Various tribes of old Germans crowded together in small villages dotted here and there in open spaces surrounded by woods consisting mainly of oak-trees. Caesar's Bello Gallico suggests us that the average population of each civitas belonging to Suebi League was between 15, 000 and 20, 000. According to Delbrück's calculation the density of population of old Germans was from 4 to 5 per square kilometre, and the average population of each tribe was 25, 000. A small number of natural villages, their smallest units of society, formed a “Hunderschaft” dnd several. Hunderschaft formed a Gau, a unit of local society. This Gau later developed into Grafschaft in Germany and had its law court. Hunderschaft developed into English hundred, subdivision of a county or a shire.
Civitas in the South-west of Germany were small and many of them were crowded while in the Northeast Civitas had wide areas. In the South-west civitas consisted of settled people mainly occupying themselves in agriculture and cattle-raising, and developed into agricultural manors of the Middle Ages. The process by which these civitas solved aud formed into Stammstaaten is evident by Ptolemy, Peutingerische Tafel and so on.
