'Old Europe' Advanced Earlier than other Known Civilizations

Thank you, JCAtom, exciting news! This lends even more support to the theory linking the Hamangia and Cucuteni cultures to the Baltic.

Gobekli Tepe was around 12,000 years ago; there were farm settlements in the Jordan valley; it looks like our estimates of history were too conservative

6200 B.C. moving north into Old Europe from Greece and Macedonia, bringing wheat and barley seeds and domesticated cattle and sheep.

Moving FROM Greece? this seems to contradict the title, indication the civilization came from Greece, and didn't develop before Greece, sounds like some researchers have an inferiority complex and are trying to justify their heritage as being older than others, where is the mention of "MING" dynastys and their comparison in age? very 6th grade level research lacking much for me.

Jim - I think you skimmed the article and did not read it

Yes they moved north around 6200 BCE and the culture (they are specifically looking at) had it's peak around 4500 BCE. It does NOT say they originated in europe, in fact says they did NOT (Nor China, and the Ming dynasty started in 1368 CE some 7,500 years later!) The first dynasty of any kind in China, The XIA was approximately 2100 BCE (or 4,000 years after the migration into europe) this was roughly the chinese bronze age

You could have done your own searches on Wiki; just because the article referred specifically to one site and it's ramifications does not mean they have to childishly, pedantically, 6th grade mentality-wise refer to all other civilizations. I am sorry you are having this reading comprehension issue

boy your reply comes across as snobbish and boorish, my apologys if I am wrong, but I did read the Article Eriq, and picked up two concepts : older than Greece, and moved from Greece , which is it? Old Europe is Older than Greek OR OLD EUROPE MOVED FROM Greece?? the article seems to say both,

and from your answer, Greek is a known to be older than europe, contradicting the title. which would be accurate if OTHER known civilizations that are younger were mentioned in the article, ming, mayan, inca, ect.

Why should I have to research an article that is supposed to be where I am getting my info?? I want to learn from the article, If I were interested in doing the research I wouldn't wiki it. I would be an archaeologist in old Europe digging up the relics myself, but you see I am not a professor or archaeologist, I am simply interested in expanding my knowledge somewhat, while enjoying literature, and educational topics, and saw an apparent error.

This is a fasinating topic, and will link it to some "creationists" that refuse to belive sciences trail of human progress.

During the period being discussed, the inhabitants of what would become Greece were members of the Boian Culture. They were not Greek nor was their culture Greek. The Boian, Dnieper Donets and Dnieper Bug cultures were descendant branches of the original Paleolithic Cro-Magnon hunters of the Magdalenian culture who moved south from the Baltic and settled in the Balkan and Anatolian peninsulas. This was not an unusual process since the inhabitants of Ice Age Europe had made this circle for thousands of years, pushed south by the ice when glaciation occurred and returning north when the weather warmed. All the cultures mentioned were part of the civilization of Old Europe, regardless of what names their lands now possess. There is some evidence that the Dnieper Donets people were ancestral to the Mycenaeans but their culture was Old Europe, not Mycenaean.

As renard rightly pointed out, it is also possible that the Eastern European and Middle Asian cultures of the time were descended from or strongly influenced by the culture of Grimaldi Man though there is no evidence to date for this.

Seems these folk may have been proto-Celts. Location seems to be right and there are similarities in artwork. Good seed, JC. Voted up!

Jim - I was trying to be polite, let me be firm - NO the article does not say anything like what you think it said, and no one else made this mistake. This demonstrates a reading comprehension issue

Before the glory that was Greece and Rome, even before the first cities of Mesopotamia or temples along the Nile, there lived in the Lower Danube Valley and the Balkan foothills people who were ahead of their time in art, technology and long-distance trade.

That does NOT say that classic greece is older than "old europe" (you demonstrate that you don't understand the concept here) Nor that these people moved through classic greece

Is that really so complicated?

Why are you so confused by this?

It is kind of like saying that the people's who became the Inca, Maya, Aztec came across a landbridge from Asia to the Americas and through lands that would later become North American native tribal peoples (like Nez Perce, Sioux, Paiute, Apache, Navajo, Hopi; etc.); not that the North American cultures are older.

And my remark about actually doing the research was in reference top your remark about "Ming" China - you should have done the research before making that comment because it just made you look foolish, as if you had no idea what you were talking about.

The story now emerging is of pioneer farmers after about 6200 B.C. moving north into Old Europe from Greece and Macedonia, bringing wheat and barley seeds and domesticated cattle and sheep. They established colonies along the Black Sea and in the river plains and hills, and these evolved into related but somewhat distinct cultures,

the above paragraph illustrates the progress of the "old Europe" culture Clearly it says this early culture moved from Greece and Macedonia, suggesting two things of which I think you are seeing one, which is probable the most likely, that this early "old Europe" culture was the common PREDISSOR of greek and macedonian cultures,

the second possibility is that the "early europe culture was the DECENDANT of the peoples that lived in Greece and Macedonia from which the "Early European, peoples moved,

since you already know the answers why do you read, other than to be boorish and arrgant? this is not difficult to see, if one has an open mind,

before making that comment because it just made you look foolish, as if you had no idea what you were talking about.

