Poles/History

Little is known of Poland's history until 966, when its rulers were baptised. In the following period the country, initially a duchy, maintained a loose relation with the Holy Roman Empire, sometimes as a vassal, sometimes as an ally. What little there exists is obtained usually through archaeology, the exegesis of secondary sources as well as hypotetisation. And while archaeological evidence accumulated over the past hundred years has increased our understanding of Poland's history in the early Mediaeval era, there is much that still remains unknown to us to this day.
===The Polans===
The Polish nation was said to have been founded by a people caled the Polans, from which the terms "Poles" and "Poland" are derived. There is much speculation over where the term "Polan" came from as it is close to the Slavic word for "field", and could refer either to the land of Poland itself - comprising mostly flat plains - or a place where the Polans first originated from. Again, much speculation surrounds the origins of the Polans themselves and their origins.
What is not in doubt, especially with the archaeological finds of previous years, is that Poland was settled by various different cultures for centuries before the official founding of Poland as a single kingdom: Celts, Germans, and Asiatic equestrian cultures as well as Slavs all have left their mark on Poland, even as the culture of the latter now dominates the present country today.