Indo-Europeans 5000-500 BC
Most modern day Whites are to the greatest part, either direct or part descendants of a great wave of Indo-European peoples who swept into Europe from about 5000 BC till around 500 BC - these peoples, Nordic in terms of the White racial sub-groupings, had their original heartland in the region in today central and southern Russia (hence Whites are often today called Caucasians - after the Caucasus mountains situated in the southern reaches of Russia).
Recent research indicates that the flooding of the Black Sea Basin from the Mediterranean - established as a factual occurrence around 5600 BC - was the probable cause of the first great movements, and the time scale would certainly fit.
With the aid of the horse, the first Indo-Europeans moved in all directions, disrupting the slow but steady pace of development everywhere they went. Large numbers settled in northern Europe, staying there till they later began again to move south; others moved off to the Middle and Near East, while others ventured west, crossing into Britain and Spain.
Indo-European invasions 4000-2000BC
The great Nordic Indo-European invasions of Europe took place in four main waves, and then in a number of sub-waves. Each sub-wave was a smaller tribe from one of the four major migrations. Leaving their ancestral homeland in the Caucasus, the Celts; the Germans, the Balts and the Slavs settled different regions of Europe, often giving their names to those regions.
In the south they settled pre-dynastic Asia Minor (Anatolians), penetrating Central Asia (Aryans) and Western China (Tocharians).
Sub-waves of the Indo-European invasion included the Mycenae into Greece and the Latini into Italy - both sparked off the great Classical civilizations.
A tribe of Indo-Europeans called the Latini penetrated as far south as Italy, taking control of that peninsula and mixing with the existing original European populations, and creating what was later to become the world's greatest empire - Rome. The Latini gave their name to the language they carried with them, Latin.
In all these regions, the invaders found the already present population of Old Europeans to be largely racially assimilable. Hence the Latini mixed with the local Etruscans in Italy, producing a Nordic/Mediterranean mix which typified the original Roman type.
The same process occurred in Ireland, which is the cause of the "Irish look" varying between Nordic (blue eyed and blonde) and dark hair and dark eyes, or dark hair and light eyes.
Indo-European languages
It comprises most of the languages of Europe together with those of the northern Indian subcontinent and the Iranian Plateau, and was also predominant in ancient Anatolia.
All Indo-European languages are descended from a single prehistoric language, reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European (PIE), spoken sometime in the Neolithic to early Bronze age. Written evidence of Indo-European appeared during the Bronze Age in the form of Mycenaean Greek and the Anatolian Hittite. They are classified as the following language groups:
East Slavic are Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian. They descend from a common predecessor, the language of the medieval Kievan Rus' (9th to 13th centuries). To some extent, Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian are mutually intelligible.
West Slavic includes Czech, Polish, Slovak, Kashubian, Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian. They split from the East Slavic and South Slavic branches around the 3rd to 6th centuries AD.
South Slavic are mainly in the Balkans. The first South Slavic language to be written (the first attested Slavic language) was the Old Church Slavonic spoken in Thessalonica, in the ninth century AD. Serbo-Croat-Bosnian is the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro.
Ancient Greece Civilizations 3000-1070BC
Europe first civilizations flourished in the Cyclades (Crete) islands, Greece, in the Aegean Sea, where the Minoans established a highly sophisticated Bronze Age culture. Rich from the sea trade, they built grand palace such as Knossos.
The Indo-European Mycenae arose on a part of the Greek mainland known as the Peloponnesus, around 1900 BC with the sudden appearance of migratory Nordic tribes who quickly absorbed the local population. The Mycenaean expanded their rule southward, topping an already weakened Minoan civilization.
The reasons for the decline of Minoan culture are unclear. Around 1500 BC, a massive volcanic eruption and an earthquake may have destroyed the trading network.
There is evidence that the Mycenae had contact with yet another invading Indo-European tribe, the Hittites, as evidence of trading activity exists between them. Mycenae was sacked and destroyed in 1100 BC by an invasion of yet another Nordic tribe, the Dorics.
