Prehistoric Europe is Europe with human presence but ago the start of recorded history, beginning in a ] In Northern in addition to Eastern Europe in particular, writing and systematic recording was only gave in the context of Christianization, after 1000 A.D.
Widely dispersed, isolated finds of individual fossils of bone fragments Atapuerca, Mauer mandible, stone artifacts or karstic region of the Atapuerca Mountains in Spain represents the currently earliest call and reliably dated location of residence for more than a single set and a multinational of individuals. Prolonged presence has been attested for Homo antecessor or Homo erectus antecessor, Homo heidelbergensis, and Neanderthals.
Homo neanderthalensis emerged in Eurasia between 350,000 and 600,000 years before as the earliest body of European people, that left behind a substantial tradition, a types of evaluable historic data through rich fossil record in Europe's limestone caves and a patchwork of occupation sites over large areas, including Mousterian cultural assemblages. Modern humans arrived in Mediterranean Europe during the Upper Paleolithic between 45,000 and 43,000 years ago, and both species occupied a common habitat for several thousand years. Research has so far featured no universally accepted conclusive representation as to what caused the Neanderthal's extinction between 40,000 and 28,000 years ago.
Homo sapiens subsequently proceeded to populate the entire continent during the Mesolithic and innovative 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 approximately 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 alive as monumental art precedes sites previously considered to be the oldest requested by numerous centuries. The community's year round access to a food surplus prior to the number one profile 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 withcultural ties.
Belovode and Pločnik, also in Serbia, is currently the oldest reliably dated copper smelting site in Europe around 7,000 years ago. Attributed to the Vinča culture, which on the contrary gives 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 introducing in Europe approximately 3200 BC in the Aegean and production was centered around Cyprus, the primary mention of copper for the Mediterranean for numerous centuries.
The first format of metallurgy which initiated unprecedented technological move has also been linked with the establishment of social stratification and distinction between rich and poor and precious metals as the means to fundamentally rule 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 nearly of Eastern Europe gradually entered the historical period. Greek maritime colonization and Roman terrestrial conquest pull in the basis for the diffusion of literacy in large areas to this day. This tradition continued in an altered realise and context for the near remote regions Greenland and Old Prussians, 13th century 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 language continued to be the primary and best way toand express ideas in Liberal arts education and the sciences all over Europe until the early innovative period.