The Linearbandkeramik and the spread of farming into central Europe
- Date
- c. 5500 BCE
- Category
- Exploration & colonisation
- Region
- Central Europe
- Era
- Prehistory
- Significance
The Linear Pottery culture (Linearbandkeramik, or LBK) carried the Neolithic farming economy rapidly across temperate central Europe.
Emerging around 5500 BCE in the Transdanubian region of western Hungary out of the earlier Starcevo–Koros–Cris complex of the Balkans, LBK communities spread within a few centuries along river corridors and fertile loess soils — reaching Slovakia, Austria, Bohemia, Germany, the Paris Basin and the lands toward the Baltic and Ukraine. They are recognised by their incised pottery, large timber longhouses, and a packaged economy of wheat, barley, cattle, sheep, pigs and goats. Ancient-DNA studies show that this expansion was driven substantially by the movement of people descended from Anatolian and Aegean farmers, who mixed only gradually with indigenous hunter-gatherers. The LBK represents one of the fastest and most consequential dispersals of agriculture in prehistory, reshaping the population and landscape of Europe.
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Further reading
The wider story
The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian
Vivid narrative of the Greek and Roman worlds that shaped Europe.
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