The Galindians, Sūdovians (Yotvingians), Pomesanians, and Old Prussians together formed a closely related Baltic language group known as the Western Balts,  to which one should also include the ancient Curonians.

Linguistically speaking, the ancestors of the West Balts were the Pre-Baltic Mazovia-Podlasie / Lublin groups of the Trzciniec culture along the Bug river basin, which bordered the Komarov (Proto-Slavic) culture of the Podolian Uplands further to the Southeast. The Trzciniec culture was related to the Komarov culture, but different, as ceramics, metalwork, hydronyms, and burial rites indicate. This difference can be seen in the word for "wolf" where Baltic has vilkas vs. Old Church Slavic vlъkъ, and with the glaring disparity of equine or copper words. The older relatedness is illustrated by the word for "name" - West Baltic emenis, Slavic imę, and Albanian emen vs. East Baltic Lithuanian vardas.

The Trzciniec ("Streaked" pottery) culture influenced the later Pomeranian culture horizon. The West Baltic dialect flowed North with migrations and trade to Coastal Balts. Even as late as the Early Iron Age (600 BCE), the southern limit of the large Sūdovian culture territory bordered the Slavic / Scythian Chernoles culture. The neighboring Baltic Milograd culture was more similar to Eastern and Central Balts. For a map, see page 83 here.

The name Galind - is probably derived from the hydromym of Gielądzkie Jezioro in the province of Olsztyn, Poland, in what was the very center of ancient Galindia. J. Nalepa (1971 * ) suggested the root *gal- was originally a different ablaut grade of the same root found in Lith. "gilus" - deep, and "gelme" - depth. The original meaning referred to the depth of the lake mentioned, which is one of the deepest in the area.* Galindian territory corresponds somewhat to modern day Masurian Poland.

Although an Eastern Baltic tribe near Moscow named the Golyad' ( ГОЛЯДЬ ) had a ethnonym of similiar derivation, they were Eastern Balts as the archeaological record shows. They will be discussed at Proto Baltic .

According to Herodotus (approx 450 BCE) the Neuri ( Νέυροι )  were a tribe living North of the Tyres (Dneister river), and the furthest nation beyond the Scythian farmers, one of the nations along the course of the river Hypanis (Bug river). The Bug river meets the Naura (Baltic name for the Narew) river. The Naura river leads one to Galinda and Sūduva. Since trade increased recognition, the Neuri of Herodotus were probably related to the Galindians and Sūdovians. Herodotus also mentions the wild white horses nearby that grazed by a great lake, which scholars today suggest are the Podlesie marshes by the Bialowieza Forest. Yotvingian Tarpans from the Bialowieza Forest seasonally faded to near white in Winter. In 500 BCE, Eastern Europe climate was much cooler and wetter. There is still a town in Poland named Nur ( Νυρ) { 52° 40' 0" N, 22° 18' 0" E } along the upper Bug River, near the Bialowieza Forest. The Nurzec river runs nearby, and the local district currently bears the river's name. Balts traditionally take ethnonyms from local hydronyms. The Baltic verbal roots *"nur-" to immerse or *"niur-" to get murky may be sources of the local hydronym. Archaeologists have excavated a fortified settlement and an open settlement near Moloczki Poland, by the Nurzec river. There are probably many more yet unexcavated in "Ziemia Nurska", as the area is known as. The Nurzec river was for a long time the Northern most border of the Przeworsk culture - which was a diverse multi-ethnic conglomeration of Lechitic Slavs, Goth/Vandals, and other descendants of Scythia. Most of the neighboring red-haired Budini of Herodotus moved away and are known now as the Udmurts and Komi. The Budini's phtheir were probably pine-nuts, not lice.

Galinda and neighboring Sūduva were the only two Baltic tribal nations mentioned by the Greek geographer Ptolemy in the 2nd Century A.D., as  Γαλίνδαι and Σουδινοί. Perhaps the spelling of Σουδινοί was possibly an uncorrected typo for the original and similar looking Σουδιυοί.   Romans coins (Tiberius / Caligula) unearthed in Galinda and Sūduva predate Ptolemy's account and indicate organized trade with Rome in the 1st Century A.D. Trade ventures with Wielbark culture Gothic speakers provided unique loanwords from Gothic. Amber trade with Central Europe had been ongoing since 1,600 BCE., providing West Balts with more material goods, metals, and cultural contacts than the Central Balts. Highly valued Galindian produced jewelry was of exceptional beauty and craftsmanship, especially the enamel incrusted types. Galindian jewelry has been found from the Kiev area to the Urals.

