History of Estonia 101

Since the PMC has been going for some 60 years here in Estonia, during which time we've seen such comings and goings as the regaining of independence, the imminent introduction of the Euro, and the Beatles concerts at the Lauluväljak, we feel fully qualified to present this, a multi part set of posts on the history of Estonia which will appear, now and again as we're given time.
There's unlikely to be anything new for Estonians, who therefore don't need to read on unless they want to check we're not peddling complete mistruths. The sources are likely to be the usual internet sites such as wikipedia and any links that arise therefrom, but this should save the reader some time in finding all this stuff themselves, the one or two books we have on the subject, and maybe the occasional word of mouth stuff.
You might also want to check out our posts about a year ago now, on the Estonian language.
At the very least we hope to dispel any misconceptions of Estonia being a slavic speaking country, being located in the Balkans or being a place with a lot of stones (although this last is in fact true)...

Part One: Beginnings

There are various estimates of how long present-day Estonia has been settled, at least by Estonians or their Finnic forbears. I've heard figures ranging from 5,000 years to 8,000 years and more. However, archaelogical evidence points towards a period at least 9,000 years BC (i.e. 11,000 years ago)  when the 'Kunda' culture flourished here. Kunda is actually a town in Estonia after which this group of people, who extended across modern day Latvia and Estonia into Northwestern Russia and southern Finland. The period falls into the Mesolithic time-frame, and involved a forest hunting and fishing culture, with the usual quarry including Elk, and Seals in coastal areas. Happily both animals are still to be found in abundance in the country. Tools were made from bone and antler, decorated with simple designs, and presmably wood. One of the most important archaelogical discoveries was made in 1967 at Pulli, near Pärnu in the southwest of the country.

The next layer in development began in the 5th millenium BC, with the appearance of stone pottery (the 'Narva' culture, named after a city in the east of the country, who traded heavily in amber from Lithuania) refined with the arrival of the 'comb ceramic culture', so called because clay pottery was often decorated with patterns that looked like they were imprinted using a comb-like implement. It also marks the first hypothesized linguistic status of settlements in Estonia - which also happens to be a proto-Estonian, Uralic language. So it might be said that these were the first Estonians. In all likelihood there were other peoples in the area including Indo-Europeans (Lativan, Russian and Lithuanian are all I.E. languages) and place names even hint at other, pre I.E. or F.U. linguistic groups.

The comb culture was in turn superseded by the more advanced 'corded culture' in the early 3rd Millenium BC (so a bit less than 4000 years ago). Corded ware covered a territory much more extensive than the preceding comb ceramic material, incorporating much of northern Europe, from the modern day Netherlands in the west, extending further east than Moscow (though excluding much of modern day Germany which, of course, had their own more advanced hardware culture, the Globular Amphorae, or 'beaker folk'). Again Southern Finland hosted the same cultural milieu. Some archaeological finds have indicated that arable cereal farming had been adopted by this time, since some pottery incorporated charred oat grain in its decoration. Funereal rituals involved burying the dead in a kind of foetal position, often together with domestic animals (!).

Not long after this period, in the overall scheme of things, the Bronze Age finally reached northeastern Europe, around 1,800 BC (by the way don't let anyone dismiss biblical tales, even from the Old Testament, as being nothing more than 'Bronze Age goatherder myths' - going purely on historicity, the B.A. ended in the Near East around the time in reached Estonia, which means much of the historcial events including the enslavement by the Babylonians, and everything in the New Testament, occur well after this - anyway, religious rant out of the way..). Now people had metal, bronze being an alloy of iron and copper (a 'copper age' preceded this period but seems to have passed this region by) and everything was happening. Fortified settlements were emerging, and the first distinction between 'Estonian' people and the scum to the south (joke) started to appear, with centres appearing in north Estonia (my favorite part of the country) and Saaremaa (by far the largest offshore island). Some other developments included people being buried in boat-shaped graves, and more commonly in 'stone cist graves' (see pic below)..

so be continued...