History of the Czech Lands

The history of what are now known as the Czech lands (Czech: České země) is very diverse. These lands have changed hands many times, and have been known by a variety of different names. Up until the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy after the First World War, the lands were known as the lands of the Bohemian Crown and formed a constituent state of that empire: the Kingdom of Bohemia (in Czech: "Království české", the word "Bohemia" is a Latin term for Čechy).

Prior to the Battle of Mohács, the Kingdom was an independent state within the Holy Roman Empire. After that battle the Lands of the Bohemian Crown were incorporated into the Austrian Empire, and later into the aforementioned Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.

They came to be known as the Czech lands after the fall of the Empire, and the rise of the First Czechoslovak Republic, when the term Bohemia (Czech: Čechy), which also refers to the core region of the former kingdom, was no longer deemed acceptable by those in Moravia and Czech Silesia (historically, other two core lands of the Bohemian Crown). These three integral Czech lands (Bohemia, Moravia and Czech Silesia) now form the boundaries of the Czech Republic.

Early modern humans had settled in the region by the (Lower Paleolithic) (2.5mil – 750,000 BP). Several Paleolithic cultures settled here, including Acheulean, Micoquien, Mousterian, and Aurignacian. The Předmostí archaeological site near Brno is dated to between 24,000 and 27,000 years old. The figurines (Venus of Dolní Věstonice) found here are the oldest known ceramic articles in the world.

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