Prehistoric heritage of the Western Beskids – Bogusław Chorąży
Man and the Beskids - this relationship dates back to deep prehistory. It was never easy - the mountains were always a communication barrier, it was also difficult to survive another winter, and the soil was not very fertile. Yet the relationship between man and the mountains has lasted for millennia, leaving its mark on the landscape with greater or lesser force.
The oldest traces of human stay in the Western Beskids, covering the modern border of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, belong to Neanderthal hunters and gatherers. They come from 60-40 thousand years ago. years (Fig. 1). Later, modern man appeared here - homo sapiens. They were ice age hunters associated with the areas of Moravia and the Ostrava Valley. They hunted wild horses, woolly rhinos and mammoths. Their main headquarters were in the cool steppe in southern Moravia, around Pavlov and Lower Vestonic. There, leading a semi-sedentary life in Stone Age conditions, they created the seeds of the oldest art in this part of Europe. From there, they also traveled north in pursuit of migrating animals - perhaps this is how they reached the Western Beskids, leaving single stone tools there as evidence of their presence.
At the end of the Pleistocene, hunters appeared here, hunting slightly smaller animals - mainly reindeer. Finally, after the end of the Ice Age, specialized forest hunter-gatherers from the so-called period lived here. Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age).
Finally, V thousand BC, the first farmers appeared in the Beskids. They brought with them a revolutionary change, in the conditions of the Neolithic - the younger Stone Age - man slowly became a producer and creator of permanent settlements, constituting the nucleus of modern civilization. Along with the manufacturing economy, pottery also emerged (Figure 2). From now on, ceramics will continuously accompany the development of humanity. Its shapes and decorative forms, which are an expression of ideas and aesthetic sensitivity, allow us to distinguish individual communities.
5 . Location of an Early Iron Age stronghold on the top of Mount Tuł in Leszna Górna, commune. Goleszów / Poloha of the old castle from the younger železnej doby on the hill of Tuł in Obci Leszna Górna Goleszow Photo. Bogusław Chorąży
This trend is especially visible in the Bronze Age and the early Iron Age, when the communities inhabiting the Beskids became familiar with metallurgical production - first bronze (Fig. 3) and finally iron (Fig. 4). This is another revolution, manifesting itself not only in new raw materials for the production of tools, weapons and decorations, but also in the factor of increased exchange contacts between communities living on both sides of the Beskid range. They ran along the natural Trans-Carpathian passages - the Jabłonkowska, Glinne and Podhorska passes, and above all through the Moravian Gate, which was a natural bridge connecting the areas of the Carpathian Basin with the North European lowland.
These conditions seem to determine the intensive settlement of the Beskid foothills at the end of the Bronze Age (900–750 BC) and in the early Iron Age (750–400 BC) by the so-called Lusatian culture. The settlements were usually located on hard-to-reach hills with circular exposure, which seems to indicate their defensive nature (Fig. 5). They were located in the Silesian Foothills, in the immediate foreland of the Silesian and Silesian-Moravian Beskids. This settlement also penetrated deep into the Beskid Mountains into the Żywiec Valley and the Skawa Valley. At that time, the mountain valleys of northern Slovakia were intensively inhabited: the Žilina Valley and Orava. Liptov and Spiš. These were communities representing a high level of various fields of production, including: pottery and metallurgy. The circumstances surrounding the disappearance of this settlement phase are unclear. It is possible that they were related to a wave of political unrest related to the invasions of nomadic Scythians. In some cases, however, we are probably dealing with the survival of individual settlement points deep into the next chronological period - the so-called La Tène.
In the Polish part of the Western Beskids, settlements from the La Tène period are known only from single sites, including: from Góra Zamkowa in Cieszyn, where we are dealing with an upland settlement located on a hill with natural defensive values, and a settlement located on Mount Grojec near Żywiec. These sites are associated with the Puchov culture, developing in the mountainous and foothill areas of Slovakia, Moravia and southern Poland. It is a specific cultural unit, created as a result of combining elements of Celtic culture and local traditions of Lusatian culture. The settlement of this unit is based on defensive settlements located on hard-to-reach terrain and accompanying open settlements (Fig. 6). It is believed that this culture can be identified with the Celtic tribe of Kotyn. According to Tacitus, these people were mainly engaged in the extraction of iron ore.
The situation in the Western Beskids was not very clear during the period of Roman influence (the beginning of our era until approximately 375 AD). During this period, the area of Central Europe, north of the Danube and west of the Rhine (so-called Barbaricum), was strongly influenced by the Roman Empire. The transfer of these influences took place mainly through trade contacts, in which the basic role was played by trade routes running through the natural Trans-Carpathian passages, including the Moravian Gate (the so-called amber route) and the Jabłonkowska Pass. From this period, numerous finds of Roman coins and individual settlements related to the Przeworsk culture are known from Cieszyn Silesia.
It is even more difficult to recreate the situation in the Western Beskids during the Migration Period (375–approx. 568 AD). It was a time of political unrest and great population shifts, initiated by the invasion of European territories by nomadic Huns. As a result of violent movements, the Germanic population, previously inhabiting the European Barbaricum, entered the borders of the western part of the Roman Empire, leading to its final collapse in 476.
During this period, convenient Transcarpathian crossings, especially the Moravian Gate, were certainly of great importance. Various population groups most likely moved there, including Hun groups, which, as archaeological finds indicate, reached the area of Opava Silesia and western Lesser Poland.
In the 5th–6th centuries, vast areas of Central Europe were occupied by the Slavic population. At that time, it was experiencing a period of expansion, developing on the one hand towards the south, becoming a serious threat to the Byzantine Empire, and on the other, towards the west, reaching the eastern territory of today's Germany. In the 7th–8th centuries, there was general settlement stabilization of the Slavs, manifested in the creation of permanent settlement structures, in which strongly fortified strongholds played an essential role. These structures most likely corresponded to individual tribal groups. At that time, the area of Cieszyn Silesia was also settled by Slavs. We know the remains of Slavic settlements from this period, among others: from two strongholds: Międzyświecie near Skoczów, and Kocobędz (Chotěbuz-Podobora) near Český Cieszyn (Fig. 7). They most likely belonged to the Gołęszyc tribe. At that time, well-organized structures of the Great Moravian state were already functioning in the Moravian and Slovak territories. After its fall, in the 10th century, new foundations of new statehoods were established: Polish, Czech and Hungarian. This opens an era of the historical history of this area.
6 . Reconstruction of the Púchov culture homestead on the Havranok hill above Liptovská Marou. Photo Bogusław Chorąży
