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The Poles ((ポーランド語:Polacy), ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'') are a nation and West Slavic ethnic group native to Poland. The population of Poles in Poland is estimated at 37,310,000 out of an overall population of 38,538,000 (based on the 2011 census).〔 The preamble to the Constitution of the Republic of Poland defines the Polish nation as comprising all the citizens of Poland; ethnicity is a private matter of each citizen. Poland's population inhabits several historic regions: Wielkopolska ("Greater Poland"), Małopolska ("Lesser Poland"), Mazovia (in Polish, ''Mazowsze''), Silesia (in Polish, ''Śląsk''), Pomerania (in Polish, ''Pomorze''), Kujawy, Warmia, Mazury, and Podlasie. A wide-ranging Polish diaspora (the ''Polonia'') exists throughout Europe (Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Russia, Belarus, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Latvia, Ukraine), the Americas (the United States, Brazil, Canada, Argentina) and in Australia. In 1960, Chicago, in the United States, had the world's largest urban Polish population after Warsaw.〔"Sections of North Milwaukee Avenue are Main Street for Chicago's huge Polish population (the second-largest urban concentration after Warsaw's)": Laura Tibert, ''Chicago for Dummies'', 2007. p. 125; "DID YOU KNOW? Chicago, with nearly a million residents of Polish extraction, is often cited as the world's second-largest Polish city after Warsaw.": Neil Wilson, Tom Parkinson, Richard Watkins, ''Poland'', 2005, p. 33; "In 1960, Chicago claimed 700,000 residents of Polish descent, making it the American city with the largest Polish community and, after Warsaw, the second largest aggregation of urban Poles in the world.": James O. Lugo, Gerald L. Hershey, ''Human development'', 1979〕 Today the largest urban concentration of Poles is the Katowice urban agglomeration (the Silesian Metropolis) of 2.7 million inhabitants. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, hosts a Polish Fest; and Chicago, Illinois, "Polish Fest Chicago". Over a thousand years ago, the Polans—an influential tribe in Wielkopolska, inhabiting the areas around Giecz, Gniezno, and Poznań—succeeded in uniting various Lechitic tribes under what became the Piast dynasty,〔Gerard Labuda. Fragmenty dziejów Słowiańszczyzny zachodniej, t.1-2 p.72 2002; Henryk Łowmiański. Początki Polski: z dziejów Słowian w I tysiącleciu n.e, t. 5 p.472; Stanisław Henryk Badeni, 1923. p. 270〕 thereby creating the Polish state. Polish émigrés have included innumerable individuals in all walks of life who have enriched American society, not least Generals Casimir Pulaski, Tadeusz Kosciuszko and Włodzimierz Krzyżanowski, and National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. Poland was for centuries a refuge for many Jews from all over Europe; a large number emigrated in the twentieth century to Israel. Several prominent Israeli statesmen were born in Poland, including Israel's founder David Ben-Gurion, former President of Israel Shimon Peres, and Prime Ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin. During Poland's thousand-year history, her people have contributed greatly to the fields of philosophy, mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology, medicine, engineering, linguistics, the social sciences, law, literature, the visual arts, music, and film, providing some of the world's most notable thinkers, scientists, medical innovators, inventors, social scientists, jurists, economists, politicians, writers, artists, composers, and filmmakers. As early as five centuries ago, Copernicus alone personified many of these achievements. ==Origins== The Slavic people have been in the territory of modern Poland for over 1500 years. They organized into tribal units, of which the larger ones were later known as the Polish tribes; the names of many tribes are found on the list compiled by the anonymous Bavarian Geographer in the 9th century.〔.〕 In the 9th and 10th centuries the tribes gave rise to developed regions along the upper Vistula (the Vistulans within the Great Moravian Empire sphere),〔 the Baltic Sea coast and in Greater Poland. The last tribal undertaking resulted in the 10th century in a lasting political structure and state, Poland, one of the West Slavic nations.〔.〕 The concept which has become known as the Piast Idea, the chief propopent of which was Jan Ludwik Popławski, is based on the statement that the Piast homeland was inhabited by so-called "native" aboriginal Slavs and Slavonic Poles since time immemorial and only later was "infiltrated" by "alien" Celts, Germans and others. After 1945 the so-called "autochthonous" or "aboriginal" school of Polish prehistory received official backing in Poland and a considerable degree of popular support. According to this view, the Lusatian Culture which archaeologists have identified between the Oder and the Vistula in the early Iron Age, is said to be Slavonic; all non-Slavonic tribes and peoples recorded in the area at various points in ancient times are dismissed as "migrants" and "visitors". In contrast, the critics of this theory, such as Marija Gimbutas, regard it as an unproved hypotheses and for them the date and origin of the westward migration of the Slavs is largely uncharted; the Slavonic connections of the Lusatian Culture are entirely imaginary; and the presence of an ethnically mixed and constantly changing collection of peoples on the North European Plain is taken for granted.〔Norman Davies (Poland's Multicultural Heritage )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Poles」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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