materials, such as copper and salt, as well as for their lush
upland pastures in their foothills.
Th e arc of the Carpathians encloses a bowl known as the
Carpathian Basin, which is the territory of modern Hungary
and adjacent areas. Part of this area is covered by open grass-
land, the Great Hungarian Plain, while elsewhere there are
fertile fl oodplains. Th e Danube River runs through this area
on its way to the Black Sea while the Tisza is an important
tributary that attracted prehistoric settlement in its drainage.
East of the great curve of the Carpathians stretch the
grasslands of Ukraine and southern Russia that form the
western end of the vast Eurasian steppes. Since it occupies
much of the area north of the Black Sea, this region is also
called the Pontic steppe. Th e valleys of the major rivers that
drain through this region—the Dniester, the Dnieper, and
the Volga—were forested, but the areas between them were
dry, cold grasslands. Th ese natural grasslands provided rich
grazing lands for livestock-herding peoples in prehistoric
times and were also the region in which the horse was fi rst
domesticated.
Th e hills of central Europe contain the headwaters of
many of the major European rivers, including the Danube,
the Rhine, the Elbe, the Oder, and the Vistula. Among these
hills are basins fi lled with very fertile soil called loess, which
was deposited by winds during the ice age. Beginning with
the earliest farming settlements, these basins were centers
for prehistoric settlement throughout later prehistory. Flint
outcrops in the hills were the source of raw material for
stone tools.
North of the uplands is the North European Plain, which
stretches from Holland across northern Germany and Poland
into the Baltic states and Russia. Th e North European Plain
was shaped by the ice age glaciers, either having been covered
by ice or being buried in the sand and gravel that were depos-
ited by melting ice in front of the advancing and retreating ice
sheet. Sandy outwash plains, gravel and clay ground moraine,
marshy hollows, small ponds and large lakes, and meander-
ing streams characterize this fl at area.
Th e Atlantic facade is the part of Europe whose envi-
ronment is closely linked to the Atlantic Ocean. Western
and northern France, Britain and Ireland, and much of the
Benelux countries are all part of this zone. Th e sea provides
not only the weather but also food, and the prehistoric in-
habitants of this region were at home on the coast and on
the water. Straits such as the English Channel and the Irish
Sea were easily crossed with watercraft. Interior regions
benefi ted from the rain and from the proximity of the sea
as well.
Th e fi n a l ge o g r aph ic a l z one of t e mp e r at e Eu rop e w it h p a r-
ticular signifi cance for ancient societies is southern Scandina-
via, which encompasses modern Denmark, the southern third
of Sweden, and the extreme southern tip of Norway, along with
the Baltic islands of Gotland, Öland, and Bornholm. Southern
Scandinavia, like the North European Plain, was also shaped
by glaciers, but in addition it has a strong maritime infl uence
from the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. Numerous estuaries
and bays were locations for prehistoric fi shing settlements
while interior regions of Denmark and southern Sweden con-
tained fertile plains. Gotland, in the middle of the Baltic sea,
has its own distinctive character and a rich archaeological re-
cord reaching back to Stone Age seal hunters.ANCIENT CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENT
Th e prehistoric environment in these regions was far diff er-
ent from that of the present day. From the mid-19th century,
scientists—geologists and botanists foremost among them—
have been able to reconstruct the prehistoric environment.
Analytical tools are continually improved, so there is still
much that can be learned about the prehistoric environment
in Europe.
Th e principal sources of data on the prehistoric environ-
ment come from landforms and sediments, their composition
and structure, and the pollen and other biological elements
they contain. Since much of Europe was shaped by glaciers
and their meltwater, geologists can trace their advance and
retreat through the relic landforms they left behind, like
moraines and eskers. Other landforms are formed through
erosion, which in turn can indicate increased rainfall. River
terraces show ancient water levels and episodes of sedimenta-
tion and downcutting. Th e sizes of particles in sediments can
reveal information about their transport and sorting.
One of the most important tools for the study of the an-
cient environment is pollen analysis. Each species of plant
produces pollen that has a distinctive shape. Th e pollen is
then blown away from the plant and eventually settles out of
the atmosphere. When it falls into lakes and bogs, it sinks to
the bottom, accumulates among the sediments building up,
and is preserved. Botanists are able to extract cores from the
sediments and study the range of pollen types and their quan-
tity present in each layer. In this way they can reconstruct the
vegetation around the lake or bog based on the proportions
of diff erent types of pollen. Broad regional changes in vegeta-
tion can also be traced on the basis of a suffi cient number of
samples. Changes in vegetation can also be correlated with
changes in climate.
Th e scientifi c tools for the study of prehistoric envi-
ronments would be of only limited value if there were not a
means of dating them. Carbon-14 (radiocarbon) dating is the
principal tool available to scientists to obtain dates from an-
cient sediments or pollen cores. Th is technique, developed in
the late 1940s and improved dramatically in the 1980s, works
best for samples between 48,000 b.c.e. and 1000 c.e. It in-
volves the fact that the radioactive form of carbon, an isotope
known as carbon-14, is absorbed by plants and the animals
that eat them. When such organic remains are found, it is
possible to measure how much carbon-14 remains and deter-
mine the age of the organic substance and the sediments in
which it was found. Th e dates derived from carbon-14 cannot
be expressed in precise years but are given in ranges of years
within which the actual date lies.climate and geography: Europe 253