In these pages I'm starting off with the 'Old Stone Age' (paleolithicum; ± 14,000 - 8,000 BC):
Dawn of Dutch man
After the last Ice Age the earliest Dutch ancestors went through life as nomadic reindeer hunters in tow with the movement of the reindeer herds as they migrated across the tundras. of what they could find in their direct surroundings, like leafs, roots, nuts, fruits and remains of diseased animals. Like any other animal life was dominated by the basic needs. It was very important to know all signs given from the environment to have a fair guess of the chances to return home with food.
This pattern wouldn't change when man started to be a hunter/fisherman himself. He would take what he needed and nothing more. About 12.000 years ago this kind of life started to change again. Man had started to grow crops and domesticate livestock and thus be less dependent of what nature would give.
So man became a farmer. This forced man to give up his nomadic life and settle down at the same spot for longer periods. That's how villages and settlements arose.
The consequence of these 'riches' was that possession had taken meaning. The one with access to the resources was able to have power over those who didn't. The first differences between rich and poor had arisen with improvement of farming. At larger scale the same balances of power changed and eventually this resulted in the rise of nations.
These developments took first place in Near East. Of course this wasn't a process in the way of "Eureka, I have invented farming!", it was a gradual process that took place for centuries. It is this very same region that is the origin of our today's common crops.
The agricultural lifestyle expanded itself through the Balcan. In Europe, processes stagnated a little because of adaptation problems, but after these had been conquered, the agrarian economy spread rapidly over the rest of Europe.

5300 B.C.: first farmers
The first farmers settled in our parts. They brought along strange, unknown objects. The most striking of them was pottery. The farmers settled in the southern parts of Limburg, with its very fertile soil. They lived in small settlements existing from a couple of huts. They cut small parts of forest for agricultural use.
The usual crops were various grain types, peas, lentils and maw-seed. At meadows cows, goats and sheep were herded.

Despite the many advantages of agriculture, most of the native hunter/gatherer tribes were very reluctant to switch over to this kind of lifestyle, and it took over more than one thousand years before they did, with the Western parts as an exception. In those parts was an abundance of rich fishing ground sand circumstances were too wet to allow effective farming.
The new type of economy demanded new quality of flint. In the southern-most parts of Limburg were such places, and deep mine shafts were dug to obtain the needed flints. At the surface the flint was manufactured into roughly forged axes and long chips. it was at the location of usage the flint was finished off.

2600 B.C.: great changes
A major technological changes took place. People started to use animals for labour purposes. Mostly oxens for plowing activities.
Spiritual life and the way people regarded topics like an afterlife knew great variation. Known were cremation, burial and excarnation (exposure of the dead to the elements).
In the neolithicum the social differences got more clearly visible. The best preserved characteristic were of course the graves of the diseased. The first evidence is that not everybody would be buried. If the latter was the case, one would be buried in a regular grave (vlakgraf), a megalithic tomb (hunebed); which is a grave consisting of an oval made of erects monolyths and roofed with similar large rocks, or beneath a burial mound.
Gifts accompanying the dead differed very much as well. The principle of the most rich will have the most power, and therefore is entitled to have most power in the afterlife, and thus has to take much more with him into the afterlife than the humble, was as valid in this time as it was later. The gifts in graves of the wealthy often were of great value: rare and exotic objects like flint dageers from France, amber from the Baltic, copper beads from the Central Europe and copper daggers.
Copper daggers and beads were clear signs changes were about to happen. The Stone-age was coming to an end. The use and guilding of metals announced a new period.

the Bronze Age (2000-800 BC)
The introduction of metal tools was one of the most important technological innovations with great economical and social consequences.
One of the first metals used in our parts was bronze, an alloy of copper and, most times, tin. None of these metals can be won in the Netherlands, and so it was, just like its raw materials, imported. The lowlands were strongly dependent of 'foreign' parts, so it was, certainly in the early Bronze Age, very rare and expensive. Most objects imported were weapons, tools and jewelry.
In the middle-Bronze Age these imports intensified. Re-usage of bronze made it possible for local industries to develop. The local industries mainly concentrated on manufacturing weapons and tools.
The discovery or iron announced another great change. Although there were many benefits of iron over bronze it took quite a while before iron had replaced to use of bronze altogether. So had the use of iron been known for centuries before we can even speak of the

