European Timeline
All dates rounded to the decade or century are approximate.Stone Age
- 43000 BC: man arrives in Europe
- 18000 BC: Last Glacial Maximum
- 10679 BC: Younger Dryas or Big Freeze
- 8000 BC: people recolonise northern Europe
- 7000 BC: farmers start to move into Europe
Copper Age
- 5000-4000 BC: copper-using Balkan cultures
- 3500 BC: wheeled vehicles; ploughs; wool sheep
- 2900 BC: first Bell Beakers in Portugal
Bronze Age
- 2500 BC: Minoans arrive in Crete
- 2300 BC: bronze made widely
Iron Age
- 800-500 BC: Hallstat Culture in Central Europe
- 600-0 BC: Jastorf Culture in what is now northern Germany and north-west Poland
- 450 BC: La Tene Culture begins
- 356–323 BC: campaigns of Alexander the Great
Roman Period
- 458 BC: Romans begin to expand
- by 50 BC: Germanic-speaking people had spread west to the Rhine and south to the Danube, expelling Celtic-speakers
- 116 AD: Roman Empire reaches its maximum extent
- 271 AD: Dacia was abandoned by Rome to the Goths
- 395–476 AD: decline and fall of the western empire
- 410 AD: Rome sacked by Alaric the Goth
Migration Period
- 300 AD: Goths settled north of the Black Sea
- 375 AD: Huns displaced the Goths from north of the Black Sea
- 395 AD: Huns pushed into the Eastern Roman Empire
- 400 AD: Angles, Saxons and Jutes start to settle in lowland Britain
- 411 AD: Alans settled in Lusitania and Suebi in Galicia
- 500 AD: Slavs settle around the Oder
- 550 AD: Slavs take Bohemia
- 660 AD: Slavs take the Elbe-Saale region
See World Timelines from The British Museum for a much flashier, world-wide and much more detailed chronologies.