Paleolithic Europe refers to the Paleolithic period of Europe, a prehistoric era distinguished by the development of the first stone tools and which covers roughly 99% of human technological history. It extends from the introduction of stone tools by hominids 1.8 million years ago, to the introduction of agriculture and the end of the Pleistocene around 12,000 BP.
It is believed that Homo erectus evolved into Homo heidelbergensis and subsequently Homo neanderthalensis in Paleolithic Europe, before being replaced by modern humans migrating out of Africa approximately 50,000 years ago. The bones of the earliest Europeans are found in Dmanisi, Georgia, and are 1.8 million years old. The oldest evidence of human occupation in Eastern Europe comes from the Kozarnika cave in Bulgaria where a single human tooth and flint artifacts have been dated to at least 1.4 million years ago. In Western Europe at Atapuerca in Spain, human remains have been found that are from 1.2 million years ago The earliest appearance of European early modern humans has been dated to 43,000 years ago from a tooth found in the Grotta del Cavallo in Italy in 1969.
For more details on this topic, see Prehistoric Europe.Read more about Paleolithic Europe: See Also
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“What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one’s heroic ancestors. It’s astounding to me, for example, that so many people really seem to believe that the country was founded by a band of heroes who wanted to be free. That happens not to be true. What happened was that some people left Europe because they couldn’t stay there any longer and had to go someplace else to make it. They were hungry, they were poor, they were convicts.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)