Prehistoric Europe
Prehistoric Europe refers to Europe before the start of written records, beginning in the Lower Paleolithic. As history progresses, considerable regional unevenness in cultural development emerges and grows. The region of the eastern Mediterranean is, due to its geographic proximity, greatly influenced and inspired by the classical Middle Eastern civilizations, and adopts and develops the earliest systems of communal organization and writing. The Histories of Herodotus is the oldest known European text that seeks to systematically record traditions, public affairs and notable events.
Overview
Widely dispersed, isolated finds of individual fossils of bone fragments, stone artifacts or assemblages suggest that during the Lower Paleolithic, spanning from 3 million until 300,000 years ago, palaeo-human presence was rare and typically separated by thousands of years. The karstic region of the Atapuerca Mountains in Spain represents the currently earliest known and reliably dated location of residence for more than a single generation and a group of individuals.Homo neanderthalensis emerged in Eurasia between 600,000 and 350,000 years ago as the earliest body of European people that left behind a substantial tradition, a set of evaluable historic data through a rich fossil record in Europe's limestone caves and a patchwork of occupation sites over large areas. These include Mousterian cultural assemblages. Modern humans arrived in Mediterranean Europe during the Middle Paleolithic between 56,800 and 51,700 years ago, and both species occupied a common habitat for several thousand years. Research has so far produced no universally accepted conclusive explanation as to what caused the Neanderthal's extinction between 40,000 and 28,000 years ago.
Homo sapiens later populated the entire continent during the Mesolithic, and advanced north, following the retreating ice sheets of the last glacial maximum that spanned between 26,500 and 19,000 years ago. A 2015 publication on ancient European DNA collected from Spain to Russia concluded that the original hunter-gatherer population had assimilated a wave of "farmers" who had arrived from the Near East during the Neolithic about 8,000 years ago.
The Mesolithic era site Lepenski Vir in modern-day Serbia, the earliest documented sedentary community of Europe with permanent buildings, as well as monumental art, precedes by many centuries sites previously considered to be the oldest known. The community's year-round access to a food surplus prior to the introduction of agriculture was the basis for the sedentary lifestyle. However, the earliest record for the adoption of elements of farming can be found in Starčevo, a community with close cultural ties.
Belovode and Pločnik, also in Serbia, is currently the oldest reliably dated copper smelting site in Europe. It is attributed to the Vinča culture, which on the contrary provides no links to the initiation of or a transition to the Chalcolithic or Copper Age.
The process of smelting bronze is an imported technology with debated origins and history of geographic cultural profusion. It was established in Europe about 3200 BC in the Aegean and production was centered around Cyprus, the primary source of copper for the Mediterranean for many centuries.
The introduction of metallurgy, which initiated unprecedented technological progress, has also been linked with the establishment of social stratification, the distinction between rich and poor, and use of precious metals as the means to fundamentally control the dynamics of culture and society.
The European Iron Age culture also originates in the East through the absorption of the technological principles obtained from the Hittites about 1200 BC, finally arriving in Northern Europe by 500 BC.
During the Iron Age, Central, Western and most of Eastern Europe gradually entered the actual historical period. Greek maritime colonization and Roman terrestrial conquest form the basis for the diffusion of literacy in large areas to this day. This tradition continued in an altered form and context for the most remote regions via the universal body of Christian texts, including the incorporation of East Slavic peoples and Russia into the Orthodox cultural sphere. Latin and ancient Greek languages continued to be the primary and best way to communicate and express ideas in liberal arts education and the sciences all over Europe until the early modern period.
Stone Age
Paleolithic (Old Stone Age)
Oldest fossils, artifacts and sites
Lower and Middle Paleolithic human presence
The climatic record of the Paleolithic is characterised by the Pleistocene pattern of cyclic warmer and colder periods, including eight major cycles and numerous shorter episodes. The northern maximum of human occupation fluctuated in response to the changing conditions, and successful settlement required constant adaption capabilities and problem solving. Most of Scandinavia, the North European Plain and Russia remained off limits for occupation during the Paleolithic and Mesolithic. Populations were sparse and small throughout the Palaeolithic.Associated evidence, such as stone tools, artifacts and settlement localities, numbers more than fossilised remains of the hominin occupants themselves. The simplest pebble tools with a few flakes struck off to create an edge were found in Dmanisi, Georgia, and in Spain at sites in the Guadix-Baza basin and near Atapuerca. The Oldowan tool discoveries, called Mode 1-type assemblages are gradually replaced by a more complex tradition that included a range of hand axes and flake tools, the Acheulean, Mode 2-type assemblages. Both types of tool sets are attributed to Homo erectus, the earliest and for a very long time the only human in Europe and more likely to be found in the southern part of the continent. However, the Acheulean fossil record also links to the emergence of Homo heidelbergensis, particularly its specific lithic tools and handaxes. The presence of Homo heidelbergensis is documented since 600,000 BC in numerous sites in Germany, Great Britain and northern France.
Although palaeoanthropologists generally agree that Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis immigrated to Europe, debates remain about migration routes and the chronology.
The fact that Homo neanderthalensis is found only in a contiguous range in Eurasia and the general acceptance of the Out of Africa hypothesis both suggest that the species has evolved locally. Again, consensus prevails on the matter, but widely debated are origin and evolution patterns.
