Post by Julia Gaia on Sept 27, 2007 16:49:33 GMT -5
Here is the Map of Ancient Europe:
Here is a List of all Lands and Folks of Ancient Europe:
Persian Empire
The earliest known record of the Persians comes from an Assyrian inscription from c. 844 BC that calls them the Parsu and mentions them in the region of Lake Urmia alongside another group, the Mādāyu (Medes). For the next two centuries, the Persians and Medes were at times tributary to the Assyrians. The region of Parsuash was annexed by Sargon of Assyria around 719 BC. Eventually the Medes came to rule an independent Median Empire, and the Persians were subject to them.
The Achaemenids were the first to create a centralized state in Persia, founded by Achaemenes (Hakhamanish), chieftain of the Persians around 700 BC.
Around 653 BC, the Medes came under the domination of the Scythians, and Teispes, the son of Achaemenes, seems to have led the nomadic Persians to settle in southern Iran around this time — eventually establishing the first organized Persian state in the important region of Anshan as the Elamite kingdom was permanently destroyed by the Assyrian ruler Ashurbanipal (640 BC). The kingdom of Anshan and its successors continued to use Elamite as an official language for quite some time after this, although the new dynasts spoke Persian, an Indo-Iranian tongue.
Teispes' descendants may have branched off into two lines, one line ruling in Anshan, while the other ruled the rest of Persia. Cyrus II the Great united the separate kingdoms around 559 BC. At this time, the Persians were still tributary to the Median Empire ruled by Astyages. Cyrus rallied the Persians together, and in 550 BC defeated the forces of Astyages, who was then captured by his own nobles and turned over to the triumphant Cyrus, now Shah of a unified Persian kingdom. As Persia assumed control over the rest of Media and their large empire, Cyrus led the united Medes and Persians to still more conquest. He took Lydia in Asia Minor, and carried his arms eastward into central Asia. Finally in 539 BC, Cyrus marched triumphantly into the ancient city of Babylon. After this victory, he set the standards of a benevolent conqueror by issuing the Cyrus Cylinder, the first charter of human rights. Cyrus was killed in 530 BC during a battle against the Massagetae or Sakas.
Cyrus' son, Cambyses II, annexed Egypt to the Achaemenid Empire. The empire then reached its greatest extent under Darius I. He led conquering armies into the Indus River valley and into Thrace in Europe. A punitive raid against Greece was halted at the Battle of Marathon. His son Xerxes I tried to subdue the Greeks, but his army was defeated at the Battle of the Termophylae and the Battle of Plataea 479 BC.
Egypt
The regularity and richness of the annual Nile River flood, coupled with semi-isolation provided by deserts to the east and west, allows for the development of one of the world's great civilizations. A unified Kingdom of Egypt arises circa 3200 BC and a series of dynasties ruled in Egypt for the next three millennia. By 3100 BC, Egypt had a centralized government controlled by a line of hereditary rulers. These kings, called pharaohs, kept a royal court of advisors and nobility, and oversaw the governors of the provinces of the kingdom. They were also commanders of the Egyptian army. Even the priests and priestesses who officiated at the complex religious ceremonies and attended on the gods served the pharaohs. The rule of the pharaohs is considered dynastic; it can also be considered absolute in the truest sense of the word. The pharaohs came to be considered as the representatives of the gods on earth and even as gods themselves. Egypt is conquered by Persia in 525 BC, and ruled by the Persian Empire from now on. Shortly before 486 BC, the year of Darius' death, there was a revolt of the type that had occurred under Aryandes, that was definitively subdued by Xerxes I (486–464 BC) only in 484 BC. The province was subjected to harsh punishment for the revolt, and especially its satrap Achaemenes administered the country without regard for the opinion of his subjects. A still more serious and extensive revolt took place in about 460 BC under Artaxerxes I. It was led by the Libyan Inarus, son of Psammetichus, who asked for help from Athens; a fleet of 200 ships sailed up the Nile as far as the ancient citadel of Memphis, two thirds of which was occupied by the insurgents. Achaemenes was killed in the course of the battle of Papremis in the western Delta. Nevertheless, due to the aridity of Egypt's climate, population centres are concentrated along the narrow Nile Valley and Delta, meaning that approximately 99% of the population uses only about 5.5% of the total land area.
