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Timeline. c. 45000 BCE. Potential earliest arrival of Homo sapiens in Europe . 30000 BCE - 12000 BCE. Cave art culture in Europe . c. 20000 BCE. Cave painting flourishes in Spain and France, the most famous being the Cave of Lascaux in France. 5000 BCE. Hierarchical societies emerge in southeast Europe .
- Joshua J. Mark
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The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD 500), the Middle Ages (AD 500–1500), and the modern era (since AD 1500). The first early European modern humans appear in the fossil record about 48,000 years ago, during the Paleolithic era.
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Regardless of the loaded aesthetic, philological, moral, confessional, and philosophical origins of the term Middle Ages, the period it defines is important because it witnessed the emergence of a distinctive European civilization centred in a region that was on the periphery of ancient Mediterranean civilization. Although European civilization appropriated elements of both Greco-Roman antiquity and Judeo-Christian religion and ethics, it emerged just as the ancient Mediterranean ecumenical world was divided into the civilizations of East Rome, or Byzantium, and Islam in the 7th and 8th centuries. Three sibling civilizations, two of them Christian, developed at about the same time. The influence of wider Eurasian and North African history on that of Europe has attracted the attention of increasing numbers of historians since the late 20th century. But such change does not occur in a single year and not even in a single century. To assign any but an approximate date to the beginning of the end of the Middle Ages, as was once the fashion, is pointless. Far more important is the assessment of the nature of change in different areas of life in different periods and different places between the 3rd and the 16th centuries.
The 8th-century English monk and computist Bede (673–735), adapting an invention of the 6th-century theologian Dionysius Exiguus, introduced the method of counting years from the birth of Jesus, anno Domini (“in the year of our Lord”), which formed the basis of the modern notion of the Common Era. The new method superseded older traditions, which included dating by four-year Olympiads, by the number of years since the founding of Rome in 753 bce, by the years of Roman consuls, by the regnal years of emperors, and by the 15-year tax assessment cycle of indictions. Bede’s innovation was taken up by Frankish chroniclers and rulers from the late 8th century and became standard practice in Europe.
Regardless of the loaded aesthetic, philological, moral, confessional, and philosophical origins of the term Middle Ages, the period it defines is important because it witnessed the emergence of a distinctive European civilization centred in a region that was on the periphery of ancient Mediterranean civilization. Although European civilization appropriated elements of both Greco-Roman antiquity and Judeo-Christian religion and ethics, it emerged just as the ancient Mediterranean ecumenical world was divided into the civilizations of East Rome, or Byzantium, and Islam in the 7th and 8th centuries. Three sibling civilizations, two of them Christian, developed at about the same time. The influence of wider Eurasian and North African history on that of Europe has attracted the attention of increasing numbers of historians since the late 20th century. But such change does not occur in a single year and not even in a single century. To assign any but an approximate date to the beginning of the end of the Middle Ages, as was once the fashion, is pointless. Far more important is the assessment of the nature of change in different areas of life in different periods and different places between the 3rd and the 16th centuries.
The 8th-century English monk and computist Bede (673–735), adapting an invention of the 6th-century theologian Dionysius Exiguus, introduced the method of counting years from the birth of Jesus, anno Domini (“in the year of our Lord”), which formed the basis of the modern notion of the Common Era. The new method superseded older traditions, which included dating by four-year Olympiads, by the number of years since the founding of Rome in 753 bce, by the years of Roman consuls, by the regnal years of emperors, and by the 15-year tax assessment cycle of indictions. Bede’s innovation was taken up by Frankish chroniclers and rulers from the late 8th century and became standard practice in Europe.
Oct 28, 2021 · The history of Europe is breathtakingly complex. While there are rare exceptions like Andorra and Portugal, which have had remarkably static borders for hundreds of years, jurisdiction over portions of the continent’s landmass have changed hands innumerable times.
History of Europe, account of European peoples and cultures beginning with the first appearance of anatomically modern humans in Europe. This treatment begins with the Stone Age and continues through the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the two World Wars to the present day.
Explore the countries, civilizations, wars, leaders and major events from European history, including Stonehenge, the French Revolution and the fall of the Soviet Union.
European Timeline. This timeline presents a chronology of religious, political, and military events in Europe. 1450 | 1500 | 1550 | 1600 | 1650 | 1700. 1453. Fall of Constantinople to the Turks 1492 Columbus lands in the New World Jews and Moslems expelled from Spain 1492 Vasco Da Game lands in Goa (Indian subcontinent) 1500 Birth of Charles V ...
