Copper Age in the context of Early Bronze Age

The three-age system is the division of human prehistory (with some overlap into the historical periods in a few regions) into three time-periods: the Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, although the concept may also refer to other tripartite divisions of historic time periods. In some systems, a fourth Copper Age is added as between the Stone Age and Bronze Age. The Copper, Bronze and Iron Ages are also known collectively as the Metal Ages.

In history, archaeology and physical anthropology, the three-age system is a methodological concept adopted during the 19th century according to which artefacts and events of late prehistory and early history could be broadly ordered into a recognizable chronology. C. J. Thomsen initially developed this categorization in the period 1816 to 1825, as a result of classifying the collection of an archaeological exhibition chronologically – there resulted broad sequences with artefacts made successively of stone, bronze, and iron.

The Iron Age (c. 1200 – c. 550 BC) is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Copper Age and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progressing to protohistory (before written history). In this usage, it is preceded by the Stone Age (subdivided into the Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic) and Bronze Age. These concepts originated for describing Iron Age Europe and the ancient Near East. In the archaeology of the Americas, a five-period system is conventionally used instead; indigenous cultures there did not develop an iron economy in the pre-Columbian era, though some did work copper and silver. Indigenous metalworking arrived in Australia with European contact. Although meteoric iron has been used for millennia in many regions, the beginning of the Iron Age is defined locally around the world by archaeological convention when the production of smelted iron (especially steel tools and weapons) replaces their bronze equivalents in common use.

In Anatolia and the Caucasus, or Southeast Europe, the Iron Age began c. 1300 BC. In the ancient Near East, this transition occurred simultaneously with the Late Bronze Age collapse, during the 12th century BC. The technology soon spread throughout the Mediterranean basin region and to South Asia between the 12th and 11th centuries BC. Its further spread to Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and Central Europe was somewhat delayed, and Northern Europe was not reached until c. the 5th century BC.

Neolithic artifacts, uncovered by archeologists at the beginning of the 21st century, indicate that Istanbul's historic peninsula was settled as far back as the 6th millennium BCE. That early settlement, important in the spread of the Neolithic Revolution from the Near East to Europe, lasted for almost a millennium before being inundated by rising water levels. The first human settlement on the Asian side, the Fikirtepe mound, is from the Copper Age period, with artifacts dating from 5500 to 3500 BCE. In the European side, near the point of the peninsula (Sarayburnu) there was a settlement during the early 1st millennium BCE. Modern authors have linked it to the possible Thracian toponym Lygos, mentioned by Pliny the Elder as an earlier name for the site of Byzantium.

There is evidence suggesting there were settlements around the region dating as far back as 6700 BC, and it is hard to define if there was any settlement on exact spot at city proper established, but earliest records about city proper begins around 660 BC when Greek settlers from the Attic town of Megara colonized the area and established Byzantium on the European side of the Bosphorus. It fell to the Roman Republic in 196 BC, and was known as Byzantium in Latin until 330, when the city, soon renamed as Constantinople, became the new capital of the Roman Empire. During the reign of Justinian I, the city rose to be the largest in the western world, with a population peaking at close to half a million people. Constantinople functioned as the capital of the Byzantine Empire, which effectively ended with the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Constantinople then became the capital of the Ottoman Turks.

The prehistory of Anatolia stretches from the Paleolithic era through to the appearance of classical civilization in the middle of the 1st millennium BC. It is generally regarded as being divided into three ages reflecting the dominant materials used for the making of domestic implements and weapons: Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. The term Copper Age (Chalcolithic) is used to denote the period straddling the stone and Bronze Ages.

Anatolia (Greek: Ἀνατολία (Anatolía), Turkish: Anadolu), also known by the Latin name of Asia Minor, is considered to be the westernmost extent of Western Asia. Geographically it encompasses the central uplands of modern Turkey, from the coastal plain of the Aegean Sea east to the western edge of the Armenian Highlands and from the narrow coast of the Black Sea south to the Taurus Mountains and Mediterranean Sea coast.

The names for archaeological periods vary enormously from region to region. This is a list of the main divisions by continent and region. Dating also varies considerably and those given are broad approximations across wide areas.

The three-age system has been used in many areas, referring to the prehistorical and historical periods identified by tool manufacture and use, of Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. Since these ages are distinguished by the development of technology, it is natural that the dates to which these refer vary in different parts of the world. In many regions, the term Stone Age is no longer used, as it has been replaced by more specific geological periods. For some regions, there is need for an intermediate Chalcolithic period between the Stone Age and Bronze Age. For cultures where indigenous metal tools were in less widespread use, other classifications, such as the lithic stage, archaic stage and formative stage refer to the development of other types of technology and social organization.

The Yamnaya (/ˈjæmnaɪə/ YAM-ny-ə) or Yamna culture (/ˈjæmnə/ YAM-nə), also known as the Pit Grave culture or Ochre Grave culture, is a late Copper Age to early Bronze Age archaeological culture of the region between the Southern Bug, Dniester, and Ural rivers (the Pontic–Caspian steppe), dating to 3300–2600 BC. It was discovered by Vasily Gorodtsov following his archaeological excavations near the Donets River in 1901–1903. Its name derives from its characteristic burial tradition: yámnaya (я́мная) is a Russian adjective that means 'related to pits' (я́ма, yáma), as these people buried their dead in tumuli (kurgans) containing simple pit chambers. Research in recent years has found that Mykhailivka, on the lower Dnieper River, Ukraine, formed the core Yamnaya culture (c. 3600–3400 BC).

The Yamnaya culture is of particular interest to archaeologists and linguists, as the widely accepted Kurgan hypothesis posits that the people who produced the Yamnaya culture spoke a stage of the Proto-Indo-European language. The speakers of the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language embarked on the Indo-European migrations that gave rise to the widely dispersed Indo-European languages of today.

