Stone Age

Topics covered in this section:

Introduction

About 4 million years ago, humanoids began their journey out of Africa, eventually arriving in Europe.

The archaeological record of these immigrants provides us with a much richer, more detailed look at the people who inhabited prehistoric Europe than anything we can learn from the geological record, but not as detailed as we can learn from the written history in later ages.

Archaeologists from Europe and elsewhere have studied a great many early sites throughout Europe and Eurasia. In some regions, more sites have been found than in others, of course, but this is often the result of the amount of research being conducted rather than an indication of population densities found in the different regions.

This document is simply an overview of the archaeological "ages" that I'll investigate in much greater detail in suceeding documents. The purpose for this document, therefore, is simply to set the stage for those later documents so that you understand how all these pieces fit together in Europe's timeline.

Note

I use a conventional notation for specifying dates. When you see "BP," it means "Before Present," and generally refers to a date that has been determined based on a specific (or multiple) techniques, such as radiocarbon dating.

When you see "BC," it means "Before Christ" and "AD" means "Anno Domini," two common notations used in Northern America and elsewhere.

Sometimes, in order to be "politically correct" and to avoid any religious references, historians use "BCE" instead of "BC" and "CE" instead of "AD." When you see "BCE," it means "Before the Common Era" and when you see "CE," it means "Common Era."

Of course, all ancient dates are little more than gross estimates or approximations.

Stone Age Periods

From about 1 million years ago to 10,000 years ago our ancestors used primarily simple stone tools in their daily lives. For this reason, the period is called the Stone Age.

Traditionally, the Stone Age is subdivided into three broad eras:

The comparatively long Paleolithic Era is again further subdivided into three shorter periods:

Unfortunately, events this far back in history often can't easily be tied specifically to one particular region, such as Romania. Stone Age peoples wandered far and wide depending on various environmental conditions or the availability of resources.

Empty Landscape

During most of the prehistoric time period, the European continent was the domain of animals, not humans.

Unlike the contemporary city-states found in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Levant, Europe was a vast landscape that was relatively empty. Only a few, small, widely dispersed groups of humans inhabited the region.

Go Elsewhere

At this point, you have a couple of options:

Romania
Burrow
Other
Burrows