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A. Introduction
• The culture in Old Europe can be gleaned from the cave paintings
(20,000 BCE) in France
• millenial traditions of Old Europens disintegrated when Indo-
Europeans brought their patriarchal social structure, pastoral
economy and male-dominated group of gods.
• It was first the Aegean and Mediterranean islands (Greek group)
that were subjected to this quiet invasion
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• western part of Europe remained unchanged for a millenium longer

• To the early Greeks, the people of Europe were barbarians (Greek
barbarophonos = incomprehensible speech).

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A. Introduction
• first Old European settlers appeared about 55,000 BCE
• Farming and the establishment of permanent settlements at the
end of the glaciation period beginning 7th millennium BCE laid the
foundations of European civilization.
• Cattle were raised for the provision of meat and dairy.
• Oxen were used for traction (for plowing and for wheeled vehicles)
and sheeps were for manure and wool.
• Discovery of plowing marks preserved in the soil dating to the end
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of the 4th millenium BC and actual wheels from northern Europe

by 2500 BCE are evidence of this pastoral way of life.
• A clay model of a wheeled cart from the same period was
excavated from a grave at Szigetszentmárton, Hungary.

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A. Introduction
• The simplest tools were required for primitive buildings
such as huts of perishable materials, shrines for worship,
stockade (fence to keep out enemies) for defense,
and cairns or mound over the grave.
• Poles were used as framework, mud and animal skins were
for walls and thatch (made of dried leaves) or earth mound
as roofing materials, are repetitions of the
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typologies discussed in the Near East.

• But prehistoric Europe has more in store.
• Henges, beehive huts, longhouses and other structures are
specific to the area.

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B. Influences
1. Geographical influence
• Europe has 4 major regions: the Northern Highlands, North European Plain,
Central Uplands and the Alpine Mountains:
• The Northern Highlands define the physical landscape of Finland, Iceland,
Scotland, Ireland, Brittany region of France, Spain and Portugal, and the
Scandinavian region (Norway, Sweden and Denmark).
• Most of the areas were covered with ice but later produced abundant
marshlands, lakes and fjords when the glaciers receded.
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• The North European Plain is below 152 meters (500 feet) in elevation
and includes parts of France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark,
Poland, the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), and Belarus.
• region known for its navigable rivers like the Rhine, Weser, Elbe, Oder and
Vistula.
• land features made the region supported communication travel and
agriculture and is the most densely populated region in Europe.

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B. Influences
• The Central Uplands include western France and Belgium, southern
Germany, the Czech Republic and parts of northern Switzerland and Austria.
• less rugged than the Alpine region, populated by trees and has low
altitude.
• In our modern period, this region has a small population except in the
Rhine, Elbe and Danube river valleys.

• The Alpine Mountain includes northern Spain, southern France, and the
Italian and Balkan peninsulas.
• High elevation and rugged plateaus of the Alps, Pyrenees, Apennines,
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Dinaric Alps, Balkans and Carpathians

• highest peak in Europe is Mount Elbrus at 5,642meters located in the
Caucasus mountains of Russia
• Active volcanoes like Vesuvius, Etna, both in Italy, also dot the Alpine
region.

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B. Influences
• length of Europe's coastline is an outstanding feature of the
continent totalling to 78,000 km length.
• second smallest continent, Europe is described as a peninsula (land
that is almost entirely surrounded by water) by the presence of the
Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, and the Mediterranean, Black and
Caspian Seas on the south.
• 28% of Europe lies on peninsulas with the Scandinavian peninsula
as the biggest covering an area of 800,000 square kilometers.
• 7% of Europe's land area is comprised of islands majority of which
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belong to Greece.

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B. Influences
2. Geological influence
• In Iceland, northern Scandinavia and Russia can be found a treeless
region called tundra.
• small mosses lichens and ferns grow that feed herds of reindeer
abundant in the area.
• The taiga, a coniferous forest, sits below the tundra and extends
across northern Europe.
• Moose, bear and elk are the animals you can find in the taiga.
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• Below the taiga is a mixture of coniferous and deciduous trees in

what remains as Europe's forest area.
• The Mediterranean Sea is bordered by vegetation that includes
pines, cypress and oak.

