History of Europe
history of Europe, including the continent and nearby islands
The history of Europe can be traced back to the appearance of the first modern humans identified as ancestors of contemporary Europeans about 37,000 years ago during the Paleolithic. Early European Farmers migrating from Anatolia spread agriculture across the continent during the Neolithic (7000–2000 BC), a period that also included early metallurgy. Starting around 4000 BC, westward migrations of steppe pastoralists spread Indo-European languages. The rise of the city-states of ancient Greece defines the beginning of classical antiquity (c. 800 BC-AD 500). The Hellenistic period (323–30 BC) began with the death of Alexander the Great and ended with the Roman Empire's control of the entire Mediterranean basin. Christianity emerged under Roman rule in the 1st century AD. The Migration Period of the Germanic peoples began in the late 4th century AD.
The abdication of the last Western Roman Emperor in 476 traditionally marks the beginning of the Middle Ages (c. 500–1500). While the Eastern Roman ("Byzantine") Empire with its capital in Constantinople continued for another 1000 years, the former lands of the Western Empire fragmented into the barbarian kingdoms. The 8th-century Umayyad conquest of Hispania established Al-Andalus.
The public source identifies “History of Europe” as history of Europe, including the continent and nearby islands. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around History, Europe and history.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7787. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2000, 1500 and 1000.
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This entry incorporates text from “History of Europe” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.