Page 48 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - The Netherlands

46  INTRODUCING THE NE THERLANDS

Prehistoric and Roman Times

About 13,000 years ago, the Low Countries emerged from
under the ice of the last Ice Age. Temperatures gradually rose,
turning the tundra into areas of forest and marshes, inhabited Utrecht
by nomadic hunters. In the Early Stone Age (4500–2000 BC), Nijmegen
farming communities were established here and there. The
megalith builders were the best known of these settled Maastricht
inhabitants. Around 600 BC, Germanic and Celtic tribes
settled in the Low Countries. They were here when the The Low Countries (AD 50)
Romans conquered the southern part of the region, in the 1st Germanic peoples
century BC. In AD 50, the Romans finally declared the Rhine as Roman territory
the Roman Empire’s northern frontier, establishing Roman Coastline in 3000 BC
settlements in Utrecht and Maastricht.

Megaliths
Between 3400 and 3200 BC, the
inhabitants of the Drenthe plateau built
some 100 megaliths. Of these, 54 have
survived into the present (see pp310–
11). These impressive tombs were once
concealed beneath a mound of sand.

Urns
These urns
date from
1150–800 BC.
The dark rings in this
picture are of the ditches
that originally surrounded
the urn-mounds. The rings
are interrupted at their
southeastern edge, possibly
to represent the symbolic
entrance to the tomb.

4500 BC Farmers settle on the loess land of
55,000 BC Small groups of Neanderthal Zuid Limburg. They have been referred to 1900 BC Start of
people inhabit the surroundings of Hijken as “Bandkeramikers”, or the Linear Pottery the Bronze Age in
and Hoogersmilde. A few hand axes and two Culture, after their striped pottery the Low Countries Bronze Age
campsites have been found sacrificial dagger
10,000 BC 7500 BC 5000 BC 2500 BC 2000 BC
3400–3200 BC
Farmers of the Beaker
Folk build megaliths at
11,000 BC Reindeer hunters of the Drenthe, Overijssel Wheel from
Hamburg Culture inhabit Drenthe and Groningen 2700 BC

046-047_EW_Netherlands.indd 46 16/01/17 12:02 pm
Eyewitness Travel LAYERS PRINTED:
Starsight history template “UK” LAYER
(Source v1.2)
Date 7th January 2013
Size 125mm x 217mm