700 BC: Homer composes The Iliad, an epic poem that represents the first piece of European literature.440 BC: Herodotus defends Athenian political freedom in the Histories.323 BC: Alexander the Great ...
Further information: History of the European UnionGermans standing on top of the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate, November 1989; it would begin to be torn apart in the following days.Following the ...
See also: 20th centuryTrenches were defences against machine guns and artillery in the First World WarThe "short twentieth century", from 1914 to 1991, included the First World War, the Second World W ...
See also: 19th century and International relations (1814–1919)In 1815 Europe's borders were redrawn, after having been shaken up by Napoleon's armiesThe "long nineteenth century", from 1789 to 1914 s ...
Main articles: Early modern Europe, Scientific revolution, Great Divergence, and European miracleGenoese (red) and Venetian (green) maritime trade routes in the Mediterranean and Black SeaThe Early Mo ...
Main articles: Middle Ages and Medieval demographyMap of Europe in 814, as the Frankish Empire reached its peak, while Byzantium faced the Islamic conquestThe Middle Ages are commonly dated from the f ...
Main article: Classical antiquityThe Parthenon, an ancient Athenian Temple on the Acropolis (hill-top city) fell to Rome in 176 BCThe Greeks and the Romans left a legacy in Europe which is evident in ...
The first well-known literate civilization in Europe was that of the Minoans. The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age civilization that arose on the island of Crete and flourished from approximately ...
Homo erectus migrated from Africa to Europe before the emergence of modern humans. The bones of the earliest Europeans are found in Dmanisi, Georgia, dated at 1.8 million years ago. Lézignan-la-Cèbe ...
The history of Europe covers the people inhabiting the European continent since it was first populated in prehistoric times to the present. The first Homo sapiens arrived between 45,000 and 25,000 BC. ...
Main article: Ancient historyOrigins of writing are dated to fourth millennium BC. Writing may have started independently on various areas of Eurasia. It appears the skill spread relatively fast, givi ...
Main article: Prehistoric EuropeLower PaleolithicFossilized remains of Homo georgicus, Homo ergaster and Homo erectus between 1.8 and 1.0 million years old have been found in Europe (Georgia (Dmanisi) ...
The history of Eurasia is the collective history of a continental area with several distinct peripheral coastal regions: the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Europe, linked by t ...
Into the 21st centuryThe Labor Party's Kevin Rudd defeated Howard at the 2007 election, and Rudd held the office until June 2010, when he was replaced as the leader of the party. Rudd used his term in ...
Indigenous people The 1960s was a key decade for indigenous rights. In 1962, the Menzies Government's Commonwealth Electoral Act provided that all Indigenous people should have the right to enrol and ...