The destruction caused many Mycenaeans to flee the Peloponnesus, and a sizable number went to the east cost of Anatolia, (later the Ionian civilization). The descendants of the Dorics were known as the Spartans and the Corinthians, two peoples later to feature dramatically in Greek history.
By 1070 BC, the last Mycenaean palaces have been abandoned. Greece had entered th "Dark Age" (1100-800 BC), for which no records exists.
Greek language
Greek is native to the southern Balkans, the Aegean Islands, western Asia Minor, southern Italy and Cyprus. It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language. During classical antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and beyond and would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire (650-1453 AD).
Spread of the Celts 2000-400BC
The Celts were a collection of tribes with origins in central Europe that shared a similar language (the Celtic languages), religious beliefs, traditions and culture. It's believed that the Celtic culture started to evolve as early as 1200 BC.
They are spreading outwards from their original homeland east of the Rhine, developed two advanced metalworking cultures, named by archaeologists after the places where the most plentiful artifacts were found: Urnfield and Hallstatt in today southwestern Germany and Upper Austria. They introduced the use of iron for tools and weapons.
The Canegrate culture (13th century BC) may represent the first migratory wave of the proto-Celtic population from the northwest part of the Alps that, through the Alpine passes, penetrated and settled in the Po river valley between Lakes Maggiore and Como.
During the reign of Tarquinius Priscus (King of Rome, 616-579 BC), they occupied the area between Milan and Cremona. Milan (Mediolanum) itself is presumably a Gaulish foundation of the early 6th century BC, its name having a Celtic etymology of "city in the middle of the plain".
With the advantage of iron weapons, they are able to press east into the Balkans; and west into France and Spain; and later they cross the Channel to the Britain islands. Their legacy remains most prominent in Ireland and Great Britain, where traces of their language and culture are still prominent today.
By the 4th century BC, the Celts controlled much of the European continent north of the Alps mountain range. The Romans, which ruled much of Italy at that time, referred to the Celts as Galli (Gauls), meaning barbarians.
Celtic languages
During the 1st millennium BC, the celtic languages were spoken across much of Europe, in the Iberian Peninsula, from the Atlantic and North Sea coastlines, up to the Rhine valley and down the Danube valley to the Black Sea, and the northern Balkan Peninsula.
The Britons and Gauls settled in the northwestern corner of present-day France, the region known today as Brittany. Celtic tradition survived in the region as it was geographically isolated from the rest of France. Roughly one-quarter of the region's residents speak Breton, a Celtic language similar to Welsh.
In Wales, the native tongue—Celtic language Welsh—is still widely spoken in the region. In Cornwall (the westernmost county in England), some (although very few) speak Cornish, which is similar to Welsh and Breton. In Scotland, the Celtic language Scots Gaelic is still spoken, although by a minority.
The Irish Gaelic language was largely disappeared in the 19th century, when the English colonized Ireland, but the language is still spoken in the western part of the country.
Germani, Balts and Slavs 2000-500BC
The Germani Indo-European tribes, who are identified by their use of Germanic languages, initially settled in what is today Denmark and southern Scandinavia, but soon thereafter starting moving south, closer to central Europe, later giving their name to Germany.
Germani Tribes and Germanic language
The recorded history of Germanic languages begins with their speakers's first contact with the Romans, in the 1st century BC. They were chronicled by Rome's historians during the Roman-Germanic wars, particularly at the historic Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD, where the vanquishment of three Roman legions at the hands of Germanic tribal warriors precipitated the Roman Empire's strategic withdrawal from Magna Germania.
As branch of the Indo-European language family, they are divided into three groups: West Germanic, including English, German, and Netherlandic (Dutch); North Germanic, including Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Faroese; and East Germanic, now extinct, comprising Gothic and the languages of the Vandals, Burgundians, and a few other tribes.
The European plains of Denmark and southern Scandinavia is where the Germanic peoples most likely originated. This is a region that was “remarkably stable” as far back as the Neolithic Age, Archeological evidence gives the impression that the Germanic people were becoming more uniform in their culture as early as 750 BC. As their population grew, the Germanic people migrated westwards into coastal floodplains due to the exhaustion of the soil in their original settlements.
