u/eatani_ggasass

From what I know, proto-Germanic is dated to the mid 1st millennium BC, and is often associated with the Jastorf Culture. But there seems to be a wide geographic area, and a lot of time before that period needed for Germanic to develop the sound changes it has. What would have been spoken before proto-Germanic? Could there have been para-Germanic languages of some sort neighboring proto-Germanic, being absorbed by the latter the same way the other Italic languages were absorbed by Latin?