From: Rick McCallister
Message: 56739
Date: 2008-04-05
>Wouldn't the presence of the Roman Empire be an
> "It would probably also be wrong to take
> overpopulation in the central
> European area as explanation for these events. In
> the course of the
> last pre-Christian century a number of landscapes in
> central Europe
> lost almost their entire population, thus the area
> between the mouths
> of the Weser and Elbe, the Altmark [around Stendal],
> southern Mark
> Brandenburg, the Lausitz and Lower Silesia 82;
> overpopulation can not
> have been the reason for that. Also exhaustion of
> the fields cannot
> have been the case at least in those cases where
> settled areas in the
> neighborhood, comparable wrt their character and
> quality, kept their
> population constant. Also the label Wanderlust is
> probably imprecise.
> Many population groups only took to wandering due to
> calamity. Their
> expressed wish for areas to settle, again and again
> remarked on by the
> Romans, sounds genuine, their permanence in newly
> won areas of
> settlement testifies against any inborn impulse to
> wander. Finally
> also a "Drang nach Süden" have played an although
> minor role. While
> namely on the Rhine Suebian and Lugian groups
> appear, while central
> Germany becomes riddled with Lugian Settlers, while
> in Northeast
> Bohemia and even in Eastern Romania groups from the
> North settle and
> while Marbod transfers his Marcomanni to Bohemia,
> begins slowly in
> Scandinavia a settling of the country, progressing
> from the South
> towards the North, and from the coast to the
> interior 83.
>
>