Talk:Prehistoric Europe

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 15 January 2021 and 14 April 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Neast024.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 07:07, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Creationists?

I might have missed some mention of it, but how can this article not be factually disputed by creationists? Normally they swarm over these kinds of topics.

Not that I want it to be... it's just a little odd.

They maynot have found the article. They may well believe it doesn't exist, as it talks of a time before "Creation". Who knows? --Sugaar 19:43, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

unencyclopedic?

"though many regions of Europe remained yet illiterate and therefore out of written history for many centuries yet, we must place the boundary somewhere and this date, near the start of our calendar, seems quite convenient."... ... ... This sounds a little unencyclopedic to me. 207.202.227.125 17:33, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Surely. This was one of my first additions to Wikipedia (I believe I wrote that some two years ago) and the idea is that pan-European chronology stops there, while we can still talk of "prehistory" in Northern and Eastern Europe because only in the Middle Ages, even in the Late Middle Ages in many cases, we start having local written sources (i.e. history). The written history of some European regions has just several centuries - think of Finland, for instance.

So guess that the meaning is correct (pan-European chronology for prehistory ends with the Roman Empire, some regions will still be technically "prehistorical" until much late though, some others entered history earlier, like Greece or even parts of Italy) but it can be written in a better way. --Sugaar 19:35, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Are you saying that illiteracy = "prehistorical"? Is there someone literate who actually believes this? What is your source? FYI, "prehistoric" connotes something other than literacy. Kortoso (talk) 16:36, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

R1 Could Not Have Been Aurignacian

This statement - "It is has been shown that the Aurignacian peoples were carriers of an early haplotype R1 y-chromosome and came to Europe by way of Central Asia." - cannot be correct, since R1 (M173) is not old enough to have taken part in the Aurignacian culture. The recent paper by Karafet et al (2008) estimates the age of R1 (M173) as 18,500 years.

The statement should be deleted in keeping with the latest developments in population genetics. The Karafet et al paper is authoritative, peer reviewed, and was used to restructure the YCC (Y Chromosome Consortium) Y Haplogroup Tree (2008).

By the way it was never "shown that the Aurignacian peoples were carriers of an early haplotype R1 y-chromosome." It was only ASSUMED because there is a lot of R1b1b2 (R-M269) in Western Europe now. -Stevo343

The whole genetics section myopically focuses on Anatolian immigrants as Europe's first farmers to the exclusion of the First People's they displaced and largely eradicated over the next ~5000 years. Genetics and archeology tell the same tale of whole agricultural communities transplanted to the Danubian valley at the expense of all natives in their path. Male to female ratios often reached double-digits among the unmistakable later Western and Central Steppe Herder invasions, leading to radically different outcomes for conquered men and women, but the previous conquerors from whom those had descended slaughtered indiscriminately. Net result: EEF and WSH mitochondrial DNA remain about equally common in modern European populations despite the lower frequency of EEF Y-chromosomal DNA, but both maternal and paternal First Peoples DNA has practically vanished outside of the two remote, foreboding and fiercely defended enclaves of Basque Country and Fennoscandia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ~2026-27071-32 (talk) 05:22, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Summaries Needed

Some of the sections are copies of other parts of Wiki such as that on the Neolithic. Now that cross references have been included these sections should be summaried to fit with Wiki policy. Adresia (talk) 12:12, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

BP vs BC

Most of this article appears to use Before Present to talk about dates, but a few places use BC instead. It is confusing to have two different systems going at once, so I'm changing BC to BP for consistency. Archaeologically and evolutionarily speaking, it makes little sense to employ Christian calendrical devices in this article. romarin [talk ] 21:42, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay, upon further investigation, and after changing the few references to BC in the first half of the article, it became more and more apparent that BC is used predominantly in the latter half of the article. Before making changes on the entire article, I wanted to open this up for discussion, since I don't want anyone to feel like their toes are being stepped on. I really do think it makes more sense to make use of the dating format more commonly found in archaeological and evolutionary texts, however. If there are no comments, I'll go ahead and finish the job in a few days or so. Thanks, romarin [talk ] 21:57, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

