European Kingdoms

Early Poland

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The system which has evolved to catalogue the various archaeological expressions of human progress is one which involves cultures. For well over a century, archaeological cultures have remained the framework for global prehistory. The earliest cultures which emerge from Africa and the Near East are perhaps the easiest to catalogue, right up until human expansion reaches the Americas. The task of cataloguing that vast range of human cultures is covered in the related feature (see link, right).

Poland occupies a large area of Central Europe, bordering the southern Baltic Sea and the Early Baltics. The region's history prior to colonisation by West Slavic Polans is a long one. It starts with the Palaeolithic Tarnowian and Witowian cultures of Tarnów and Witów, part of the Federmesser group, while the later-starting Hamburg culture also had links.

At the start of the Mesolithic period, as the Central European Swiderian began to break up into regional expressions, the Janislavice culture emerged across large areas of Poland. It quickly extended into north-western Ukraine and survived until the early third millennium BC before giving way to the Globular Amphora culture.

The later Bronze Age and Iron Age cultures contained several distinct cultural periods and links with Poland, starting with the Lusatian culture. Those of the latter period saw the settlement or through-migration of various Belgic groups, northern or eastern Celts or Celtic-influenced people with an additional Germanic influence from southern Scandinavia, while the eastern Venedi may also have played a part here from their settlements along the Vistula.

In the last two centuries BC direct Germanic settlement from Scandinavia formed minor (tribal) states on the southern Baltic coast and west bank of the Vistula. Of these, the Buri and Lugii occupied areas of southern Poland, the Burgundians and Goths were located centrally, while the Gepids and Rugii were on the northern coast.

These states were fairly ephemeral. Once outward migration had depleted most of them, they were replaced by Slavic settlements which eventually coalesced into the early Polish states and then the modern state of Poland.

(Information by Peter Kessler, with additional information from The History of the Baltic Countries, Zigmantas Kiaupa, Ain Mäesalu, Ago Pajur, & Gvido Straube (Eds, Estonia 2008), from A Genetic Signal of Central European Celtic Ancestry, David K Faux, from Investigating Archaeological Cultures: Material Culture, Variability, and Transmission, Benjamin W Roberts & Marc Vander Linden (Eds), and from External Link: Encyclopaedia Britannica.)