Europeans started farming after the inhabitants of the Near and Middle East . Agriculture arrived in Neolithic Europe around 6500 BC. and approximately 4,000 years B.C. there were already settled farming communities throughout continental Europe, southern Scandinavia, and Great Britain.
Neolithic Europe
Archaeologists call the Neolithic or New Stone Age the period of the first agriculture , thus differentiating it from the previous period, the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age, which was that of the hunter-gatherers, who constantly moved from one place to another.
The first European peasants grew and raised the same kinds of vegetables and animals that had already been domesticated in the Near and Middle East. Starting from Greece, agriculture spread throughout the Mediterranean basin, to the west, and through central and northern Europe, to the north. Most of the early farmers in the Mediterranean area lived in coastal caves, suggesting that local hunter-gatherer communities may have been in contact with each other by boat or along the coast.
Those communities probably obtained sheep and grain through trade, so they would have farmed as well as fished, hunted, and gathered plants. Eventually, these groups moved inland and created settlements in areas where there was more space to grow plants and raise animals.
As they spread north, starting around 6000 BC, farming communities occasionally encountered hunter-gatherer groups who had found areas with abundant hunting and fishing. One of these groups lived right where the Danube cuts through the Carpathian Mountains, in a gorge known as the Iron Gates. There, the inhabitants of sites such as Lepenski Vir and Vlasac lived in large settlements of small huts, each with a central stone hearth. The inhabitants of these settlements carved strange stone statues with fish heads. These hunter-gatherers preyed on the numerous wild animals on the surrounding mountain slopes and also had an abundant supply of fish in the rapids and eddies of the river. Eventually, they ended up adopting the agriculture of nearby farming communities.
When the peasants reached central Europe, around 5,500 BC, they encountered only a few large hunter-gatherer groups, so they could spread rapidly west from Hungary to France and north up the Rhine valleys. , Elbe, Oder and Vistula, until reaching the Baltic Sea and the North Sea.
Linear ceramics
Those farmers had begun to manufacture a very characteristic pottery, called Lineal, due to its decoration based on incised lines. The shapes of the vessels and their decoration were very similar from Slovakia to France.
Linear pottery farmers settled along small streams throughout Central Europe. Their settlements, such as Bylany in what is now the Czech Republic and Schwanfeld in Germany, consisted of small groups of long wooden houses, each occupied by a family, their animals and their belongings. The fields, where the farmers grew wheat and barley, were located in small clearings in the forest, where the trees had been felled or killed by removing the bark. Cattle were the most common animals of Linear pottery peasants, although they also had sheep, goats and pigs. It appears that they were among the first groups of people to raise animals for their milk. Some of the Linear pottery settlements were fortified with ditches and earthworks.
Farther north, along the coasts of the Baltic and North Seas, small groups of hunter-gatherers lived close to shore, where they could find plenty of food.
The coastal towns
Those coastal towns collected large quantities of seashells. The large mounds created from the discarded shells after oysters, cockles, and clams were cracked open and eaten were called "kitchen middens" by early archaeologists. These groups also fished with traps that consisted of specially designed baskets so that the fish could enter them through a small hole and helped by the current.
Inland, hunter-gatherers paddled canoes on lakes and rivers and fished with harpoons. Using a new invention, the bow and arrows, they also hunted waterfowl such as geese and ducks. In the forest they found edible plants, along with deer and wild pigs. Children could increase the family's food supply by gathering berries and nuts.
These coastal hunter-gatherers saw no reason to adopt agriculture, so for almost a thousand years it did not extend beyond the area occupied by Linear pottery farmers. Regardless, the two groups traded, and wheat and barley began to grow in some coastal communities around 4,000 BC. Initially, the coastal peoples may have practiced part-time agriculture, but this eventually became their main source of food.
Along the Atlantic coast of France and in Britain, the last hunters became farmers just after 4,000 BC. Little is known about the settlements of these new farmers, except for the few sites that have been preserved.
One of them is that of Skara Brae, in the Oreads, along the coast of Scotland, created around 3100 BC. There were few trees in Orkney, so one-room houses were built of stone, as were hearths, beds and dressers. Covered walkways connected the houses. The inhabitants of Skara Brae and other similar nearby settlements were mainly cattle ranchers, many sheep and cattle bones having been found during excavations.
Not long after agriculture was established in Western Europe, megalithic tombs began to be built . They were built on the basis of large flat upright rocks that formed the walls of the burial chamber, which could have a simple box shape or be a long corridor with side rooms. Earth was piled up on the outside to form a ramp and then more stones were dragged to the top to form the roof, which was then covered with earth. These tombs were used for many generations. When people died, the tomb was opened and their bodies were placed next to the bones of their ancestors. Several hundred skeletons have been found in some of the larger tombs.
Over time, early farmers found good sources of flint to make tools, and the trade in flint brought many communities together. Around 3000 BC, farmers learned to harness their animals to pull plows and carts. Finally, they discovered that certain rocks, when heated, expelled molten copper. Copper was first used to make ornaments because it's a soft metal that doesn't hold its shape well, but eventually people started using it to make tools like axes.
The Iceman
In September 1991, hikers in the Alps found the body of a man lying in a pool of water that had melted from a glacier. The body was taken to the University of Innsbruck, in Austria, where it was identified as that of a man who had died about 5,300 years ago, having been preserved in ice. Since he was found in an area called the Otzlaer Alps, the man became known as Otzi or simply the iceman . It seems that our protagonist was crossing the mountains when he died (perhaps from exhaustion). He had with him many personal items that, along with his clothes, had been preserved thanks to the ice.
The Iceman had a copper axe, a wooden bow, a leather quiver with 14 arrows, and a flint dagger. He may also have been carrying a leather backpack. On his feet he wore leather leggings and shoes, which had been stuffed with straw as insulation against the cold. Near his body was a fur cap. Berries and mushrooms were found in a small birch bark container. These objects provided archaeologists with a "time capsule" that has told us a great deal about daily life in the Neolithic Alps.
Neolithic ceremonial sites
In addition to building impressive tombs, early farmers in Central and Western Europe built large ceremonial centers where they gathered to perform rituals. At first, they used to place them on peaks surrounded by ditches and embankments. One such site is Hambledon Hill in south-west England, where several ditches surround a ridge. Many human skeletons, partial or complete, were found within the trenches, suggesting that the bodies of the dead had a role in ritual activities. Other enclosures found in Denmark, France, Germany, and the Czech Republic indicate that such sites were widespread between 3,500 and 3,000 BC.
As time passed, the construction of large ceremonial structures became more important. One such henges is at Avebury, in the south of England, where a deep ditch was dug to encircle an area 300 meters long. The embankment formed from the excavated earth is still 8m high, the same depth as the trench. Inside the circle, standing stones were placed in circles, while two avenues of stones lead out of the ceremonial area. Dated to just after 3000 BC, Avebury is believed to have been built a few centuries before its more famous neighbor, Stonehenge, some 20 miles to the south.