Carthagian Empire
Carthage was founded by Phoenician settlers from Tyre, on the coast of Palestine. These Phoenicians were famous for their trade in the murex mollusc that yielded a highly-prized brilliant purple dye, and it is likely that the settlement, founded on a peninsula near the mollusc beds, was chosen for its commercial suitability. Its Phoenician name, Kart Hadasht (meaning 'New Capital' as well as 'New City'), however, could also point to the added purpose of founding the town as a potential alternative capital in the West at a time when Tyre was being threatened by the Assyrians. Although Carthage was not the first Phoenician colony in the Western Mediterranean, it soon became the most important. During the 7th C. the city became independent of Tyre and began to control the surrounding tribes, in turn founding colonies and expanding to become one of the largest cities of antiquity. During the 6th C. it began to interfere in the affairs of cities in W. Sicily and beyond; with its defeat of a Phocian fleet at the battle of Alalia (off Corsica) in 535 BC, Carthage was free to extend its influence to Sicily, Sardinia and even Spain. The Carthaginian engagement of the Sicilian Greeks in 480 BC at the same time as the Persians under Xerxes were invading Greece seems to have been part of a coordinated plan that met with failure. The Carthaginians were defeated at Himera (in Sicily), the Persians at Salamis (480 BC) and then at Plataia (479 BC). For most of the 5th century, Carthage pursued a policy of retrenchment and consolidation, overthrowing the Mago dynasty and replacing it with an aristocracy that built up Carthage's military might.
Rome
The founding of Rome goes back to the very early days of civilization. It is so old that today it is known as 'the eternal city'. The first foundations of the city were founded in the year 753 BC, modern historians although believe it was the year 625 BC.
Early Rome was governed by kings, but after only seven of them had ruled, the Romans took power over their own city and ruled themselves, built up a democracy.
They then instead had a council known as the 'senate' which ruled over them. From this point on one speaks of the 'Roman Republic'.
The word 'Republic' itself comes from the Latin (the language of the Romans) words 'res publica' which mean 'public matters' or 'matters of state'.
The senate under the kings had only been there to advise the king. Now the senate appointed a consul, who ruled Rome like a king, but only for one year. - This was a wise idea, as like that, the consul ruled carefully and not as a tyrant, for he knew that otherwise he could be punished by the next consul, once his year was up.
Rome knew four classes of people. This division was very important to the Romans.
The lowest class were the slaves. They were owned by other people. They had no rights at all.
The next class were the plebeians. They were free people. But they had little say at all.
The second highest class were the equestrians (sometimes they are called the 'knights'). Their name means the 'riders', as they were given a horse to ride if they were called to fight for Rome. To be an equestrian you had to be rich.
The highest class were the nobles of Rome. They were called 'patricians'. All the real power in Rome lay with them.
Etruscan Empire
Somewhere between 900 and 800 BC, the Italian peninsula was settled by a mysterious peoples called the Etruscans. We don't know where the Etruscans came from, but archaeologists suspect that they came from the eastern Mediterannean, possibly Asia Minor. We will, however, never really know where they came from or why they colonized Italy. We do know that when they came to Italy, they brought civilization and urbanization with them. They founded their civilizations in north-eastern Italy between the Appenine mountain range and the Tyrrhenian Sea. Their civilization stretched from the Arno river in the north to the Tiber river towards the center of the Italian peninsula; it was on the Tiber river that a small village of Latins, the village that would become Rome, sat. So the Romans, who were only villagers during the rise of the Etruscan civilization, were in close contact with the Etruscans, their language, their ideas, their religion, and their civilization; the Etruscans were the single most important influence on Roman culture in its transition to civilization.
The Etruscans lived in independent, fortified city-states; these city-states would form small confederacies. In the earliest times, these city-states were ruled by a monarch, but were later ruled by oligarchies that governed through a council and through elected officials. Like the surrounding peoples, the Etruscans were largely an agrarian people, but they also had a strong military, and used that military to dominate all the surrounding peoples. These dominated populations were forced to do the agricultural labor on the Etruscan farms, so the Etruscans had time to devote to commerce and industry. In the seventh and sixth centuries, the Etruscan military had subjugated much of Italy, including Rome, and regions outside of Italy, such as the island of Corsica.
They were a sophisticated people, with an alphabet based on the Greek alphabet, a powerfully original sculptural and painting tradition, a religion based on human-type gods which they had learned from the Greeks, and a complicated set of rituals for divining the future, which they handed down to the Romans. Unlike most civilizations of the time, gender inequality seems not to have been very pronounced.
