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a short history of europe

Europe History in Brief

The history of Europe starts with the earliest hominid found in the region of today's Georgia, which is supposed to have lived 1.8 million years ago. This first prehistoric man was the predecessor of the famous Neanderthal man, the remnants of which were found in Germany, followed by modern humans who appeared around 35-40,000 BC. It's at the end of this era that the megalith constructions were formed, such as Stonehenge, for example. Prehistoric Europe was inhabited by nomadic bands and later by tribes who permanently settled in Bulgaria, Romania and Greece during the 7th millennium BC. The Neolithic era reached what is now Central Europe a millennium later, and the Trypillian civilization was formed, known as the first civilization on the continent. It's believed that during the Copper Age, the first European literate civilizations were formed, such as the Minoans on Crete and the Mycenaens in Greece around the second millennium BC. Soon, various states were formed, which led to the Persian empires and the formation of the Ancient Greek city-states around 700 BC, which was later followed by the Roman Republic that transformed into the Roman Empire. It was around 1100-800 BC that iron was found and used by the people in Europe, and the Iron Age brought evolution and prosperity. Ancient Greece had a significant impact on Western civilization, as the Greeks invented not only the city-state but also spread many democratic and philosophical ideas, as well as making significant scientific and cultural contributions.
Later, with the strengthening of the Roman Empire which expanded from the Mediterranean to a great part of the continent, Europe was strongly influenced by the Romans, who made serious contributions in language and law, architecture and engineering, etc. It was at that time that Christianity was legitimized by Roman Emperor Constantine I. After the Roman Empire's decline, Europe suffered a period known as the Dark Ages, during which many people migrated and many invasions tore through the continent, organized by Goths, Vandals, Huns, Saxons, Vikings, Normans, and others. There aren't many documents left from that period. Soon, the western part of the Roman Empire was under the control of Slav, Celt and Germanic tribes, which conquered great parts of Europe and eventually led to the formation of the Holy Roman Empire in the year 800. The eastern part of that Roman Empire formed the Byzantine Empire, which considered itself a successor of the original Roman Empire and was based in Constantinople. The Byzantine Empire enjoyed a golden age under Emperor Justinian I, only to be conquered by the Ottoman Empire in the year 1453.
These dark years were followed by the so-called Middle Ages, which are remembered for the social structures of nobility and clergy, feudalism and the writing of the Magna Carta or the so-called Charter of Freedom, which was the first document that limited the power of the English King. During that period, education in Europe was mainly organized by the Roman Catholic Church, its monasteries and cathedral schools. It was during the High Middle Ages that the church got its power and Pope Urban II organized crusade against the Muslims and Inquisition against heretics. Later, in the middle of the 14th Century, Europe was overrun by the Black Death epidemic, when more than one third of the population died. The pain and death during the Middle Ages was followed by a much brighter period that brought many cultural changes, a new humanism and rediscovery of classical knowledge. This period is named the Renaissance, and it ruled over Europe until the 16th Century. It was characterized by the flourishing of art, music, philosophy and science. It was during that period when artists like Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci lived and created their works of art. At that time, the church suffered a forty-year period when two popes claimed to rule over it. This led to the weakening of its strength and the Thirty Year War, which brought new monarchs. During the rule of the new monarchs, the Renaissance flourished and the Age of Discovery was marked by great inventions, eager exploration and scientific research. It was during this period that Christopher Columbus started his voyage to discover the New World in 1498. This discovery led to the formation of many colonial empires belonging to France, England and the Netherlands.
With the start of the 18th Century, a new era began known as the Age of Enlightenment, dominated by scientific discoveries, the French Revolution (which led to the formation of the First Republic) and of course, the Napoleonic Wars, which conquered large parts of Europe before they collapsed in Waterloo in 1815. During this period, the Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain, which quickly spread throughout the continent. New technologies emerged, along with new inventions, soon resulting in urban growth and mass employment, as well as the formation of the working class. The 20th Century started with two World Wars that devastated Europe and led to economic depression. During World War I, all European nations were involved with over 40 million casualties. The map of the continent was dramatically changed with the revolution in Russia and the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires breaking into several nations.
Debt and economic instability led to the Great Depression, which marked the 1930s. At that time, a strong Fascist movement was created with the leaders being Hitler, Mussolini and Franco. Hitler started invading countries such as Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland, starting World War II, which involved the United States and Japan, as well.
World War II is considered by far the most destructive war in human history, resulting in 60 million victims and 9 - 11 million people who disappeared during the Holocaust. After the war, the European territories were set according to the Yalta Conference and divided into two main parts, western and eastern, separated by the so-called Iron Curtain. The western part, along with the United States, formed the NATO organization, while Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union formed the Warsaw Pact, two powers that led the Cold War for fifty years. At the end of the 1980s, the situation in Europe became normal again with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the symbol of the separation between Western and Eastern Europe.
In 1993, the European Union was formed, which established a court, a parliament and a central bank system, which introduced the unified euro currency. The European Union expanded significantly with many new countries from the eastern part of the continent and now counts twenty-seven nations altogether.