This question has been asked numerous times and some Poles obsess about it. Based on everything that we’ve seen, the answer currently seems to be a qualified ‘yes’.
Why a ‘yes’ and why ‘qualified’?
Well, let’s start at the beginning. First, of all, who do we mean by Poles? This is simply the genetic nation. Basically, the ‘Polish-looking’ population. What does that mean though? Well, you can extrapolate to saying the generally white, more specifically, ‘Eastern European’ population of Poland with their relatives (and, of course, their biological descendants, wherever in the world located). Of course, there were some additions to (and subtractions from) that gene pool over historical time but the fundamental fabric of it has not really changed. The description of Slavs given by Procopius (hair not too blonde, not too dark) still holds approximately true for Slavs everywhere and so too for Poles.
Virtually all of that nation, as with most Slavic nations, is derived from the peasant-farmers who had lived there over the course of the last millennium. But what about before that?
Here we come to our qualified yes.
First of all, there is the technical question of the first usage of the name Poles for the nation that we described above.
On the one hand, it is true that the name ‘Poles’ does appear in relation to pre-10th century periods in the Nestor Chronicle and in certain Scandinavian documents. On the other hand, the Nestor Chronicle was written in the early 12th century and it uses the name to refer to the Eastern (Kievan) Poles* whereas the antiquity of the tradition of the Scandinavian sources is debatable.
[* Interestingly though for anyone familiar with the eagle nest of the Lech legend, the Norse name hreiðr – which some connect with the Hreiðgoths of Hreiðgotaland – means “nest”. The fact that the Western Poles had their early capital at Gniezno (meaning “nest”) while Gnezdovo was a major Slavic (Eastern Polanian?) and Viking site in Russia seems suspicious. Add to that the fact that the Slavic for “burg” was gard or gord but also horod (see Horodło/Городло) and that the concept of a “home” or “nest” and a protected enclosure (as in a burg) are quite obviously related and you cannot help but wonder what this all means. For more fun note that rod is also the name for clan or family just as ha-rod is the name for nation. Since the latter is related to “birthing” it is not too much of a stretch to tie that too to the “nest”. For more fun yet just see the Lombard king name Lethuc]
All in all, we can accept that the name ‘Poles’ – as relating to the inhabitants of present-day Poland – appears for the first time around the turn of the millennium. That said, however, not much of an inference can be drawn from the fact that first attested use is so late.
While some BS purveyors have claimed that the name was “invented” around the year 1000 in conjunction with the state-building activities of the Piast dynasty, such a claim is pure speculation. For one thing, there are very few sources regarding Polish territories prior to the 11th century. Consequently, given such source material paucity, one cannot reasonably equate the first attested appearance of the name with any “invention” of it (and the fact that the name was very likely used for Eastern Polans around Kiev speaks against attributing it to the Piasts’ creativity). (Take the name “Germans”. It was clearly not “invented” the first time some Roman mason etched the name Germani in Italian stone).
More importantly, even an invention of the name would have no relevance to the issue any more than the invention of the Polish state. The ancestors of the American Anglo-Saxons existed before the name Americans ever became known and the history of that “American” people certainly did not begin only in 1787 with the creation of the modern American state (Jamestown was founded in 1607 – interestingly, the first Poles and Germans arrived there just a year later) .
So too with the Poles. It appears the same people (whatever may have been their name) lived in the territories of Piast (and today’s) Poland not only around year 1000 but also around the year 1 and, likely, a thousand years before. Hints of this appear not only in the historiography (Legii, Lechites, Licikaviki) of the region but also in the anthropological studies and, most recently, in genetic studies. We will not get into detail regarding the same here. Nevertheless, population continuity of the Central European Plain since at least 1000 BC may – tentatively – be assumed. (The same may also be true of other Slavs (Belarussians, Ukrainians, Slovenes (they had their own Veneti too) and, maybe, Czechs and Slovaks)).
What this does not mean is that the people who lived in Poland were Poles by name. It also does not mean that these people spoke the same language as they speak today (or as they spoke a millennium ago). It further does not mean that other tribes (or warrior bands) did not pass through “Polish” territory or that these bands did not form their own “states” on that territory (or bring their own language?). Nor does it mean, in the longer horizon, that these “Poles” did not come “out of Africa” (that’s a separate discussion in any event) or even that they were the “first” humans in Poland.
But it does mean, again, that more or less the same people – by blood – have lived in the same geographic space as far back as we can tell (and, more obviously, the nation, as defined above, must have had a northern Urheimat since the lighter hair and skin are unlikely to have come with the original migrants from Africa).
Thus, it seems more than likely that the people of Biskupin were, after all, what we could call proto-Poles.
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