While the Etruscans were busy building their power over Italy and engaging in active commerce with the east and with Africa, a city to their south began to grow precipitously, a city imitating Etruscans in many ways: the Roman kingdom.
Italic Tribes
Ancient Italic peoples are all those peoples that lived in Italy before the Roman domination. Not all of these various peoples are linguistically or ethnically closely related. Some of them spoke Italic languages, others spoke Greek because of the arrival of Hellenic colonists, while others belonged to another Indo-European branch or were non-Indo-European. The classification of a number of these ethnicons is unknown or disputed. The tripes of Apulia and Veneti also were counted to the Italic tribes.
Illyria
Illyrian culture is believed to have evolved from the Stone Age and to have manifested itself in the territory of Albania towardthe beginning of the Bronze Age, about 2000 BC. The Illyrians were not a uniform body of people but a conglomeration of many tribes that inhabited the western part of the Balkans, from what is now Slovenia in the northwest to and including the region of Epirus, which extends about halfway down the mainland of modern Greece. In general, Illyrians in the highlands of Albania were more isolated than those in the lowlands, and their culture evolved more slowly--a distinction that persisted throughout Albania's history.
In its beginning, the kingdom of Illyria comprised the actual territories of Dalmatia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, with a large part of modern Serbia. Shkodra (Scutari) was its capital, just as it is now, the most important center of Northern Albania.
The earliest known king of Illyria was Hyllus (The Star) who is recorded to have died in the year 1225 B.C. The Kingdom, however, reached its zenith in the fourth century B.C. when Bardhylus (White Star), one of the most prominent of the Illyrian kings, united under scepter the kingdoms of Illyria, Molossia (Epirus*) and a good part of Macedonia. But its decay began under the same ruler as a result of the attacks made on it by Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great.
Thrace
At the dawn of history the ancient Thracians—a group of tribes speaking an Indo-European language—extended as far west as the Adriatic Sea, but they were pushed eastward (c.1300 B.C.) by the Illyrians, and in the 5th cent. B.C. they lost their land west of the Struma (Strimón) River to Macedon. In the north, however, Thrace at that period still extended to the Danube. Unlike the Macedonians, the Thracians did not absorb Greek culture, and their tribes formed separate petty kingdoms.
The Thracian Bronze Age was similar to that of Mycenaean Greece, and the Thracians had developed high forms of music and poetry, but their savage warfare led the Greeks to consider them barbarians. Many Greek colonies—e.g., Byzantium on the Hellespont and Tomi (modern Constanţa) on the Black Sea—were founded in Thrace by c.600 B.C. The Greeks exploited Thracian gold and silver mines, and they recruited Thracians for their infantry. Thrace was reduced to vassalage by Persia from c.512 B.C. to 479 B.C., and Persian customs were introduced.
Greece
The early history of Greece is not very detailed. Because of this it is often called the Dark Age of Ancient Greece. The first people to inhabit Greece built settlements along the shores of Greece. They relied on the Aegean Sea for trade and supplies. Travel by sea introduced the Greeks to other cultures, and they were exposed to western benefits of agriculture and various techniques of metalwork.
Different communities began to develop in Greece: the Aegeans, Achaeans, the and Pelasgians. Crete became the center of the Aegean civilization, also called the Minoans, and their culture dominated the region about 2500 BC. The Achaeans built their capital at Mycenae. A volcanic eruption in 1400 BC caused the destruction of the Minoan Thera, an island east of Crete. The destruction crushed the Minoan functionality and their culture was absorbed by the Mycenaean Greeks.
Around 1200 BC, a conflict arose at the city of Troy, where a ten year battle took place. Armed invaders hid themselves inside a large wooden horse. As the horse was brought into the city, the soldiers attacked and seized control. This was the subject of an epic poem by Homer. Homer is also well known for his epic poem of the hero Odysseus. These works of literature are now popular school studies.
Greek settlements transformed themselves into city-states, or poleis. Regions ruled by a council and a king. Their political structure was unstable because the kings often acted like tyrants to the citizens. The Aristocratic people, mostly landowners, served on the council. Many citizens were not fairly represented in this system. This caused tension, and in many cases political uprisings. It is ironic that the Greek culture is given so much credit for ideas of democracy, because times of democracy seldom existed in Ancient Greece; only for short whiles in-between unstable governments.
