Notes

Stonehenge

The first European Civilization was the Greeks.  They began as one of many European barbarian people.  Barbarian means they had a distinctive way of life, based on farming and warfare, and that was widespread in Western Europe.  2000 bc they migrated toward the Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, and Egypt.  They used and learned advanced tools there.  The Greek civilization was between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean.    They emerged as a classical civilization in 800 bc.   Over three thousand years up to the Persian Empire, civilization had spread from its Sumerian and Egyptian homelands right across southwestern Asia and northeastern Africa and other region s of civilization had also arisen in India , china and the western hemisphere.  4000 bc farming and village life had spread throughout the continent. In 3500 bc there were peoples in western Europe who were numerous and well organized enough to construct ceremonial monuments consisting of circles and rows of huge upright boulders as well as massive earthen tombs and fortifications.  Many of these megalithic structures have survived to the present day.  Megaliths are massive rough-cut stones used to construct monument and tombs.  They’re biggest achievement of early European times was the Stonehenge.  It was a huge open-air monument built by a prosperous farming and trading people on the west of England, probably as a religious center.  The final form of it was done in 2000 bc.  People started to speak languages of Indo-European origin that were the distant ancestors of Greek and Latin.  Groups of villages or farmsteads formed tribes, held together by common interests, traditions, and real or mythical ties of kinship.  Tribes would meet once in a while to constructers business and celebrate the festivals of local deities and would often build itself a massive earth and timber hilltop stronghold.  The Greeks settled in mainland Greece from about 2000 bc, coming as migrants from somewhere father north.  Between 1200 and 800 bc they spread to the islands.  Western means Situated in the west.