Poland in the Middle Ages is a period of Polish history covering roughly a millennium in the 5th century through to the 16th century. It is commonly dated from the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and contrasted with a later Early Modern Period; the time during which the rise of humanism in the Italian Renaissance and the Reformation unfolded, are generally associated with the transition out of the Middle Ages, with European overseas expansion as a succeeding process, but such dates are approximate and based upon nuanced arguments.
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The first waves of Slavic migration settled the area of the upper Vistula River and elsewhere in the lands of present-day southeastern Poland and southern Masovia, coming from the upper and middle regions of the Dnieper River.[1] The West Slavs came primarily from the more western early Slavic branch called the Sclaveni by the Byzantine historian Jordanes in Getica, the eastern branch being the Antes.[a] The Slavs had first migrated into Poland in the second half of the 5th century, some half century after these territories had been vacated by Germanic tribes.[2][3] This discontinuity (a period during which human settlements were absent from or rare on most Polish lands) makes the moment of the Slavs' appearance in Poland at the outset of the Middle Ages distinct and clear. Many scholars now believe that the Slavic tribes had not been present in Poland before the earliest medieval period,[b] though the opposite view, predominant in Polish prehistory and protohistory in the past, is still represented.[4][5]
From there, over the 6th century, the new population dispersed north and west. The Slavs lived mostly by cultivating crops but also engaged in hunting and gathering. Their migrations took place while Eastern and Central Europe were being invaded from the east by waves of peoples and armies such as the Huns, Avars and Magyars.[4][5]
A number of West Slavic Polish tribes formed small states, beginning in the 8th century, some of which later coalesced into larger states. Among these tribes were the Vistulans (Wiślanie) in southern Poland, with Kraków and Wiślica as their main centers (major fortified centers were built in their country in the 9th century), but later the tribe(s) referred to as the Polans (Polanie—literally, "people of the fields") would prove of decisive historic importance.
The tribal states built many gords – fortified structures with earthen and wooden walls and embankments – from the 7th century onward. Some of these were developed and inhabited; others featured a large empty space and may have served primarily as refuges in times of trouble. The Polans settled the plains around Giecz, Poznań and Gniezno that would become the early center of Poland and lent their name to the country. They went through a period of accelerated building of gord-type fortified settlements and of territorial expansion, beginning in the first half of the 10th century, and the Polish state developed from their tribal polities in the second half of the 10th century.[5][6]
a.^ "Though their names are now dispersed amid various clans and places, yet they are chiefly called Sclaveni and Antes"; transl. by Charles Christopher Mierow, Princeton University Press 1908, from the University of Calgary web site
b.^ This is the so-called allochthonic theory; according to the autochthonic theory the opposite is true
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