Prehistoric Timeline

For those of you who do not live in the past, like I do, I offer a timeline of events that may help to orient you to the prehistoric events to come.

2 Million Years Ago

Homo erectus evolved and was relatively successful, colonizing Africa and making several migrations into Eurasia, where they begot the Neanderthals and Denisovans.  

300,000 Years Ago

Anatomically modern humans, Homo Sapiens, evolved.  Given the exceedingly harsh ice age conditions in Africa, humans almost died out; at one point the effective size of the global human population may have been as low as 700 people.  

70,000 Years Ago

Some unknown factor (speech?, abstract reasoning?, cuture?) led to an extraordinary burst of evolutionary success for humans.  They escaped Africa and colonized all of Eurasia and Australasia within 20,000 years.

5500 BCE

The Anatolian farmers moved into the Balkans and the Carpathian Basin: modern day Serbia, Hungary and Romania from around 6,200 BCE in what is called the Starčevo–Kőrös–Criș culture.  For 700 years they developed their culture, adapting to a colder climate, learning to plow, manuring the fields, mining salt and storing food for the winter.  For whatever reason, after some centuries of percolation, a subsequent culture called the Linear Beaker Keramik, or LBK suddenly burst forth around 5500 cal. BCE, following the Danube north-west, and colonizing all the major river basins of western and central Europe and Ukraine: the Seine, Rhine, Elba, Oder, Vistula, Bug and Dniester rivers.  Within 500 years, the expansion of the LBK farmers spanned from Odessa in the east to Paris in the West.  Further expansion of farmers along the Atlantic seaboard and the British Isles brought the great megalith cultures which built Stonehenge and similar monuments across Spain, Great Britain,  Brittany and northern Germany.  

British archeologist Colin Renfrew has promoted the Anatolian hypothesis: the idea that these farmers who had come from Anatolia (modern day Turkey) spoke the proto-Indo-European language and the migrations of the LBK farmers into Europe spread the Indo-European languages.

People of the LBK culture lived in long timbered houses in extended family configurations.  Based on analysis of skeletal strontium isotope ratios, it appears that it was predominantly a patrilocal family organization with exogamy, meaning that brides from other farming communities farther away or native hunter-gatherer groups were recruited into the male's family.  When the family unit got too big, perhaps the eldest male stayed with the farmstead while younger men traveled up the river valley to form new farmsteads.  

1000 BCE

The Kingdom of Israel was formed around 1000 BCE.  It flourished for about a century before splitting into a Northern Kingdom of Israel and a southern Kingdom of Judah.  In 720 BCE King Sargon II of Assyria invaded the Kingdom of Israel and drove the ten lost tribes into slavery.  In 587 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed the Kingdom of Judah and drove the elite into captivity in Babylon.  In 539 BCE, the Persian King Cyrus the Great conquered Babylonia, freed the Israelites and helped them rebuild the Second Temple in Jerusalem which stood until destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE.

The Hamangia Culture 5200-4500 BCE

The Hamangia culture is a successor to the  Starčevo–Körös–Criș culture, located along the western coast of the Black Sea.  Settlements tended to be larger than in  Starčevo–Körös–Criș Culture, and unlike before, some graves included pottery, figurines or jewelry, often Spondylus (spiny oyster) shells, sourced all the way from the Aegean Sea.

The Varna Culture 4600-4200 BCE

The Varna culture was discovered in northeastern Bulgaria in 1972 by a backhoe operator when he accidently dug into some ancient graves with elaborate grave goods.  To date 294 graves have been excavated, with 61 having a total of more than 3,000 gold objects weighing 13 pounds.  This is far more gold than is found collectively in all the other cultures of the world to that date.  Two thirds of the objects were found in just four graves, with grave #43, an adult male having golden beads, arm rings, finger rings, a cast copper axe and a gold penis sheath.  Interestingly, 47 of the graves were cenotaphs: graves with elaborate grave goods but no skeleton.  Some centaphs had human sized clay masks instead of the head and gold amulets in the shape of women in place of the neck.  Prior to this, hunter gatherer and Neolithic graves were very mundane; only 20-30% of LBK graves had modest tools, pottery or jewelry.  The Varna necropolis points to a sudden marked degree of social stratification, with the emergence of chiefs.  What accounts for this sudden change in societal structure?

