Chapter 1 – Prehistory

Despite their heavy skeletons and developed brow ridges, Neanderthals were probably little different from modern humans. Some of the skeletal remains appear to be from deliberate burials, the first evidence for such careful behaviour among humans.

(Encyclopedia Britannica)

Prehistory is the period of time before any written history. We have some idea of what happened then from the remains that have been and continue to be studied and analyzed.

As the story of human history always does, Europe’s story begins with hominids—those bipedal descendants of the great apes who learned how to craft simplistic tools, clothe themselves in the skins of dead animals, and even cook their scavenged meals over the hot flames of a controlled fire. These human ancestors wandered into Europe from Africa via the Middle East about 45,000 years ago. [1] Back then, there were multiple species and cultures of humanity, including the Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon, both of whom made their homes throughout Europe. Neanderthals far predated the Cro-Magnons, however; they’d actually evolved in Europe about 350,000 years before ever setting eyes on their Cro-Magnon cousins.

Within just a few thousand years of modern humans’ appearance in Europe, the Neanderthal branch of the human family completely disappeared. No one knows exactly why this happened, but there are two popular theories. The first posits that Homo sapiens clashed violently with their Neanderthal neighbors, killing and wiping out the offending populations of the latter group. The second theory suggests that Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons simply interbred to the point that they became one civilization and culture instead of two. There is evidence for this in the existence of Neanderthal DNA mixed into the DNA of Cro-Magnon humans as well as even modern humans.

Whatever the early social order of Europe’s first people, the Cro-Magnon emerged as the only remaining species and laid its claim boldly to the continent during a period when the climate was particularly cold. Research from some archaeologists has suggested that the social structure of the Cro-Magnon was particularly advantageous to humans at that time since they could gain access to resources over a larger area thanks to community sharing and trade.

The lone human survivors of that nasty cold snap about 40,000 years ago wrapped themselves liberally in furs and skins and pressed onward. They learned to live in small communities, traveling from place to place as hunter-gatherers. [2] Nomadic by nature, it was the daily ambition of these people to search for deer, fish, root vegetables, seeds, acorns, sea beets, and honey. Though their primary goal was big game or seafood, hunter-gatherers of Paleolithic Europe were not picky. They ate vegetable matter whenever and wherever they could find it, a habit that not only provided them with necessary vitamins and fiber but with the instruments of reasonably healthy teeth. [3] Grass seeds, the predecessors to cereals like wheat, oats, and barley, were frequently included in meals.

Despite their strong teeth and bones, however, Cro-Magnons only lived into their 30s or 40s, if they even survived infancy. Over the course of the next 30,000 years, their numbers increased minimally as it was difficult to manage large families in a nomadic system. All of that was about to change, however, as the next step in human evolution was just around the corner.