The Olympic Games, a great athletic contest, began in 776 BC. The Olympics marked a rise of the Greek culture, and the beginning of the Archaic Period of Greece. During this time period, foreign culture held a great influence over Greek ideas. Artwork began to focus on human figures and of mythology. The culture soared even higher into the Classical Period, approximately 500 BC. This was the highest point of Greek creativity especially in the areas of philosophy, art, and literature.
The Persian Wars began in 490 BC, with a Persian invasion in Greece led by Darius I the Great of Thrace. The Greek forces were superior and crushed the invasion at Marathon, under Miltiades. In 480 BC, the Persians launched a second attack led by Xerxes. The Spartians killed many of Xerxes' men in the Battle of Thermopylae, but in the end were defeated as they only defended this passage with 300 men. Xerxes' went on and sacked and ruined Athens. The Greeks later won a decisive military victory at Salamis, they defeated the Persian naval fleet.
More Wars followed, and in 461 BC, the first of the Peloponnesian Wars began between the Athenians and Spartans. Athens had a completely democratic government, and the Spartan aristocratic government saw that as a potential threat. Athens was victorious and they signed a peace treaty with Persia and made a truce with Sparta.
The Celts
The Celts were a group of peoples that occupied lands stretching from the British Isles to Gallatia, over the whole Europe. The Celts had many dealings with other cultures that bordered the lands occupied by these peoples, and even though there is no written record of the Celts stemming from their own documents, we can piece together a fair picture of them from archeological evidence as well as historical accounts from other cultures.
The first historical recorded encounter of a people displaying the cultural traits associated with the Celts comes from northern Italy around 400 BC, when a previously unkown group of barbarians came down from the Alps and displaced the Etruscans from the fertile Po valley, a displacment that helped to push the Etruscans from history's limelight. The next encounter with the Celts came with the still young Roman Empire, directly to the south of the Po. The Romans in fact had sent three envoys to the beseiged Etruscans to study this new force.
Scythian Realm
The Central-Asian steppe has been the home of nomad tribes for centuries. Being nomads, they roamed across the plains, incidentally attacking the urbanized countries to the south, east and west.
The first to describe the life style of these tribes was a Greek researcher, Herodotus, who lived in the fifth century BCE. Although he concentrates on the tribes living in modern Ukraine, which he calls Scythians, we may extrapolate his description to people in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and possibly Mongolia, even though Herodotus usually calls these eastern nomads 'Sacae'. In fact, just as the Scythians and the Sacae shared the same life style, they had the same name: in their own language, which belonged to the Indo-Iranian family, they called themselves Skudat ('archers'?). The Persians rendered this name as Sakâ and the Greeks as Skythai. The Chinese called them, at a later stage in history, Sai.
Tribes are, almost by definition, very loose organizations. Every now and then, new tribal coalitions came into being, and sometimes, new languages became prominent among the nomads from the Central-Asian steppe.
The oldest group we know of is usually called Indo-Iranian. (The old name 'Aryan' is no longer used.) There are no contemporary reports about their migration, but it can be reconstructed from their language. It is reasonably certain that at the beginning of the second millennium BCE, the speakers of the Proto-Indo-Iranian language moved from Ukraine to the southeast. From an archaeological point of view, their migration is attested in the change from the Yamnaya culture into the Andronovo culture.
They invaded the country that was later called Afghanistan, where they separated into an Iranian and an Indian branch. The first group settled in Aria, a name that lives on in our word 'Iran', where they settled after 1000 BCE; the second group reached the Punjab c.1500 BCE. From the second millennium on, three groups of languages can be discerned: the Indian group (Vedic, Sanskrit...), the Scythian group (in the homeland on the steppe), and the Iranian group (Gathic, Persian...). Even when, in the sixth century, the Achaemenid empire was at its most powerful and the Persians lived in comfortable towns, they still remembered their earlier, nomadic life style.
Saami Realm
It is believed that the Saami arrived on the Fenno-Scandinavian peninsula just over 10,000 bpe. They are considered the first residents of this area. The Saami followed their food sources that moved northward behind the retreating glaciers. They eventually inhabited all of present-day Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula southward almost to present-day Tallinn, Estonia.
As the Saami inhabited the different ecosystems they adapted to the conditions. On the coastal fjords and bays of Norway, they utilized the resources of the sea. In the mountains and forests farther inland, hunting and gathering became the norm. The inland lakes of Finland and Northwestern Russia were used for their abundant pike, trout and other freshwater fish. For some of the Saami away from major fishing areas, reindeer became the major food source.