Iron Age (700 B.C.)
For instance the little iron pin that was found at the wooden footpath near Bargeroosterveld in the Province of Drenthe from 1500 B.C. Iron is considerably harder and stronger than bronze. Another advantage over bronze is that the ore for iron does exist in our parts. In the great marshes of that time it was possible to gain iron from bog-ore, and until deeply into the twentieth century it has been used as raw material for the iron industry.
Of course this was much cheaper than importing expensive bronze from far away. Iron was manufactured at the spot it was gained. In almost all remains of settlements found one could find traces of these activities.
In spite of all these nerve-shocking inventions the lowlands remained a country that was based on agriculture. Farms steadily grew in size, (stables would be built for storing cattle at Winter. Before this time people let cattle run free at Winter.) and land in agricultural use expanded further and further. Sometimes exploitation got out of hand and farmland got exhausted. Moorlands and sand-drifts were the first man-caused environmental problems of man in those days.
A new system of farming was introduced during the Iron Age. In the drier parts of the lowlands honeycomb shaped fields, 'the Celtic fields', were laid. These were rectangular fields surrounded by low ramps with shrubs and small trees growing on top of them, used as wind-shields. To prevent exhaustion of farmland parts of farmland were kept unused and fields were fertilized with manure from the stables.
Since demand for space and agriculture rose and rose, people were forced to colonize the 'wetter' parts of the land to at least have a living. The accent, in a province, like Frysland, was cattle, though.
This process continued in the Iron Age, and the 'salt marshes' in the North Netherlands and the bog-areas in the West were colonized. This again requested adaptations in business policy to the environment. In the North, for example, people constructed so called 'Terpen', mounds of land higher than the surrounding parts, for refuge against floods. People concentrated on keeping cattle, dairy products and local industries.
The Iron Age shows a tremendous increase in the scale of affairs. Not just in farming, but also in the number of settlements, in contacts with other regions and in the social structure.
The small hamlets from the Bronze Age gradually developed into villages, although rarely there was continuity in the location of the various settlements: the core of any settlements would move through time. At the end of the Iron Age, though, ditches were dug surrounding the villages. It's unclear whether this had to do with defense or for keeping cattle within the confinements of the village. Also in this age people constructed pieces of fenced land without clear housing functions. The guess is that they were used for storage purposes.

In the Iron Age there was also an increase in international contacts. Mostly they had to do with imports of jewelry and other luxury-articles but certainly there was trade as well.
In the Bronze Age there were, besides weapons tools, also golden bracelets, amber beads and bronze beads imported. All these contacts point towards international contacts with other parts of Europe, amongst which overseas parts like England and Ireland. In the Iron Age the contacts were intensified and trade in articles of use was started. The best examples are the production of glass in the river area near Nijmegen, the production of salt in the coastal areas and the export eastwards, imports of millstones and the introduction of money as a means of transaction. Contacts with Central Europe and South Europe can be deducted from excavation of bronze buckets, a silver vase from Neerharen and a silver ornamental disc from Helden.
In the Bronze Age the burial of the dead in a burial mound remained commonplace. Sometimes those mounds were used generations after another by the same family. Still, in this time many people weren't taken care at all after their demise. Many remains of people our found in the garbage heaps at the edge of settlements.
In the late-Bronze the burying rituals rapidly changed. Instead of burying people the dead were cremated and the ashes were put in an urn and kept in an urn-field. The reason behind this switch remains unclear. That tradition lasted until the late-Iron Age. After that time another wide variety in taking care of the dead took place.
Not everybody was kept in urn-fields. Some outstanding grave sites are known that differ from the customary pattern. They are bigger and many valuable artifacts have been found within them. The wealth and the exotic character of these objects suggest they were king's graves.
The social divide between people became broader in the Bronze Age. Village leaders or local rulers were in power of subjects. One of their means of power was the monopoly in the bonze trade. To prevent an excess in bronze objects going around, local rulers deliberately destroyed a number of the objects by tossing them into rivers and marshes. In this way they rose in power could control trade and show it by means of their wealth. His reputation would gain and his subjects remained dependent of him.
Power inevitably must have lead to battle. Clues for it are the many weapons found from the Bronze- and Iron Age depots. The picture of the peaceful farmer must therefore be adjusted. In fact: the Bronze Age rather must've been a quite violent period. This has painfully come to light by the excavation of a mass-grave near Wassenaar. It has been the burial site for victims of an ambush in the early Bronze Age.
In the middle-Iron Age the richest graves are found. These are the royal graves, in which, amongst others were found bronze buckets from Central and South Europe, remains of four-wheeled carts and in a single case a sword inlayed with gold.
Similar sites are known from other parts of Europe, and are generally associated with an upper-class in society, an elite that earns the label royal.

Religion
Next to social differentiation the rise of religion played a role in that time. In Bargeroosterveld (Drenthe) a small wooden temple was erected in the early Bronze Age.
Elsewhere valuable objects have been found in bogs, water pools and rivers. These offerings had mainly a socio-economic background, as suggested before, but another part was offered solely for religious reasons.

'Veenlijken'(Moor Corpses)
The most macabre are the remains of many people that are found in the marshes. It is suggested that these are persons that were sacrificed or executed. To whether which category they belong remains unclear. More religious activities from the Iron Age are known:
Especially in the southern parts, cult-sites have been found. E.g. the one in Empel, near Den Bosch. This was a Celtic place of worship, that kept its purpose even during Roman rule, and was transformed into a Roman Temple.

The arrival of the Romans brought the prehistoric to an end. These aggressors also brought the process of development towards some sort of market economy in an organized society to an end. A society that was ruled by an elite which lead a rich social and cultural life. From the Roman time scribes would narrate about our parts inhabited in their view by Barbarians.