The Nuragic civilization, also known as the Nuragic culture, formed in the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, Italy in the Bronze Age. According to the traditional theory put forward by Giovanni Lilliu in 1966, it developed after multiple migrations from the West of people related to the Beaker culture who conquered and disrupted the local Copper Age cultures; other scholars instead hypothesize an autochthonous origin. It lasted from the 18th century BC (Middle Bronze Age), up to the Iron Age or until the Roman colonization in 238 BC. Others date the culture as lasting at least until the 2nd century AD, and in some areas, namely the Barbagia, to the 6th century AD, or possibly even to the 11th century AD.Although it must be remarked that the construction of new nuraghi had already stopped by the 12th-11th century BC, during the Final Bronze Age.

It was contemporary with, among others, the Mycenaean civilization in Greece, the Apennine and Terramare cultures of the Italian peninsula, the Thapsos culture of Sicily, and the final phase of the El Argar culture in the Iberian peninsula.

The first evidence of human presence in Ireland dates to around 34,000 years ago, with further findings dating the presence of Homo sapiens to 7,000 BC. The receding of the ice the Younger Dryas cold phase of the Quaternary, around 9700 BC, heralds the beginning of Prehistoric Ireland, which includes the archaeological periods known as the Mesolithic, the Neolithic from about 4000 BC, and the Copper Age beginning around 2500 BC with the arrival of the Beaker Culture. The Irish Bronze Age proper begins around 2000 BC and ends with the arrival of the Iron Age of the Celtic Hallstatt culture, beginning about 600 BC. The subsequent La Tène culture brought new styles and practices by 300 BC.

Greek and Roman writers give some information about Ireland during the Classical period (see "protohistoric" period), by which time the island may be termed "Gaelic Ireland". By the late 4th century CE Christianity had begun to gradually subsume or replace the earlier Celtic polytheism. By the end of the 6th century, it had introduced writing along with a predominantly monastic Celtic Christian church, profoundly altering Irish society. Seafaring raiders and pirates from Scandinavia (later referred to as Vikings), settled from the late 8th century AD which resulted in extensive cultural interchange, as well as innovation in military and transport technology. Many of Ireland's towns were founded at this time as Scandinavian trading posts and coinage made its first appearance. Scandinavian penetration was limited and concentrated along coasts and rivers, and ceased to be a major threat to Gaelic culture after the Battle of Clontarf in 1014. The Norman invasion in 1169 resulted again in a partial conquest of the island and marked the beginning of more than 800 years of English political and military involvement in Ireland. Initially successful, Norman gains were rolled back over succeeding centuries as a Gaelic resurgence reestablished Gaelic cultural preeminence over most of the country, apart from the walled towns and the area around Dublin known as The Pale.

A riding horse or a saddle horse is a horse used by mounted horse riders for recreation or transportation.

It is unclear exactly when horses were first ridden because early domestication did not create noticeable physical changes in the horse. However, there is strong circumstantial evidence that horse were ridden by people of the Botai culture during the Copper Age, circa 3600–3100 BCE. The earliest evidence suggesting horses were ridden dates to about 3500 BCE, where evidence from horse skulls found at site in Kazakhstan indicated that they had worn some type of bit. Evidence from Bhimbetka rock shelters suggests mounts were used at least 10,000 BCE. facets of 3 mm or more were found on seven horse premolars in two sites, Botai and Kozhai 1, dated about 3500–3000 BCE. It is theorized that people herding animals first rode horses for this purpose, presumably bareback, and probably used soft materials such as rope or possibly bone to create rudimentary bridles and hackamores. However, the earliest definitive evidence of horses being ridden dates to art and textual evidence dating to about 2000–1500 BCE.

The Mykhailivka Culture, Mikhaylovka culture, Lower Mykhaylivka culture (Ukrainian: Нижньомихайлівська культура, romanized: Nyzhnjomykhajlivsjka kuljtura, 3600—3000 BCE) is a Copper Age archaeological culture which flourished on the Pontic steppe from 3600 BC to 3000 BC.

Lower Mikhaylivka culture is named after an early Yamna site of the late copper age of the lower Dnieper River, noted for its fortifications, after lower archaeological layer of the site near the village of Mykhaylivka in Kherson Oblast of Ukraine.

The Armenian hypothesis, also known as the Near Eastern model, is a theory of the Proto-Indo-European homeland, initially proposed by linguists Tamaz V. Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav Ivanov in the early 1980s, which suggests that the Proto-Indo-European language was spoken during the 5th–4th millennia BC in "eastern Anatolia, the southern Caucasus, and northern Mesopotamia".

Recent ancient DNA research has led to renewed suggestions of a Caucasian homeland for a "pre-proto-Indo-European". Particularly, an admixture between the Khvalynsk and Caucasian Copper Age burials gave rise to the ancestry that later became known as a typical marker (WSH – Western Steppe Herders) of the Yamnaya pastoralists. It also lends support to the Indo-Hittite hypothesis, according to which both proto-Anatolian and proto-Indo-European split off from a common mother language "no later than the 4th millennium BCE".These suggestions have been disputed in other recent research, which still locates the origin of the ancestor of proto-Indo-European in the Eastern European/Eurasian steppe or from a hybridization of both steppe and Northwest-Caucasian languages. The origin of the Anatolian languages according to the Near Eastern model has also been challenged because "[a]mong comparative linguists, a Balkan route for the introduction of Anatolian IE is generally considered more likely than a passage through the Caucasus, due to, for example, greater Anatolian IE presence and language diversity in the west."