Prehistoric Albania

Defining prehistoric Albania within Southeast EuropeПодробный разбор

Albania's prehistoric period falls within the broader prehistory of Southeast Europe, a region defined roughly to include Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, and European Turkey. The period begins with the presence of Homo sapiens in the area approximately 44,000 years ago and ends with the appearance of the first written records in Classical Antiquity in Greece.

The conventional division of human prehistory in Southeast Europe runs through the Upper Paleolithic, the Holocene Mesolithic or Epipaleolithic, the Neolithic Revolution, the expansion of Proto-Indo-Europeans, and a period of Protohistory. The transitions between these phases are gradual rather than abrupt. Prehistory in the region ends before Herodotus in the 5th century BC, and by one interpretation of the historiography criterion, protohistory begins only with Homer.

A defining characteristic of the entire Southeast European prehistoric sequence, including the territory of modern Albania, is gradual rather than revolutionary change. Douglass W. Bailey, writing in Balkan Prehistory: Exclusion, Incorporation and Identity, states that less dramatic changes to climate, flora, and fauna resulted in less dramatic adaptive or reactive developments in material culture. This regional pattern distinguishes the Balkans from the sharper transitions documented in northern and central Europe.

The Palaeolithic in the Balkans: a gradual not revolutionary transitionПодробный разбор

The Palaeolithic, or Old Stone Age, was characterised by the use of unpolished chipped stone tools. The earliest evidence of human occupation discovered anywhere in the broader Southeast European region comes from Kozarnika cave in Bulgaria, dating from at least 1.5 million years ago. Human presence in Southeast Europe is attested from the Lower Palaeolithic onwards, though the number of sites is limited.

The transition from the Middle to the Upper Palaeolithic is generally associated with the development of behavioural modernity by hominids around 40,000 years BP. In much of Europe this shift is described as the Upper Palaeolithic Revolution. However, the Bulgarian key Palaeolithic caves of Bacho Kiro and Temnata Dupka, which contain early Upper Palaeolithic material correlated to the earliest emergence of Homo sapiens sapiens at approximately 44,000 BC, demonstrate that the transition in the Balkans was gradual rather than revolutionary. Bailey argues explicitly that the notion of an Upper Palaeolithic Revolution is not applicable to this region.

During the last interglacial period and the most recent glaciation of the Pleistocene, spanning from 131,000 to 12,000 BP, glaciation did not affect Southeast Europe to the extent it did northern and central Europe. Evidence of both forest and steppe indicates the climatic influence was not so drastic, and some species of flora and fauna survived only in this southern part of Europe. The absence of Upper Palaeolithic cave art in the region is consistent with this pattern of gradual environmental and cultural change.

Upper Palaeolithic human remains in the wider region (50,000–20,000 BP)Подробный разбор

In 2002, some of the oldest modern human remains in Europe were discovered in the Cave With Bones (Peștera cu Oase), near Anina, Romania. The mandible, nicknamed Ion din Anina (John of Anina), is approximately 37,800 years old. These are among Europe's oldest remains of Homo sapiens and likely represent some of the first such people to have entered the continent.

According to some researchers, the find presents a mixture of archaic, early modern human, and Neanderthal morphological features, indicating considerable Neanderthal and modern human admixture. This has been interpreted as suggesting that modern humans met and interbred with Neanderthals upon their arrival in Europe. However, recent reanalysis of some of these fossils has challenged the view that the remains represent evidence of interbreeding. A second expedition by Erik Trinkaus and Ricardo Rodrigo discovered further fragments, including a skull dated to approximately 36,000 years and nicknamed Vasile.

Two further human fossil remains found in the Muierii Cave (Peştera Muierilor) and the Cioclovina Cave in Romania were radiocarbon dated using accelerator mass spectrometry. The remains from Muierii Cave, discovered in 1952 in Baia de Fier, Gorj County, were dated to 30,150 ± 800 years BP. A skull from Cioclovina Cave, found in 1941 near Commune Bosorod, Hunedoara County, was dated to 29,000 ± 700 years BP. Dating work was carried out at the University of Lund AMS group by Göran Skog, Kristina Stenström, and Ragnar Hellborg.

