34 POLSKA
distinguished hunters from Archduke Francis-Ferdinand to Air Marshal
Hermann Goering did notable damage.
It is difficult to compare this combination of geographical circumstances with
that of any other area in the world, although it is not too dissimilar to southern
Ontario, where an essentially continental location is ameliorated by the prox-
imity of the Great Lakes, just as Poland's easterly position on the European
peninsula is modified by the continuing influence of the Atlantic and the Baltic.
At all events, Poland lies well within the bounds of both a pastoral and an arable
economy. For the purposes of primitive settlement, Poland, unlike Muscovy,
always lay within the area where a nuclear peasant family could comfortably
support itself by its own unaided efforts. When Ibrahim-ibn-Jakub stated that
the (Western) Slavs 'inhabited the richest limits of land suitable for settlement',
it seems that he chose his words carefully.
Archaeological evidence puts the beginnings of human settlement in the val-
leys of the Odra and the Vistula in the two hundredth millennium BC. The Old
Stone Age left few traces, although palaeolithic sites do exist in the Ojcow Caves
near Cracow and at Swidry near Warsaw. The New Stone Age, in contrast, left
several characteristic cultures from the period 4000 to 1800 BC, each classified by
the predominant features of its pottery. These include the Funnel Beaker
Culture, the Corded Ware Culture, the Bell Beaker Culture, and in the north-
east, the Pit-Comb Culture. The principal sites are located at Rzucewo near
Gdansk, at Sarnowo near Bydgoszcz, at Jordanow near Wroclaw, and at
Krzemionki, Cmielow, and Zlota near Kielce. The Bronze Age Cultures, each
classified by the location of their initial finds, were still more prolific. The
Unetice People (c. 1800-1400 BC), first identified in neighbouring Moravia, were
pastoralists who worked both in bronze and gold. The Trzciniec People (c.
1500-100 BC), first identified in the area of Lublin, were, like the Iwno People of
the Lower Vistula, patriarchal sun-worshippers who practised cremation. The
Lausitz or Lusatian People (c. 1300-400 BC), first identified in the Lusatian
district of East Germany, lived from mixed farming and maintained far-flung
commercial contacts with the Danubian Basin and with Scandinavia. They built
wooden fortresses, among them the famous island stronghold at Biskupin in
eastern Posnania, with its elaborate timber breakwater and high rampart. At
nearby Slupca and Kamieniec, the skeletons of mutilated men, women, and chil-
dren, and bone arrow-heads embedded in charred gateposts, vividly evoke the
violent end inflicted on the Lusatians at the dawn of the Iron Age by the first
wave of predatory nomads, the Scythians. At Witaszkowo on the Western
Neisse, a dead Scythian chieftain was buried with all his treasure. The succeed-
ing Iron Age cultures stretched from the same time right into the medieval
period. The Bylany Culture (from c. 600 BC) and the Puchov Culture (from c. 100
BC) originated in Bohemia and Slovakia respectively. The Zarubi-nets Culture
(c. 200 BC-AD 100), which displays close affinities with similar remains in distant
Pomerania, and the Chernyakovo Complex (c. AD 200-400), which has yielded
over one thousand related sites from the Vistula to the Dnieper, are thought to