Europe
In 1725, Philip Johan von Strahlenberg drew a new line along the Volga River. He followed the waterway north until the Samara Bend and then traced it along Obshchy Syrt to its source in the Ural Mountains. This proposal marked the first time mountain ranges were included as boundaries between continents instead of relying solely on rivers or seas. The Russian Empire endorsed this convention, which eventually became commonly accepted across Europe.
Before this shift, geographers like Herman Moll had suggested boundaries following major rivers such as the Irtysh and the Ob River all the way to the Arctic Ocean. These earlier maps used waterways to define the border between Europe and Asia from the Turkish Straits to the Don River. However, these proposals never gained universal acceptance among other cartographers who began moving away from water-based divisions.
By the mid-19th century, three main conventions existed for defining Europe's eastern boundary. One followed the Don River beyond Kalach-na-Donu, another followed the Kuma, Manych Depression to the Caspian Sea, and a third abandoned the Don altogether by using the Greater Caucasus watershed. Douglas Freshfield advocated the Caucasus crest boundary as the best possible option during the 1860s controversy in geographical literature.
In 1958, the Soviet Geographical Society formally recommended that textbooks draw the boundary from Baydaratskaya Bay on the Kara Sea along the eastern foot of the Ural Mountains. They continued the line following the Ural River until the Mugodzhar Hills and then the Emba River before reaching the Kuma, Manych Depression. This decision placed the entire Caucasus region within Asia while keeping the Urals entirely in Europe.
Homo erectus georgicus lived roughly 1.8 million years ago in Georgia and represents the earliest hominin discovered in Europe. Other hominin remains dating back approximately one million years have been found at Atapuerca in Spain. Neanderthal man appeared in Europe around 150,000 years ago and disappeared from the fossil record about 40,000 years ago with their final refuge being the Iberian Peninsula.
Modern humans known as Cro-Magnons seem to have arrived in Europe between 43,000 and 40,000 years ago. Evidence suggests Homo sapiens may have reached the continent as early as 54,000 years ago, which is ten thousand years earlier than previously thought. The earliest sites in Europe dated 48,000 years ago include Riparo Mochi in Italy, Geissenklösterle in Germany, and Isturitz in France.
The European Neolithic period began around 7000 BCE in Greece and the Balkans. This era marked by crop cultivation and livestock raising spread from the Balkans along the Danube and Rhine valleys through Linear Pottery culture. It also extended along the Mediterranean coast via Cardial culture.
Between 4500 and 3000 BCE, central European neolithic cultures developed further west and north while transmitting newly acquired skills in producing copper artifacts. Western Europe during this period featured field monuments such as causewayed enclosures, burial mounds, and megalithic tombs rather than large agricultural settlements. Giant megalithic monuments like the Megalithic Temples of Malta and Stonehenge were constructed throughout Western and Southern Europe.
In 508 BCE, Cleisthenes instituted the world's first democratic system of government in Athens. The Greek city-state known as the polis served as the fundamental political unit of classical Greece. Ancient Greece generated many cultural contributions including philosophy under Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato; history with Herodotus and Thucydides; drama with Sophocles and Euripides; medicine with Hippocrates and Galen; and science with Pythagoras, Euclid, and Archimedes.
During the fifth century BCE, several Greek city-states checked the Achaemenid Persian advance in Europe through the Greco-Persian Wars. These conflicts are considered a pivotal moment in world history because the fifty years of peace that followed became known as the Golden Age of Athens. This seminal period laid many foundations for Western civilization.
By 200 BCE, Rome had conquered Italy and over the following two centuries expanded to conquer Greece, Hispania, North African coast regions, much of the Middle East, Gaul, and Britannia. Expanding from their base in central Italy beginning in the third century BCE, the Romans gradually ruled the entire Mediterranean basin and Western Europe by the turn of the millennium.
The Roman Republic ended in 27 BCE when Augustus proclaimed the Roman Empire. The two centuries that followed were known as the pax romana, a period of unprecedented peace, prosperity, and political stability across most of Europe. The empire continued expanding under emperors such as Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius who spent time on the northern border fighting Germanic, Pictish, and Scottish tribes.
Christianity was legalised by Constantine I in 313 CE after three centuries of imperial persecution. He permanently moved the capital of the empire from Rome to Byzantium which was renamed Constantinople in his honour in 330 CE. Christianity became the sole official religion of the empire in 380 CE while Emperor Theodosius outlawed pagan religions between 391 and 392 CE.
During the decline of the Roman Empire, Europe entered a long period of change arising from what historians call the Age of Migrations. Numerous invasions and migrations occurred among Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Goths, Vandals, Huns, Franks, Angles, Saxons, Slavs, Avars, Bulgars, Vikings, Pechenegs, Cumans, and Magyars. Isolated monastic communities were the only places to safeguard written knowledge accumulated previously during this era.
Charlemagne, a Frankish king of the Carolingian dynasty who had conquered most of Western Europe, was anointed Holy Roman Emperor by the Pope in 800. This led in 962 to the founding of the Holy Roman Empire which eventually became centred in German principalities of central Europe. East Central Europe saw the creation of the first Slavic states and the adoption of Christianity.
An East-West Schism in 1054 split the former Roman Empire religiously with the Eastern Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire and the Roman Catholic Church in the former Western Roman Empire. In 1095 Pope Urban II called for a crusade against Muslims occupying Jerusalem and the Holy Land.
