European Kingdoms

Early Greece (Neolithic & Chalcolithic)

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The system which has evolved to catalogue the various archaeological expressions of human progress is one which involves cultures. The task of cataloguing the vast range of human cultures which emerged from Africa and the Near East right up until human expansion reached the Americas is covered in the related feature (see link, right).

Subsequent cultural complexity appeared across Europe to produce two main areas of progress in the form of Northern Europe and Southern Europe. Within the latter region, the Early Greece & Balkans area formed a southern zone below the Balkans, across today's Greece, North Macedonia, southern Bulgaria and part of Albania.

The region's role in human development was relatively minimal during Mesolithic Greece (between about 9000-7000 BC), but a far greater role would be played in the subsequent Neolithic Greece, and across the Balkans too. This area hosted the first of a concentrated series of Neolithic Farmer cultures from about 6700 BC onwards.

In Greece itself this took the form of the Sesklo culture, but a pre-Sesklo phase can also be attributed to Greece in the period between about 7000-6700 BC. That is partially covered by the Greek Pre-Ceramic between about 6800-6500 BC. It witnessed a transition from hunter-gatherer societies in the region to early farming, with temporary dwellings appearing alongside the earliest uses of imported obsidian from the island of Milo.

The Sesklo culture is confirmed from about 6700 BC but can be dated to include this pre-ceramic phase from about 7000 BC. To the north the greatest proliferation of Neolithic cultures took place in what generally has been classified as Old Europe. This carried practically all of south-eastern Europe into the Chalcolithic (Copper Age, or 'Final Neolithic' for this specific area).

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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).)