Here is a List of all Lands and Folks of Ancient Europe:
Persian Empire
The earliest known record of the Persians comes from an Assyrian inscription from c. 844 BC that calls them the Parsu and mentions them in the region of Lake Urmia alongside another group, the Mādāyu (Medes). For the next two centuries, the Persians and Medes were at times tributary to the Assyrians. The region of Parsuash was annexed by Sargon of Assyria around 719 BC. Eventually the Medes came to rule an independent Median Empire, and the Persians were subject to them.
The Achaemenids were the first to create a centralized state in Persia, founded by Achaemenes (Hakhamanish), chieftain of the Persians around 700 BC.
Around 653 BC, the Medes came under the domination of the Scythians, and Teispes, the son of Achaemenes, seems to have led the nomadic Persians to settle in southern Iran around this time — eventually establishing the first organized Persian state in the important region of Anshan as the Elamite kingdom was permanently destroyed by the Assyrian ruler Ashurbanipal (640 BC). The kingdom of Anshan and its successors continued to use Elamite as an official language for quite some time after this, although the new dynasts spoke Persian, an Indo-Iranian tongue.
Teispes' descendants may have branched off into two lines, one line ruling in Anshan, while the other ruled the rest of Persia. Cyrus II the Great united the separate kingdoms around 559 BC. At this time, the Persians were still tributary to the Median Empire ruled by Astyages. Cyrus rallied the Persians together, and in 550 BC defeated the forces of Astyages, who was then captured by his own nobles and turned over to the triumphant Cyrus, now Shah of a unified Persian kingdom. As Persia assumed control over the rest of Media and their large empire, Cyrus led the united Medes and Persians to still more conquest. He took Lydia in Asia Minor, and carried his arms eastward into central Asia. Finally in 539 BC, Cyrus marched triumphantly into the ancient city of Babylon. After this victory, he set the standards of a benevolent conqueror by issuing the Cyrus Cylinder, the first charter of human rights. Cyrus was killed in 530 BC during a battle against the Massagetae or Sakas.
Cyrus' son, Cambyses II, annexed Egypt to the Achaemenid Empire. The empire then reached its greatest extent under Darius I. He led conquering armies into the Indus River valley and into Thrace in Europe. A punitive raid against Greece was halted at the Battle of Marathon. His son Xerxes I tried to subdue the Greeks, but his army was defeated at the Battle of the Termophylae and the Battle of Plataea 479 BC.
Egypt
The regularity and richness of the annual Nile River flood, coupled with semi-isolation provided by deserts to the east and west, allows for the development of one of the world's great civilizations. A unified Kingdom of Egypt arises circa 3200 BC and a series of dynasties ruled in Egypt for the next three millennia. By 3100 BC, Egypt had a centralized government controlled by a line of hereditary rulers. These kings, called pharaohs, kept a royal court of advisors and nobility, and oversaw the governors of the provinces of the kingdom. They were also commanders of the Egyptian army. Even the priests and priestesses who officiated at the complex religious ceremonies and attended on the gods served the pharaohs. The rule of the pharaohs is considered dynastic; it can also be considered absolute in the truest sense of the word. The pharaohs came to be considered as the representatives of the gods on earth and even as gods themselves. Egypt is conquered by Persia in 525 BC, and ruled by the Persian Empire from now on. Shortly before 486 BC, the year of Darius' death, there was a revolt of the type that had occurred under Aryandes, that was definitively subdued by Xerxes I (486–464 BC) only in 484 BC. The province was subjected to harsh punishment for the revolt, and especially its satrap Achaemenes administered the country without regard for the opinion of his subjects. A still more serious and extensive revolt took place in about 460 BC under Artaxerxes I. It was led by the Libyan Inarus, son of Psammetichus, who asked for help from Athens; a fleet of 200 ships sailed up the Nile as far as the ancient citadel of Memphis, two thirds of which was occupied by the insurgents. Achaemenes was killed in the course of the battle of Papremis in the western Delta. Nevertheless, due to the aridity of Egypt's climate, population centres are concentrated along the narrow Nile Valley and Delta, meaning that approximately 99% of the population uses only about 5.5% of the total land area.
