Prehistoric Europe

Prehistoric Europe refers to the prehistorical period of Europe, usually taken to refer to human prehistory since the Lower Paleolithic, but in principle also extending to the geological time scale – for which see Geological history of Europe.

From the Lower Paleolithic, approximately 1.8 million years ago, until 40,000 years ago, Europe was populated by Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis. In the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic, from about 43,000 to 6,000 years ago, Europe had Homo sapiens hunter-gatherer populations. During the last glacial maximum, much of Europe was depopulated and re-settled, about 15,000 years ago. The European Neolithic began about 9,000 years ago in southeastern Europe, and reached northern Europe by about 5,000 years ago.

The forerunner to the Bronze age was the Chalcolithic or Copper age; an archaeological site in Serbia contains the worlds oldest securely dated evidence of copper making at high temperature, from 7,500 years ago.

The European Bronze Age begins from about 3200 BC in Greece. The European Iron Age begins from about 1200 BC, spreading to northern Europe by 500 BC. During the Iron Age, Europe gradually enters the historical period. Literacy came to the Mediterranean world from as early as the 8th century BC (Classical Antiquity), but northern Europe, including northern Russia, remained in the prehistoric period until as late as the Middle Ages, around AD 1200. Around that date, Swedish and German expansion in the Northern Crusades brought the lands of the eastern Baltic into the historical record, while present-day northern Russia entered the historical record as a result of Russian expansion northward under the Novgorod Republic. Thus, much of Europe was in a stage of proto-history for a long period.