European Kingdoms

Early Eastern European Plain (Belarus, Russia, & Ukraine)

Palaeolithic Cultures Early Africa (Intro) Early Americas (Intro) Early Asia (Intro) Early China (Intro) Early Europe (Intro) Early Near East (Intro) Early Oceania (Intro)

The pre-history of Europe is a long and largely uncertain period in which small windows of opportunity to view events can be gained through archaeology. Masses of material are found each year by archaeologists, and a system was long ago needed to help organise all these findings.

Once the ice had retreated and Europe had become a much more hospitable place, human cultures became increasingly regionalised. The Magdalenian culture of circa 17,000 to 12,000 BC preceded increasing cultural complexity. What had been a single human culture across Europe eventually divided in two which - at least at first - can be equated to Northern Europe and Southern Europe.

Further complexity and regional differentiation followed during the early Mesolithic. This seems especially visible in Eastern Europe and across the Eastern European Plain to the east of the Vistula, which includes today's states of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine.

In this zone there appeared a number of more or less contemporaneous Epi-Palaeolithic and early Mesolithic cultures. This mainly took place in the steppe zone across the northern Black Sea region, but activity was also taking place to the north and east of that.

The East European Plain is one of the largest continuous flatlands in Europe. It stretches from the line of the Vistula in eastern Poland to the Ural mountains and the edge of European Russia. The land is generally low and open, which today makes it easier to build roads, railway lines, and large farms, and in prehistory made it relatively easy for human groups to travel far and wide in their hunting routines and settlement patterns.

Maps of the region tend to show long corridors of movement across the region rather than barriers. Large parts of the plain contain chernozem, a dark, nutrient-rich soil which today supports productive agriculture. Major waterways cross the region, such as the Dnieper, Donets, and Volga, providing some of the only borders here. The plain has a continental climate, so winters are cold and summers can be warm, often intensely so, and populations have explored survival patterns over the past twelve thousand years to be able to cope.

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(Information by Peter Kessler, with additional information from A Genetic Signal of Central European Celtic Ancestry, David K Faux, from Investigating Archaeological Cultures: Material Culture, Variability, and Transmission, Benjamin W Roberts & Marc Vander Linden (Eds), from The Magdalenian Settlement of Europe, Quaternary International Volumes 272-273 (2012), and from External Links: The Genetic History of Ice Age Europe (Nature 2016), and Dietary Change from the Mesolithic to the Middle Ages in the Iron Gates, C Bonsall (Lead Author, Cambridge University Press, 18 July 2016), and East European Plain (Intro to World Geography, Fiveable).)