A spear of hardened yew, presumably flung or thrust by a human, fixes itself between the ribs of an elephant in what is now Saxony

The earliest known Venus figurine, with emphasized sexual features, is carved near the Hohle Fels cave in Germany from the tusk of a woolly mammoth

The defeat of three Roman legions in the Teutoberg Forest by Arminius, establishes the Rhine as a natural boundary of the Roman empire

Tacitus begins his career with two specialized but influential works of history, one on Britain and the other on Germany

Trajan, succeeding to the imperial throne in AD 98, is sufficiently confident to spend a year in Germany before returning to Rome

With a victory at Tertry, Pepin II wins effective control over all three Frankish kingdoms

Boniface, working as a missionary among pagan Germans, makes his headquarters at Mainz

The professional bards of the Germanic tribes give lasting life to Norse legend

On the death of his brother, Charlemagne inherits the entire kingdom of the Franks

Charlemagne destroys a great Saxon shrine, the Irminsul - the start of a 30-year campaign against his pagan neighbours in what is now Germany

Charlemagne, meeting the English scholar Alcuin on a visit to Italy, invites him to become head of the palace school in Aachen

Alcuin leaves the palace school at Aachen to become abbot of the monastery of Tours

Beowulf, the first great work of Germanic literature, mingles the legends of Scandinavia with the experience in England of Angles and Saxons

The Jews prosper in the Muslim and Carolingian empires, forming strong communities in Spain and in Germany

Pope Leo III consecrates Charlemagne's new palace chapel in Aachen, modelled on San Vitale in Ravenna

The central Frankish kingdom, Francia Media, becomes one of the great fault lines of European history

Henry I is elected king of the east Frankish kingdom, consisting of four great feudal duchies - Bavaria, Swabia, Saxony and Franconia

A Muslim dynasty is established at Gao, on the Niger

Conrad II is elected as the German king, begining the dynasty variously known as Franconian or Salian

Ife emerges as a powerful kingdom in the equatorial forest of the lower Niger

Peter the Hermit, an old monk on a donkey, leads the largest of the popular groups from Germany on the first crusade

The German crusade begins with a massacre of Jews in many of the region's cities

Conrad III, of the Hohenstaufen family, is elected German king - a title which remains in the family for more than a century, bringing with it that of Holy Roman emperor

The second crusade is led east by two kings, Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany

In feudal France and Germany Charlemagne is by now venerated as a saint