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B. Influences
• Agriculture imported from the Near East adapted to the different European
regional environments to produce not only food products but also wine and
cloth, among other things.
• Agricultural societies, initially preferred the prime arable soils like the loess
of central Europe, were later able to exploit many less fertile soils with the
use of sheep.
• Agricultural revolution spread to southeast Europe in 7000 BCE while a
Neolithic culture flourished in the Aegean and Adriatic areas abut 6500 BCE.
• Areas in central Europe and around the Danube river became food-producing
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economies in 6000-5500 BCE. Copper artifacts from 5500 BCE suggests a

fully developed copper culture in the 5th millenium BCE.
• Agrarian cultures appeared in western and nothern Europe 2 millenia later.

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B. Influences
• northward movement of the
African plate into the Eurasian
plate in the Mediterranean basin
is a prominent geologic aspect in
Europe
• Movement of the African plate
caused the elevation of the
Pyrenees, the Alps and
Carpathian mountains.
• Pushed upwards are limestone
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and sediments of the ancient

floor of the Tethys Sea. The
African plate is also credited for
stimulating active faults and
volcanoes such as Mount
Etna.

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B. Influences
3. Climatic influence
• The Pleitocene pattern of warm and cold periods characterized the climate
during paleolithic period.
• Human occupation varied irregularly as response to climate conditions.
• Most of Scandinavia, the North European Plain and Russia were un-
occupied during the Paleolithic and Mesolithic.
• The Antarctic Cold Reversal around 14,000 years ago helped Europe,
Asia and North America escape the icy grip of kilometer-thick ice
sheets.
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• Temperatures in the northern hemisphere began to increase by as

much as 10degees centigrade in a single decade.
• The temperate climate of Europe made it the most favored region on earth
as it is away from climatic excesses of unabated rainfall and high
temperatures.

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B. Influences

• Meteorological conditions is another important reason for

partiality to Europe -- its indented coastlines provided a
beneficial effect on climate.
• The Atlantic Ocean on the north and west, and the
Mediterranean Sea on the south are great modulators of
European climate.
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• The climate, geographical position and sea-integrated terrain are

the factors for the habitation of Europe from the first appearance
of man on earth.

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B. Influences
4. Religious influence
• Archaeology reconstructed the beliefs and practices of Old Europe through the
examination of temples, altars, frescoes, rock carvings, caves and tombs,
figurines, masks and cult vessels.
• Evidence were uncovered in southeastern and Danubian areas up to the
Carpathian Mountains in the north, comprising the countries of Greece, Italy,
Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Hungary, and the Czech and Slovak
Republics.
• A second area for cult artifacts is in western Europe that includes Spain,
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Portugal, France and the British Isles.

• Megalithic tomb monuments with engraved symbols and images of deities,
stone stelae and figurines for burial were well-preserved for study revealing
the commonality in deities and practices even in diverse locations.

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B. Influences
• evidence of female sacred images depicted in
various forms of aniconic and elaborated icons
showed goddess worship throughout Europe
and northern Asia.
• gynecocentric (centered on women) beliefs
during the Paleolithic era was concerned w/
feminine cycles, lunar phases and seasonal
changes that created a mother, root gatherer,
and seed planter.
• sky and stars of Indo-European myth had no
place in symbolism.
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• trees, springs and serpents that emerge from the

ground were taken as symbols of rising and
spontaneous life. The interplay between
creation and destruction, birth and death are
symbols of the changing nature of life on
earth. The moon phases -- new, waxing and old -
- are the trinity of deities maiden, nymph and
crone.