The Renaissance was a period of cultural change originating in Florence that later spread to the rest of Europe between the 14th and 16th centuries. The rise of new humanism accompanied the recovery of forgotten classical Greek and Arabic knowledge from monastic libraries often translated from Arabic into Latin. Art, philosophy, music, and sciences flowered under joint patronage of royalty, nobility, the Catholic Church, and an emerging merchant class.
In the 15th century, Spain and Portugal took the lead in exploring the world as the greatest naval powers of their time. Christopher Columbus reached the New World in 1492 while Vasco da Gama opened the ocean route to the East linking Atlantic and Indian Oceans in 1498. Ferdinand Magellan reached Asia westward across oceans in a Spanish expedition resulting in the first circumnavigation completed by Juan Sebastián Elcano between 1519 and 1522.
Religious fighting spread with Protestantism after Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses criticizing indulgence sales to a church door in 1517. He was subsequently excommunicated in the papal bull Exsurge Domine in 1520 while followers were condemned in the 1521 Diet of Worms which divided German princes between Protestant and Catholic faiths. The Thirty Years War from 1618 to 1648 crippled the Holy Roman Empire and devastated much of Germany killing between 25 and 40 percent of its population.
Important figures of the Scientific Revolution during the 16th and 17th centuries included Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Isaac Newton. Modern science arose in Europe of the 17th century introducing new understanding of the natural world according to Peter Barrett.
The First World War was fought between 1914 and 1918 starting when Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip. More than 60 million European soldiers were mobilized from 1914 to 1918 leaving more than 16 million civilians and military dead. Russia plunged into revolution throwing down Tsarist monarchy and replacing it with communist Soviet Union leading to independence for many former Russian governorates including Finland Estonia Latvia and Lithuania.
Adolf Hitler became leader of Germany in 1933 beginning work toward building Greater Germany. Germany re-expanded taking back Saarland and Rhineland in 1935 and 1936 while Austria became part of Germany following Anschluss in 1938. The Munich Agreement signed by Germany France United Kingdom and Italy allowed Germany to annex Sudetenland which was inhabited by ethnic Germans.
Germany invaded Poland on the 1st of September 1939 prompting France and United Kingdom to declare war on Germany on September 3 opening the European theatre of Second World War. The Soviet invasion of Poland started on September 17 and Poland fell soon thereafter. On the 7th of December 1941 Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor drew United States into conflict as allies of British Empire and other allied forces.
Berlin finally fell in 1945 ending Second World War in Europe. The war was largest and most destructive in human history with 60 million dead across world. More than 40 million people in Europe died as result of Second World War including between 11 and 17 million who perished during Holocaust.
In 1949 Council of Europe was founded following speech by Sir Winston Churchill with idea of unifying Europe to achieve common goals. It includes all European states except Belarus Russia and Vatican City. Treaty of Rome in 1957 established European Economic Community between six Western European states with goal of unified economic policy and common market.
In 1967 EEC European Coal and Steel Community and Euratom formed European Community which became European Union in 1993. EU established parliament court and central bank introducing euro as unified currency. Between 2004 and 2013 more Central European countries began joining expanding EU to 28 European countries making Europe major economical and political centre once again.
United Kingdom withdrew from EU on the 31st of January 2020 as result of June 2016 referendum on EU membership. Russo-Ukrainian War steeply escalated after Russian invasion of Ukraine on the 24th of February 2022 marking largest humanitarian and refugee crisis in Europe since Second World War and Yugoslav Wars.
European integration advanced significantly after fall of Berlin Wall in 1989 allowing previously isolated cities like Berlin Prague Vienna Budapest and Trieste to return to center of Europe. Regular popular elections take place every five years within EU considered second-largest democratic elections in world after India's.
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Common questions
When did Philip Johan von Strahlenberg draw the boundary line along the Volga River for Europe?
Philip Johan von Strahlenberg drew a new line along the Volga River in 1725. This proposal marked the first time mountain ranges were included as boundaries between continents instead of relying solely on rivers or seas.
What is the earliest hominin discovered in Europe and when did it live?
Homo erectus georgicus lived roughly 1.8 million years ago in Georgia and represents the earliest hominin discovered in Europe. Other hominin remains dating back approximately one million years have been found at Atapuerca in Spain.
Who instituted the world's first democratic system of government in Athens and when?
Cleisthenes instituted the world's first democratic system of government in Athens in 508 BCE. The Greek city-state known as the polis served as the fundamental political unit of classical Greece.
When was Christianity made the sole official religion of the Roman Empire?
Christianity became the sole official religion of the empire in 380 CE while Emperor Theodosius outlawed pagan religions between 391 and 392 CE. Christianity was legalised by Constantine I in 313 CE after three centuries of imperial persecution.
On what date did Germany invade Poland to start the Second World War in Europe?
Germany invaded Poland on the 1st of September 1939 prompting France and United Kingdom to declare war on Germany on September 3 opening the European theatre of Second World War. Berlin finally fell in 1945 ending Second World War in Europe.
When did the United Kingdom withdraw from the European Union?
United Kingdom withdrew from EU on the 31st of January 2020 as result of June 2016 referendum on EU membership. Between 2004 and 2013 more Central European countries began joining expanding EU to 28 European countries making Europe major economical and political centre once again.