Prehistory of Southeastern Europe

For the history of Earth before the occupation by the genus homo, including the period of early hominins, see Geology of Europe and Human evolution.

The prehistory of Southeastern Europe , defined roughly as the territory of the wider Balkans peninsula (including the territories of the modern countries of Albania, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Moldova, and some regions of Ukraine, such as Zakarpattia Oblast), covers the period from the Upper Paleolithic, beginning with the presence of Homo sapiens in the area some 44,000 years ago,  until  the appearance of the first written records in Classical Antiquity, in Greece as early as the 8th century BC.

Human prehistory in Southeastern Europe is conventionally divided into smaller periods, such as Upper Paleolithic, Holocene Mesolithic/Epipaleolithic, Neolithic Revolution, expansion of Proto-Indo-Europeans, and Protohistory. The changes between these are gradual. For example, depending on interpretation, protohistory might or might not include Bronze Age Greece (2000-1200 BC), Minoan, Mycenaean, Thracian, Lemnian, and Venetic cultures. By one interpretation of the historiography criterion, the Southeastern Europe enters protohistory only with Homer (See also Historicity of the Iliad, and Geography of the Odyssey). At any rate, the period ends before Herodotus in 5th century BC.

Balkan Transition to the Upper Palaeolithic
There is evidence of human presence in the Balkans from the Middle Paleolithic onwards, but the number of sites is limited. According to Douglass W. Bailey : it is important to recognize that the Balkan Upper Palaeolithic was a long period containing little significant internal change. Thus, the Balkans transition was not as dramatic as in other European regions. Crucial changes that define the earliest emergence of Homo sapiens sapiens are presented at Bacho Kiro at 44,000 BCE. The Bulgarian key Palaeolithic caves named Bacho Kiro and Temnata Dupka with early Upper Palaeolithic material correlate that the transition was gradual.

The Palaeolithic period or literally the “Old Stone Age” is an ancient cultural level of human development, characterized by the use of unpolished chipped stone tools. The transition from Middle to Upper Palaeolithic is directly related to the development of behavioural modernity by homonids around 40,000 years BP. This dramatic shift or leap from Middle to Upper Palaeolithic is sometimes called the Upper Palaeolithic Revolution to denote the great significance and degree of change.

In the late Pleistocene various components of the transition–material culture and environmental features (climate, flora, and fauna)indicate continual change, differing from contemporary points in other parts of Europe. The aforementioned aspects make us have some doubt that the term Upper Palaeolithic Revolution is appropriate to the Balkans.

In general outline, continual evolutionary changes are the first crucial characteristic of the transition to the Upper Palaeolithic in the Balkans. The notion of the Upper Palaeolithic Revolution that has been developed for core European regions is not applicable to the Balkans. What is the reason? This particularly significant moment and its origins are defined and enlightened by other characteristics of the transition to upper Old Stone Age. The environment, climate, flora and fauna corroborate the implications.

During the last interglacial and the most recent glaciation of the Pleistocene (from 131,000 till 12,000 BP) Europe was very different from the Balkans. The glaciations did not affect southeastern Europe as seriously as they did in the north and centre regions. The evidence of forest and steppe indicate the influence was not so drastic, and some species of flora and fauna survived only in the Balkans. The Balkans today still abound in species endemic only to this part of Europe.

The notion of gradual transition (or evolution) best defines the Balkan Europe from about 50,000 BP. In this sense, the material culture and natural environment of the Balkans of the late Pleistocene and the early Holocene were distinct from other parts of Europe. Therefore Douglass W. Bailey writes in Balkan Prehistory: Exclusion, Incorporation and Identity, “Less dramatic changes to climate, flora and fauna resulted in less dramatic adaptive, or reactive, developments in material culture.”

Thus, in speaking about southeastern Europe, many classic conceptions and systematizations of human development during the Palaeolithic (and then by implication the Mesolithic) should not be considered correct in all cases. In this regard the absence of the Upper Palaeolithic cave art in the Balkans does not seem to be surprising. Civilisations develop new and distinctive characteristics as they respond to new challenges in their environment.

Upper Paleolithic
In 2002, the oldest modern human (Homo sapiens sapiens) remains in Europe, have been discovered in the "Cave With Bones" (Peştera cu Oase), near Anina. Nicknamed "John of Anina" (Ion din Anina), his remains (the lower jaw) are approximately 42,000 years old.