Carthagian Empire
Carthage was founded by Phoenician settlers from Tyre, on the coast of Palestine. These Phoenicians were famous for their trade in the murex mollusc that yielded a highly-prized brilliant purple dye, and it is likely that the settlement, founded on a peninsula near the mollusc beds, was chosen for its commercial suitability. Its Phoenician name, Kart Hadasht (meaning 'New Capital' as well as 'New City'), however, could also point to the added purpose of founding the town as a potential alternative capital in the West at a time when Tyre was being threatened by the Assyrians. Although Carthage was not the first Phoenician colony in the Western Mediterranean, it soon became the most important. During the 7th C. the city became independent of Tyre and began to control the surrounding tribes, in turn founding colonies and expanding to become one of the largest cities of antiquity. During the 6th C. it began to interfere in the affairs of cities in W. Sicily and beyond; with its defeat of a Phocian fleet at the battle of Alalia (off Corsica) in 535 BC, Carthage was free to extend its influence to Sicily, Sardinia and even Spain. The Carthaginian engagement of the Sicilian Greeks in 480 BC at the same time as the Persians under Xerxes were invading Greece seems to have been part of a coordinated plan that met with failure. The Carthaginians were defeated at Himera (in Sicily), the Persians at Salamis (480 BC) and then at Plataia (479 BC). For most of the 5th century, Carthage pursued a policy of retrenchment and consolidation, overthrowing the Mago dynasty and replacing it with an aristocracy that built up Carthage's military might.
Rome
The founding of Rome goes back to the very early days of civilization. It is so old that today it is known as 'the eternal city'. The first foundations of the city were founded in the year 753 BC, modern historians although believe it was the year 625 BC.
Early Rome was governed by kings, but after only seven of them had ruled, the Romans took power over their own city and ruled themselves, built up a democracy.
They then instead had a council known as the 'senate' which ruled over them. From this point on one speaks of the 'Roman Republic'.
The word 'Republic' itself comes from the Latin (the language of the Romans) words 'res publica' which mean 'public matters' or 'matters of state'.
The senate under the kings had only been there to advise the king. Now the senate appointed a consul, who ruled Rome like a king, but only for one year. - This was a wise idea, as like that, the consul ruled carefully and not as a tyrant, for he knew that otherwise he could be punished by the next consul, once his year was up.
Rome knew four classes of people. This division was very important to the Romans.
The lowest class were the slaves. They were owned by other people. They had no rights at all.
The next class were the plebeians. They were free people. But they had little say at all.
The second highest class were the equestrians (sometimes they are called the 'knights'). Their name means the 'riders', as they were given a horse to ride if they were called to fight for Rome. To be an equestrian you had to be rich.
The highest class were the nobles of Rome. They were called 'patricians'. All the real power in Rome lay with them.
Etruscan Empire
Somewhere between 900 and 800 BC, the Italian peninsula was settled by a mysterious peoples called the Etruscans. We don't know where the Etruscans came from, but archaeologists suspect that they came from the eastern Mediterannean, possibly Asia Minor. We will, however, never really know where they came from or why they colonized Italy. We do know that when they came to Italy, they brought civilization and urbanization with them. They founded their civilizations in north-eastern Italy between the Appenine mountain range and the Tyrrhenian Sea. Their civilization stretched from the Arno river in the north to the Tiber river towards the center of the Italian peninsula; it was on the Tiber river that a small village of Latins, the village that would become Rome, sat. So the Romans, who were only villagers during the rise of the Etruscan civilization, were in close contact with the Etruscans, their language, their ideas, their religion, and their civilization; the Etruscans were the single most important influence on Roman culture in its transition to civilization.
The Etruscans lived in independent, fortified city-states; these city-states would form small confederacies. In the earliest times, these city-states were ruled by a monarch, but were later ruled by oligarchies that governed through a council and through elected officials. Like the surrounding peoples, the Etruscans were largely an agrarian people, but they also had a strong military, and used that military to dominate all the surrounding peoples. These dominated populations were forced to do the agricultural labor on the Etruscan farms, so the Etruscans had time to devote to commerce and industry. In the seventh and sixth centuries, the Etruscan military had subjugated much of Italy, including Rome, and regions outside of Italy, such as the island of Corsica.
They were a sophisticated people, with an alphabet based on the Greek alphabet, a powerfully original sculptural and painting tradition, a religion based on human-type gods which they had learned from the Greeks, and a complicated set of rituals for divining the future, which they handed down to the Romans. Unlike most civilizations of the time, gender inequality seems not to have been very pronounced.