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B. Influences
• Goddesses include the water-bird goddess associated with divine
moisture from the oceans, rivers, lakes and skies.
• The snake goddess was a symbol of fertility and family well-
being. In tomb-shrines, a winding snake figure is also taken as a
symbol of regeneration.
• The birth-giving goddess is a well-documented paleolithic art in
France, whose maleficent twin is the vulture or owl goddess,
appearing as death through vulture, owl or predatory bird
representations that bear hooks and axes.
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• The goddess of regeneration is represented by a fish, toad,

hedgehog, triangle, hourglass, bee and butterfly.
• The pregnant goddess (mother earth) is depicted as a nude with
hands on her enlarged belly. She is graphically represented as a
snake, triangle, lozenge (rhombus or diamond), and 2 or 4 lines.

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B. Influences
• 2 male gods are recorded from the
period, the sorrowful ancient and the
mature male holding a crosier (a
hooked staff).
• The sorrowful ancient is depicted as a
sitting man with hands on knees or
supporting his face, usually appearing
beside the seated pregnant
figurines. Ganditorul (above) or 'The
Thinker of Cernavodar" is a terracotta
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sculpture that was excavated in 1953

in Romania and believed to be from
circa 5000 BCE. Mature male
excavated in Szegvár-Tüzköves (Tisza
culture, Hungary) is from Upper
Paleolithic period.

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B. Influences
5. Social and historical influences
• The Atapuerca Mountains in northern Spain is the earliest known and dated
location of a group and generation of individuals in Old Europe.
• Fossils of human bones and stone artifacts suggesting Lower Paleolithic
occupation over 3 million-300,000 years ago are scattered over a wide area and
periods.
• Homo antecessor (homo erector antecessor), homo heidelbergensis and
Neanderthals left enough historic data to attest their prolonged presence in Old
Europe.
• Homo heidelbergensis was discovered in numerous sites in Germany, Great
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Britain and northern France.

• Homo neanderthalensis is the earliest European (350,000 and 600,000 years
ago) whose records were found in limestone caves and other large areas like the
Mousterian (from Le Mouster rock shelters in Dordogne, France).
• The Neanderthals disappeared between 40,000 and 28,000 years ago with no
clear explanation for their extinction.
•
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B. Influences
• It was during the Mesolithic that homo sapiens began populating the region
• Lepenski Vir in Serbia is the earliest settled community with buildings and
large store of food.
• earliest farming in Europe was discovered in Starcevo (Serbia)
• Copper smelting was started by the Vinca culture around 7,000 years ago in
Belovode and Plocnik areas of Serbia, which provided no link of transitioning
to the Chalcolithic Age.
• The introduction of metals not only initiated technoloical progress but also
the social distinction between rich and poor.
• Iron Age culture in Europe arrived in northern Europe by 500 BC and was
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influenced by the Hittites.

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B. Influences
The Near East, Mediterranean and Caucasus were the origins of European
Neolithic. Thessalia in Greece was the first to engage in agriculture, cattle herding and
pottery in what is known as pre-Sesklo culture. It was eventually the Thessalian Sesklo
culture (8000 BC) that branched out into Europe. From there the Balkan Peninsula was fully
occupied in the 6th millennium BCE. There became a fully-formed Neolithic Europe with 5
main cultural regions:
• Danubian cultures: from northern France to western Ukraine. Now split into several local
cultures, the most relevant ones being the Romanian branch (Boian culture) that expanded into
Bulgaria, the Rossen culture that was pre-eminent in the west, and the Lengyel culture of
Austria and western Hungary, which would have a major role in later periods.
• Mediterranean cultures: from the Adriatic to eastern Spain, including Italy and large portions of
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France and Switzerland. They were also diversified into several groups.
• The area of Dimini-Vinca: Thessalia, Macedonia and Serbia but extending its influence to parts
of the mid-Danubian basin (Tisza, Slavonia) and southern Italy.
• Eastern Europe: basically central and eastern Ukraine and parts of southern Russia and
Belarus (Dniepr-Don culture). Apparently, they were the first to domesticate horses though
some Paleolithic evidence could disprove it.
• Atlantic Europe: a mosaic of local cultures, some of them still pre-Neolithic, from Portugal to
southern Sweden. In around 5800 BC, western France began to incorporate the Megalithic style
of burial.

