Ancient Estonia

Ancient Estonia refers to a period covering History of Estonia from the middle of the 8th millennium BC until the conquest and subjugation of the Estonian people in the first quarter of the 13th century during the Danish Northern Crusades.

The region has been populated since the end of the last glacial era, about 10,000 BC. The earliest traces of human settlement in Estonia are connected with Kunda culture. The oldest known settlement in Estonia is the Pulli settlement, which was located on the banks of the river Pärnu, near the town of Sindi, in South-western Estonia. It has been dated to the beginning of the 9th millennium BC. The Kunda Culture received its name from the Lammasmäe settlement site in northern Estonia, which dates from earlier than 8500. Bone and stone artifacts similar to those found at Kunda have been discovered elsewhere in Estonia, as well as in Latvia, northern Lithuania and southern Finland. Among minerals flint and quartz was used the most for making cutting tools.

The beginning of the Neolithic period is marked by the ceramics of the Narva culture, which appears in Estonia at the beginning of the 5th millennium BC. The oldest finds date from around 4900 BC. The first pottery was made of thick clay mixed with pebbles, shells or plants. The Narva type ceramics are found throughout almost the entire Estonian coastal region and on the islands. The stone and bone tools of the era have a notable similarity with the artifacts of the Kunda culture.

Around the beginning of 4th millennium BC Comb Ceramic Culture arrived in Estonia. Until the early 1980s the arrival of Finnic peoples, the ancestors of the Estonians, Finns, Livonians on the shores of Baltic sea around was associated with the Comb Ceramic Culture. However, such a linking of archaeologically defined cultural entities with linguistic ones cannot be proven and it has been suggested that the increase of settlement finds in the period is more likely to have been associated with an economic boom related to the warming of climate. Some researchers have even argued that a Uralic form of language may have been spoken in Estonia and Finland since the end of the last glaciation.

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