Ambient relaxing music ancient black forest hercynian forest
The Hercynian Forest was an ancient and dense forest that stretched eastward from the Rhine River across southern Germany and formed the northern boundary of that part of Europe known to writers of antiquity. The ancient sources are equivocal about how far east it extended. All agree that the Black Forest, which extended east from the Rhine valley, formed the western side of the Hercynian.
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Across the Rhine to the west extended the Silva Carbonaria and the forest of the Ardennes. All these old-growth forests of antiquity represented the original post-glacial temperate broadleaf forest ecosystem of Europe.
Relict tracts of this once-continuous forest exist with many local names: the Schwarzwald ("Black Forest"), Odenwald, Spessart Rhön, Thüringerwald (Thuringian Forest), Harz, Rauhe Alb, Steigerwald, Fichtelgebirge, Erzgebirge, Riesengebirge, the Bohemian Forest, and the forested Carpathians. The Mittelgebirge seem to correspond more or less to a stretch of the Hercynian mountains.
Etymology
Hercynian has a Proto-Celtic derivation, from perkuniā, later erkunia. Julius Pokorny lists Hercynian as being derived from *perkʷu- "oak" (compare quercus). He further identifies the name as Celtic. Proto-Celtic regularly loses initial *p preceding a vowel, hence Hercynia (the H- being prothetic in Latin, the Latin y signifying a borrowing from Greek). The corresponding Germanic forms have an f- by Grimm's Law: Old English firgen = "mountains", Gothic faírguni = "mountain range". The assimilated *kwerkwu- would be regular in Italo-Celtic, and Pokorny associates the Celtiberian ethnonym Querquerni, found in Hispania in Galicia.
It is possible that the name of the Harz Mountains in Germany is derived from Hercynian, as Harz is a Middle High German word meaning "mountain forest." Also, the Old High German name Fergunna apparently refers to the Erzgebirge and Virgundia (cf. modern Virngrund forest) to a range between Ansbach and Ellwangen. The name of Pforzheim (Porta Hercyniae) in southwest Germany and the tiny village of Hercingen are also derived from "Hercynian".
Hercyne was the classical name (modern Libadia) of a small rapid stream in Boeotia that issued from two springs near Lebadea, modern Livadeia, and emptied into Lake Copais. It did not have any geographical association with the Hercynian Forest, so logically it may have been a parallel derivation from similar etymology.
Medieval period
Monks sent out from Niederaltaich Abbey (founded in the eighth century) brought under cultivation for the first time great forested areas of Lower Bavaria as far as the territory of the present Czech Republic, and founded 120 settlements in the Bavarian Forest, as that stretch of the ancient forest came to be known. The forest is also mentioned in Hyperotomachia Poliphili as the setting for the dream allegory of the work.