The European Megalithic Culture
| The European Megalithic Culture was a prehistoric and preliterate civilisation based primarily in Western Europe, that has left a legacy of large stone monuments, or megaliths, scattered widely across the continent, many of these constructions have been shown to have significant astronomical alignments. The earliest of these constructions, found in Brittany and the Iberian Peninsula, such as Stonehenge, are reckoned to date to around 4800 BC, thus predating the Egyptian pyramids by some two millennia. Though generally known as dolmens, many local names also exist, such as anta in Portugal, stazzone in Sardinia, hunnebed in Holland, Hünengrab in Germany, dysser in Denmark, and cromlech in Wales. The distribution of megalithic constructions strongly indicates that this culture was spread by seafarers. With the earliest sites found on the Atlantic seaboards of Brittany and Portugal dating to about 4800 BC, the techniques of building and other cultural traits gradually spread to other coastal areas, thence inland via the major river systems. These are:
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Some Anatolian terms from which may survive in river names and other geographical features across Western Europe with the spread of Indo-European languages in Europe coincided with the introduction of agriculture during the Neolithic period. The megalithic culture remained at the Neolithic stage until the so-called Bell-beaker explosion of Western Europe from around 2500 BC, which ushered in the Chalcolithic period – a preliminary phase of the Bronze Age.
Defensive structures dating from this time are often impressive, for example the brochs of northern Scotland and the hill forts that dotted the rest of the islands. Scandinavia (including Finland) and Northern Balticum shows a small-scaled iron producing very early, but a further dating is currently impossible. The time varies from 3000 BC-1000 A.D. The Iron Age is divided into the Pre-Roman Iron Age and the Roman Iron Age. This is followed by the migration period. Northern Germany and Denmark was dominated by the Jastorf culture (Scandinavia and North Germany), whereas the culture of the southern half of the Scandinavia was dominated by the very similar Nordic Iron Age, the Pre-Roman Iron Age evolved out of the Nordic Bronze Age with sites that reached as far east as Estonia. Mycenaean Greece, the Villanovan culture, Phoenicia and Ancient Egypt have all been identified as possible sources of influence for Scandinavian artwork from this period and the expansion of the following Iron Age cultures corresponded to that of Proto-Germanic and the Germanic tribes. According to Greek mythology, Celtus was the son of Heracles and Keltine, the daughter of Bretannus. Celtus became the primogenitor of Celts.
From the Hallstatt culture, the Iron Age spreads west with the Celtic (keltoi) expansion from the 6th century B.C. from Upper Austria, the village in the Salzkammergut, a region in Austria. An eastern Hallstatt cultural zone including Croatia, Slovenia, western Hungary, Austria, Moravia, and Slovakia can be distinguished from a western cultural zone which includes northern Italy, Switzerland, eastern France, southern Germany, and Bohemia. Exchange systems or folk movements (probably both) spread the Hallstatt cultural complex into the western half of the Iberian peninsula, Great Britain, and Ireland. It is probable that some if not all of this diffusion took place in a Celtic-speaking context. In Poland, the Iron Age reaches the late Lusatian culture in about the 6th century, followed in some areas by the Pomeranian culture. The Iron age ends with the Roman Conquest. No notable events took place during Roman rule or the early Middle Ages.
| Etruscan civilization developed in Italy after about 800 B.C. approximately over the range of the preceding Iron Age Villanovan culture of an increasingly Orientalizing culture influenced by Greek traders. Etruscan cities began to be founded. The latter gave way in the seventh century to a culture that was influenced by Greek traders and Greek neighbors in Magna Graecia, the Hellenic civilization of southern Italy. The ancient Romans called Etrusci or Tusci, the ancient Greeks' word for them was Tyrrhenoi, or Tyrrsenoi, and the Etruscans themselves used the term Rasenna into complete assimilation to Italic Rome in the Roman Republic in three confederacies: of Etruria, of the Po valley and Latium and of Campania. Villanovan settlements were centered in the Po River valley and Etruria round Bologna. Early Rome was dominated by Etruscans, and are believed to have spoken a non-Indo-European language from the pre-Athenian invasion until the Romans sacked Veii in 396 BC. |  |
Herodotus records the legend that the Etruscans of Eturia, Lombardy, Tuscany, came from Lydia in Asia Minor. A possible relationship with Minoan (Eteocretan) to Etruscan, written in the Linear A script. As the Etruscan speakers wrote using an alphabet closely related to the Greek alphabet and not like Phoenician, the Latin alphabet that is used in English owes its existence to the Etruscan writing system.
An Egyptian inscription at Deir al-Madinah records a victory of Ramesses III over Sea Peoples in Egyptian script. commemorating Merneptah’s victory in a Libyan campaign at about 1220 B.C. at Troy. The seafaring Etruscans may simply have sought brides from among their client or host populations, accounting for present-day dispersal patterns of mitochondrial DNA. The Sea Peoples could have assimilated to Etruscan culture, just as the Etruscans assimilated to the Romans. When Phoceans of Italy founded colonies along the coast of France, Catalonia and Corsica. This led the Etruscans to ally themselves with the Carthaginians, whose interests also collided with the Greeks of Magna Graecia.
In the fourth century, Etruria saw a Gallic invasion put to an end its influence over the Po valley and the Adriatic coast. Meanwhile, Rome had started annexing Etruscan cities. At the beginning of the 1st century, Rome annexed all the Etruscan territory. In the British Isles, the Iron Age lasted from about the 5th century B.C. until the Roman conquest and until the 5th century A.D. in non-Romanised parts. In the 1st century, the stone circles tradition was brought across the Baltic Sea to the area of modern-day Northern Poland, probably by the Goths, as excavations made during the time of the German Empire indicate (see the Wielbark Culture).