Editing History of the Alps (section)

== Early history (before 1200) ==
[[File:Scena di duello R6 - Foppe - Nadro (Foto Luca Giarelli).jpg|thumb|[[Petroglyphs]], [[Rock Drawings in Valcamonica]], Italy, which was recognized by [[UNESCO]] in 1979 and was Italy's first recognized [[World Heritage Site]]]]
[[File:Otzi-Quinson.jpg|thumb|Reconstruction of [[Ötzi]] mummy as shown in [[Alpes-de-Haute-Provence]], France. The original mummy and his remains and personal belongings are on exhibit at the [[South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology]] in [[Bolzano]], [[South Tyrol]], Italy.]]
The [[Wildkirchli]] caves in the [[Appenzell Alps]] show traces of [[Neanderthal]] habitation (about 40,000 BCE). During the [[Würm glaciation]] (up to c. 11700 BP), the entire Alps were covered in ice.
[[Anatomically modern human]]s reach the Alpine region by c. 30,000 years ago. MtDNA [[Haplogroup K (mtDNA)|Haplogroup K]] (believed to have originated in the mid-Upper Paleolithic, between about 30,000 and 22,000 years ago, with an estimated age here of c. 12,000 years BP), is a [[genetic marker]] associated with southeastern Alpine region.<ref>[[Bryan Sykes]], ''[[The Seven Daughters of Eve]]'' (2001){{page needed|date=November 2016}}<!--can we please have a link to an actual study less than ten years old?--></ref>

Traces of [[transhumance]] appear in the [[Neolithic Europe|Neolithic]]. In the [[European Bronze Age|Bronze Age]], the Alps formed the boundary of the [[Urnfield culture|Urnfield]] and [[Terramare culture|Terramare]] cultures.
The mummy found on the [[Ötztal Alps]], known as "[[Ötzi the Iceman]]", lived c. 3200 BC. At that stage the population in its majority had already changed from an economy based on hunting and gathering to one based on agriculture and animal husbandry. It is still an open question whether forms of pastoral mobility, such as [[transhumance]] (alpiculture), already existed in prehistory.<ref>Philippe Della Casa (ed.): Prehistoric alpine environment, society, and economy, Bonn 1999; Pierre Bintz, Thierry Tillet: Migrations et gestions saisonnières des Alpes aux temps préhistoriques, in: Histoire des Alpes 3 (1998), pp. 91–105; Noël Coulet: Vom 13. bis 15. Jahrhundert: die Etablierung der provenzalischen Transhumanz, in: Histoire des Alpes 6 (2001), pp. 147–158.</ref>

The earliest historical accounts date to the Roman period, mostly due to [[Greco-Roman ethnography]], with some epigraphic evidence due to the [[Raetians]], [[Lepontii]] and [[Gauls]], with [[Ligurians]] and [[Adriatic Veneti|Venetii]] occupying the fringes in the south-west and south-east, respectively ([[Cisalpine Gaul]]) during the 4th and 3rd centuries BC. 
The [[Rock Drawings in Valcamonica]] date to this period.  A few details have come down to modern scholars of the conquest of many of the Alpine tribes by [[Augustus]], as well as [[Hannibal]]'s battles [[Hannibal's crossing of the Alps|across the Alps]].
Most of the local Gallic tribes allied themselves with the Carthaginians in the [[Second Punic War]], for the duration of which Rome lost control over most of Northern Italy. The [[Roman conquest of Italy]] was only complete after the Roman victory over Carthage, by the 190s BC.

Between 35 and 6 BC, the Alpine region was gradually integrated into the expanding [[Roman Empire]]. The contemporary monument [[Tropaeum Alpium]] in [[La Turbie]] celebrates the victory won by the Romans over 46 tribes in these mountains. The subsequent construction of roads over the Alpine [[Mountain pass|passes]] first permitted southern and northern Roman settlements in the Alps to be connected, and eventually integrated the inhabitants of the Alps into the culture of the Empire. The upper [[Valais|Rhône Valley]] or ''Vallis Poenina'' fell to the Romans after a battle at Octodurus ([[Martigny]]) in 57 BC. [[Aosta]] was founded in 25 BC as ''Augusta Praetoria Salassorum'' in the former territory of the [[Salassi]]. [[Raetia]] was conquered in 15 BC.

With the division of the Roman Empire and the collapse of its Western part in the fourth and fifth centuries, power relations in the Alpine region reverted to their local dimensions. Often dioceses became important centres. While in Italy and Southern France, dioceses in the Western Alps were established early (beginning in the fourth century) and resulted in numerous small sees, in the [[Eastern Alps]] such foundations continued into the thirteenth century and the dioceses were usually larger. New monasteries in the mountain valleys also promoted the [[Christianisation]] of the population.<ref>See e.g. Jochen Martin (ed.), Atlas zur Kirchengeschichte. Die christlichen Kirchen in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Freiburg i. B. 1987.</ref> In that period the core area of supra-regional political powers was mainly situated north of the Alps, first in the [[Carolingian Empire]] and later, after its division, in France and the [[Holy Roman Empire]]. The [[Family tree of the German monarchs|German emperors]], who received the imperial investiture from the Pope in Rome between the ninth and the fifteenth centuries, had to cross the Alps along with their entourages.

In the 7th century, much of the [[Slavic settlement of the Eastern Alps|Eastern Alps were settled]] by [[Slavs]]. Between the 7th and 9th century, the Slavic principality of [[Carantania]] existed as one of the few non-Germanic polities in the Alps. The [[Alpine Slavs]], who inhabited the majority of present-day [[Austria]] and [[Slovenia]], were gradually [[Germanized]] from the 9th to the 14th century. The modern [[Slovenes]] are their southernmost descendants.

The successive emigration and occupation of the Alpine region by the [[Alemanni]] from the 6th to the 8th centuries are, too, known only in outline. For "mainstream" history, the [[Frankish Empire|Frankish]] and later the [[Habsburg monarchy|Habsburg]] empire, the Alps had strategic importance as an obstacle, not as a landscape, and the [[Alpine passes]] have consequently had great significance militarily.

Between 889 and 973, a community of Muslim raiders operating from their base of [[Fraxinetum]], on the coast of [[Provence]], blocked the Alpine passes to Christian travellers until their expulsion by Christian forces led by [[Arduin Glaber]] in 973, at which point transalpine trade was able to resume.<ref>{{Cite journal |jstor = 163627|title = The Arab/Muslim Presence in Medieval Central Europe|journal = International Journal of Middle East Studies|volume = 12|issue = 1|pages = 59–79|last1 = Wenner|first1 = Manfred W.|year = 1980|doi = 10.1017/S0020743800027136| s2cid=162537404 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.history.ubc.ca/sites/default/files/users/cbooker/docs/Ballan_Fraxinetum.pdf |title=Archived copy |access-date=2018-11-28 |archive-date=2017-08-11 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170811105619/http://www.history.ubc.ca/sites/default/files/users/cbooker/docs/Ballan_Fraxinetum.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Not until the final breakup of the [[Carolingian Empire]] in the 10th and 11th centuries is it possible to trace out the local history of different parts of the Alps, notably with the High Medieval [[Walser]] migrations.