Neanderthals settled Europe long before the emergence of modern humans, Homo sapiens. The earliest appearance of modern people in Europe has been dated to 35,000 B.C. Evidence of permanent settlement dates from 7,000 B.C.
The first well-known civilization in Europe was that of the Minoans of the island of Crete and the Achaeans in the adjacent parts of Greece, starting at the beginning of the 2nd millennium B.C. Around the same time, the Celts spread over most of the interior as far as Iberian Peninsula (now Spain and Portugal), and later Anatolia. As they did not use a written language, knowledge of them is piecemeal. The Romans encountered them and recorded a great deal about them; these records and the archeological evidence form our primary understanding of this extremely influential culture. The Celts posed a formidable, if disorganized, competition to the Roman state, that later colonized and conquered much of the southern portion of Europe.