The Galindians and Sūdovians surface again in the historical record one millennium later, as inhabiting the same geographic location during the European Crusades against Baltic peoples. The Galindians and Sūdovians proved to be militarily formidable. The European Papal Crusades ended in failure when the Western European Crusaders were defeated at the Battle of Grunwald in 1410.

The Western Baltic dialect that gave rise to the Galindian,  Sūdovian, and Old Prussian languages was one of the dialects of the Peripheral Baltic Area. Thus, the Western Balts should include the Galindians, Sūdovians ( Яцьвягі ), Pomesanians, and the Prussians, and also the Curonians, the former comprising the Southern group, and the latter,  the Northern group. This explains the close linguistic similarity between Galindian,  Sūdovian ( Yatvingian ), and Old Prussian.

The Littoral Piemare culture was one of a few later northern outcrops of the Corded Ware horizon. These Baltic cultures came from the Strednij Stog culture (4500-3350 BCE), which in turn leads back to the Khvalynsk and nearby Samara PIE epoch homeland culture (5500-5000 BCE) on the Volga River. The ancient Dual Horse motif found on top of Baltic peoples homes reflects the related Vedic Asvins. Similiar ( Ašvieniai ) symbolism was found in the Khvalynsk and Samara PIE cultures (5500 - 4700 BCE).

Some very archaic lexical differences exist between the Western Baltic dialects and the Central Baltic dialects. The word for "fire" is just such an example. The Western Balts used the word "panu", whereas the Central Balts used the word (Lith.) "ugnis".  Another example is the word for "wheel". The Western Balts used the word "kelan", whereas the Central Balts used the word (Lith.) "ratas".  These words have cognates in other ancient Indo-European languages. That such archaic diversity of basic terminology existed within "Proto"-Baltic illustrates the antiquity of the West / East Baltic dialect areas inherited from the late Strednij Stog horizon (4500-3350 BCE) into the Corded Ware horizon..

Another key feature of West Baltic was the nominative singular neuter gender ending in [ -n ]. This is noted in such words as kelan (wheel), azeran (lake), and dadan (milk). There were also many neuter gender words that ended in [ -u ], such as panu (fire) and peku (livestock), as well as alu (mead). Lithuanian still has the neuter gender in some adjectives ending in -a, -ia, or -u. For example, "Šalta" (It is cold).

Another feature of West Baltic is the Genitive singular declensional ending in [ -as ] for words that end in [ -as ] or [ -an ] in the Nominative case. This declensional ending also changes the stress of the accent to the end syllable, as in many cognate Vedic words.  This generalized declensional feature is noted in a word like Nominative singular pedan (ploughshare), with Genitive singular pedas, or in the West Baltic Genitive singular Deivas' (God's). The above unique features of West Baltic are relics from the Proto-Indo-European Strednij Stog horizon (4500-3350 BCE).

The four cases of West-Baltic (Galindian, Sūdovian, & Prussian) declension are not an innovation but an archaic feature, uniting West Baltic with Germanic and Greek. Only nominative, genitive, dative and accusative forms have constant intercrossing functions in various Indo-European languages, while forms used for the instrumental or locative cases (traditionally declared to be "Common Indo-European"), have related functions: e.g. the IE *"-ois" may occur in the instrumental case in one language and in the locative case in other ones, or *"-ō" / (apophonically) "-ē " occurs as "-āt" in the Indo-Iranian ablative and as "-it" in the Hittite instrumental. Such intercrossing elements were used for semi-paradigmatic adverbial forms, differently paradigmatized in the various Indo-European languages. (V. Toporov, V. J. Mažiulis)

Galindian had the same four nominal accent classes as does Lithuanian, but it had retained the original accentual state of Baltic ( an acute rising accent and a circumflex falling accent). The first class is the acute barytone paradigm. The second is the circumflex barytone paradigm. Thirdly, the acute mobile paradigm. Lastly, the circumflex mobile paradigm.