As Europe’s oldest remains of Homo sapiens, they are likely to represent the first such people to have entered the continent. According to some researchers, the particular interest of the discovery resides in the fact that it presents a mixture of archaic, early modern human and Neanderthal morphological features, indicating considerable Neanderthal/modern human admixture, which in turn suggests that, upon their arrival in Europe, modern humans met and interbred with Neanderthals. Recent reanalysis of some of these fossils has challenged the view that these remains represent evidence of interbreeding. A second expedition by Erik Trinkaus and Ricardo Rodrigo, discovered further fragments (for example, a skull dated ~36,000, nicknamed "Vasile").

Two human fossil remains, found in the Muierii (Peştera Muierilor) and the Cioclovina caves, in Romania have been radiocarbon dated, using the technique of the accelerator mass spectrometry to the age of ~ 30,000 years BP. These are the most ancient dated human fossil remains from Europe, possibly belonging to the upper Paleolithic, the Aurignacian period (see Human fossil bones from the Muierii Cave and the Cioclovina Cave, Romania).

The first skull, and scapula and tibia remains were found in 1952 in Baia de Fier, in the Muierii Cave, Gorj county in the province Oltenia, by Constantin Nicolaescu-Plopşor.

In 1941 another skull was found at the Cioclovina Cave near Commune Bosorod, Hunedoara county, in Transylvania. The anthropologist, Francisc Rainer, and the geologist, Ioan Simionescu, published a study of this skull.

The physical analysis of these fossils was begun in the summer of the year 2000 by Emilian Alexandrescu, archaeologist at the Institute of Archaeology 'Vasile Parvan' in Bucharest, and Agata Olariu, physicist at the Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering-Horia Hulubei, Bucharest, where samples were taken. One sample of bone was tajen from the skull from Cioclovina, as well as samples from the scapula and tibia remains from Muierii Cave. The work continued at the University of Lund. AMS group, by Göran Skog, Kristina Stenström  and Ragnar Hellborg. The samples of bones were dated by radiocarbon method applied at the AMS system of the Lund University and the results are shown in the analysis bulletin issued on the date 14 December 2001.

The human fossil remains from Muierii Cave, Baia de Fier, have been dated to 30,150 ± 800 years BP, and the skull from the Cioclovina Cave has been dated to 29,000 ± 700 years BP.

Mesolithic
The Mesolithic period began at the end of the Pleistocene epoch 10th millennium BC and ended with the Neolithic introduction of farming, the date of which varied in each geographical region. According to Douglass W. Bailey :

It is equally important to recognize that the Balkan upper Palaeolithic was a long period containing little significant internal change. The Mesolithic may not have existed in the Balkans for the same reasons that cave art and mobiliary art never appeared: the changes in climate and flora and fauna were gradual and not drastic. (…) Furthermore, one of the reasons that we do not distinguish separate industries in the Balkans as Mesolithic is because the lithic industries of the early Holocene were very firmly of a gradually developing late Palaeolithic tradition

The Mesolithic is the transitional period between the Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gathering existence and the development of farming and pottery production during the Postglacial Neolithic. The duration of the classical Palaeolithic, which lasted until about 10,000 years ago, is applicable to the Balkans. It ended with the Mesolithic (duration is 2–4 millennia) or, where an early Neolithisation was peculiar to, with the Epipalaeolithic.

Regions with limited glacial impact (e.g. the Balkans), the term Epipalaeolithic is more preferable. Regions that experienced less environmental effects during the last ice age have a much less apparent, straightforward, and occasionally marked by an absence of sites from the Mesolithic era. See the above Douglass W. Bailey quote.

There is lithic evidence in Serbia, southwestern Romania, and Montenegro. At Ostrovul Banului, the Cuina Turcului rock shelter in the Danube Gorges and in the nearby caves of Climente people make relatively advanced bone and lithic tools (i.e. end-scrapers, blade lets, and flakes).

The single site representing materials related to Mesolithic in Bulgaria is Pobiti Kamini. There is no another lithic evidence on the period. There is a 4,000-gap between the latest Upper Palaeolithic material (13,600 BP at Temnta Dupka) and the earliest Neolithic evidence presented at Gulubnik (the beginning of the seventh millennium BCE).

