Prehistory

Old stone age

240.000 - 180.000 B.C. is known as the Riss glacial period. Primitive stone tools found in Hainaut (now part of Belgium) are the earliest signs of people living in the Netherlands.

180.000 to 70.000 B.C. was a relative warm period in between two ice ages known as the Riss-Würm interglacial. Signs of Neanderthals have been found in the Walloon (Southern, French speaking) region of Belgium.

70.000 - 10.000 B.C. was the period in which the last (Würm) ice age took place. In the beginning, Neanderthals were still living in the northern parts (Drenthe), but soon only our own species (Homo Sapiens) remains. These people hunt reindeer and other polar mammals on the tundra's of the Netherlands.

Young stone age

4.500 B.C. Arrival of the first farmers. They first lived on the rich löss grounds in Limburg and farmed the land without using a plough. In the other parts of the country, people still were hunter-gatherers.

3.200 B.C. In the eastern part of the country (Drenthe and surroundings) lived a people consisting of farmers, they also kept cattle. They also raised many dolmen (????) (mesolithic burial sites).

Bronze age

1.900 B.C. Many bronze objects were imported from Germany and Ireland. Since the economy of the Netherlands was in quite a primitive shape, many people could not affort them and had to keep using flint tools.

1.300 B.C. Time at which the Exloo necklace was produced. The necklace was found near the village of Exloo in Drenthe and consisted of 25 tin beads from the U.K., 14 amber beads from the Baltic Sea area and 4 faience beads made in Egypt. It is a good example of how remote the places doing bussiness with each other could be .

800 B.C. Burial fields with (urns) appear. This new trend in burial rituals was probably brought by immigrants, possibly Germans from the north and Kelts froms the south.

Iron age

750 - 400 B.C. First iron age. The iron products are of the so-called Hallstatt type, which originated near Salzburg, Austria.

450 B.C. Second iron age. First settlements of cattle farmers in Drenthe, Friesland and Groningen.

300 B.C. Because of the rising of the sea level, the farmers in the north had to build artificial hills called "wierden" (Groningen) or "terpen" (Friesland).

57 B.C. Julius Caesar arrives in the low countries. Start of (written) history.