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B. Influences
• “copper period began to be used in the Balkans and eastern and central Europe from 5500 BC.
• Same time when the Yamna people from Volga filtered into eastern Europe, creating the Sredny
Stog culture and pushing the natives northwest to the Baltic and to Denmark. This is the
Kurgan hypothesis explaining the spread of the IndoEuropean in the north.
• Another cultural branch, the Cernavoda I, left traces in the lower Danube in what is believed to
be another invasion. For both instances, the main factor for mobility is the use of horses.
• the cultures in the Czech Republic and Poland got aborbed in the Danubian Lengyel culture,
only to disappear later on. The Boian-Marica people (Bulgaria and southern Romania) left a
royal cemetery near the Black sea hinting of a monarchial set up, which is seen to have been
copied by the Bodrogkeresztur culture in the Tiszan region.
• Michelsberg culture from the western Danubian region (the Rhine and Seine basins) displaced
the Rossen culture.
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• Chassey in southeastern France and La Lagozza in northern Italy fused into a functional culture
due to the distribution network of silex (a silica, especially quartz or flint) but signs of conflict
left skeletons with violent injuries.
• The people beyond the Volga took over southern Russia and Ukraine.
• In the west, a megalithic super-culture from southern Sweden to southern Spain formed the
Danubian grouping which divided into smaller groups.”

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B. Influences
• By middle Chalcolithic period, fortified towns appeared in the Iberian Peninsula: the Villa
Nova de Sao Pedro culture in Portugal and the Los Millares people from southern Spain.
• Both towns appeared to have friendly and productive exchanges. Villa Nova de Sao
Pedro lasted 1300 years but vanishes around the Bronze period.
• rise and fall of cultures in different parts of Europe
• sea peoples destroyed some parts of Greece (Troy and Mycenae) but on the Atlantic
side, Great Britain became the center of Atlantic cultures.
• It was also around this time that the Villanova culture, the possible predecessor of
the Etruscan civilization, appeared in central Italy.

• Most of Europe entered the historical period during the Iron Age. The territorial
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expansion by the Greeks and Romans diffused literacy in large areas, continuing in altered
form on the remote regions of Greenland and Old Prussians.
• The Celtic La Tene culture defined the 2nd phase of Iron Age in Europe around 400
BC. They expanded into the Balkans, British Isles and other regions of France and
Italy. Germanic tribes (from Scandinavia and Lower Germany) superseded the Celtic
power.
• The remaining history is country or region specific, a protohistory, and no longer
European prehistory.

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1. Dwellings
PALEOLITHIC PERIOD

a.1 Caves were abundant in the region and were ready for occupancy usually by
the hunter-gatherers who were constantly on the move. Artifact of flints, human
and animal bones were the signs of cave occupancy during the paleolithic. An
improvement of cave dwelling is the lean-to (a shed erected against 1 wall of the
cave) near the cave entrance by draping a curtain of animal skin or thatch over the
posts and building a hearth inside.
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Example: Le Lazaret (Nice, France) - home to either Homo Heidelbergensis or

proto-Neanderthals of about 200,000 year-old juvenile, archaeologists date the the
more than 20,000 fossilized bone fragments to the Lower Paleolithic period.

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Example: Lascaux Cave -
located in southwestern
France, its occupation is
evidenced by paintings
within the cave. Images of
people and animals were
on thee walls as a way to
record their daily lives.
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a.2 Hut - round or oval in plan made of
stakes and built on shoreline. Fooring was a
thick bed of organic matter and ash, with
pebble-lined or shallow pit central hearth.

Example: Terra Amata (Nice, France) -

Central posts carry tree branches in A-frame
position and are held in place on the ground
with stones. There is a central hearth and
an opening on the roof for smoke. Some
houses measured 14.9meters (49 feet).
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These were wood, tent-link structures made

of wooden poles and branches covered with
grass or animal hides. These were light and
easily constructed and dismantled. They
were used by people on the move, by
nomads (hunters-gatherers and early
pastoral people).

