THE POLISH LAND 41Englishmen in the age of Hengist and Horsa. In the last resort, all our ancestors
were alien mongrel immigrants.
The linguistic picture is equally confused. It stands to reason that somewhere
there must have been people speaking a language, or group of related languages,
from which modern Polish has since developed. Philologists have succeeded in
reconstructing the main outlines of protoslavic syntax and vocabulary. But in
the total absence of any linguistic records prior to the thirteenth century, any
accurate description of the dialects of west Slav speech in earlier times is out of
the question. One may suppose that the Polanian, Mazovian, Vistulanian, and
Silesian dialects were diverging from common Slav in response to the varying
linguistic environment of the areas in which the Slavs settled. But scholars can
only speculate about the persistence of common forms and the interrelation-
ships in the Slav group as a whole. (See Diagram D.)
None the less, in the eighth century, at the very start of recorded history in
Northern Europe, the main westerly tide of human settlement may be seen to
falter, and then to eddy in the opposite direction. The Frankish Kingdom, which
stretched right across Germany, held off the Slavs on its eastern borders; whilst
the establishment of the Duchy of Bavaria drove the first of several wedges that
were to separate the Slavs of the south from their kinsfolk on the northern plain.
Before long, the Slavs were to be pressurized both by Scandinavian raiders in the
Baltic and by the steady advance of the Saxons on the Elbe and Odra. The return
of the Germans across the Elbe in the early tenth century is generally taken to
mark the onset of that Drang nach Osten which many historians have regarded
as the main theme of Central European History over the next thousand years.^7
Yet the easterly drive has by no means been the sole prerogative of the Germans.
Once the western and central regions of the continent were effectively settled,
organized, and defended, the possibilities for expansion towards the more open
marches of the east proved more attractive for everyone. When the Germans
were trying to recross the Elbe, the French were beginning to press for the Rhine,
just as the Poles were heading for the Dnieper. The area available for coloniza-
tion has constantly retreated in an easterly direction. Seen from the European
perspective, therefore, the expansion of the Poles and Lithuanians into medieval
Ruthenia and Ukraine, or the still more dramatic expansion of the Great
Russians from their base in Muscovy into the steppes of Siberia and Central
Asia, forms a part of the Drang nach Osten no less significant than that of the
Germans into Brandenburg, Pomerania, Prussia, and Livonia.
The history of primitive agriculture in Poland is another subject where theo-
ries are more common than hard facts. It is clear that conditions have not always
been constant. Studies of variable water-levels suggest that warm periods have
alternated with cooler ones throughout the post-glacial epoch. The water-level
at Biskupin rose far enough in the late Bronze Age to drown the island settle-
ment completely. Later on, in the seventh century, it subsided to permit the re-
establishment of a flourishing fortress community, which survived for four
hundred years. A number of studies point to the conclusion that the climate was