Polish tribes - a term used sometimes to describe the tribes of West Slavs that lived in the territories that became Polish from around the mid-7th century to the creation of Polish state by the Piast dynasty. The territory they lived on became a part of the first Polish state created by duke Mieszko I and expanded at the end of the 10th century, enlarged further by king Bolesław I at the beginning of the 11th century.
In about 850 AD a list of peoples was written down by the Bavarian Geographer. Absent on the list are Polans, Pomeranians and Masovians, who were mentioned later by Nestor the Chronicler in his Primary Chronicle (11th/12th century).
The most important Polish tribes are Polans, Masovians, Vistulans, Silesians and Pomeranians[1]. These five tribes "shared fundamentally common culture and language and were considerably more closely related to one another than were the Germanic tribes."[2]
|
Contents
|
The name is derived from the most important Polish tribe - the Polans. Their name, on the other hand, derives from the word pole - field. It was used also for the eastern Polans that lived in the region of the Dnieper River. Some of the Polans began to surface further west and settled in what was later known as Greater Poland, while the rest remained in the east and later on became part of the Kievan Rus.
The following is the list of Polish and other conquered Slavic tribes that constituted the lands of Poland in the early Middle Ages, at the beginning of the Polish state. Some of them have remained a separate ethnicity while others have been assimilated into the culture of Poland.
| This Polish history-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)