<P> Following the 5th century Fall of Rome, Western Europe entered the Middle Ages, during which period the Catholic Church filled the power vacuum left in the West by the fall of the Western Roman Empire, while the Eastern Roman Empire (or Byzantine Empire) endured in the East for centuries, becoming a Hellenic Eastern contrast to the Latin West . By the 12th century, Western Europe was experiencing a flowering of art and learning, propelled by the construction of cathedrals and the establishment of medieval universities . Christian unity was shattered by the Reformation from the 14th century . A merchant class grew out of city states, initially in the Italian peninsula (see Italian city - states), and Europe experienced the Renaissance from the 14th to the 17th century, heralding an age of technological and artistic advance and ushering in the Age of Discovery which saw the rise of such global European Empires as those of Spain, Portugal and Britain . </P> <P> The Industrial Revolution began in Britain in the 18th century . Under the influence of the Enlightenment, the Age of Revolution emerged from the United States and France as part of the transformation of the West into its industrialised, democratised modern form . The lands of North and South America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand became first part of European Empires and then home to new Western nations, while Africa and Asia were largely carved up between Western powers . Laboratories of Western democracy were founded in Britain's colonies in Australasia from the mid-19th centuries, while South America largely created new autocracies . In the 20th century, absolute monarchy disappeared from Europe, and despite episodes of Fascism and Communism, by the close of the century, virtually all of Europe was electing its leaders democratically . Most Western nations were heavily involved in the First and Second World Wars and protracted Cold War . World War II saw Fascism defeated in Europe, and the emergence of the United States and Soviet Union as rival global powers and a new "East - West" political contrast . In addition, the prehistoric men used tools to get food . They slaughtered large animals for food . They also gathered fruits and ate roots . They were hunters and gatherers and hence, moved across different environments searching for food . To support this, these humans had evolved body parts that could help them survive in very hot climates . They had a small brain and their skull was small . They used symbols to communicate and they had a social life . Prehistoric men frequently lived in gatherings of a couple of or many individuals, in a few families . They created devices to enable them to survive and were subject to the wealth of nourishment in the territory, which if a zone was not sufficiently abundant expected them to move to greener timberlands . Other than in Russia, the European Empires disintegrated after World War II and civil rights movements and widescale multi-ethnic, multi-faith migrations to Europe, the Americas and Oceania lowered the earlier predominance of ethnic Europeans in Western culture . European nations moved towards greater economic and political co-operation through the European Union . The Cold War ended around 1990 with the collapse of Soviet imposed Communism in Central and Eastern Europe . In the 21st century, the Western World retains significant global economic power and influence . The West has contributed a great many technological, political, philosophical, artistic and religious aspects to modern international culture: having been a crucible of Catholicism, Protestantism, democracy, industrialisation; the first major civilisation to seek to abolish slavery during the 19th century, the first to enfranchise women (beginning in Australasia at the end of the 19th century) and the first to put to use such technologies as steam, electric and nuclear power . The West invented cinema, television, the personal computer and the Internet; produced artists such as Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Mozart and The Beatles; developed sports such as soccer, cricket, golf, tennis, rugby and basketball; and transported humans to an astronomical object for the first time with the 1969 Apollo 11 Moon Landing . </P> <P> While the Roman Empire and Christian religion survived in an increasingly Hellenised form in the Byzantine Empire centered at Constantinople in the East, Western civilization suffered a collapse of literacy and organization following the fall of Rome in AD 476 . Gradually however, the Christian religion re-asserted its influence over Western Europe . </P> <P> After the Fall of Rome, the papacy served as a source of authority and continuity . In the absence of a magister militum living in Rome, even the control of military matters fell to the pope . Gregory the Great (c 540--604) administered the church with strict reform . A trained Roman lawyer and administrator, and a monk, he represents the shift from the classical to the medieval outlook and was a father of many of the structures of the later Roman Catholic Church . According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, he looked upon Church and State as co-operating to form a united whole, which acted in two distinct spheres, ecclesiastical and secular, but by the time of his death, the papacy was the great power in Italy: </P>

Why is 476 ce considered a turning point in european history