Many of the present conditions, especially those of ownership, as well
as the progress in the development both of forest policy and of forest
management, can be understood only with some knowledge of the early
history of the settlement of the country.[3]
[3] FELIX DAHN, _Urgeschichte der germanischen und romanischen
Völker_, 1881.
As is well known, Aryan tribes from central Asia had more than a
thousand years before Christ begun to overrun the country. These
belonged to the Keltic (Celtic) or Gaelic race which had gradually come
to occupy partly or wholly, France, Spain, northern Italy, the western
part of Germany and the British Islands. They were followed by the
_Germani_ (supposedly a Celtic word meaning neighbor or brother), also
Aryan tribes, who appeared at the Black Sea about 1000 B.C., in
Switzerland and Belgium about 100 B.C. These were followed by the
Slovenes, Slovaks, or Wends, crowding on behind, disputing and taking
possession of the lands left free by, or conquered from the Germani.
Through these migrations, by about 400 A.D., the whole of Western Europe
seems to have been fully peopled with these tribes of hunters and
herders. The mixture of the different elements of victors and vanquished
led to differentiation into three classes of people, economically and
politically speaking, namely the free, the unfree (serfs or slaves), and
the freedmen--an important distinction in the development of property
rights.