really if your going to be insulting and not courtous and helpful,, please put me on ignore so you don't have to see my pithy comments. I am going to put you on ignore, so I dont have to deal with your boorishness

Jim, you could say that all western European cultures were Portuguese and Spanish, all middle European cultures were Roman, all eastern European cultures were Greek or Turkish, since all Europeans lived in refugia in either the Iberian, Italian or Balkan and Anatolian peninsulas during periods of glaciation prior to the end of the Ice Age. Assumptions of this sort are what gave rise to the invasion theories of the 18th and 19th century. Vast hordes of Indo-European invaders were believed to have swept across Europe from a proposed homeland located either on the Russian Steppes or the Iranian Plateau. These in fact never occurred. People moved south when glaciers covered their places of origin in the north. They move north again when the weather warmed and returned to these same places of origin. DNA evidence, linguistic evidence and archaeological evidence prove it.

Yes, the article said they moved into Old Europe from Greece and Macedonia. It also said the same people established colonies along the Black Sea that evolved into different but related cultures. What it did not make clear is that prior to 6200 BCE, they had moved into Greece and Macedonia and established colonies along the Black Sea because the waters around the Baltic Sea rose, causing them to follow these very ancient and established migration routes south. One of these cultures was the Dnieper Donets people who travelled down the Dnieper River from the Baltic to the Black Sea. They were the ancestors of the Mycenaean Greeks.

Thank you for your educational, informative, polite answer, I recently saw a program, highlighting the rise and fall of the mederatian sea level, creating a "land bridge" at the straight of Gibralter allowing foot passage between europe and africa, also showing the migration of humanity ( I wont use "culture" here ) north and south following not the climate so much as the grazing animals that were their food source.

This also brings up the suggestion, that we shouldn't try to separate and individualize these cultures, especially since DNA incates humans of all ethnicity are still so closely related that we obviously had to be interacting / trading/ ects since we started using Fire, and tools, aka EARLY civilization, though I realize this article is more defined by higher levels of technology, so please don't feel I'm argueing against this article, only commenting.

thank you again for your polite reply

One theory is that Grimaldi man crossed over a temporary land bridge between Africa and the Iberian Peninsula about 45,000 years ago and was the first Cro-Magnon to enter Europe. Another is that the first Cro-Magnon migrated from the Caucasus mountains into Europe around that time. Since the explosion of high culture known as the Aurignacian and the later Magdalenian occurred along the European Atlantic Façade and not in the Middle East, the first theory seems more likely for the origin of the Old Europe Civilization, as renard tried to point out earlier. My apologies, renard, for my rather snide remark about Grimaldi not being Celtic.

Grimaldi has been identified as the same type as the Khoisan people of Africa. There has been some contention that the (white) Caucasians wiped out the (black) descendants of Grimaldi in Europe. It should be made clear that if the foundation of Old Europe extends back to 35,000 BCE and these cultures, all humans at that time were black or at least non-white. White skin is a mutation generally associated with the change from the heavy meat diet of the hunter-gatherer to the regime of grains and vegetables by a settled, agrarian people. This mutation probably occurred no earlier than 20,000 years ago in the vicinity of the Baltic Sea. Without the heavy consumption of animal fat, darker skinned people cannot absorb enough vitamin D from sunlight in the northern latitudes to maintain their health while light "white" skin allows the assimilation of Vitamin D, which in turn boosts calcium absorption, prevents psoriasis, osteoporosis, breast and prostate cancer.

It was not invasion from east to west but migration from north to south that is responsible for the light skins of Europeans.

very interesting, I have always thought that skin color was due to geographic climate differences, but assumed it was more that light-skin babys would die from sun-burn / heat exposure in the hotter climates, where the northern cooler climates, people wore more furs and animal plets, thus minimizing skin color attributes, and we all know from seeing "farmer's Tan" how skin lightens with less sun exposure, but that did always seem to fall short of a complete explanation, where the vitamin needs makes more sense..

...the lightest complexion on earth is native only to the region within 600 miles of the Baltic and North seas. The feature is unique on the globe. One can further grasp its uniqueness by examining a similar plot of iso-color contour lines for the color gradients of human head hair. The figure below appears in (Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi, and Piazza 1994, 267), although it was first published in (Coon 1939, 270-71). This map of head hair gradients shows that blondes are also native only to the region within 600 miles of the Baltic and North seas. With two minor exceptions, the genetic trait for blonde hair precisely matches that for fair complexion. Even the black-haired and beige-skinned Saami of northern Lapland can be discerned in both maps. (The two minor exceptions are the fair-skinned but brown-haired people of Bordeaux and the blonde but swarthy descendants of the Volga Rus.)

--The Paleo-Etiology of Human Skin Tone

Additional quote from the above cited source:

Only one spot on the globe enables economically competitive grain production above the 55th parallel. It is where the warm Gulf Stream washes into the North and Baltic Seas, keeping temperatures moderate despite dim near-Arctic sunlight. Around the planet, only circum-Baltic farmers could switch to a grain diet devoid of vitamin D, in a place where sunlight also lacked UV. And so, the extreme of the paleness adaptation is found only within 600 miles of this unique spot on earth.