Cultures of Prehistoric Europe: Art History 201
A brief timeline of prehistoric European history and archeogenetics
The theory of human evolution says that we all stem from Africa. Various groups of hominids (including Neanderthals and Denisovans) left the continent and spread across the globe in countless waves. The first Homo sapiens appeared between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago, as hominids developed the capacity for cumulative culture.
As humans migrated into Europe, they fought and allied with groups like the Neanderthals. Before their eventual extinction, traces of Neanderthal DNA began showing in ancient humans, as high as 6% between 63,000 and 43,000 BC.
Neanderthal culture was fairly complex; they had stone tools, fire, medicine, paint, clothing, musical instruments, and even basic boats. We don’t know how much of this was shared with early humans, versus how much we figured out on our own.
Genetic analysis shows that distinct lineages emerged between 70,000 and 50,000 years ago. African, Eurasian, Oceanic, etc. This is also around the time that early language and modern cognition seems to have appeared in humans. Shortly thereafter, we see a split between “a West Eurasian lineage” and “an East Eurasian lineage.” Most groups became effectively geographically isolated.
The Earliest Cultures
Different environments and evolutionary pressures led to subtle yet distinct changes in genetic diversity, especially after 37,000 years ago, when the Aurignacian culture came into being. Researchers estimate that the European population was between 1,738 and 28,800 people at this time. Some of their DNA is still present in modern Europeans.
The Aurignacians (41-31k BC) are considered Europe’s first culture. They painted in caves, put together jewelry, made tools from stone and bone, and crafted early figurines. The most famous is probably the “lion person,” a dramatic ivory figure called the world’s oldest statue.
From there we transition to the Gravettian culture (31-19k BC) which is “archaeologically the last European culture many consider unified.” They’re responsible for many of the famous (albeit ugly) Venus figurines.
The peak of cave painting is associated with both cultures along with some others. Cave paintings are typically 15,000 to 40,000 years old. The famous Lascaux cave paintings date back to around 17,000 years ago.
The Last Glacial Maximum and the Neolithic Revolution
This is roughly 20,000 BC to 10,000 BC. The Last Glacial Maximum means what it implies–this was when the ice sheets covering the North were at their greatest extent. This, in part, forced populations further south.
Genetic lineages expanded as groups became more isolated from other populations. For example, there’s West European Hunter-Gatherer (WHG) and Early European Farmers (EEF). The farming population was closely related to Mesolithic populations of West Asia (Anatolia and the Caucasus) nearer where agriculture was first developed (the Fertile Crescent).
Culturally, groups remained largely similar to the Aurignacians and Gravettians. Their successors included an “Epi-Gravettian” (19k-6k BC) and a group named the Solutrean (20-15k BC). The latter is known mostly for their advanced techniques with flint.
Archeological finds include: “Large thin spear-heads; scrapers with edge not on the side but on the end; flint knives and saws, but all still chipped, not ground or polished; long spear-points, with tang and shoulder on one side only, are also characteristic implements of this epoch. Bone or horn, too, was used. The Solutrian work exhibits a transitory stage of art between the flint implements of the Mousterian and the bone implements of the Madelenian epochs. The fauna includes the horse, reindeer, mammoth, cave lion, rhinoceros, bear and urus.”
The Magdalenian culture was rather long-lived (18-10k BC) and associated with reindeer hunting. Their work with bone was unusually complex especially compared to previous stone tools. And while they didn’t create pottery, they did work with clay in new ways, and built some of the earliest tents.
Side note: mammoths went extinct in Europe around 10-8k BC.
Other early cultures included:
Hamburg culture (14-11k BC)
Federmesser culture (12-11k BC)
Ahrensburgian (11-10k BC)
Azilian (11-8k BC)
Swiderian culture (11-8k BC)
Fosna–Hensbacka culture (8-7k BC)
Maglemosian culture (9-6k BC)
The Estonian Kunda culture (9-5k BC)
Some humans began transitioning from hunter-gatherers to agricultural societies around 10,000 years ago. They domesticated animals, the first of which was dogs. (One paper suggests that dogs were domesticated thousands of years before farming.) As free time increased, so did early foundations of art and writing (proto-writing).
After Agriculture
After 8,000 BC, we see an interesting change in genetic makeup. Around 7,000 years ago, all across the world, data points to “a decline in the male effective population size during the Neolithic to approximately one-twentieth of its original level before the Neolithic.” Except the overall global population continued to increase, so a natural disaster couldn’t be the cause (for example, the alleged Toba disaster).
Researchers suggest “Patrilineal kin group competition” as the answer–a cultural shift and increase in warfare. The genetic bottleneck then decreased alongside the emergence of more complex societies, such as chiefdoms and regional states.
Which is something that we do see, and very obviously at that. The Stone Age ended in Europe around 5500 BC as metalworking was discovered. The Chalcolithic, or Copper Age, was a transitional era between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age.
Central/Eastern European culture between 7000-2000 BC is sometimes referred to as “Danubian culture.” This includes the important Linear Pottery culture. These peoples worked metal, domesticated animals, built longhouses, cultivated the soil, and more markers of advanced complex societies.
The Vinča culture (mainly 5700-4500 BC) has one of the world’s earliest copper mines (Rudna Glava) plus evidence of metalworking, pottery, figurines, and advanced farming knowledge. They’re credited by one source with introducing wheat and plowing to Europe. The Serbian government calls them the “Cradle of European civilization.”
Other cultures at this time included:
Cucuteni–Trypillia culture (5500-2750 BC)
Kongemose culture (6-5k BC)
Ertebølle culture (5-4k BC)
Varna culture (5-4k BC)
The Varna are especially notable for their vast quantities of gold and massive cemetery complex. They were possibly the richest culture in the world at the time.
Another major shift in early European culture came after 3000 BC with the invasion (or migration) of the Indo-European peoples. Primarily based on the Yamnaya culture from the Pontic-Caspian Steppes. We don’t know for sure if it was violent, but either way, large amounts of Indo-European (Western Steppe Herder, Ancient North Eurasian, etc) DNA became infused into local populations. Languages changed drastically, as did religious beliefs. (More on this in the future.)
Modern European ancestry is now mostly categorized by differences in three main groups of DNA makeup:
Western Hunter-Gatherer (WHG)
Early European Farmer (EEF)
Ancient North Eurasian (ANE) which is generally less than 20% of ancestry and the likely origin of blond hair
Other important cultures included those of the Bell Beaker and Corded Ware.
The End of Prehistory
“Prehistory” ended as writing systems developed. Early examples of potential writing include the wooden Dispilio Tablet dating to 5202 BC and the disputed Tărtăria tablets from 5500-2750 BC.
The European Bronze Age began around 4000-2300 BC, varying by region. The Minoan culture, based out of Crete, is especially notable for being “the first advanced civilization in Europe” with their still-undeciphered writing systems (generally considered the first known writing in Europe).
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