Scandinavian prehistory
The period 2500–500 BC also left many visible remains to modern times, most notably the many thousands rock carvings (petroglyphs) in western Sweden at Tanumshede and in Norway at Alta.
The pre-history of Scandinavia begins at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, following the last glacial period's receding Fenno-Scandian ice sheet.
It wasn't until 7000 BC that all of Svealand and the modern coastal regions of northeastern Sweden were free of ice, although the huge weight of the ice sheet had caused isostatic depression of Fennoscandia, placing large parts of eastern Sweden and western Finland underwater.
These groups met and mixed in Scandinavia, creating a population more diverse than contemporaneous central and western European hunter-gatherers.
[1] In the 7th millennium BC, when the reindeer and their hunters had moved for northern Scandinavia, forests had been established in the land.
These early peoples followed cultural traditions similar to those practiced throughout other regions in the far-north areas, including modern Finland, Russia, and across the Bering Strait into the northernmost strip of North America (containing portions of today's Alaska and Canada) The Maglemosian people lived in forest and wetland environments using fishing and hunting tools made from wood, bone and flint microliths.
The finds from this period are characterised by long flintstone flakes which were used for making the characteristic rhombic arrowheads, scrapers, drills, awls and toothed blades.
In southern Scandinavia it replaced the Ertebølle culture, which had maintained a Mesolithic lifestyle for about 1500 years after farming arrived in Central Europe.
[2] Tribes along the coasts of Svealand, Götaland, Åland, northeastern Denmark and southern Norway learnt new technologies that became the Pitted Ware culture (3200–2300 BC).
The Pitted Ware culture then developed along Sweden's east coast as a return to a hunting economy in the mid-4th millennium BC (see the Alvastra pile-dwelling).
Towards the end of the 3rd millennium BC, they were overrun by new groups who many scholars think spoke Proto-Indo-European, the Battle-Axe culture.
All the bronze and gold was imported and it has been assumed that the civilization was founded in amber trade, through contacts with Central European and Mediterranean cultures.
The period between 2300 and 500 BC was the most intensive petroglyph-carving period in Scandinavia, with carvings depicting agricultural activities, animals, nature, hunts, ships, ceremonies, warfare, etc.. Petroglyphs with themes of a sexual nature have also been found in Bohuslän, dating from 800 to 500 BC.
