Poland is a country in the northeastern sector of Europe, bordered by Germany on the west, Slovakia and the Czech Republic to the south, Ukraine to the southeast, and Belarus, Lithuania and Russia to the east. Its northern shore sits on the Baltic Sea. Poland is roughly 312,696 sq km/120,733 sq mi (a little smaller than New Mexico) and has over 38 million people (almost as many as California). Northern and central Poland is a mostly flat plain, with the Carpathians of central Europe in its south.
Political map of eastern Europe.
Traces of human habitation go back 500,000 years with remains of Homo erectus, and there are signs of many different peoples through the archeological record. Homo sapiens arrived about 10,000 years ago after the retreat of the last (Weichselian) glaciers, and the region has been continuously inhabited since then. Historically Poland has had to fight repeatedly for its independence against frequently more-powerful neighbors like the Prussians to the west, the Austrians to the south, and the Russians to the east. Modern Poland was constituted in 1919 following World War I, but fell under foreign control again with the joint invasions of Germany and Russia in World War II. The Soviet Union maintained hegemonic control of Poland in the decades following the war, but Poland gradually threw off Soviet influence and, with the rise of the Solidarity labor movement in the 1980’s, led the way toward the collapse of the Soviet empire in eastern Europe.
Physical map, Poland.
Poland’s economy is the sixth-largest in the EU, and continues to grow rapidly. Its economy is mainly agricultural, with coal mining and machinery manufacturing also important. Coal fuels most of Poland’s electricity generation. In the early 2010’s there was aggressive prospecting for shale gas deposits, with an estimated more than 500 million cubic meters of gas available, meaning Poland could potentially approach the UK in natural gas production. But the geology is too complicated for the deposits to be counted as commercial, so very little has been produced.
Central and northern Poland is largely flat, though it slopes gradually to the west, a region more crisscrossed by rivers than the higher altitudes of the east. The south is dominated by mountains, the Sudetes to the west and the taller Carpathians to the east (of which the Tatra mountains are part). Poland’s climate is temperate overall, with cold winters, ranging from oceanic (milder) in the north to conetinental (greater seasonal extremes) in the southeast.
Tatra Mountains, southern Poland.
Tomorrow: Poland and climate change.
Be brave, and be well.
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