The area around the Sudetes had by the 12th century been relatively densely settled with agriculture and settlements expanding further in the High Middle Ages from the 13th century onward. The majority of settlers were Germans from neighbouring Silesia, founding typical Waldhufendörfer. As this trend went on thinning of forest and deforestation had turned clearly unsustainable by the 14th century. In the 15th and 16th centuries agriculture had reached the inner part of Stołowe Mountains in the Central Sudetes. Destruction and degradation of the Sudetes forest peaked in the 16th and 17th centuries with demand of firewood coming from glasshouses that operated through the area in the early modern period.