Italian History · Chronicle I of IX

Prehistoric & Ancient Italy

Italia

Before Rome: Ötzi and the nuraghi, the Villanovans and the Latins.

Span: before 753 BCE
Entries: 16
Next: Roman History

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Entry 1 of 16

1,500,000 BC
Lower PalaeolithicCultural
The first Italians at Pirro Nord
Bands of early Homo leave chipped flint tools among the bones of vanished beasts at Pirro Nord in Apulia, the oldest trace of humankind yet found in the Italian peninsula.
430,000 BC
Middle PleistoceneCultural
Ceprano Man and the elephant hunters
An archaic human skull-cap is laid down near Ceprano in Lazio, while at Notarchirico and Isernia La Pineta bands of hunters butcher straight-tusked elephants and bison.
55,000 BC
Middle PalaeolithicCultural
Neanderthals of Monte Circeo
Neanderthal communities range across Italy from the Guattari cave at Monte Circeo to the gravels of Saccopastore in Rome, leaving skulls, hearths, and Mousterian tools.
43,000 BC
Upper PalaeolithicCultural
Modern humans at Grotta del Cavallo
Two milk teeth from Grotta del Cavallo in Apulia, makers of the Uluzzian culture, count among the earliest remains of Homo sapiens in Europe.
11,000 BC
Late Upper PalaeolithicCultural
The engravings of Addaura
On the slopes of Monte Pellegrino above Palermo, Epigravettian artists incise the Addaura cave with a dynamic scene of human figures, the masterpiece of Italian Palaeolithic rock art.
Meanwhile, elsewhere · 1
- American History · 11,000 BCClovis culture and the great hunters
6000 BC
Early NeolithicCultural
Impressed Ware farmers and the Tavoliere villages
Neolithic colonists bring grain, sheep, and Impressed Ware pottery across the Adriatic, raising hundreds of ditched villages on the Tavoliere plain of Apulia.
3300 BC
Copper AgeCultural
Ötzi the Iceman in the Alps
A Copper Age traveller dies high in the Ötztal Alps on what is now the South Tyrolean border; his frozen body, tools, and copper axe survive to become Europe's most famous prehistoric mummy.
Meanwhile, elsewhere · 2
- Iraqi History · 3300 BCThe birth of writing
- Egyptian History · 3250 BCThe dawn of writing at Abydos
1700 BC
Bronze Age SardiniaCultural
The nuraghi of Sardinia
Across Sardinia, communities begin raising the nuraghi — thousands of conical dry-stone towers — founding the island's distinctive Nuragic civilization.
Meanwhile, elsewhere · 3
1550 BC
Bronze Age ItalyCultural
The Terramare of the Po plain
In the central Po valley, embanked and moated villages of the Terramare culture flourish, while the Apennine culture spreads its herding economy down the peninsula.
Meanwhile, elsewhere · 3
1400 BC
Aegean ContactsCultural
Mycenaean traders in the Tyrrhenian
Mycenaean Greek pottery reaches Vivara, the Aeolian Islands, and Thapsos in Sicily, drawing Bronze Age Italy into the trade networks of the Aegean world.
Meanwhile, elsewhere · 3
1150 BC
Final Bronze AgeCultural
Proto-Villanovan urnfields
As the Bronze Age world unravels, the cremation rite of the Proto-Villanovan culture spreads across Italy, its ashes gathered in biconical urns beneath fields of buried pots.
Meanwhile, elsewhere · 3
900 BC
Early Iron AgeCultural
The Villanovan culture and the dawn of the Etruscans
In Tuscany, Lazio, and around Bologna, the Iron Age Villanovan culture gathers people into large proto-urban centres that will grow into the cities of Etruria.
Meanwhile, elsewhere · 3
850 BC
Latial CulturePolitical
Latins on the hills of Rome
Iron Age villages of the Latial culture cluster on the Palatine and neighbouring hills above the Tiber, the human seedbed from which the city of Rome would grow.
Meanwhile, elsewhere · 3
814 BC
Phoenicians in the WestPolitical
Phoenician outposts and the founding of Carthage
Phoenician seafarers plant trading posts in Sardinia and western Sicily, and tradition dates the founding of Carthage — Rome's future rival — to this age.
Meanwhile, elsewhere · 3
775 BC
Greek ColonisationCultural
Euboean Greeks at Pithekoussai
Settlers from Euboea establish an emporion on the island of Pithekoussai (Ischia), the earliest Greek colony in the West and the gateway of the alphabet into Italy.
Meanwhile, elsewhere · 3
753 BC
Foundation of RomePolitical
The traditional founding of Rome
Roman tradition fixes the founding of the city by Romulus to 21 April 753 BC, the symbolic threshold where prehistoric Italy gives way to the history of Rome.
Meanwhile, elsewhere · 3
8 more entries, to 753 BC

Prehistoric & Ancient Italy

The first Italians at Pirro Nord

Ceprano Man and the elephant hunters

Neanderthals of Monte Circeo

Modern humans at Grotta del Cavallo

The engravings of Addaura

Impressed Ware farmers and the Tavoliere villages

Ötzi the Iceman in the Alps

The nuraghi of Sardinia

The Terramare of the Po plain

Mycenaean traders in the Tyrrhenian

Proto-Villanovan urnfields

The Villanovan culture and the dawn of the Etruscans

Latins on the hills of Rome

Phoenician outposts and the founding of Carthage

Euboean Greeks at Pithekoussai

The traditional founding of Rome