Plotinus said:
Well it started with the issue of discussing "sweeping migrations" (page 23 onwards) and "how much do people know about their ancestors".
How does this relate to Bronze Age people in Poland? This depends on what happened between the Bronze Age and the Late Iron Age.
As you know there is a theory that in the Late Iron Age all of Poland's inhabitants emigrated to invade the Roman Empire, and later new people speaking another language immigrated from the east and repopulated the abandoned land.
So how comes that recent genetic and anthropological studies show biological continuity of population from the Bronze/Iron Ages to modern times in the territory of Poland? This somehow contradicts the model of migration and replacement.
Another question is were there changes in ethnic identity and language spoken by people in these areas between the Bronze Age and the Early Middle Ages, or not. And if not through population replacement (as assumed by many archaeologists and historians) then how did those transformations take place.
Also if we hear about Germanic-speaking tribes, then we expect haplogroups such as I1, R1b U106 branch or - even if R1a - then Z284 ("Norwegian") branch. No of this was found, instead we find haplogroups typical of Balto-Slavic speakers in Bronze Age and Iron Age burials east of the Elbe River.
In the Early Middle Ages the whole area east of the Elbe was inhabited by Slavic-speakers. But in the Late Iron Age it is believed that Germanic-speakers had lived there (including area of Poland), and before that - in the Bronze Age and Early Iron Age - it is unknown what language was spoken there.
So question is whether there was a series of sweeping migrations replacing population, or a series of sweeping changes in identity and language.
There is also a theory that Ancient Germanic-speaking tribes only marched across the territory of Poland, rather than staying there for a long time, and were never the majority of population. This theory was popular among pre-war Polish archaeologists such as Joseph Kostrzewski.
Kostrzewski claimed that e.g. a tribe named "Goths" did not have to consist of ethnic Gothic (Gothic-speaking) majority. They could be a minority. Finally there are people who claim that those tribes whose names were recorded by Greek and Roman sources could be pre-Slavic / Balto-Slavic.
Of course all of the tribal names of Ancient tribes which are believed to have lived in the territory of Poland, are Later Iron Age tribes (from times of the Classical Antiquity). We don't have any written sources recording the names of even more ancient, Bronze Age and Earlier Iron Age tribes.
Some people argue that Poland was wrongly identified as homeland for those tribes, and for example that Goths originally lived in South Germany, etc. But their own legends, written down on paper by Jordanes, claim that they travelled south from areas near the Baltic Sea coast.
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This theme in history has a potential of being heavily politically loaded.
In the past - in the age of 20th century nationalism - both Germans and Poles - who considered themselves to be "heirs" of respectively
proto-Germanic and
proto-Slavic tribes - used ancient history as justification for their policies and territorial claims. Germany claimed territories in the east based on the supposed range of Germanic-speakers in the Iron Age, and their
Lebensraum as well as the
Generalplan Ost were justified by that. As for Poland - her claims about the alleged proto-Slavic character of Ancient Poland were rather defensive measures against German claims in the east, while when it comes to Polish claims in the west - those used to be based on the territorial extent of Early Medieval Poland under the Piast dynasty, which served as a justification for them.
