FACTBOX: Europe's main pre-historic periods

(Reuters) - A 7,500-year old Neolithic settlement in what is now southern Serbia suggests that Europe's Copper Age could have started 500 years earlier than previously thought.

Here is a table detailing Europe's main prehistoric periods, as commonly accepted by archaeologists, with the oldest at the top. It is impossible to give precise dates because different parts of Europe developed at different times:

AGE CHARACTERISTICS EXAMPLE

Stone Age

Palaeolithic Nomadic tribes lived as Cave paintings

hunter-gatherers, used stone in Altamira

tools, discovered fire.

Mesolithic First settlements, tools made Lepenski Vir

of wood, stone and bones, humanoid