Nordic Stone Age

From around the time during the Lower Paleolithic Era, which was about 1.8 million years ago, into the Upper Paleolithic Era, or 20,000 years ago, Europe was sparsely populated by Homo Erectus and Homo Neanderthalensis. The ancient ancestors of modern humans. They were a hunter-gather types of people that were eventually replaced by Homo Sapiens Sapiens, modern humans.

Survival was hard and basic survival techniques limited in an ever changing and unpredictable climate. The general practice was to hunt and find whatever it was you could eat. Hunting megafauna animals was the most practiced means by groups that were able to survive. To hunt these large animals, they had to develop ways to take them down, such as spears and javelins. Archeologists have found 380,000 year old wooden javelins in the Nordic Stone Age area. These javelins are the oldest complete hunting weapons ever found anywhere in the world and they were discovered in Schoningen, Germany.i

During the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic Era, from about 43,000 to 6,000 years ago, Europe's Homo sapiens hunter-gatherer populations began to increase. During the last glacial maximum (Ice Age), much of Europe was depopulated and then re-settled agaiun about 15,000 years ago.

During this period, groups had migrated long distances, following the edge of the glacial ice in search of food, mostly hunting seals. Some groups following seals and other marine food stuffs, made it all the Way to North America.

Several dozen European-style stone tools, dating back between 19,000 and 26,000 years, have been discovered at six locations along the U. S. East Coast. What’s more, chemical analysis carried out on a 19,000 year old stone knife found in Virginia, USA revealed that it ...

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...pottery from around 2500 BC.viii

The span of Corded-Ware Culture coincides with the Funnel-Beaker Culture as improvements were learned from neighboring groups and greater reliance on farming began to evolve. Much of the early distribution of this culture was more inland in its beginnings than from the coastal regions. The people of this culture shared many features of the Funnel-Beaker Culture such as use of horses and wheeled carts (which were possibly drawn by oxen) that originated from the European steppes.

The improvements from this culture spread quickly to other settlements due to the aforementioned higher sea levels which instead of being a hindrance and dividing the cultures, allowed them to use the dividing waterways and the seas as highways. This developed into a maritime culture that enhanced their geographical spread and economies with expanded trade.