The Mesolithic and Epipaleolithic in Southeast Europe (13,000–5,000 BP)Подробный разбор

The Mesolithic period began at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, in the 10th millennium BC, and ended with the Neolithic introduction of farming, the date of which varied by region. Bailey argues that a distinct Mesolithic may not have existed in the Balkans, for the same reasons that cave art and mobiliary art never appeared: changes in climate, flora, and fauna were gradual and not drastic. The lithic industries of the early Holocene in the region were firmly rooted in a gradually developing late Palaeolithic tradition.

In regions with limited glacial impact, such as Southeast Europe, the term Epipaleolithic is considered preferable to Mesolithic. The current sea level is approximately 100 metres higher than it was during this period, meaning a number of coastal Mesolithic sites have been covered by water, making the archaeological record incomplete. This factor, combined with limited research in many areas, means the period is poorly defined.

The Iron Gates Mesolithic culture, notable for its early urbanisation, is attested at Lepenski Vir, with related sites found in modern Serbia, south-west Romania, and Montenegro. At Ostrovul Banului and the Cuina Turcului rock shelter in the Danube gorges, and in nearby caves at Climente, finds indicate that people of this period made relatively advanced bone and lithic tools including end-scrapers, blade lets, and flakes. At Odmut in Montenegro there is also evidence of human activity during the Mesolithic. The relative climatic stability of Southeast Europe compared to northern and western Europe enabled continuous settlement, and the region may have functioned as an ice-age refuge from which much of eastern Europe was later repopulated.

Neolithic cultures and their reach into Albanian territoryПодробный разбор

Southeast Europe was the site of major Neolithic cultures including Butmir, Vinča, Varna, Karanovo, Hamangia, and Sesklo. The Vinča culture, dating between the 6th and the 3rd millennium BC, stretched along the course of the Danube across Serbia, Croatia, northern parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro, Romania, Bulgaria, and North Macedonia. Traces of it extend into parts of Central Europe and Asia Minor.

The Varna Necropolis in Bulgaria, located approximately 4 km from the city centre of Varna, is considered one of the key archaeological sites in world prehistory. The oldest gold treasure in the world, dating from 4,600 BC to 4,200 BC, was discovered at this site. A gold piece dating from 4,500 BC was also found at Durankulak, near Varna.

The Eneolithic period saw a process described as Kurganization of the eastern part of Southeast Europe, associated with an early expansion of Indo-Europeans. The Cucuteni-Trypillian culture, adjacent to the north, was affected by this process. Neolithic settlements are also documented in modern Greece, with major sites including Sesklo, Dimini, Early Knossos, and Nea Nikomedeia near Krya Vrysi, and trading routes based in the late Mesolithic period extending across the Aegean Sea.

The Bronze Age in the western Balkans (3,500–1,100 BCE)Подробный разбор

The Bronze Age in Southeast Europe is divided into an Early Bronze Age spanning the 20th to 16th centuries BCE, a Middle Bronze Age from the 16th to 14th centuries BCE, and a Late Bronze Age from the 14th to 13th centuries BCE. In the central and eastern part of Southeast Europe, the Bronze Age begins late, at around 1800 BCE. The transition to the Iron Age set in gradually over the course of the 13th century BCE.

The East Balkan Complex, encompassing the Karanovo VII and Ezero cultures, covers all of Thrace, corresponding to modern Bulgaria. The Bronze Age cultures of the central and western Balkans, the territory that includes modern Albania, are described as less clearly delineated and stretch into Pannonia, the Carpathians, and Hungary.

The Minoan civilization, based on the Greek island of Crete, became Europe's first civilisation during this period. The culture of Mycenaean Greece, dated to 1600–1100 BC, provides the first written evidence of the Greek language. Mycenaean Greece was dominated by a warrior elite society and consisted of a network of palace states. Its religion already included several deities later found in the Olympic Pantheon. Mycenaean civilisation was followed by the Greek Dark Ages and the introduction of iron.

The Illyrians and the Iron Age in the territory of AlbaniaПодробный разбор

Following the Greek Dark Ages or Submycenaean Period, classical Greek culture began to develop in Southeast Europe, the Aegean islands, and western Asia Minor from around the 9th to 8th century BC, the Geometric Period, reaching its peak with the 5th century BC democracy in Athens. Greek trade routes extended across Southeast Europe from 700 BC to 300 BC, accompanied by the foundation of several colonies on the Black Sea coast, in Asia Minor, and in Dalmatia.