@Romarin Absolutely agree on the confusion matter. Be it this or that, let's at least pick up just one and stay with it.Cheers Extraprase (talk) 06:04, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

I came here and was confounded by the term BP. Since this seems to have been recognized over a decade ago as a problem, and noone has fixed it, I for sure will, lest any body else should become as confused and annoyed by this sillyness as I am at the moment. --Lasse Hillerøe Petersen (talk) 14:28, 8 March 2020 (UTC) I presumed "BC" in English contexts generally understood to now mean "Before Common Era", and that the previous "E" had been dropped precisely to gloss over these needless distracting controversies. Debating what to call a universally recognized era cannot further define nor improve understanding of it in any way. In most cases within this context, we could use x.y kya to force contentious people to fabricate another source of conflict. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ~2026-27071-32 (talk) 05:28, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Neolithic population, R1a missing

Immigration R1a + I ca. 10.000 about Syria Amuq-Plateau to Greek balkan-danube route ca. 8000 BC, start Vinca cultur - sprite to north german deepland (SK), than Balticum forest cultur (Lithusia) and Scandinavia (svear/norge), Sprite from Cimbri/Kimbern (Jutland) to Cymri (Welsh people, England) ca. 3000 BC, start to build stonehenge. A other small sprite from Balkan to Apulia/Italy. Cimbrii (Jutland) and cymri (welsh) spoken archaic germanic (ur-germanic). No "old celtic population". Celts came 1000 years later... R1a+I imported cows and emmer to europe, bearer of first agrar pack. The complete R1a population is exploded near of german deepland ca. 5.000 BC short before SK was build. That is a I+R1a continuum but R1a was a bit more wandering. Ca. 4000 R1a+ (a bit) I flees to Northern Pontus (because LBK sprite). No Yamna-Horicont Remix with R1b! Too wrong culture transfer. Indoeuropean language was no existent! No refugium of R1a in Ukraine/Ural. That other is LBK from balaton Lake (G2a,K and E? Oetzi-group) imported second agrar pack and sprite out about central europe. No celts! Seaway from Syria, Byblos to creta to cost rhoene and italy to bellbeaker (G2a, F) R1b from Orient - Tunesia - Northern Africa, Gibraltar to Iberian ca. 5500 BC sprite to central europe and Italy. The recent paper by Klyosov et al 2012. He found a lot bugs in other papers. PS: Sorry dear celts, your not old-european, but national interests is not a good wikipedia style. That map is not correct. And sorry, i found BC is much better...

Sardinia

for an unknown reason in the page there isn't nothing regarding Sardinia and its prehistoric civilization, which left the greatest European megaliths and some of the oldest architectural structures in the world, even dating 4000 b.C. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.12.210.203 (talk) 23:48, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Image accuracy

I don't think the map is accurate, otherwise how else would you explain the skull in Georgia — Preceding unsigned comment added by Guardian101 (talk • contribs) 01:25, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Bronze Age period

Bronze Age started more than 1 millennium before 2.000 BC which is mentioned in the article. The outstanding Minoan civilization, the Cycladic culture, Korakou culture etc. are left in the wrong part... Something must be done to solve it. Historyandsciencelearn (talk) 14:38, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

What exactly is "prehistoric" in this article?

The first paragraph of this article on "prehistoric Europe" ends by introducing The Histories of Herodotus!

And there were "sovereign states" in prehistoric Europe?? 190.27.152.231 (talk) 20:26, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Last Glacial Maximum

The animated map shows glaciers labeled as Last Glacial Maximum at 1 million years ago. Elsewhere in Wikipedia the LGM is described as occurring around 20,000 years ago. 190.27.152.231 (talk) 15:56, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

It shows something called "last glaciation maximum" from 1 million to 5000 years ago. I have deleted it. Dudley Miles (talk) 22:52, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

The Copper Age section

Middle C.Age section headlined as 4000-3000BC. First sentence says it extends through first half of the millennium. Then progressively it reads through whole 4th and first half of 3rd. That is a bit too inconsistent and confusing for an article like this. Also, something like a Late C.Age section is missing, which may or may not be a (or the main) key? Extraprase (talk) 06:23, 24 May 2026 (UTC)