While the Etruscans were busy building their power over Italy and engaging in active commerce with the east and with Africa, a city to their south began to grow precipitously, a city imitating Etruscans in many ways: the Roman kingdom.
Italic Tribes
Ancient Italic peoples are all those peoples that lived in Italy before the Roman domination. Not all of these various peoples are linguistically or ethnically closely related. Some of them spoke Italic languages, others spoke Greek because of the arrival of Hellenic colonists, while others belonged to another Indo-European branch or were non-Indo-European. The classification of a number of these ethnicons is unknown or disputed. The tripes of Apulia and Veneti also were counted to the Italic tribes.
Illyria
Illyrian culture is believed to have evolved from the Stone Age and to have manifested itself in the territory of Albania towardthe beginning of the Bronze Age, about 2000 BC. The Illyrians were not a uniform body of people but a conglomeration of many tribes that inhabited the western part of the Balkans, from what is now Slovenia in the northwest to and including the region of Epirus, which extends about halfway down the mainland of modern Greece. In general, Illyrians in the highlands of Albania were more isolated than those in the lowlands, and their culture evolved more slowly--a distinction that persisted throughout Albania's history.
In its beginning, the kingdom of Illyria comprised the actual territories of Dalmatia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, with a large part of modern Serbia. Shkodra (Scutari) was its capital, just as it is now, the most important center of Northern Albania.
The earliest known king of Illyria was Hyllus (The Star) who is recorded to have died in the year 1225 B.C. The Kingdom, however, reached its zenith in the fourth century B.C. when Bardhylus (White Star), one of the most prominent of the Illyrian kings, united under scepter the kingdoms of Illyria, Molossia (Epirus*) and a good part of Macedonia. But its decay began under the same ruler as a result of the attacks made on it by Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great.
Thrace
At the dawn of history the ancient Thracians—a group of tribes speaking an Indo-European language—extended as far west as the Adriatic Sea, but they were pushed eastward (c.1300 B.C.) by the Illyrians, and in the 5th cent. B.C. they lost their land west of the Struma (Strimón) River to Macedon. In the north, however, Thrace at that period still extended to the Danube. Unlike the Macedonians, the Thracians did not absorb Greek culture, and their tribes formed separate petty kingdoms.
The Thracian Bronze Age was similar to that of Mycenaean Greece, and the Thracians had developed high forms of music and poetry, but their savage warfare led the Greeks to consider them barbarians. Many Greek colonies—e.g., Byzantium on the Hellespont and Tomi (modern Constanţa) on the Black Sea—were founded in Thrace by c.600 B.C. The Greeks exploited Thracian gold and silver mines, and they recruited Thracians for their infantry. Thrace was reduced to vassalage by Persia from c.512 B.C. to 479 B.C., and Persian customs were introduced.
Greece
The early history of Greece is not very detailed. Because of this it is often called the Dark Age of Ancient Greece. The first people to inhabit Greece built settlements along the shores of Greece. They relied on the Aegean Sea for trade and supplies. Travel by sea introduced the Greeks to other cultures, and they were exposed to western benefits of agriculture and various techniques of metalwork.
Different communities began to develop in Greece: the Aegeans, Achaeans, the and Pelasgians. Crete became the center of the Aegean civilization, also called the Minoans, and their culture dominated the region about 2500 BC. The Achaeans built their capital at Mycenae. A volcanic eruption in 1400 BC caused the destruction of the Minoan Thera, an island east of Crete. The destruction crushed the Minoan functionality and their culture was absorbed by the Mycenaean Greeks.
Around 1200 BC, a conflict arose at the city of Troy, where a ten year battle took place. Armed invaders hid themselves inside a large wooden horse. As the horse was brought into the city, the soldiers attacked and seized control. This was the subject of an epic poem by Homer. Homer is also well known for his epic poem of the hero Odysseus. These works of literature are now popular school studies.
Greek settlements transformed themselves into city-states, or poleis. Regions ruled by a council and a king. Their political structure was unstable because the kings often acted like tyrants to the citizens. The Aristocratic people, mostly landowners, served on the council. Many citizens were not fairly represented in this system. This caused tension, and in many cases political uprisings. It is ironic that the Greek culture is given so much credit for ideas of democracy, because times of democracy seldom existed in Ancient Greece; only for short whiles in-between unstable governments.
