia from the West and later cubism, dadaism, surrealism, unanimism, and German expressionism.

He never lived in Lithuania but was born and spent his childhood in Cereja (near Mogilev, Belarus) and graduated from Lycée Janson de Sailly in Paris.

Since the Christianization of parts of Lithuania proper in 1387 and of Samogitia in 1413, the majority of Lithuanians have been members of the Roman Catholic Church.

Sutartinė can be accompanied by skudučiai, a form of panpipes played by a group of people, as well as wooden trumpets (ragai and dandytės).

Kanklės is an extremely important folk instrument, which differs in the number of strings and performance techniques across the country.