Chalcolithic Europe

Chalcolithic Eneolithic, Aeneolithic or Copper Age This box:
↑ Stone Age ↑ Neolithic
Near East Ghassulian culture, Naqada culture, Uruk period Europe Yamna culture, Corded Ware Cernavodă culture, Decea Mureşului culture, Gorneşti culture, Gumelniţa–Karanovo culture, Petreşti culture, Coțofeni culture Remedello culture, Gaudo culture, Monte Claro culture Central Asia Yamna culture, Botai culture, BMAC culture, Afanasevo culture South Asia Periodisation of the Indus Valley Civilisation, Bhirrana culture, Hakra Ware culture, Kaytha culture, Ahar-Banas culture Savalda Culture, Jorwe culture, Inamgoan culture China Mesoamerica
Metallurgy, Wheel, Domestication of the horse,
↓ Bronze Age

Chalcolithic Europe, the Chalcolithic (also Aeneolithic, Copper Age) period of Prehistoric Europe, lasted roughly from 3500 to 1700 BC.

It was a period of Megalithic culture, the appearance of the first significant economic stratification, and probably the earliest presence of Indo-European speakers.

The economy of the Chalcolithic, even in the regions where copper was not yet used, was no longer that of peasant communities and tribes: some materials began to be produced in specific locations and distributed to wide regions. Mining of metal and stone was particularly developed in some areas, along with the processing of those materials into valuable goods.

From c. 3500 to 3000 BC, copper started being used in the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and Central Europe. However, perhaps more influential on the period than copper itself was the domestication of horses and the resulting increased mobility of cultures. From c. 3500 onwards, Eastern Europe was apparently infiltrated by people originating from beyond the Volga (Yamna culture), creating a plural complex known as Sredny Stog culture, which substituted the previous Dnieper-Donets culture, pushing the natives to migrate in a NW direction to the Baltic and Denmark, where they mixed with natives (TRBK A and C). This may be correlated with the linguistic fact of the spread of Indo-European languages; see Kurgan hypothesis. Near the end of the period, another branch would leave many traces in the lower Danube area (culture of Cernavodă culture I), in what seems to be another invasion.

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