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History of Europe. 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 ...
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.
- Prehistory
- Name & Greek Colonization
- Roman Expansion
- Rise of The State, Church & Vikings
- Renaissance & Reformation
- Conclusion
Archaeological evidence places Homo erectus in Europe c. 600,000 years ago during the Lower Paleolithic Period and Neanderthals by c. 150,000 years ago in the Middle Paleolithic Period. Although Neanderthals have routinely been discounted in the past as brutes, they actually developed an impressive culture which included cave art, grave goods (sugg...
The first appearance of Europe to designate the continent comes from Greece in the 6th century BCE, but it is unclear when the term was first used. The name may derive from the myth of Europa (known by the 8th century BCE when it is referenced in Homer'sIliad) in which the Phoenician princess is abducted by Zeus, king of the Greek gods, who, in the...
Rome was a small port on the banks of the Tiber River, founded in 753 BCE, which initially expanded through trade and came in contact with the Greek colonies to the south along modern-day Italy's coast. The Etruscan civilization, to the north, and the southern Greeks both significantly influenced early Roman culture and civilization. Rome developed...
By the time the Western Roman Empire fell in 476, Christianity was well established in Europe. Kings such as Odoacer of Italy (r. 476-493) and Theodoric the Great (r. 493-526) considered themselves Christian kings as did Clovis I of the Franks (r. 481-511) and Alboin of the Lombards (r. 560-572). After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, leaders ...
The kingdoms and principalities of Europe had diverse languages, customs, and goals but were united – at least nominally – through religious belief and the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. In 1095, when Pope Urban II called the First Crusade to free the Holy Land from Muslim rule, people from all over Europe answered. Except for the first, t...
The Byzantine Empire fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 who then closed the Silk Road, ending European land trade with the East and encouraging greater maritime trade, which launched the Age of Exploration. The colonization of the Americas began in 1492 and was encouraged, not only by the European need to find alternative routes to the East but also...
- Joshua J. Mark
Classical antiquity, also known as the classical era, classical period, classical age, or simply antiquity, [1] is the period of cultural European history between the 8th century BC and the 5th century AD [note 1] comprising the interwoven civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome known together as the Greco-Roman world, centered on the ...
4300 BCE. First megalithic tombs in Europe . 3500 BCE. Farming has spread across Europe . c. 3300 BCE - c. 1200 BCE. The Bronze Age, lasting from c. 3300 BCE- c. 1200 BCE in the Near East and South Asia and c. 600 BCE in Europe . 2800 BCE - 1900 BCE. Bell beaker culture in western Europe . 2300 BCE.
- Joshua J. Mark
- Content Director
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History of Europe - Chronology, Migration, Empires: 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.
The Greek civilizations were the earliest in Europe, and in the Classical period the Greeks were a conduit for the advanced civilizations of the Middle East, which, along with the unique Greek contribution, laid the foundation for European civilization. By the mid-2nd century bce the Greeks had come under Roman control, and the vast Roman ...