It appears that the Varna culture probably brought the Chalcolithic, or Copper Age to the Balkans.  There is some evidence of copper mining in Israel, Iran and Mesopotamia from 7000 BCE, but not widespread use.  A copper axe dated around 5000 BCE was found in Serbia, related to the Vinča culture.  The discovery of copper metallurgy was related to the high temperature 1100 degree C pottery kilns that were widespread at that time.  If blue-green azurite or malachite copper ore is heated to 800 degrees C with powdered charcoal, tiny shiny beads of copper form.  These can then be reheated, welded, and hammered into a wide variety of tools: fish hooks, awls, blades, and jewelry: beads, rings, and pendants.  An analysis of the gold objects in Varna, shows that the gold was probably sourced from mountain streams close to known ancient copper mining sites.  The metallurgy was extremely sophisticated; several articles were hollow, made by the lost wax process.  It appears that copper mining and metallurgy had been percolating for several centuries, probably from its invention in the Vinca culture, but the Varna people were able to scale up the manufacture to industrial levels.  Starting from this time, copper rings, beads, and axes start to be found across cultures even as far as 1,200 miles away on the Volga River.  There had been long distance trade networks in Spondylus shells from the Aegean Sea, now magical copper tools and jewelry were traded for anything the Varna chiefs desired.  Perhaps hunter gatherer and early farmers  cultures are egalitarian because everyone is poor.  What do you think caused extreme social stratification in Varna?

The Cucuteni-Trypillia Culture 5500 to 2750 BCE

Over 2400 settlements have been found to date.  Cucuteni-Trypillian sites varied in size, from six houses to hundreds, and later, thousands of houses.  The houses were rectangular and sized for one family unit, with one or two rooms, around 300 square feet, made of timber with clay floor, wattle and daub walls and thatched roof.  Cattle skulls were often buried underneath the house floor as perhaps some sort of cultish deposit.   Each house was self-contained with ceramic kilns, baking ovens and work centers, with loom weights, indicating looms were used to weave flax and later, wool. Most pottery was made by winding long coils of clay into circles to form the shape of the pot and then smoothing the sides, although there is some indirect evidence that they sometimes used a slow turning potter's wheel.  Houses were set in circles, sometimes surrounding a larger central structure which may have functioned as a communal building.  Cucuteni Trypillian settlements were completely burned down and rebuilt, often on the exact same floor plan every 75 years or so; no one knows why.  Can you hazard some guesses?

The family units probably all participated in a subsistence farming life: working in the fields to raise crops, tending livestock, hunting wild game, gathering firewood or clay, fishing, and cooking.  Population expansion was accommodated by splitting off and forming new settlements a few kilometers away as needed.

Since the farming communities were mostly self-sufficient, there was little need for trade, but some occurred.  Certain types of flint were imported from 200 miles away; other flint tools were made in Cucuteni-Trypolie settlements and traded to other cultures.  Copper was imported from the Gumelniţa culture, which sourced it from Varna culture in Bulgaria.  Spondylus shells were sourced from the Aegean.  Exquisite Cucuteni-Trypillian ceramic pots were traded with their neighbors.  The earliest known salt works in the world was in Romania, used by the  Starčevo culture, and later by the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture.  This salt was necessary to supplement the grain based diet of people and cattle, and tens of thousands of pounds were likely widely exported each year.

One remarkable feature of the Cucuteni-Trypillian is that throughout the culture there are no signs of social stratification.  The material culture is uniform throughout each settlement.  There are no grave goods; we haven't found any graves and don't know what they did with their bodies.   Perhaps in conjunction with egalitarianism, there are no signs of warfare or defensive fortifications such as palisades, at least until 4000 BCE.  It may be that the period was a time of plenty; there was enough land and food and no reason for violence.  Violence and defensive structures are found at various times throughout the European Neolithic, just not in Southeastern Europe during this period.

