According to archaeological research the area of Estonia was first inhabited about 13,000–11,000 years ago . It has previously been claimed living in the same area for more than 5,000 years would put Estonians' ancestors among Europe's oldest permanent inhabitants. On the other hand, some recent linguistic estimations suggest that
Finno-Ugric speakers arrived around the Baltic Sea considerably later, perhaps during the
Early Bronze Age (ca. 1800 BCE). It has also been argued that Western
Uralic tribes reached
Fennoscandia first, leading into the development of the
Sámi peoples, and arrived in the
Baltic region later in the Bronze Age The oldest known
endonym of the Estonians is , literally meaning "land people" or "country folk". It was used until the mid-19th century, when it was gradually replaced by
Eesti rahvas "Estonian people" during the
Estonian national awakening.
Eesti, the modern endonym of Estonia, is thought to have similar origins to
Aesti, the name used by the
Germanic peoples for the neighbouring people living northeast of the mouth of the
Vistula. The Roman historian
Tacitus in 98 CE was the first to mention the "
Aesti" in writing. In
Old Norse, the land south of the
Gulf of Finland was called
Eistland and the people
eistr. The
Wanradt–Koell Catechism, the oldest known book in Estonian, was printed in 1535, while the oldest known examples of handwritten Estonian appear in 13th-century chronicles.
National identity (map of
1897 census literacy data) {{multiple image |direction=vertical |align=right |width=220 , ca 1895) stage. Held since 1869, the festival is now one of the largest
choral events in the world, and a major symbol of Estonian national identity Although Estonian
national identity spread in the course of the 19th century during the
Estonian national awakening, some degree of ethnic awareness preceded this development. By the 18th century the self-denomination spread among Estonians along with the older . According to a poll done in 2013, about half of the young
Estonians considered themselves Nordic, and about the same number viewed Baltic identity as important. Estonians consider themselves being part of
Finno-Ugric peoples, and does not exclude being Baltic. In Estonian foreign ministry reports from the early 2000s Nordic identity was preferred over Baltic one. After the
Treaty of Tartu (1920) recognised Estonia's 1918 independence from Russia, ethnic Estonians residing in Russia gained the option to acquire the citizenship of Estonia upon returning to the newly independent country. An estimated 40,000 Estonians lived in Russia in 1920, and 37,578 people resettled from Russia to Estonia in 1920–1923. ==Emigration==