At Odmut in Montenegro there is evidence for human activity in the period. The research of the period was supplemented with Greek Mesolithic well represented by sites such as Franchthi. The other sites are Theopara and Sesklo in Thessaly that represent the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic as well as the early Neolithic period. Yet southern and coastal sites Greece, which contained materials from the Mesolithic are less known.

Activities began to be concentrated around individual sites where people displayed personal and group identities using various decorations: wearing ornaments and painting their bodies with ochre and hematite. As regards the point of identity Dailey writes, “Flint-cutting tools as well as time and effort needed to produce such tools testify the expressions of identity and more flexible combinations of materials, which began to be used in the late Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic.”

The aforementioned allows us to speculate whether or not there was a period which could be described as Mesolithicin southeastern Europe, rather than an extended [[Upper Palaeolithic. On the other hand, lack of research in a number of regions, and the fact that many of the sites were close to the shore (it is evident that the current sea level is 100 m higher, and a number of sites were covered by water) means that Mesolithic Balkans could be referred to as Epipalaeolithic)Balkans which would better describe its gradual continuity and poorly-defined development.

Neolithic
The Balkans were the site of major Neolithic cultures, including Vincha, Varna, Karanovo, Hamangia.

The Vinča culture was an early culture of the Balkans (between the 6th and the 3rd millennium BC), stretching around the course of theDanube in Serbia, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, Montenegro and the Republic of Macedonia, although traces of it can be found all around the Balkans, parts of Central Europe and Asia Minor.

"Kurganization" of the eastern Balkans (and the Cucuteni culture adjacent to the north) during the Eneolithic is associated with a first expansion of Proto-Indo-Europeans.


 * Starčevo-Criş culture
 * Dudeşti culture
 * Cucuteni culture
 * Hamangia culture
 * Vinča culture
 * Varna culture
 * Tărtăria tablets
 * Indo-Europeans

Bronze Age
The Bronze Age in the Balkans is divided as follows (Boardman p. 166)
 * Early Bronze Age: 20th to 16th centuries BC
 * Middle Bronze Age: 16th to 14th centuries BC
 * Late Bronze Age: 14th to 13th centuries BC

The Bronze Age in the Central and Eastern Balkans begins late, around 1800 BC. The transition to the Iron Age gradually sets in over the 13th century BC.

The "East Balkan Complex" (Karanovo VII, Ezero culture) covers all of Thrace. The Bronze Age cultures of the Central and Western Balkans are less clearly delineated and stretch to Pannonia, the Carpathians and into Hungary.

See also Cucuteni Culture. From this mix of native neolithic populations and the invading Indo-Europeans, a new ethnos emerged -- the Thracians. See also Thraco-Cimmerian.

Iron Age
After the period that followed the arrival of the Dorians, known as the Greek Dark Ages or the Geometric Period, the classical Greek culture developed in the southern Balkan peninsula, the Aegean islands and the western Asia Minor Greek colonies starting around the 9–8th century and peaking with the 5th century BC Athens democracy.

The Greeks were the first to establish a system of trade routes in the Balkans and, in order to facilitate trade with the natives between 700 BC and 300 BC, they founded several colonies on the Black Sea (Pontus Euxinus) coast, Asia Minor, Dalmatia, Southern Italy (Magna Graecia) etc.

The other peoples of the Balkans organized themselves in large tribal unions such as the Thracian Odrysian kingdom in the Eastern Balkans in the 5th century BC, and the Illyrian kingdom in the Western Balkans from the early 4th century.

Other tribal unions existed in Dacia at least as early as the beginning of the 2nd century BC under King Oroles. The Illyrian tribes were situated in the area corresponding to today's former Yugoslavia and Albania. The name Illyrii was originally used to refer to a people occupying an area centred on Lake Skadar, situated between Albania and Montenegro (= Illyrians proper). The term Illyria was subsequently used by the Greeks and Romans as a generic name to refer to different peoples within a well defined but much greater area.

Hellenistic culture spread throughout the Macedonian Empire created by Alexander the Great from the later 4th century BC. By the end of the 4th century BC Greek language and culture were dominant not only in the Balkans but also around the whole Eastern Mediterranean.

By the sixth century BC the first written sources dealing with the territory north of the Danube appear in Greek sources. By this time the Getae (and later the Daci) had branched out from the Thracian-speaking populations