Another remarkable feature of the Cucuteni-Trypillian is the presence of female figurines with joined legs, exaggerated hips and buttocks and schematic rodlike heads about four inches long.  These were found in nearly every house, some houses had nine or more.  One collection, called the Council of the Goddesses, contained twenty-one figurines, with many reclining on little chairs.

We'll revisit the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture again next week.

The End of Old Europe

Suvorovo Culture  4300 to 4000  BCE

From between 4300 and 4000 BCE, large kurgans began appearing on the northern edge of the Danube River delta where it empties into the Black Sea.  Kurgans are large burial mounds of earth which cover a single or few graves.  The word kurgan is derived from a Turkic word meaning "build", "erect", or "guard", "protect".  These kurgans were about 30 feet in diameter, perhaps 20 feet high, and surrounded by standing stones.  See a picture of a similar but larger kurgan from Russia, below:

Why did people spend so much time and effort building these burial mounds?  No one really knows.  They were probably a sign of respect for the honored chieftain buried within.  Perhaps they were a marker of territory, or perhaps they mirrored the tell towns along the Danube.  

This culture, known as the Suvorovo culture, is known only by its burials; no settlements have been found.   Within the kurgans the skeleton ( or sometimes the several skeletons) were lavishly decorated with shell and copper beads, copper rings, bracelets and neck rings (torques).  The copper was traced by elemental analysis to mines from  the Varna culture in Bulgaria. Some graves included sacrificed cattle or sheep.   Sometimes weapons, such as solid cast copper axes, spears and javelins, or polished stone mace heads in the shape of horse heads were in the burials:

These burials represent a huge departure from anything seen before in Old Europe.  The shape of the male skulls were wide and flat, termed proto-Europoid, unlike the narrow and gracile skulls of the Neolithic farmers.  The elaborate single grave was in sharp contrast to any egalitarian burial in Old Europe, excepting the chief in Varna.  The weapons, the animal sacrifices, and the erection of a huge burial monument show that an entirely different culture had suddenly arrived.  

Death of Old Europe

Soon after the Suvorovo kurgans started appearing, thirty small agricultural settlements of the Bolgrad culture, just north of the Danube delta were abandoned and burned.  Most settlements were evacuated before burning; one was found left with whole pots, indicating abandonment was quick.  

By 4000 BCE, the entire Balkans had fallen into what J.P.  Mallory termed a "dark age".  All of the 600 tell settlements in the Balkans were abandoned; new settlements  of a new culture, called the Cernavodă culture occurred in all directions except eastwards and were located in marginal locations such as islands or caves, or on easily fortified hilltop or promontory sites.  These new cultures did not use female figurines, had crude pottery, did not live on tells, and depended more on stockbreeding.  All the copper mines in the Balkans abruptly ceased operation.

What caused the death of Old Europe?  Gimbutas' kurgan  or steppe hypothesis is that patriarchal cattle herders from the Russian and Ukrainian steppe invaded and destroyed the Neolithic cultures, much as the Slavic tribes would destroy all the Greek and Byzantine settlements in the Balkans over three millennia later.  Gimbutas thought that the cattle herders from the steppes spoke proto-Indo-European language and eventually spread that language across Europe and Asia.

Another theory is climate change.  The period from 6000 to 4000 BCE had been the warmest weather since the end of the ice age.  Suddenly, perhaps due to a volcanic eruption or a meteor or asteroid impact, the weather got much colder, in an event called the Piora Oscillation.   Two bitterly cold years occured in 4120 BCE and 4040 BCE, followed by a 140 year long bitterly cold period lasting from 3960 BCE to 3821 BCE.    This shock could have collapsed the farming economy of Old Europe.

A third theory is that following two millennia of intensive farming with increasing populations, the soils around the tell towns decreased in fertility.  Perhaps the death of Old Europe was a combination of all three.  What do you think?  One fact that is hard to understand however, is that the Cucuteni-Tripillian Culture, to the east of the Carpathians, did not collapse, rather it seemed to thrive and grow larger.   In order to figure out why, in the next chapter we'll have to travel east to the steppes of Russia and Ukraine and figure out what was happening over there.