10 little-known facts about prehistoric Europe that you won't find in history books

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The word "prehistoric" is usually applied to the earliest period of human development, up to the beginning of any recorded events. But because people around the world have evolved in different ways, the backstory begins and ends in different regions at different times. Europe is by no means an exception to this rule. Naturally, this does not mean that humanity did not evolve before the invention of writing, or that humans lived only as hunter-gatherers during all this time. Today we will talk about what events took place in prehistoric Europe.

1. Early people in Europe

As most people know, humanity first evolved on the African continent, and the oldest stone tools found here are about 2.5 million years old. Then, about 200,000 years ago, the first Homo Sapiens appeared, and after 140,000 years they began to migrate from the continent. The earliest evidence of modern humans in Europe was found in the "Cave of Bones" (Pestera cu Oase) in present-day southwestern Romania, where several 37,800-year-old human skulls were found. These remains confirm that these early humans interbred with Neanderthals who already lived on the continent. However, these humans seem to have left almost no distinctive genetic trail in modern Europeans, as they have no more Neanderthal DNA than any other humans who later came to the continent.

Initially, it was believed that originally modern man came to Europe through the Middle East and the territory of modern Turkey. But more recent evidence indicates that his route actually ran through Russia. In western Russia, 36,000 years old remains of Homo Sapiens have been found that are more genetically related to modern Europeans. In addition, some stone and bone tools were discovered 400 kilometers south of Moscow, dating back to approximately 45,000 years. Among these artifacts are bone needles, that is, these people could sew animal skins to survive in the harsh northern climate. They also expanded their diet to include small mammals and fish, using all kinds of traps and traps. All of this gave humans an edge in competing with the Neanderthals, who couldn't live that far north.

2. Neanderthals and their habits

Neanderthals were a species (or subspecies) of man that lived in most of Europe and Western Asia and became extinct 40,000 to 28,000 years ago. It is no coincidence that their disappearance corresponds to the arrival of modern humans in the region, as well as the beginning of a very cold period in the Northern Hemisphere. It is believed that the last Neanderthals became extinct in southern Spain, where they were slowly replaced by a cold snap. Even though these two species descended 600,000 to 400,000 years ago from a common ancestor, Homo heidelbergensis (with the exception of people from sub-Saharan Africa), all other modern humans are the result of a confusion between Homo sapiens and Homo sapiens neanderthalensis.

Archaeological evidence indicates that, in addition to their ability to craft stone tools, Neanderthals also buried their dead, practiced cave bear worship, and built the earliest structures ever discovered (around 175,000 years old). Later discoveries indicate that Neanderthals may have also practiced cannibalism, especially during periods of famine. Currently, the remains of Neanderthals have been found in Belgium (Goye Caves) and Spain (El Sidron Cave), showing signs that their skin was ripped off, after which their bodies were dismembered and their marrow removed. In addition, their bones were then turned into all kinds of tools.

3. Doggerland

Doggerland, or "British Atlantis," as some like to call it, is the area between present-day England and Denmark, now flooded by the North Sea. When the ice caps melted at the end of the last Great Ice Age around 6300 BC, huge volumes of water entered the oceans, raising sea levels by 120 centimeters across the globe. Perhaps it is thanks to this that many myths about the Great Flood have appeared around the world. During this time, the British Isles were part of mainland Europe, and humans and Neanderthals roamed where the waters of the North Sea now stretch. The English Channel was also dry land, and it is believed that it was a river valley where the Thames, Rhine and Seine combined to form a huge river system, somewhere between the current Cornwall peninsula in England and Brittany in France.

In addition to the numerous mammoth fossils that were sometimes caught by fishermen in the North Sea, stone tools and jagged horns were sometimes found, which may have been used as a harpoon. The age of these finds dates back to approximately 10,000 - 12,000 years. BC when Doggerland was tundra. Once, about 15 kilometers from the Dutch coast, a fragment of a Neanderthal skull 40,000 years old was found, and off the British coast - the remains of a human settlement. As the climate began to get warmer, sea levels rose steadily by about 1 to 2 meters per century, and water gradually covered gentle hills, swampy lagoons and wooded lowlands. Slowly but surely, the people living there became trapped and eventually the sea drove them to Dogger Bank, the highest point in the area, which turned into an island in about 6,000 BC, after which it also completely flooded.

4. Sturegg landslide

What can only be described as an apocalyptic event of biblical proportions was one of the largest landslides in history, and it happened relatively recently. Approximately 8,400 - 7,800 years ago, 100 kilometers from the Norwegian coast, a huge piece of land broke off the continental shelf of Europe and slid 1,600 kilometers into the bottomless depths of the Norwegian Sea. 3,500 cubic kilometers of sediment covered approximately 95,000 square kilometers of the seabed. For comparison, this volume of soil could fill the whole of Iceland with a layer 34 meters thick.

