A mere speck on the world map to an outsider, it is much more to a Lithuanian – a country that was built over thousands of years. It is a place that intertwines the experiences of our ancestors, the battles that were fought, and the love that was shared. Lithuania is mostly about its people. The people who built the state and the cities, who engendered cultural enrichment and knowledge, and who searched for their true identity. Although Lithuania was first recorded as a country in 1009, the first people are thought to have settled in the territory as far back as the 10th millennium BC. The first Baltic tribes arrived some 7,000 years later and settled near the Baltic Sea. Lithuanians are proud to have been brought up in a country with such a rich historical past, and they try to accentuate their national heritage by doing their best on stages and in sports arenas, by being great painters and authors, by singing their hearts out to thousands of people, and by making their presence known with the tricolor flag.