The Neanderthal fossil record ranges from Western Europe to the Altai Mountains in Central Asia and the Ural Mountains in the North to the Levant in the South. Unlike its predecessors, they were biologically and culturally adapted to survival in cold environments and successfully extended their range to the glacial environments of Central Europe and the Russian plains. The great number and, in some cases, exceptional state of preservation of Neanderthal fossils and cultural assemblages enables researchers to provide a detailed and accurate data on behaviour and culture. Neanderthals are associated with the Mousterian culture, stone tools that first appeared approximately 160,000 years ago.
Upper Paleolithic
Homo sapiens arrived in Europe around 46,000 and 43,000 years ago via the Levant and entered the continent through the Danubian corridor, as the fossils at the sites of Bacho Kiro cave and Peștera cu Oase suggest. With an approximate age of 46,000 years, the Homo sapiens fossils found in Bacho Kiro cave consist of a pair of fragmented mandibles including at least one molar This site yielded the oldest known ornaments in Europe, radiocarbon dated to over 43,000 years ago.The fossils' genetic structure indicates a recent Neanderthal ancestry and the discovery of a fragment of a skull in Israel in 2008 support the notion that humans interbred with Neanderthals in the Levant.
After the slow processes of the previous hundreds of thousands of years, a turbulent period of Neanderthal–Homo sapiens coexistence demonstrated that cultural evolution had replaced biological evolution as the primary force of adaptation and change in human societies.
Generally small and widely dispersed fossil sites suggest that Neanderthals lived in less numerous and more socially isolated groups than Homo sapiens. Tools and Levallois points are remarkably sophisticated from the outset, but they have a slow rate of variability, and general technological inertia is noticeable during the entire fossil period. Artifacts are of utilitarian nature, and symbolic behavioral traits are undocumented before the arrival of modern humans. The Aurignacian culture, introduced by modern humans, is characterized by cut bone or antler points, fine flint blades and bladelets struck from prepared cores, rather than using crude flakes. The oldest examples and subsequent widespread tradition of prehistoric art originate from the Aurignacian.
After more than 100,000 years of uniformity, around 45,000 years ago, the Neanderthal fossil record changed abruptly. The Mousterian had quickly become more versatile and was named the Chatelperronian culture, which signifies the diffusion of Aurignacian elements into Neanderthal culture. Although debated, the fact proved that Neanderthals had, to some extent, adopted the culture of modern Homo sapiens. However, the Neanderthal fossil record completely vanished after 40,000 years BC, but genetic studies show mixing may have been common in the prehistoric period, and modern Europeans all have Neanderthal DNA..
Image:Europe20000ya.png|thumb|Last Glacial Maximum refugia, c. 20,000 years ago
Around 32,000 years ago, the Gravettian culture appeared in the Crimean Mountains. By 24,000 BC, the Solutrean and Gravettian cultures were present in Southwestern Europe. Gravettian technology and culture have been theorised to have come with migrations of people from the Middle East, Anatolia and the Balkans, and might be linked with the transitional cultures mentioned earlier since their techniques have some similarities and are both very different from Aurignacian ones, but this issue is very obscure. The Gravettian also appeared in the Caucasus and Zagros Mountains but soon disappeared from southwestern Europe, with the notable exception of the Mediterranean coasts of Iberia.
The Solutrean culture, extended from northern Spain to southeastern France, includes not only a stone technology but also the first significant development of cave painting and the use of the needle and possibly that of the bow and arrow. The more widespread Gravettian culture is no less advanced, at least in artistic terms: sculpture is the most outstanding form of creative expression of such peoples.
File:Lascaux painting.jpg|thumb|Lascaux cave painting, Magdalenian, 15,000 BC
Around 19,000 BC, Europe witnesses the appearance of a new culture, known as Magdalenian, possibly rooted in the old Aurignacian one, which soon superseded the Solutrean area and also the Gravettian of Central Europe. However, in Mediterranean Iberia, Italy, the Balkans and Anatolia, Epigravettian cultures continued to evolve locally.
With the Magdalenian culture, the Paleolithic development in Europe reaches its peak and this is reflected in art, owing to previous traditions of paintings and sculpture.
Around 12,500 BC, the Würm Glacial Age ended. Slowly, through the following millennia, temperatures and sea levels rose, changing the environment of prehistoric people. Ireland and Great Britain became islands, and Scandinavia became separated from the main part of the European Peninsula. Nevertheless, the Magdalenian culture persisted until 10,000 BC, when it quickly evolved into two microlith cultures: Azilian, in Spain and southern France, and Sauveterrian, in northern France and Central Europe. Despite some differences, both cultures shared several traits: the creation of very small stone tools called microliths and the scarcity of figurative art, which seems to have vanished almost completely, which was replaced by abstract decoration of tools.
In the late phase of the epi-Paleolithic period, the Sauveterrean culture evolved into the so-called Tardenoisian and strongly influenced its southern neighbour, clearly replacing it in Mediterranean Spain and Portugal. The recession of the glaciers allowed human colonisation in Northern Europe for the first time. The Maglemosian culture, derived from the Sauveterre-Tardenois culture but with a strong personality, colonised Denmark and the nearby regions, including parts of Britain.