The landslide was most likely triggered by an earthquake, which in turn led to the rapid release of huge amounts of methane hydrate trapped in the ocean floor. This destabilized a large chunk of land that came off and collapsed into the depths of the sea. The ensuing tsunami caused complete chaos in all the surrounding territories. Sediment from this tsunami was found 80 kilometers offshore in some places and 6 meters above current high tide levels. Considering that the sea level was then 14 meters lower than today, in some places the waves exceeded 24 meters in height (for a second, this is the height of a nine-story building). This event seriously affected the present Scotland, England, Norway, Iceland, Faroe, Orkney and Shetland Islands, Greenland, Ireland and the Netherlands. What suffered most was what was left of Doggerland, which was swept away by the tsunami caused by the Sturegg landslide. All life on Dogger Bank was simply washed into the sea.

Today, oil and gas exploration companies are taking particular care in the region to avoid triggering another such horrific event, as this was far from an isolated example - many smaller landslides have occurred here 50,000 to 6,000 years ago.

5. First Europeans in North America

Today, many already know that the first Europeans in America were not the Spaniards, led by Christopher Columbus at the end of the 15th century, but the Vikings, led by Leif Eriksson, four centuries earlier. However, newer evidence indicates that even Norwegians were not the first Europeans in the New World. Rather, they were people of the Stone Age who lived in modern France and northern Spain, and are known as the Solutrean culture. They are believed to have reached North America about 26,000 years ago, during the Ice Age, when Arctic ice connected the two continents. Most likely, they rode boats near the edge of the ice and hunted seals and birds like modern Inuit.

The first evidence of this theory came in 1970, when a trawler, along with a catch of scallops, lifted from the bottom a 20-centimeter stone blade and a 22,700-year-old mastodon tusk, 100 kilometers from Virginia. Particularly interesting about this blade was its manufacturing technique, strikingly similar to the style used by the Solutrean tribes in Europe. Since then, other artifacts have been found in six other locations off the east coast of the United States. The rarity of these finds is due to the fact that the sea level at that time was much lower and the people of the Stone Age lived mainly on the coasts, as a result of which there are very few archaeological finds on the surface today.

While the Solutrean hypothesis has not yet been fully proven and has many gaps, it is also supported by an 8,000-year-old skeleton found in Florida, for which only Europeans, not Asians, have genetic markers. In addition, some Indian tribes have languages that have nothing to do with Asian Indian peoples.

6. History of blue eyes and fair skin

Scientists have concluded that blue eyes first appeared somewhere north of the Black Sea about 10,000 years ago. Before that, all people had brown eyes. The oldest remains of a man with blue eyes date back 7,000 to 8,000 years and were found in modern northwestern Spain in a cave system near the city of Leon. But although this 30-35-year-old man had blue eyes, DNA analysis showed, he definitely had dark skin, like people living in sub-Saharan Africa today. Its DNA has been compared to other hunter-gatherer burials in Sweden, Finland and Siberia, as well as 35 modern Europeans. The results showed that this was a representative of the Stone Age culture that spread from Spain to Siberia, and which is also famous for the "Venus" figurines. In part, she is the ancestor of many Europeans.

Further studies on 800 blue-eyed people from all over the world, from Turkey to Denmark to Jordan, show that this trait can be traced back to a single ancestor, unlike people with brown eyes. But the reason why 40% of people in Europe have blue eyes in 10,000 years is still a mystery.

Similar to eye color, skin color also changed on the European continent, but this happened later. Along with agriculture, the genes responsible for lighter skin color came from the Middle East, and it wasn't until about 5,800 years ago that Europeans began to resemble modern humans living there. Both of these new features were an advantage for living in higher latitudes, where there is less sunlight, compared to the tropics. While dark skin and brown eyes protect against UV radiation due to their higher levels of melanin, they become a disadvantage when there is not much sunlight.

7. Cucuteni-Tripoli culture and the wheel

At a time when Europe consisted of hunter-gatherer tribes and used stone tools for hunting and survival, civilization located in what is now Romania, Moldova and Ukraine has flourished for about 3,000 years. Somewhere between 5,500 and 2,750 BC The Tripoli civilization (or Cucuteni culture) built some of the largest settlements in the world, some of which were home to more than 15,000 people, and there were about 2,700 structures. Occupying an area of about 360,000 square kilometers, they lived in a kind of confederation of settlements located at a distance of 3-6 kilometers from each other and, most likely, had a matriarchal society. More recently, Romanian archaeologists have discovered a huge 7,000-year-old temple complex with an area of about 1,500 square meters and part of a 25 hectare settlement.