By approximately 250 BC, additional expansion further southwards into central Europe took place, and five general groups of Germanic people emerged, each employing distinct linguistic dialects but sharing similar language innovations.
These five dialects are distinguished as North Germanic in southern Scandinavia; North Sea Germanic in the regions along the North Sea and in the Jutland peninsula, which forms the mainland of Denmark together with the north German state of Schleswig-Holstein; Rhine-Weser Germanic along the middle Rhine and Weser river; Elbe Germanic directly along the middle Elbe river; and East Germanic between the middle of the Oder and Vistula rivers.
Baltic Tribes and Balts language
The Balts settled the area between the lower Vistula and upper Daugava and Dnieper rivers on the southeast shore of the Baltic Sea. Because the thousands of lakes and swamps in this area contributed to the Balts' geographical isolation, the Baltic languages retain a number of conservative or archaic features.
Slavic Tribes and Balts language
Of all the Indo-European peoples who settled in Europe around 2000 BC - during the great Nordic invasions, a group which became known as the Slavs settled the closest to the ancestral homelands in southern Russia.
The land they settled - today known as the Ukraine and Byelorussia - was ideal for cereal farming and this encouraged the settlers to turn to agriculture rather than war or conquest. By 1000 BC, these Indo-European forerunners of the Slavs had started to move westward, occupying territory around the Vistula River, in present day Poland.
Around 700 BC, the eastern region was conquered by yet another Indo-European tribe, the Scythians, who appeared from the south (where another branch of that tribe had penetrated into Asia Minor and the Near East).
Ancient peoples of Italy 1400-700BC
The Italian Bronze Age begins around 1500 BC, likely corresponding to the arrival of Indo-European speakers whose descendants would become the Italic peoples of the Iron Age. At the same time, the Etruscan civilization in central Italy, the Celts in northern Italy and the Greek colonies in the south flourished starting from the 8th centuries BC.
The Etruscan is the name given to a powerful and wealthy civilization in the area corresponding roughly to Tuscany, western Umbria and northern Lazio.
According to Strabo, in the 8th and 7th centuries BC, for the search for new commercial outlets and ports, Greeks began to settle in in Sicily and the southern part of the Italian Peninsula. The Romans called the such area Magna Graecia since it was so densely inhabited by the Greeks.
Roman Kingdom and the early Roman Republic 753-390 BC
Among the Italic peoples, the Latins, originally situated in the Latium region, and their Latin language would come to dominate the peninsula of Italy in the 3rd century BC.
The site of the founding of the Roman Kingdom (and eventual Republic and Empire) had a ford where one could cross the river Tiber. The Palatine Hill and hills surrounding it provided easily defensible positions in the wide fertile plain surrounding them.
Rome's records were destroyed in 390 BC when the city was sacked and it is impossible to know for certain how many kings actually ruled the city of Rome, or if any of the deeds attributed to the individual kings, by later writers, are accurate.
Roman Kingdom 753-509 BC
Romulus was the legendary founder and first king of Rome. The founding of the city by Romulus was commemorated annually on April 21, with the festival of the Parilia.
Romulus then laid out the city's boundaries with a furrow that he ploughed, performed another sacrifice, and with his followers set to work building the city itself. Romulus then sought the assent of the people to become their king.
| Year | King | Other notable information |
| 753–717 BC | Romulus | Italian myth of Romulus and Remus |
| 716–673 BC | Numa Pompilius | Rome's most important religious and political institutions are attributed to him |
| 673–642 BC | Tullus Hostilius | Defeat of Alba Longa |
| 640–616 BC | Ancus Marcius | >Wars with the Sabines |
| 616–579 BC | Tarquinius Priscus | Increased the number of the Senate; Built the Circus Maximus |
| 578–535 BC | Servius Tullius | Compitalia festivals; Roman coinage |
| 535–509 BC | Tarquinius Superbus | Last king of Rome |
During the period of the Roman Kingdom, the Roman King was the principal executive magistrate. He was the chief executive, priest, lawgiver, judge and the sole commander-in-chief of the army. He had the sole power to select his own assistants, and to grant them their powers.