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Example: Molodova - located on the
Dniester River in Ukraine, it has a 5
Middle Paleolithic (Molodova 1-5), 3
Upper Paleolithic and 1 Mesolithic
occupations under the Mousterian
culture. 26 hearths were found at
Molodova I with diameters ranging from
40x30cm to 100x40cm. About 2500
mammoth bones have been recovered
from Molodova I layer 4.
Molodova level 4 has 5 bone areas
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covering 1,200 square meters that

includes a bone pit, an area with
engraved bones, 2 areas with bones and
tools, and a mammoth bone hut (circular
dump of bones with tools at the
center). The ring of bones measures
5x8meters inside and 7x10 externally.

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a.3 Tent - common in glaciated
parts of Old Europe. Early man
survived the harsh climates in
simple animal-hide huts and
tents located near a cave mouth
or under a rock-overhang or in
open air. Straight tree branches
were used for the teepee frame
over which hides were draped
and rocks held the frame and
hides in place.
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Example: Plateau Parrain

(Dordogne, France) -

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Example: Gonnersdorf,
Germany - the settlement
covered an area of 650 square
meters. Tent houses had circular
plans with a diameter of 6-10
meters and colored red on the
inside and outside. The floors
were paved with slate. The
Gonnersdorf people lived during a
cold phase but lived comfortably
in tents. The hearth is located
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near the central pole to allow

smoke to escape thru the opening
at the top. The framework
construction was very sturdy and
also allowed household items to
be hunt from the beams.

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a.4 Pit house - common
where climate was
severe. The house may be
oval or trapezoidal in plan
with central post holes for
the roof.

Example: @Barca, Czech

Republic -
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MESOLITHIC PERIOD

b.1 Hut

Example: Lepenski Vir,

Danube
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Example: Soroki, Ukraine
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NEOLITHIC PERIOD

c.1 Timber-framed houses

Example: Nea Nikomedeia (Greece)
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c.2 Longhouse
Example: Bylany, Czech Republic
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c.3 Drystone house
Example: Skara Brae (Scotland)
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C.2 Temples and ritual structures

2.a Temple
Example: Ggantija (Gozo, Malta) - trefoil plan made from megalithic elements backed by
stone-faced earthen walls. The structure was formall planned, had concave monumental
facades, trilithon entrance passages and pairs of lateral and terminal chambers. Corbelling
of masonry was done to narrow the roof opening which was eventually closed with beams
and thatch
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Example: Hal Tarxien, Malta - A striking group of megalithic temples, far removed from
the Atlantic coast but in a similar tradition, is found in Malta. The main group is at Tarxien,
where the three surviving structures date from around 1500 BC. They are built above the
ruins of an earlier temple. The buildings are constructed from great blocks of dressed
limestone, many of them decorated with patterns of low-relief spirals or images of sacrificial
animals.
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2.b Open-air ritual structure
Example: Merrivale and Stalldon Down (western Dartmoor, Devon, England)
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Example: Megaliths of Carnac, France
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Example: Stanton Drew (Somerset, England)
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2.c Enclosures with causeway
Example: Windmill Hill (UK)
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2.d Henges
Example: Avebury, Wiltshire, England
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Example: Woodhenge, Wiltshire
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C.3 Tomb
COLLECTIVE TOMBS

3.a Megalithic passage graves

Example: Maes Howe, Scotland - covered by a barrow and surrounded by a ditch. An
entrance passage led to a burial chamber which is a stone corbelled vault.
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Example: Newgrange, Ireland
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Example: Los Millares, Spain
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3.b Megalithic gallery grave
Example: Mid Howe (Oarkney Island, Scotland)
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Example: Esse, La Rouche (Brittany, France)
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3.c Earthen longbarrow
Example: Fussel's Lodge, England
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