hist notlari 2: peopling of europe

The human invasion started when they started to come out of Africa, crossed Middle East and went to different directions. It is the pre-mordial colonization of the world when they spread unevenly throughout Europe and Asia. They were hunter and gatherers going after the food. In the Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic periods they were using basic tools like sharpened stones. Since it is a durable material the change in the technique of making stone tools could be traced.  In the Neolithic period food production has started, humans were experimenting and domesticating plants. This food could be stored, leading to surpluses and enabling population growth. For the Mesolithic period the population density was estimated as 0.1 human per km² it raised to 1.5 per km² in the late Mesolithic period and to 5 – 10 per km² during the Roman Empire. The surplus of food also led to the Bronze and Iron ages, of which the ages can be calculated via the carbon 14 method. 

Jean Auel has not written about people with names, she never uses modern European nations. What she does is to invent names but not the events that occur, since her books are based on serious archeological and anthropological research, which she attends in person. On the contrary the Turkish Thesis of History alleges that the most ancient people are Turks. Taking 7000 BC as the ending point, this thesis propounds the ancient civilization was created by proto-Turks, the white Caucasian race who were advanced in science, cultured and have invented agriculture. Wherever they have immigrated, they enlightened people and pushed them up to become a civilization. Lots of them left central Asia and went to north and south America, while others went to Egypt, Anatolia and Italy became Sumerians, Hittites and Etruscans. The people putting forward this theory were obviously playing with the evidence to tie everything to the Turkish race.   

The British developed the Indo-European languages hypothesis after the colonization of India. The similarities between the two languages were fascinating. The booming of oriental studies and linguistics to comprehend the customs, art and literature revealed the structural and grammatical similarities between the European and Indian languages. After several stages, the inescapable conclusion was that they were one point at time the same language. What they also realized was that the commonality neither depends on the similarity of the sound nor the look of the words. The next question that people came up with was how they might get separated and have spread over time. Scholars came up with the idea that until 4000 BC there was a compact block of tribes living together and speaking a common language with slight variations. Hence, the reconstruction of the lost trunk-language was taking place. Different groups went different ways: some went to the south of the Caspian sea, one branch (Arians) went to the Indus valley and others spread to different directions in Europe.

Two waves from the north arrived at what is called Greece today in 2200-2000 BC and 1100 – 1000 BC. Another huge demographic move occurred also from the north to Italy by the Italic speaking people who settled there as different groups in different areas creating their own small principalities. The evidence for Greek invasion (Acais) comes from Homer’s poets and archeological findings of fire distraction. Archeologists look at several places and try to trace a horizon of fire distraction and find the connection between them. Moreover, the burial customs are also significant indicators as the tombs contain possessions of the buried person. The material and ethnolinguistic evidences are brought together draw a possible map and give the Greek (or Acais) name to the people there. Ancient Greece was taken over by Alexander the Great of Macedonia and stayed so until his death. After that the Macedonian Empire broke down to several kingdoms among which Rome in Italy was one. This was also the beginning of the history of Europe shaped through the Greco-Roman and Christian legacy. Moreover geographers and historians like Hecataeus, Strabo, and Herodotus were successfully describing the gradual filling up of the world through the synthesis of knowledge and copying from each other. Even before them anonymous bureaucrats were keeping records of dynasties, kings’ lists and great deeds of them. Hence, these state archives written by faceless people mentioning the developments inside and outside their borders (through wars) can be considered as the first historical records.

Cartage and Punic wars ensures Rome’s domination in the Western Mediterranean and starts the construction of identity as us versus them. People outside the Greco-Roman settlement are named as barbarians, creating its own identity crystallization. When Augustus died in AD 14, the Roman Empire was roughly a rectangle around the Mediterranean incorporating Greece and Northern Africa as well. On the north frontier lay Danube and Rhine rivers that were protecting the empire from invasions. In addition the system of fortresses and legions behind them were successful against the Slavic and Germanic tribes for a while. In 300 AD mobile army was also held in reserve in step behind the fortresses. The empire switched from an offensive to a defensive characteristic. In 370 AD Visigoths started to burst from Balkans and they were bribed to go west. But the Germanic tribes were already coming from the north and west to Britannia. In 420 Romans had to evacuate it and the age of migrations accelerated with the coming of Ostrogoths, Franks and Slavs in the 700s. The Antiquity ended and the Middle Ages begun with the invasions and migrations of Germans and Slavs. That is also referred as the European history or Dark ages. By the time Western Roman Empire has ended and Byzantium was left. Western Europe was invaded by the Germanic tribes while the east was exposed to the Slavic expansion. Hence the North – South division became the East – West division also through the language split and by the Elbe River. In the 6^th century Justinian sent his generals to re-conquer western Mediterranean against Vandals and Ostrogoths who were semi-tribal in social formation. However, the rule did not last long and a vacuum was created of which the Frankish king took advantage. Merovingians who own their victories against Visigoths, Saxons and Alemanni to their leader Merovech, took control of the Western Europe. Some kingdoms like Saxony, Lombard, and Burgundy were united through the conquests of Clovis and Charlemagne.

After Clovis’ sons and grandsons have conquered the Burgundian kingdom the Frankish control has extended to the Mediterranean. But in hundred years the Merovingian House started to decay due to inner weaknesses. Dividing the kingdom among king’s sons led to bitter civil wars as the kings were also ineffective rulers. The kingdom divided into three and the rulers were mere puppets. With the Merovindian decline, new waves of invasions from Slavic people and Muslims threatened western Europe. Charles Martel ‘the hammer’ won a victory against the Muslim invasion and his son Pepin the Short the first Carolingian king has succeeded in overthrowing the Lombards in Italy. His son Charlemagne seized  a huge territory and sent Arabs back to Spain. But the civil wars burst and the means of government were not enough to control huge territories. Finally, the Treaty of Meerssen in 870 has partitioned the Carolingian Empire that gave the rough shape of France, Germany and Italy.