Europa Recens Descripta
William Blaeu
1640
Most histories of Europe start with Greece. Though the area saw the continent’s first literate societies, human settlement here has far deeper roots than the Minoan or Mycenaean civilisations.
For centuries we could only grope in the dark at times such long past, predating any written sources, but the ongoing revolution in the science of history has begun to lift back the veil on humanity’s deep past. Where once we had to piece together an incomplete picture from scattered fragments of pottery or the ruins of burial mounds, now we have the ability to trace genealogies through millennia, reveal old enemies are even older than we thought, and track the influence of climatic change on the populations of ancient humans.
Europe’s prehistory began long before Homo sapiens first walked the African sands and ended when writing first emerged on the islands of the Aegean. From those first scripts carved into the rock came a mythology of origin: Homer, Hesiod, and the other poets sang of a primordial time when gods and heroes once walked the Earth. We’ve never lost the urge to look back and wonder where we came from. Though the story is far from complete, modern science has given us the beginnings of an answer.
M. E. Rothwell here. As always, thanks for letting me into your inbox. If you’re a new subscriber to Cosmographia, welcome! This newsletter is about exploring the world and its beauty, via history, myth, and art.