even northern France and Belgium. In Poland and nearby regions, the putative Indo-Europeans reorganized and consolidated again with the culture of the Globular Amphoras. Nevertheless, the influence of many centuries in direct contact with the still-powerful Danubian peoples had greatly modified their culture. Late Chalcolithic This period extended from c. 2500 BC to c. 1800 or 1700 BC (depending on the region). The dates are general for the whole of Europe, and the Aegean area was already fully in the Bronze Age. Circa 2500 BC the new Catacomb culture (proto-Cimmerians?), whose origins are obscure but who were also Indo-Europeans, displaced the Yamnaya peoples in the regions north and east of the Black Sea, confining them to their original area east of the Volga. Some of these infiltrated Poland and may have played a significant but unclear role in the transformation of the culture of the Globular Amphorae into the new Corded Ware culture. In Britain, copper was used between the 25th and 22nd centuries BC, but some archaeologists do not recognise a British Chalcolithic because production and use was on a small scale. Around 2400 BC. this people of the Corded Ware replaced their predecessors and expanded to Danubian and Nordic areas of western Germany. One related branch invaded Denmark and southern Sweden (Single Grave culture), while the mid-Danubian basin, though showing more continuity, also displayed clear traits of new Indo-European elites (Vučedol culture). Simultaneously, in the west, the Artenac peoples reached Belgium. With the partial exception of Vučedol, the Danubian cultures, so buoyant just a few centuries ago, were wiped off the map of Europe. The rest of the period was the story of a mysterious phenomenon: the Beaker people. This group seems to have been of mercantile character and preferred being buried according to a very specific, almost invariable, ritual. Nevertheless, out of their original area of western Central Europe, they appeared only inside local cultures, so they never invaded and assimilated but rather went to live among those peoples, keeping their way of life. The rest of the continent remained mostly unchanged and in apparent peace. From c. 2300 BC the first Beaker Pottery appeared in Bohemia and expanded in many directions, but particularly westward, along the Rhone and the sea shores, reaching the culture of Vila Nova (Portugal) and Catalonia (Spain) as its limit. Simultaneously but unrelatedly, c. 2200 BC in the Aegean region, the Cycladic