The prehistoric society relied heavily on agriculture, animal husbandry, but also practiced regular hunting. Archaeological evidence indicates that these people were highly skilled craftsmen in pottery, jewelry making and sewing. For example, the swastika and yin-yang symbols appeared on their products 1,000 years before the Indian and Chinese cultures, respectively. It was this culture that provided about 70% of European Neolithic ceramics. Moreover, many of their structures were two-story, and it seems that they had a habit or tradition of burning entire settlements every 60-80 years, just to rebuild them in the same place, in a kind of cycle of death and rebirth.

This culture may have invented the wheel. Despite the fact that the age of the oldest wheel ever found (it was found in Slovenia) is 5,150 years old, a clay toy resembling a bull on wheels was discovered in Ukraine, which is several centuries older. While this is not definitive proof, chances are high that the Cucuteni-Trypillian civilization was the inventor of the wheel. The main theory of its disappearance is currently considered climate change, catastrophic for the agrarian civilization.

8. The culture of Turdash-Vincha and the oldest writing in the world

Both the Turdash-Vinca culture and the Trypillian culture described above, as well as several others known under the general name of the Danube Valley civilization, were closely associated with the fertile banks of the mighty Danube River. While the Cucuteni civilization was located closer to the north, the Vinca culture spread to the territory of present-day Serbia and parts of Romania, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Greece between 5,700 and 3,500 years. BC. Their form of government is still unknown, and it is possible that they were not politically united. Despite this, there was a high degree of cultural uniformity throughout the region, facilitated by long-distance exchanges.

Like Cucuteni-Tripoli culture, Turdash Vinca was very advanced for its time. She was the first in the world to create brass tools, spin fabrics and create furniture. The legacy of this culture is still debated, with some believing that it is of Anatolian origin, while others put forward the idea of its local development from the previous Starchevo-Krishna culture. Be that as it may, the Turdash Vinca boasted impressive ceramic art found throughout their territory. It is possible that this particular culture is the inventor of the first written language. Three small tablets of this culture, dating from about 5,500 BC, were discovered in 1961 in Transylvania, Romania. Specialists in Mesopotamia reject even the idea that these tablets, and even the symbols engraved on them, are any form of written language, and insist that they are merely decoration.

Many other scholars and linguists do not share their opinion and believe that the world's first writing originated here in the Balkans, almost 2,000 years before cuneiform writing in Sumer. Today, more than 700 symbols of the Danube writing are known, which is approximately equal to the number of hieroglyphs used by the ancient Egyptians. If we accept this theory, then we can confidently say that the cradle of civilization should not be considered Mesopotamia, but the Balkans.

9. Man from Varna and the richest prehistoric grave

During excavations in the 1970s, near the port city of Varna in eastern Bulgaria, archaeologists stumbled upon a vast necropolis dating back to the 5th millennium BC. But when they got to grave No. 43, they realized that they had just discovered the world's largest treasure of gold dating back to that period. The treasure consisted of approximately 3,000 gold artifacts weighing a total of 6 kilograms. More gold artifacts have been found here than in the rest of the world before this time. The necropolis also found the oldest known evidence of the burial of a male elite class at a time when male dominance began to emerge in Europe. Before that, the best burials were for women and children.

The Varna civilization gained importance between 4,600 and 4,200 years. BC when she began to process gold, becoming the first civilization to do so. The culture located on the Black Sea coast (and especially its elite), possessing some extremely valuable materials for trade, such as gold, copper and salt, was able to quickly accumulate wealth. Archaeological evidence suggests that this society had a complex structure, and it formed the basis for the first monarchical society with its unevenly distributed wealth.

The death of civilization happened for fairly common reasons. Its wealth and abundance attracted attention and provoked the invasion of mounted warriors from the steppes. This, combined with the climatic changes taking place at that time, led to the disappearance of the culture.

10. Domestication of the dog

Scientists and archaeologists can confirm that the domestication of the dog took place in different places of the world at the same time (moreover, different types of wolves were tamed, depending on the region). Although humans have previously domesticated animals to improve their lives, this has never happened as quickly as with a dog. This makes sense, given that the domestication of animals only took place in a sedentary lifestyle, while dogs helped people when hunting during a nomadic lifestyle.

But what's really amazing is how early humans were able to domesticate the ferocious wolf. Previous estimates based on the oldest dog fossils date back to around 14,000 years. But more recently, dog fossils were found both in Belgium and in Central Russia, and their age was 33,000 and 36,000 years, respectively. This discovery amazed archaeologists, as the dog was domesticated 20,000 years earlier than previously thought.

And in continuation of the topic especially for those who are interested in the antiquities of Europe 15 little-known facts about Stonehenge - Europe's stone enigma.