History of Europe

The history of Europe can be traced back to the appearance of the first modern humans identified as ancestors of contemporary Europeans about 37,000 years ago during the Paleolithic. Early European Farmers migrating from Anatolia spread agriculture across the continent during the Neolithic (7000–2000 BC), a period that also included early metallurgy. Starting around 4000 BC, westward migrations of steppe pastoralists spread Indo-European languages. The rise of the city-states of ancient Greece defines the beginning of classical antiquity (c. 800 BC-AD 500). The Hellenistic period (323–30 BC) began with Alexander the Great's 4th-century BC conquests from Greece to India and ended with the Roman Empire's control of the . Christianity emerged under Roman rule in the 1st century AD. The Migration Period of the Germanic peoples began in the late 4th century AD.

The fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 traditionally marks the beginning of the Middle Ages (c. 500–1500). While the Eastern Roman ("Byzantine") Empire with its capital in Constantinople continued for another 1000 years, the former lands of the Western Empire fragmented into the barbarian kingdoms. The 8th-century Umayyad conquest of Hispania established Al-Andalus. The Rome-based Latin Church proclaimed the King of the Franks, Charlemagne, as "Emperor of the Romans" in the early 9th century and increasingly competitive missionary efforts by the Latin West and Byzantines resulted in the division of the Slavic peoples between Latin and Cyrillic use. Norsemenraided, invaded, and trafficked slaves across Europe during the Viking Age. During the High Middle Ages (c. 1000–1300), the Latin Church split with the Eastern Orthodox Church, was convulsed by reform and entangled in conflict with the Holy Roman Empire, called for the Crusades, and provided key support for northern Italian city-states achieving independence from the Empire. The oldest university currently in continuous operation in the world was established in the 12th century amid rapid population and urban growth that continued until the end of the 13th century. Despite a decline in population caused by the Great Famine and the Black Death in the 14th century, Europe experienced a cultural Renaissance in the 15th century.

Early modern Europe began with 15th-century revolutions in both printing and seafaring. Printing changed how knowledge was created, preserved and disseminated while the Age of Discovery led to extensive colonization, the Atlantic slave trade and the Columbian exchange. The 16th-century Reformation challenged the hegemony of the Catholic Church and precipitated over a century of religious wars. With leadership from Italian astronomerGalileo Galilei and English mathematical physicistIsaac Newton, modern science emerged during the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century.

The Industrial Revolution and waves of liberal and nationalist upheaval shaped the long 19th century dominated by the five great powers of the Concert of Europe. Two rivalmilitary alliances fought World War I (1914–1918), which ended with multi-ethnic empires fragmented into nation states. Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland launched World War II (1939–1945), and as its armies overran Europe the regime systematically perpetrated the Holocaust. During the Cold War (1947–1991), Europe was divided between a U.S.-led Western bloc of countries and the NATO military alliance and the Soviet-led Eastern bloc and the Warsaw Pact. The Western bloc's colonial empires and remaining military dictatorships in Portugal, Greece and Spain were dismantled. After Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev refused to intervene militarily against democratic reforms in Poland and elsewhere, the Revolutions of 1989 led to all European communist states transitioning to market economies and then the Soviet Union itself dissolving. The European Union ("EU") was established in 1993. In the 21st century, most of the former communist states joined the EU and Europe faced the Euro area crisis (2009–2018) and the Russian invasion of Ukraine (2022–).