Unlike most other ancient monarchs, these monarchs were elected, for life, by men who made up the Roman Senate. His powers rested on law and legal precedent, through a type of statutory authorization known as "Imperium" (Latin: "Command").
The Roman Senate was a governing and advisory assembly in ancient Rome. It was one of the most enduring institutions in Roman history, being established in the first days of the city of Rome (traditionally founded in 753 BC). It survived the overthrow of the Roman monarchy in 509 BC; the fall of the Roman Republic in the 1st century BC; the division of the Roman Empire in 395 AD; and the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476; and lasted well into the Eastern Roman Empire's history.
Birth of the Republic 509 BC
The Roman Republic was established around 509 BC, when the last of the seven kings of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus (colloquially known as "Tarquin the Proud") was deposed because his son, Sextus Tarquinius, had raped the noblewoman Lucretia, who afterwards took her own life.
The husband of Lucretia, Tarquinius Collatinus, together with Tarquin the Proud's nephew, Lucius Junius Brutus, mustered support from the Senate and Roman army and forced the former monarch into exile to Etruria.
The Senate agreed to abolish kingship. Most of the king's former functions were transferred to two Consuls, who were elected to office for a term of one year. Brutus and Collatinus became Republican Rome's first consuls. They had the capacity to act as a check on his colleague, if necessary through the same power of veto that the kings had held.
Roman Republic 509-390 BC
Roman society under the Republic was primarily a cultural mix of Latin and Etruscan societies, as well as of Greek cultural elements. Its political organization developed, at around the same time as direct democracy in Ancient Greece, with collective and annual magistracies, overseen by a senate.
Under the republic, regions of the empire were ruled by provincial governors answerable to and authorised by the "Senate and People of Rome". Rome and its senate were ruled by a variety of magistrates. The top magistrates were the two consuls, who had an extensive range of executive, legislative, judicial, military, and religious powers.
As distinguished by its unique language, Etruscan's civilization endured from the time of the earliest Etruscan inscriptions (c. 700 BC) until its assimilation into the Roman Republic, beginning in the late 4th century BC with the Roman-Etruscan Wars.
At the same time, however, several Gallic tribes had begun invading Italy from the north as Celtics culture expanded throughout Europe. In 390 BC, they defeated the Roman army of around 15,000 troops and proceeded to pursue the fleeing Romans back to Rome itself and partially sacked the town before being either driven off or bought off.
Archaic and Classical Greece 800-336 BC
Archaic Greece 800-480 BC
In the 8th century BC, Greece began to emerge from the Dark Ages (1070-800 BC), when literacy had been lost and Mycenaean script forgotten. However, the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet, modifying it to create the Greek alphabet. It was in the archaic period that the Greek alphabet developed, the earliest surviving Greek literature was composed, monumental sculpture and red-figure pottery began in Greece and the hoplite became the core of Greek armies.
The archaic period saw developments in Greek politics, economics, international relations, warfare and culture. It laid the groundwork for the later Classical period (480-336 BC), both politically and culturally.
The period saw the development of the polis (or city-state) as the predominant unit of political organisation. Many cities throughout Greece came under the rule of autocratic leaders, called "tyrants". It is the pattern largely dictated by Greek geography, where every island, valley, and plain is cut off from its neighbors by the sea or mountain ranges.
Some of the most important city-states were Athens, Sparta, Thebes, Corinth, and Delphi. Athens and Sparta were the two most powerful city-states. In Athens, the earliest institutions of democracy were implemented in 508 BC under a noble Athenian. In Sparta, the region of Messenia was brought under Spartan control and the Peloponnesian League was founded which made Sparta a dominant power.
