Knowra Prehistoric Europe Prehistoric Europe Prehistoric Europe is the human past in Europe before written records, from the earliest known hominin presence through writing’s gradual spread across different regions.
Paleolithic Europe : The long period of European prehistory when people lived mainly by hunting, fishing, and gathering. Its changing stone technologies and lifeways span the earliest human presence to the end of the last Ice Age.
Archaeological dating : Methods archaeologists use to estimate when objects, sites, and events existed. Prehistory depends on dating evidence rather than written chronologies.
Atapuerca : A complex of archaeological and paleontological sites in northern Spain with exceptionally rich early human remains. Its fossils document hominin presence in Europe hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Prehistory : The human past before written records provide a usable historical account. Prehistoric Europe is one regionally defined part of this broader period.
Mesolithic Europe : The postglacial period in European prehistory, marked by diverse hunter-gatherer societies before farming became widespread. Warming climates transformed environments and encouraged new regional lifeways after the Ice Age.
Radiocarbon dating : A method for dating once-living material by measuring its remaining carbon-14. It provides many chronologies for European sites, especially those younger than about 50,000 years.
Dmanisi : An archaeological site in Georgia containing some of the earliest known hominin fossils outside Africa. It provides a key comparison for debates about how early hominins reached Europe.
Protohistory : A period when a society lacks its own written records but is described in texts produced elsewhere. External accounts can make some European societies historically visible before local writing appeared.
Neolithic Europe : The period when farming, herding, and settled village life spread through much of Europe. The transition to food production reshaped settlement, labor, and population across the continent.
Stratigraphy : The study of layered deposits and their sequence, used to establish the relative order of archaeological remains. Layers help establish which European artifacts and occupations came before others.
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