The Olympic Games, a great athletic contest, began in 776 BC. The Olympics marked a rise of the Greek culture, and the beginning of the Archaic Period of Greece. During this time period, foreign culture held a great influence over Greek ideas. Artwork began to focus on human figures and of mythology. The culture soared even higher into the Classical Period, approximately 500 BC. This was the highest point of Greek creativity especially in the areas of philosophy, art, and literature.
The Persian Wars began in 490 BC, with a Persian invasion in Greece led by Darius I the Great of Thrace. The Greek forces were superior and crushed the invasion at Marathon, under Miltiades. In 480 BC, the Persians launched a second attack led by Xerxes. The Spartians killed many of Xerxes' men in the Battle of Thermopylae, but in the end were defeated as they only defended this passage with 300 men. Xerxes' went on and sacked and ruined Athens. The Greeks later won a decisive military victory at Salamis, they defeated the Persian naval fleet.
More Wars followed, and in 461 BC, the first of the Peloponnesian Wars began between the Athenians and Spartans. Athens had a completely democratic government, and the Spartan aristocratic government saw that as a potential threat. Athens was victorious and they signed a peace treaty with Persia and made a truce with Sparta.
The Celts
The Celts were a group of peoples that occupied lands stretching from the British Isles to Gallatia, over the whole Europe. The Celts had many dealings with other cultures that bordered the lands occupied by these peoples, and even though there is no written record of the Celts stemming from their own documents, we can piece together a fair picture of them from archeological evidence as well as historical accounts from other cultures.
The first historical recorded encounter of a people displaying the cultural traits associated with the Celts comes from northern Italy around 400 BC, when a previously unkown group of barbarians came down from the Alps and displaced the Etruscans from the fertile Po valley, a displacment that helped to push the Etruscans from history's limelight. The next encounter with the Celts came with the still young Roman Empire, directly to the south of the Po. The Romans in fact had sent three envoys to the beseiged Etruscans to study this new force.
Scythian Realm
The Central-Asian steppe has been the home of nomad tribes for centuries. Being nomads, they roamed across the plains, incidentally attacking the urbanized countries to the south, east and west.
The first to describe the life style of these tribes was a Greek researcher, Herodotus, who lived in the fifth century BCE. Although he concentrates on the tribes living in modern Ukraine, which he calls Scythians, we may extrapolate his description to people in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and possibly Mongolia, even though Herodotus usually calls these eastern nomads 'Sacae'. In fact, just as the Scythians and the Sacae shared the same life style, they had the same name: in their own language, which belonged to the Indo-Iranian family, they called themselves Skudat ('archers'?). The Persians rendered this name as Sakâ and the Greeks as Skythai. The Chinese called them, at a later stage in history, Sai.
Tribes are, almost by definition, very loose organizations. Every now and then, new tribal coalitions came into being, and sometimes, new languages became prominent among the nomads from the Central-Asian steppe.
The oldest group we know of is usually called Indo-Iranian. (The old name 'Aryan' is no longer used.) There are no contemporary reports about their migration, but it can be reconstructed from their language. It is reasonably certain that at the beginning of the second millennium BCE, the speakers of the Proto-Indo-Iranian language moved from Ukraine to the southeast. From an archaeological point of view, their migration is attested in the change from the Yamnaya culture into the Andronovo culture.
They invaded the country that was later called Afghanistan, where they separated into an Iranian and an Indian branch. The first group settled in Aria, a name that lives on in our word 'Iran', where they settled after 1000 BCE; the second group reached the Punjab c.1500 BCE. From the second millennium on, three groups of languages can be discerned: the Indian group (Vedic, Sanskrit...), the Scythian group (in the homeland on the steppe), and the Iranian group (Gathic, Persian...). Even when, in the sixth century, the Achaemenid empire was at its most powerful and the Persians lived in comfortable towns, they still remembered their earlier, nomadic life style.
Saami Realm
It is believed that the Saami arrived on the Fenno-Scandinavian peninsula just over 10,000 bpe. They are considered the first residents of this area. The Saami followed their food sources that moved northward behind the retreating glaciers. They eventually inhabited all of present-day Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula southward almost to present-day Tallinn, Estonia.
As the Saami inhabited the different ecosystems they adapted to the conditions. On the coastal fjords and bays of Norway, they utilized the resources of the sea. In the mountains and forests farther inland, hunting and gathering became the norm. The inland lakes of Finland and Northwestern Russia were used for their abundant pike, trout and other freshwater fish. For some of the Saami away from major fishing areas, reindeer became the major food source.