Classical Greece 480-336 BC
This Classical period saw the annexation of much of modern-day Greece by the Persians and its subsequent independence. Classical Greece had a powerful influence on the Roman Republic and on the foundations of western civilization. Much of modern Western politics, artistic thought (architecture, sculpture), scientific thought, theatre, literature, and philosophy derives from this period of Greek history.
The Greco-Persian Wars (499 BC-449 BC) were a series of conflicts between the Achaemenid Empire of Persia and the Hellenic city-states. The collision between the fractious political world of the Greeks and the enormous empire of the Persians began when Cyrus the Great conquered Ionia in 547 BC.
After the victory of Greco-Persian Wars in 449 BC, Athens emerged as preeminent and Greek culture reached its height. Athenian democracy was established and Athens was a center for the arts, learning and philosophy, home of Plato's Akademia and Aristotle's Lyceum. Athens was also the birthplace of Socrates, Pericles, Sophocles, and many other prominent philosophers, writers and politicians of the ancient world. It is widely referred to as the cradle of Western Civilization, and the birthplace of democracy.
The city of Athens was leading the Delian League against Sparta and the Peloponnesian League. Greek civilization declined following the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC) between Athens and Sparta, and in 338BC it was taken over by Philip II of Macedonia.
Philip II of Macedon 359-336 BC
Before the 4th century BC, Macedonia was a small kingdom at the north and outside of the area dominated by the great city-states of Athens, Sparta and Thebes. It was briefly subordinate to Achaemenid Persia.
During the reign of the Argead king Philip II of Macedon (r. 359-336 BC), Macedonia subdued mainland Greece and the Thracian Odrysian kingdom through conquest and diplomacy. With a reformed army containing phalanxes wielding the sarissa pike, Philip II defeated the Greek city-states of Athens and Thebes at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC.
Philip II led the effort to establish a federation of Greek states known as the League of Corinth, with him as the elected hegemon and commander-in-chief of Greece for a planned invasion of the Achaemenid Empire of Persia. However, his assassination in 336 BC, led to the immediate succession of his son Alexander, who would go on to invade the Achaemenid Empire in his father's stead.
Scythians 700-339 BC
The Scythians were an Iranian equestrian tribal confederation who was mentioned as inhabiting large areas in the central Eurasian steppes starting with the 700 BC up until the 400 AD, who appeared from the south (where another branch of that tribe had penetrated into Asia Minor and the Near East). In 512 BC, when Darius the Great of Persia attacked the Scythians, he allegedly penetrated into their land after crossing the Danube.
According to Herodotus, a Greek historian (484-425 BC), Darius in this manner came as far as the Volga River, and the nomadic Scythians frustrated the Persian army by letting it March through the entire country without an engagement. The term Scythian, like Cimmerian, was used to refer to a variety of groups from the Black Sea to southern Siberia and central Asia.
During the 5th to 3rd centuries BC, the Scythians evidently prospered. When Herodotus wrote his Histories in the 5th century BC, Greeks distinguished Scythia Minor, in present-day Romania and Bulgaria, from a Greater Scythia that extended eastwards for a 20-day ride from the Danube River, across the steppes of today's East Ukraine to the lower Don basin.
Strabo (c. 63 BC-24 AD) reports that King Ateas united under his power the Scythian tribes living between the Maeotian marshes and the Danube. His westward expansion brought him into conflict with Philip II of Macedon, who took military action against the Scythians in 339 BC. Ateas died in battle, and his empire disintegrated. In the aftermath of this defeat, the Celts seem to have displaced the Scythians from the Balkans; while in south Russia, a kindred tribe, the Sarmatians, gradually overwhelmed them.
Sarmatians 600-200 BC
The Sarmatians emerged in the 600 BC in a region of the steppe to the east of the Don River and south of the Ural Mountains in Eastern Europe, at western part of greater Scythia (mostly modern Ukraine and Southern Russia).
For centuries they lived in relatively peaceful co-existence with their western neighbors the Scythians. Then, in the 200 BC, they fought with the Scythians on the Pontic steppe to the north of the Black Sea. The Sarmatians were to dominate these territories over the next five centuries.
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