Both politically and economically the mark was an independent community, and its earliest members were doubtless blood relatives.
First used in this sense, it was then applied to the land cleared by the settlers in the forest areas of Germany, and later it was used for the system which prevailed to what extent or for how long is uncertain in that country.
It is generally assumed that the lands of the mark were divided into three portions; forest, meadow and arable, and as in the manorial system which was later in vogue elsewhere, a system of rotation of crops in two, three or even six fields was adopted, each member of the community having rights of pasture in the forest and the meadow, and a certain share of the arable.
Its affairs were ordered by the markmen who met together at stated times in the markmoot.
An opposing school denies entirely the existence of the mark system, and a French writer, Fustel de Coulanges, refers to it contemptuously as a figment of the Teutonic imagination.