section_path: History/Prehistory
section_name: Prehistory
paragraph_text: Prehistory
  
  The earliest traces of human occupation in Norway are found along the coast, where the huge ice shelf of the last ice age first melted between 11,000 and 8000 BC. The oldest finds are stone tools dating from 9500 to 6000 BC, discovered in Finnmark (Komsa culture) in the north and Rogaland (Fosna culture) in the southwest. Theories about the two cultures being separate were deemed obsolete in the 1970s.
  
  Between 3000 and 2500 BC, new settlers (Corded Ware culture) arrived in eastern Norway. They were Indo-European farmers who grew grain and kept livestock, and gradually replaced the hunting-fishing population of the west coast.