The Illyrian kingdom in the west of Southeast Europe was organised from the early 4th century BC by Illyrian tribes situated in the area corresponding to modern Montenegro and Albania. The name Illyrii was originally used to refer to a people occupying an area centred on Lake Skadar, situated between Albania and Montenegro. The term Illyria was subsequently adopted by the Greeks and Romans as a generic name applied to different peoples within a larger, well-defined area.

Other significant polities in Southeast Europe during the Iron Age included the Thracian Odrysian kingdom in the east, organised in the 5th century BC, and Dacian tribal unions existing at least from the beginning of the 2nd century BC under King Oroles. Under Burebista in the early 1st century BC, Dacia expanded its territory from Central Europe into Southern Europe. Hellenistic culture spread throughout the Macedonian Empire created by Alexander the Great from the later 4th century BC, making Greek language and culture dominant across Southeast Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean.

Personal identity and material culture in prehistoric Southeast EuropeПодробный разбор

From the late Upper Palaeolithic and into the Mesolithic, activities in Southeast Europe became increasingly concentrated around individual sites where people displayed personal and group identities through various forms of decoration. These included wearing ornaments and painting bodies with ochre and hematite.

Bailey observes that flint-cutting tools, along with the time and effort required to produce them, testify to expressions of identity and the use of more flexible combinations of materials, practices that began in the late Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic. The production of such tools represents a form of cultural complexity that predates the more formally structured societies of the Neolithic and Bronze Age.

The absence of cave art and mobiliary art in the Balkans, including the territory of modern Albania, is interpreted by Bailey not as a sign of cultural backwardness but as a consequence of the region's relatively stable environmental conditions. Civilisations, he argues, develop new and distinctive characteristics as they respond to new challenges in their environment, and in Southeast Europe those challenges were less severe than in the glacially affected north and west.

The written record and the end of prehistory in the regionПодробный разбор

The end of prehistory in Southeast Europe is defined by the appearance of the first written records. The first written script associated with Greece was Linear A, an undeciphered script used for writing the Minoan language of Crete. Linear B, a syllabic script used for writing Mycenaean Greek, followed and represents the earliest attested form of the Greek language. The oldest Mycenaean writing dates to about 1400 BC. Linear B was found mainly in palace archives at Knossos, Kydonia, Pylos, Thebes, and Mycenae, but disappeared with the fall of Mycenaean civilisation in the Late Bronze Age collapse.

The question of precisely when Southeast European prehistory ends is subject to interpretation. By one criterion based on historiography, the region enters protohistory only with Homer. By another, the period of protohistory may or may not include Bronze Age Greece from approximately 3,000 to 1,200 BC, as well as Minoan, Mycenaean, Thracian, and Venetic cultures. All interpretations agree that prehistory in Southeast Europe ends before Herodotus in the 5th century BC.

By the 6th century BC, the first written sources dealing with the territory north of the Danube appear in Greek records. These sources reference the Getae, who had by this time branched out from Thracian-speaking populations. The Illyrian peoples of modern Albania and Montenegro are documented in Greek and Roman written sources from the early 4th century BC, marking the formal transition from prehistory to protohistory for that territory.

Research context and gaps in the prehistoric recordПодробный разбор

The prehistoric record for Southeast Europe, including Albania, is uneven. Bailey notes that lack of research in a number of regions and the submersion of many coastal sites beneath water that is now approximately 100 metres higher than its prehistoric level have left significant gaps in the Mesolithic record in particular. The single site with materials related to the Mesolithic in Bulgaria is Pobíti Kámǎni, and there is a 4,000-year gap between the latest Upper Palaeolithic material at Témnata Dupka, dated to 13,600 BP, and the earliest Neolithic evidence at Gǎlǎbnik, from the beginning of the 7th millennium BC.

Southern and coastal sites in Greece that contain Mesolithic material are described as less well known than inland counterparts. The Greek Mesolithic is better represented at sites such as Frachthi Cave, while Theopetra Cave and Sesklo in Thessaly represent the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic as well as the early Neolithic. The incompleteness of the record means that many classic conceptions and systematisations of human development during the Palaeolithic, and by extension the Mesolithic, should not be considered universally applicable to Southeast Europe.

The broader methodological point raised by researchers is that the classic frameworks developed for core European regions — including the concept of the Upper Palaeolithic Revolution — are not straightforwardly applicable to the Balkans, and therefore not to Albania. The gradual pace of environmental and cultural change in this part of Europe requires interpretive models suited to its specific conditions rather than those imported from regions that experienced more dramatic glacial and climatic disruption.