SocietyEurope

Farming reaches central Europe

5,501 BCE

Farmers from Anatolia move in, and Europe becomes another place

In depth

Ancient DNA settled a century-old argument: Europe's hunters were not chiefly persuaded but genetically displaced and partly absorbed. The Linear Pottery people built near-identical thirty-metre longhouses from Hungary to the Netherlands — a strikingly uniform culture across vast distances. Today's Europeans carry inheritance from three layers: hunters, these farmers, and the steppe people who arrived two thousand years later.

For children

Farming did not come to Europe merely as an idea — it came with people. Farmers from Anatolia moved up the Danube with grain, livestock and a distinctive kind of longhouse. Within a few centuries they had reached the North Sea.

Connects to

Farming begins9,501 BCE
The steppe people move out3,301 BCE – 2,601 BCE
The megaliths rise4,801 BCE – 2,501 BCE

Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org