Main article: History of Europe
Prehistory
Main article: Prehistoric Europe
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Homo georgicus, which lived roughly 1.8 million years ago in Georgia, is the earliest hominid to have been discovered in Europe.[24] Other hominid remains, dating back roughly 1 million years, have been discovered in Atapuerca,Spain.[25] Neanderthal man (named for the Neander Valley in Germany) appeared in Europe 150,000 years ago and disappeared from the fossil record about 30,000 years ago. The Neanderthals were supplanted by modern humans (Cro-Magnons), who appeared in Europe around 40,000 years ago.[26]
The European Neolithic period—marked by the cultivation of crops and the raising of livestock, increased numbers of settlements and the widespread use of pottery—began around 7000 BC in Greece and the Balkans, probably influenced by earlier farming practices in Anatolia and the Near East. It spread from South Eastern Europe along the valleys of the Danube and the Rhine(Linear Pottery culture) and along the Mediterranean coast (Cardial culture). Between 4500 and 3000 BC, these central European neolithic cultures developed further to the west and the north, transmitting newly acquired skills in producing copper artefacts. In Western Europe the Neolithic period was characterized not by large agricultural settlements but by field monuments, such as causewayed enclosures, burial mounds andmegalithic tombs.[27] The Corded ware cultural horizon flourished at the transition from the Neolithic to the Chalcolithic. During this period giantmegalithic monuments, such as the Megalithic Temples of Malta andStonehenge, were constructed throughout Western and Southern Europe.[28][29] The European Bronze Age began in the late 3rd millennium BC with the Beaker culture.
The European Iron Age began around 800 BC, with the Hallstatt culture. Iron Age colonisation by the Phoenicians gave rise to earlyMediterranean cities. Early Iron Age Italy and Greece from around the 8th century BC gradually gave rise to historical Classical Antiquity.
Classical antiquity
Main article: Classical Antiquity
See also: Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome
Ancient Greece had a profound impact on Western civilisation. Western democratic andindividualistic culture are often attributed to Ancient Greece.[30] The Greeks invented the polis, or city-state, which played a fundamental role in their concept of identity.[31] These Greek political ideals were rediscovered in the late 18th century by European philosophers and idealists. Greece also generated many cultural contributions: in philosophy, humanism and rationalism underAristotle, Socrates and Plato; in history with Herodotus and Thucydides; in dramatic and narrative verse, starting with the epic poems of Homer;[30] and in science with Pythagoras, Euclid andArchimedes.[32][33][34]
Another major influence on Europe came from theRoman Empire which left its mark on law, language,engineering, architecture, and government.[35] During the pax romana, the Roman Empire expanded to encompass the entire Mediterranean Basin and much of Europe.[36]
Stoicism influenced Roman emperors such as Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius, who all spent time on the Empire's northern border fighting Germanic, Pictish and Scottishtribes.[37][38] Christianity was eventually legitimised by Constantine I after three centuries ofimperial persecution.
Early Middle Ages
Main articles: Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages
See also: Dark Ages and Age of Migrations
During the decline of the Roman Empire, Europe entered a long period of change arising from what historians call the "Age of Migrations". There were numerous invasions and migrations amongst the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Goths, Vandals, Huns, Franks, Angles, Saxons, Slavs, Avars, Bulgarsand, later still, the Vikings and Magyars.[36] Renaissance thinkers such as Petrarch would later refer to this as the "Dark Ages".[39] Isolated monastic communities were the only places to safeguard and compile written knowledge accumulated previously; apart from this very few written records survive and much literature, philosophy, mathematics, and other thinking from the classical period disappeared from Europe.[40]
During the Dark Ages, the Western Roman Empire fell under the control of various tribes. The Germanic and Slav tribes established their domains over Western and Eastern Europe respectively.[41] Eventually the Frankish tribes were united under Clovis I.[42] Charlemagne, a Frankish king of the Carolingian dynasty who had conquered most of Western Europe, was anointed "Holy Roman Emperor" by the Pope in 800. This led to the founding of the Holy Roman Empire, which eventually became centred in the German principalities of central Europe.[43]
The predominantly Greek speaking Eastern Roman Empire became known in the west as theByzantine Empire. Its capital was Constantinople. Emperor Justinian I presided over Constantinople's first golden age: he established a legal code, funded the construction of the Hagia Sophia and brought the Christian church under state control.[44] Fatally weakened by the sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade, the Byzantines fell in 1453 when they were conquered by the Ottoman Empire.[45]
Middle Ages
See also: Medieval demography
The economic growth of Europe around the year 1000, together with the lack of safety on the mainland trading routes, made possible the development of major commercial routes along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. In this context, the growing independence acquired by some coastal cities gave the Maritime Republics a leading role in the European scene.
The Middle Ages on the mainland were dominated by the two upper echelons of the social structure: the nobility and the clergy. Feudalism developed in France in the Early Middle Ages and soon spread throughout Europe.[46] A struggle for influence between the nobility and the monarchyin England led to the writing of the Magna Carta and the establishment of a parliament.[47] The primary source of culture in this period came from the Roman Catholic Church. Through monasteries and cathedral schools, the Church was responsible for education in much of Europe.[46]
The Papacy reached the height of its power during the High Middle Ages. A East-West Schism in 1054 split the former Roman Empire religiously, with the Eastern Orthodox Church in theByzantine Empire and the Roman Catholic Church in the former Western Roman Empire. In 1095Pope Urban II called for a crusade against Muslims occupying Jerusalem and the Holy Land.[48] In Europe itself, the Church organised the Inquisition against heretics. In Spain, the Reconquistaconcluded with the fall of Granada in 1492, ending over seven centuries of Muslim presence in theIberian Peninsula.[49]
In the 11th and 12th centuries, constant incursions by nomadic Turkic tribes, such as thePechenegs and the Kipchaks, caused a massive migration of Slavic populations to the safer, heavily forested regions of the north.[50] Like many other parts of Eurasia, these territories wereoverrun by the Mongols.[51] The invaders, later known as Tatars, formed the state of the Golden Horde, which ruled the southern and central expanses of Russia for over three centuries.[52]
The Great Famine of 1315–1317 was the first crisis that would strike Europe in the late Middle Ages.[53] The period between 1348 and 1420 witnessed the heaviest loss. The population ofFrance was reduced by half.[54][55] Medieval Britain was afflicted by 95 famines,[56] and France suffered the effects of 75 or more in the same period.[57] Europe was devastated in the mid-14th century by the Black Death, one of the most deadly pandemics in human history which killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe alone—a third of the European population at the time.[58]
The plague had a devastating effect on Europe's social structure; it induced people to live for the moment as illustrated by Giovanni Boccaccio in The Decameron (1353). It was a serious blow to the Roman Catholic Church and led to increased persecution of Jews, foreigners, beggars andlepers.[59] The plague is thought to have returned every generation with varying virulence and mortalities until the 18th century.[60] During this period, more than 100 plague epidemics swept across Europe.[61]
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