History of Eurasia

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Further information: History of Europe and History of Asia
By the time of the Roman Empire, the Silk Road was firmly established.
Eurasia around 200 CE

The history of Eurasia is the collective history of a continental area with several distinct peripheral coastal regions:

Central Eurasia.[1]

Prehistory

Main articles: Prehistoric Europe and Prehistoric Asia

Lower Paleolithic

Fossilized remains of

Homo cepranensis
, are local in nature, so the extent of human residence in Eurasia during 1,000,000 - 300,000 ybp remains a mystery.

Middle Paleolithic

450000 ybp. These would have presented any humans outside the tropics unprecedented difficulties. Indeed, fossils from this period are very few, and little can be said of human habitats in Eurasia during this period. The few finds are of Homo antecessor and Homo heidelbergensis, and Lantian Man
in China.

After this,

Sahara dried
up, forming a difficult area for peoples to cross.

The birth of the first modern humans (

Single-origin hypothesis), that is, to the coldest phase of the Riss glaciation. Remains of Aterian
culture appear in the archaeological evidence.

Population bottleneck

In the beginning of the

Upper Paleolithic revolution
began after this extreme event, the earliest finds are dated c.50000 BCE.

A divergence in genetical evidence occurs during the early phase of the glaciation. Descendants of female

CT
are the ones found among Eurasian peoples today.

Upper Paleolithic

Humans populated all of ice-free Europe during the Upper Paleolithic
Further information:
Emireh culture, Ordosian culture, Châtelperronian, Aurignacian, Gravettian, Solutrean, and Magdalenian
See also:
Pre-history of the Southern Levant

The

anatomically modern humans to Eurasia beginning about 70,000 BC. Moving along the southern coast of Asia, they reached Maritime Southeast Asia
by about 65,000 years ago. The establishment of population centers in Western Asia, the Indian subcontinent and in East Asia is attested by about 50,000 years ago. The Eurasian Upper Paleolithic proper is taken after c. 45,000 years ago, with the
into Europe (Mousterian), and the expansion into the Mammoth steppe
of Northern Asia.

Migrations

Tracing back minute differences in the

Eurasian steppe. Crossing the Caucasus and the Ural Mountains were the ancestors of Samoyeds and the ancestors of Uralic peoples, developing sleds, skis and canoes. Through Kazakhstan moved the ancestors of the Indigenous Americans (dated 50000 - 40000 BCE). Eastbound (maybe through Dzungaria and the Tarim Basin went the ancestors of the northern Chinese and Koreans. It is possible that the routes taken by the Indo-European ancestors travelled across the Bosphorus. Genetic evidence suggests a number of separate migrations (1.Anatoleans 2. Tocharians, 3 Celto-Illyrians, 4.Germanic and Slav, - possibly in this order). Archaeological evidence has not been identified for a number of different groups. On historical linguistic evidence, see for example classification of Thracian. The traditional view of associating early Celts with the Hallstatt culture, and the Nordic Bronze Age with Germanic peoples. The Roman Empire spread after the first widespread use of iron outside Central Europe from the Villanovan culture area. Most likely there was trade also in these periods, e.g. with amber and salt
being major products.

Influences from northern Africa via Gibraltar and Sicilia cannot be readily discounted. Many other questions remain open, too; for example, Neanderthals were still present at this time. More genetic data is being gathered by various research programs.

Early Holocene

Main article: Neolithic Revolution
See also: Mesolithic
Primary cultural areas in Europe c.4500 BC

As the ice age ended, major environmental changes happened, such as

Holocene extinction event. At the same time Neolithic Revolution began and humans started to make pottery, began to cultivate crops and domesticated
some animal species.

Neolithic cultures in Eurasia are many, and best discussed in separate articles. Some of the articles on this subject include:

Ötzi the Iceman (dated 3300 BC) provides an important insight to Chalcolithic period in Europe. Proto-languages
of various peoples have been forming in this period, though no literal evidence can (by definition) be found. Later migrations further complicate the study of migrations in this period.

Emergence of civilizations

Main articles:
Civilisation

Due to the similarities between

Pontic steppe in the 5th millennium BC spread both east and west, gradually making their way towards the Indian subcontinent and China in the east and western Europe in the west. These Proto-Indo-Europeans
spread their languages into the Middle East, India, Europe, and to the borders of China.

Early forms of

China (1200 BCE).[6]

In southern Europe, the

Egyptian empires, competing for control over the city states in the Levant
.

The Black Sea area was another cradle of European civilization. The prehistoric fortified stone settlement of Solnitsata (5500 BC - 4200 BC) is one of the oldest known towns in Europe.[8][9] The Bronze Age arose in this region during the final centuries of the 4th millennium.

The

Aramaean kingdoms of the mid-10th century BC, and the rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire
.

cuneiform writing of Assyria and the logographic system in the Far East (and later the abugida
systems of India).

The Iron Age made large stands of timber essential to a nation's success because smelting iron required so much fuel, and the pinnacles of human civilizations gradually moved as forests were destroyed. In Europe the Mediterranean region was supplanted by the German and Frankish lands. In the Middle East the main power center became Anatolia with the once dominant Mesopotamia its vassal. In China, the economical, agricultural, and industrial center moved from the northern Yellow River to the southern Yangtze, though the political center remained in the north. In part this is linked to technological developments, such as the mouldboard plough, that made life in once undeveloped areas more bearable.

In the

China, India, and the Mediterranean formed a continuous belt of civilizations stretching from the Pacific to the Atlantic and connected by the Silk Road
. Later development of Eurasian history is told in other articles.

See also

References

  1. ^ Beckwith, for instance, gives an overall view of Central Eurasian history
  2. ISBN 978-0-7641-3822-5
    .
  3. ISBN 978-1-57596-251-1
    .
  4. ISBN 9781438120034
    .
  5. ^ "Indus River Valley Civilization". The River Valley Civilization Guide. Retrieved 27 September 2017.
  6. ^ Boltz, William (1994). The origin and early development of the Chinese writing system. American Oriental Society. p. 31.
  7. ^ This chronology of Minoan Crete is (with minor simplifications) the one used by Andonis Vasilakis in his book on Minoan Crete, but other chronologies will vary, sometimes quite considerably (EM periods especially). Sets of different dates from other authors are set out at Minoan chronology.
  8. The Los Angeles Times
    . Retrieved 1 November 2012.
  9. ^ Squires, Nick (31 October 2012). "Archaeologists find Europe's most prehistoric town". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 1 November 2012.
  10. ISBN 978-0-691-02591-9
    .
  11. ^ See A. Stoia and the other essays in M.L. Stig Sørensen and R. Thomas, eds., The Bronze Age—Iron Age Transition in Europe (Oxford) 1989, and T.A. Wertime and J.D. Muhly, The Coming of the Age of Iron (New Haven) 1980.

External links
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