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The unitary culture, the Mediterranean culture, which
characterized the Roman Empire even in its late stages,
had definitely collapsed around 1500. The Ottoman
Empire's expansion across the Balkans closed this area
of European influence for several centuries. Something
similar was the case with the vast Russian territory,
which since the Mongol conquest in the 1200's.
preferably had received impulses from the east. These
peripheral areas therefore also followed a different
pattern of development from the rest of Europe.
Here,
about 1,500 breaches could be traced in almost all
areas. Everywhere the population had again begun to grow
after the great losses associated with the 1300's plague
epidemics. According to a soluble estimate, there lived
around 1500 approximately 80 million people in Europe,
including European Russia. This number had grown around
1600 to approximately 110 million to further increase to
approximately 187 million around 1800. There was an
unprecedentedly high growth rate, a population
explosion.
The renewed increase in population had significant
economic and social effects. Many cities were now
growing rapidly after centuries of stagnation, and at
the same time the growing pressure on natural resources
required a steady streamlining of agriculture and food
production, which in turn gave rise to significant
changes. Europe thus experienced in the 1500's. for the
first time in centuries, a general inflation, a price
revolution, which endowed the continent's economic life
with an unprecedented lack of stability.
In addition, there were extensive changes in the
usual trading patterns. The great discoveries and
improved ship technology, in connection with the Turks'
blocking of the caravan routes to the Orient, meant that
the old trade routes became less important. Instead, new
ones emerged, predominantly oriented towards the
Atlantic and primarily based on maritime transport. The
economic center of gravity increasingly became the areas
around the English Channel, and cities such as London,
Amsterdam and Antwerp experienced a period of
prosperity, while old centers such as Venice and the
southern German cities languished. During the 1500's.
the economic division of labor between Eastern and
Western Europe was strengthened. Visit
Countryaah for detailed information about East
Europe, West Europe, Central Europe and Southern Europe.
The sparsely populated areas around the Baltic Sea
produced a surplus of cheap grain, meat and raw
materials, which were then processed and consumed in the
rich, densely populated Western Europe.
There was also a break in consciousness.
Fundamentalist religious movements gathered in the
Protestant Reformations (the Lutheran 1517, the
Zwinglian 1519 and the Calvinist 1541), which
definitively shattered the old utopia of a unified
Christianity under the papal clergy and the secular
authority of the emperor. Due to the ecclesiastical
schism, the old German-Roman Empire was split into a
northern Protestant and a southern Catholic part, which
led to a significant weakening of the Habsburg emperor
in relation to the local princely powers. A whole new
dividing line emerged in Europe: on the one hand a
Protestant Northern Europe, which more and more
distanced itself from the Latin world, on the other a
Catholic Southern Europe, which was still dominated by
the old Mediterranean culture. To the east, the Orthodox
Church dominated.
At the same time, the Italian Renaissance and its
northern European counterpart led to a quantum leap in
consciousness that left long traces in European
civilization. At its core was the abandonment of the
medieval notion of creation as a completed process and
earthly society as an imperfect reflection of an eternal
divine order. This cosmological way of thinking was
gradually replaced by a conception that could be called
anthropocentric in the sense that it put man at the
center and thought all things from there. Man was, from
this point of view, endowed with a free will and created
to create; creation was a continuous process, and man
was not just a product of God's creation, but instead an
opportunity, a part of the very process of creation.
This new belief in man's ability to shape the future for
better or worse gave European civilization a new, almost
aggressive and experimental touch. It was thus hardly
unrelated to the fact that powers such as Spain, France,
the Netherlands and England in the following centuries
created an extensive network of overseas colonies with
the result that European civilization around 1800
dominated approximately 35% of the total land mass of
the globe.
The colonial empires in Asia, Africa and the Americas
made Europe the center of a worldwide economic system
and, in the long run, gained great importance for the
development of the continent. Economically, because the
colonies became an inexhaustible source of cheap raw
materials and at the same time a large market for
European industry, which became a significant triggering
factor for the industrial revolution of the 1700's.
Politically, because the colonial occupation favored the
Atlantic-facing naval powers, each of which became
centers of worldwide empires. This relationship also
explains that conflicts between the European powers
often had a tendency to spread to the whole world.
Romania's prehistory
Romania's prehistory is the country's history up to
around 600-500 before our time.
Stone Age
The oldest prehistoric finds from Romania are of the
abbevilli character. One of the richest sites of
Paleolithic time is Ripiceni in the Suceava region.
Here, an area of up to 12-13 meters thick cultural
layers is uncovered on a 2100 square meter area. The
oldest finds represent the Clactonien culture. Further
up in the settlement layers, from the Mousterian period,
several fireplaces and bone remains have been found that
testify to the hunting of the elephant species
Mammuthus primigenius. Remains of the Neanderthal
man have been found in the Chaba-Ponor cave. Several
settlement phases have been identified with houses,
tombs, flint implements, ornamental objects made by
mammoth teeth and animal statuettes as well as so-called
"Venus statuettes" of clay. C-14 dates indicate that the
Dolní Věstonice settlement dates back to approximately
24,000 BCE.
The paleolithic cultures were followed by Mesolithic
hunter and fishery groups. Early Neolithic times in the
Balkans are characterized by related cultural groups.
The site of Starčevo in Serbia is characteristic of the
period 6-4. millennium BCE The archaeological material
from the Middle Neolithic period (about 4000-2700 BCE)
is more differentiated. Ribbon ceramic culture is
represented in the northeastern part of the country.
From Eastern Romania and Bulgaria one knows the Boian
culture with its characteristic decorated pottery. The
settlement teams have created small mounds here (tells).
The area around the Danube estuary is known as the
Hamangia culture. From here are small sculptures in
terracottaand marble.
The site of Sălcuta near the border with Bulgaria and
Serbia is on a hill. The town was probably fortified
with moat and an earthen wall. The houses were oval or
rectangular. Several of the settlements from the Middle
Neolithic cultural groups also lived in Late Neolithic
times. Gumelniţa is a pure Late Neolithic / Copper Age
culture with permanent villages.
Bronze Age and Iron Age
The transition to the Bronze Age took place at
different times (2200-1800 BCE) in the different regions
of the country. At about the same time the bronze came
into normal use, the horse was introduced as a domestic
animal. Monteoru, located on a hill near Bucharest,
represents a typical Bronze Age village from the eastern
part of the country. It resided in the period 1600–1300
BCE. Import objects have been found here that show
contact with areas further south and east. From the
Bronze Age, numerous deposits of bronze objects are
known.
The transition to the Iron Age occurred around 800
BCE. In the early Iron Age, differentiation of the area
took place. |