signs of conflicts are clear, as many skeletons show violent injuries. This was the time and area where Ötzi, a man whose well-preserved body was found in the Alps, lived. Another significant development of this period was the Megalithic phenomenon spreading to most places of the Atlantic region, bringing with it agriculture to some underdeveloped regions existing there. Middle Chalcolithic This period extends along the first half of the 3rd millennium BC. Most significant is the reorganization of the Danubians into the powerful Baden culture, which extended more or less to what would be the Austro-Hungarian Empire in recent times. The rest of the Balkans was profoundly restructured after the invasions of the previous period but, with the exception of the Coțofeni culture in a mountainous region, none of them show any eastern (or presumably Indo-European) traits. The new Ezero culture, in Bulgaria, had the first traits of pseudo-bronze (an alloy of copper with arsenic); as did the first significant Aegean group: the Cycladic culture after circa 2800 BC. In the North, the supposedly Indo-European groups seemed to recede temporarily, suffering a strong cultural danubianization. In the East, the peoples of beyond the Volga (Yamnaya culture), surely eastern Indo-Europeans, ancestors of Iranians, took over southern Russia and Ukraine. In the West the only sign of unity comes from the Megalithic super-culture, which extended from southern Sweden to southern Spain, including large parts of southern Germany. But the Mediterranean and Danubian groupings of the previous period appear to have been fragmented into many smaller pieces, some of them apparently backward in technological matters. From circa 2800 BC, the Danubian Seine-Oise-Marne culture pushed directly or indirectly southwards, destroying most of the rich Megalithic culture of western France. After c. 2600 several phenomena prefigured the changes of the upcoming period. Large towns with stone walls appeared in two different areas of the Iberian Peninsula: one in the Portuguese region of Estremadura (culture of Vila Nova de São Pedro), strongly embedded in the Atlantic Megalithic culture; the other near Almería (SE Spain), centred on the large town of Los Millares, of Mediterranean character, probably affected by eastern cultural influxes (tholoi). Despite the many differences the two civilizations seemed to be in friendly contact and to have productive exchanges. In the area of Dordogne (Aquitaine, France), a new unexpected culture of bowmen appeared, the culture of Artenac, which would soon take control of western and