5000-3200 BC Neolithic

The Neolithic ‘package’, an array of new technologies and ways of living, came to north-west Europe by two main routes – one to the north and one to the south. Both routes can be traced by finds of distinctive pottery styles. Linear pottery is widely found in the north while to the south, along the shores of the northern Mediterranean sea, Cardial pottery, named after the cockle-shell (cardium) used to press patterns into its surface, is found.

In the north of the region the earliest evidence for people living a Neolithic lifestyle appeared with a late form of Linear pottery around 5300 BC, while related pottery reached northern and western France after 5000 BC. Some quite long-term static ‘frontier’ zones became established, where fully Neolithic communities confronted existing hunter-gatherers, for example in the lowlands of Belgium and the sandy plains of the Netherlands which lie to the north of the fertile lands occupied by the settled users of Linear pottery. Some of these late hunter-gatherers began to make distinctive pottery of their own.