[gothic-l] Re: Sarmatians and Goths in Poland

[Anthony Appleyard]

  dirk at smra.co.uk wrote:-
> ... in Poland, where at times up to one third of the population claimed noble
> descent including many very poor peasants ...

Perhaps accurately sometimes. When there was a famine year, the higher up the
social scale, the more they could hog what food there was and so leave more
surviving descendants than those below them. That would mean steadily more
nobility and less peasants as time passed. But the land can only support a
given percentage of nobility, so the surplus would have to go down the social
scale, as in the type of traditional fairy story centered on a younger son of
a noble having to go out into the world to seek his fortune.


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