History_of_Europe

In brief:

Europe has been human-occupied since the dawn of mankind. Neanderthal man settled Europe long before the emergence of modern man, Homo sapiens.

The first well-known civilization in Europe was that of the Minoans and Achaeans in Greece. Around the same time, the Celts spread over most of the interior as far as Spain and later Turkey. As they did not practice a written language, knowledge of them is piecemeal. The Romans encountered them and recorded a great deal about them; these records and the results of archaeological digs form our primary understanding of this extremely

influential culture. The Celts posed a formidable, if disorganized, competition to the Roman Empire, that had

colonized and conquered much of the southern portion of Europe.

At the end of the Bronze Age the older Greek kingdoms collapsed and a brilliant new civilization grew up in their place. The Hellenic Civilization took the form of a collection of City-States, many having vastly differing types of government and cultures, including what are more or less unprecendent developments in various governmental forms, Philosophy, Science, Politics, Sports, Theater and Music.

The campaigns of Alexander the Great brought GreeK culture into contact with the older learnings of Persia, Egypt, and India, opening up a new period of developments. Much of this learning was assimilated by the nascent Roman Empire as it expanded outward from Italy, taking advantage of its enemies' inability to unite. First governed by kings, then a senatorial republic, Rome finally became an empire under Julius Caesar and his Authoritarian successors.

Europe emerged as the site of a distinct civilization after the fall of the Roman Empire (c. 400-500 AD), separated from the rest of the Meditteranean by the Byzantine and Islamic cultures. Huge amounts of technology and learning were lost, and people returned to local agragarian communities.

The first substantial new development was the appearance of the Holy Roman Empire around 800 AD. The subsequent period saw the growth of Feudalism, the development of the Catholic Church as a major power, and the first signs of new learning began to appear. By the end of the Middle Ages, powerful Nation-States had appeared and began conquering wide portions of the world.

Philosophy, Science and Technology developed rapidly throughout. The church broke up and semi-secular governments started developing. In the French Revolution, people made a significant attempt to create a new government based on freedom and equality, instead launching the Napoleonic Era. Napoleon Bonaparte also destroyed the Holy Roman Empire, leaving Germany and Italy to develop into nation-states by 1900.

The twentieth century saw the massively overdone World Wars, which ended the pre-eminent position of Europe. Thereafter it was a zone of contention in the Cold War between the world-powers of the United States and Soviet Union, which have only just finished.