THE POLISH LAND 43
more favourable in the high medieval period than at any time before or since.
Research in the Karkonosze Mountains has shown that the tree-line was no less
than 600 feet higher in the fourteenth century than in the twentieth, and that
vines, apricots, and melons were grown in valleys where they can no longer be
produced. In the Vistula Delta, the accumulation of alluvium has been very
erratic. The main enlargement of the Delta, and the formation of the spit of
Westerplatte, occurred in the seventeenth century, conceivably indicating an
increase of river water and a lengthy deterioration in the weather.^8 Despite the
variations, however, there is ample archaeological evidence to confirm that at
no point since the Bronze Age was agriculture seriously interrupted. Sickles and
half-scythes, datable to the first century BC have been unearthed in Nowa Huta
near Cracow. Rotary querns of similar vintage have been recovered at Wroclaw,
and at Inowroclaw in Kujawy. Ploughshares from Nowa Huta and from Brzeg
in Silesia have been dated to c. AD 300. Already in the pre-migration period,
contacts with Pannonia across the Carpathians were considerable, and all four
major cereals were in production. The very name 'Polska', deriving from the
Slavonic word pole 'field', is sometimes taken to indicate native prowess in
agriculture. Certainly by the thirteenth century, central Poland was the object of
a major influx of German peasant colonizers, moving into lands which could
sustain a marked increase in the number of its inhabitants. By the fourteenth
century, it was capable not only of supporting a rapidly growing population but
also of providing a regular surplus for exchange and trade.^9 According to
Haxthausen and others, this situation had not been reached in the central
Muscovite provinces of Russia as late as the middle decades of the nineteenth
century.
The process of Polish settlement defies any precise description therefore; but
the resultant pattern can be reasonably discerned by the beginning of historic
times. Given that the pressure from increasing population and from the west-
ward movement of peoples out of Asia was equivalent to that elsewhere in
Europe, the over-all density of settlement would be somewhat less in Poland
than in Germany or in France, where conditions were still more favourable.
Given also that the total surface area was far more extensive than the total cul-
tivable area, it seems reasonable to suppose that only the very best sites would
have been exploited, and that considerable distances would have separated
them. Yet once a settlement was founded, the adequate level of 'life-support
capacity' ensured its survival. Harsh winters, inferior communications, and
great distances all combined to isolate neighbouring communities from each
other. Hence the typical Polish pattern clearly observable in historic times, of
deeply-rooted, self-sufficient but widely scattered localities.
Lowmianski has attempted to put precise figures to the density of population
in the tenth century. Starting from the basis of a family of six persons working
the two-field system, he calculated that each family required 22 hectares to sup-
port itself. This is equivalent to a density of 13.5 persons per square kilometre
of cultivated land, or 4.5/km^2 of total land surface. It would suppose a total