Early Italy Cultures

The system which has evolved to catalogue the various archaeological expressions of human progress is one which involves cultures. For well over a century, archaeological cultures have remained the framework for global prehistory. The earliest cultures which emerge from Africa and the Near East are perhaps the easiest to catalogue, right up until human expansion reaches the Americas. The task of cataloguing that vast range of human cultures is covered in the related feature (see link, right).

Modern Europeans in the form of Homo sapiens first appeared in the Balkans around 47,000 BC, largely through the transitional Bohunician culture. The Magdalenian culture of circa 17,000 to 12,000 BC was the last major pan-European expression of early human spread. Once the most recent ice age had retreated, human cultures became increasingly regionalised, initially divided here between Northern Europe and Southern Europe.

Within the latter, formed by a relatively narrow peninsula which emerges into the Mediterranean, modern Italy's territory is characterised by a rugged central spine of mountains, the Apennines, which are bordered either side by fertile plains and valleys (for more on the naming of the Apennines, see the feature link).

This mountain range has a surface area of 301,230 square kilometres, including as part of its reach the islands of Sardinia and Sicily. Archaeological investigation shows signs of Homo Heidelbergensis and Neanderthal occupation, with modern humans arriving into Italy around forty thousand years ago.

During the most recent ice age, water levels in the Mediterranean were much lower than they are today, allowing land bridges to form to the islands of Elba and Sicily, and leaving the northern half of the Adriatic as a fertile grass-swept plain. Sea levels did not fully balance out until around 5000 BC.

The human hunter-gatherers of the Palaeolithic prospered until the end of the most recent ice age around 10,000 BC, when large game became harder to find. The Grimaldian finds of about 20,000 BC have been assigned to the widespread Aurignacian culture, with that appearing to survive in areas of Italy without a Solutrean or Magdalenian interlude. It perhaps even remained viable into the Italian Mesolithic, which is when the broad Epigravettian dominated in the peninsula's north.

What can be described as a true early Italy emerged towards the end of the Epigravettian (around 8000 BC), while the Italian Neolithic began with the introduction of pottery and the later Gaudo culture in southern Italy, before these both regionally gave way to the Italian Chalcolithic and Italian Bronze Age.

The greatest changes came in the latter period, and between the twelfth to eighth centuries BC when West Indo-European proto-Italic tribes gradually made their way into Italy. They bumped up against Greek settlements in the south and the early Etruscans in the centre and west.

The basis was laid by this migration for the Roman republic and subsequent empire of the Italian Iron Age, as was the ethnic mix of the modern country, albeit with a heavy Germanic addition in the north and centre in the form of the Lombards and Ostrogoths, and in the south by a smaller number of Normans.

European Kingdoms

Early Cultures

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