the islands of modern Japan as well, while people long in-
habited the more arable valleys, the abundant mountains
served to inhibit interaction and cooperation among tribes.
By the third century c.e. small states had come into exis-
tence, but even the largest occupied only a loosely defi ned
portion of the southernmost Japanese island, Kyushu. Th e
fi rst signifi cant Japanese court did not appear until the sixth
century c.e.
EUROPE
BY KIRK H. BEETZ
Most of the territory of ancient Europe consisted of unsettled
wild lands. Th e practice of agriculture probably came to Eu-
rope from the Near East, passing through Anatolia in mod-
ern Turkey, the Balkans, and then north and west throughout
Europe, ending in southern Sweden, with all the people far-
ther to the north remaining hunter-gatherers. By 4000 b.c.e.
almost all of Europe had adopted agricultural ways. It was a
period in which diff erent cultures could mix with only rare
confl icts. Th us people could move among settlements in Eu-
rope with little hindrance. Th is would continue to be the case
until about 2500 b.c.e., but by then what is now called the
megalithic culture had begun to change how Europeans re-
garded territory.
Th e culture that built the megaliths was probably the fi rst
to establish anything recognizable as a single group’s terri-
tory. Th e word megalith means “large stone,” and the mega-
lithic people built huge stone monuments such as Stonehenge
in England. In about 3000 b.c.e. Europeans north and west of
the Alps and all the way south through Portugal began build-
ing burial chambers constructed of stones that were oft en 13
feet in height. Th ese impressive burial chambers could have
been built by large families or clans as ways to let other people
know that they claimed the nearby territory and were show-
ing their claim by burying their dead in a tomb that could be
seen for miles.
By about 2000 b.c.e. burial chambers for only one person
were being built, indicating that a tomb was honoring a leader,
perhaps a chief or a priest. Other megalithic structures such
as Stonehenge were being erected not only to mark burials
but also for worship. Th ese building projects involved trans-
porting stones weighing several tons for many miles, prob-
ably by boat along the Atlantic coast of the Continent and
the west coast of Britain and both coasts of Ireland. Planning
and building such huge projects required the cooperation of
hundreds of people over long periods and probably involved
the cooperation of several villages, all part of a chiefdom that
ruled over hundreds of square miles of land. Such interaction
suggests recognition that one group of people could own ter-
ritories consisting of many villages.
In southern and eastern Spain ca. 2340 b.c.e. people
began building fortresses. Tin was mined in southern and
eastern Spain, and tin was one of the two metals required
for making bronze, the other being copper. Of the two met-
als, tin was the harder to fi nd, and merchants from the Near
East would sail all the way to Spain to trade for it. To protect
their tin mines and themselves, the peoples of the region built
walls and towers of stone. Th ese structures meant that they
were claiming territories for themselves.
In the 600s b.c.e. Carthage, a city on the coast of North
Africa southwest of the island of Sicily, began conquer-
ing the southern coast of modern Spain. By 264 b.c.e. the
Carthaginians controlled almost all of Spain’s trade in tin.
From 237 to 218 b.c.e. they conquered the land north, be-
yond the Guadalquiver River in southern Spain and along
Spain’s east coast to the Ebro River, displacing Celtic tribes.
On the east coast in 218 b.c.e. they conquered the town of
Saguntum, an ally of Rome, and this conquest started the
Second Punic War (218–201 b.c.e.) between Carthage and
Rome. When Rome invaded Spain, the Romans found two
kinds of Celtic peoples: one still in the process of shift ing
from nomadic lives to living in towns and cities and the oth-
er living settled urban lives in Carthaginian territory. At the
end of the war, Rome made its newly won Spanish territory
into the province Hispania, using the Pyrenees mountain
range as its northern border.
North of that border was Gaul, which was populated by
Celts. Celt is the name given to the majority of Europeans by
the Greeks; the Romans called them Gauls. Anyone speak-
ing one of the Celtic languages is called a Celt (pronounced
“Kelt”). Th e Celts originated in either central Asia or central
Europe. Th ey were a violent people ruled by warriors. Indi-
vidual Celtic tribes oft en held ill-defi ned territories in which
farmers worked to serve the warriors. Other tribes packed
everything they owned onto large carts pulled by horses and
traveled across the land. Th ey routinely waged war against
each other and raided territories for loot and slaves. In 390
b.c.e. Celts raided Italy and sacked the city of Rome. When
Julius Caesar (100–44 b.c.e.) set out to conquer Gaul in 58
b.c.e., Rome already controlled portions of the region in
modern-day southern France and northern Italy, with bor-
ders through the Alps and along the headwaters of several
southern rivers.
In central France, Caesar found many Celts living in towns
and cities made of wood, and there were some small kingdoms
with ill-defi ned frontiers. To defy Rome, in 52 b.c.e. some of
these kingdoms united under one of the kings, Vercingeto-
rix—perhaps the fi rst time they had thought of themselves as
one people; however, they were defeated at the town of Alesia.
In the north, near the Rhine River, Celtic tribes still tended
to be nomadic, organizing themselves around the carts that
carried their possessions when they traveled. To Caesar, the
Rhine was a natural border. To the north of the river lived an-
other ethnic group of people, the Germans. Caesar believed
that the Germans were migrating into northern Europe from
Asia. Some historians contend that the Germanic peoples de-
veloped within Europe, perhaps in modern-day Poland, but
in general they have much in common with ancient central
Asian tribes. Th ey were territorial, and they had small realmsborders and frontiers: Europe 145