Maybe a better question for AskAnthropology, I'm not sure. But Wikipedia says there is evidence for human occupation going back 5000 years, but that citation points to a $30 book, so I can't read it.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about what people were doing in the Italian peninsula before written records. Obviously that's an extremely difficult inquiry to answer.

Also was wondering about tribes outside the peninsula, say "barbarians" from the north. When they sacked rome in ~390BCE, those people must have come from settled societies I figure, otherwise how would they have the equipment and organization? So do we know how long parts of the Western Europe mainland have been settled? Say in the modern France and German areas.

Thank you!