Latvia, on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Riga, was settled by reindeer hunters as the ice retreated; Salaspils Laukskola on the Daugava, from about 10,500 BCE, is the oldest known site. By the end of the first millennium the Baltic Curonians, Semigallians, Selonians and Latgalians and the Finnic Livonians shared the land, trading amber, furs and silver along the Daugava, and the Curonians were feared seafarers across the Baltic.

German crusaders founded Riga in 1201 and conquered the tribes between 1206 and 1290. For more than seven centuries the land was ruled from outside: by the Livonian Order and the archbishops of Riga, then divided between Poland-Lithuania, Sweden and the Duchy of Courland, and from 1710 to 1795 absorbed piece by piece into the Russian Empire, while a Baltic German nobility held the land and Riga grew rich as a Hanseatic port.

Freed from serfdom in 1817–1819, and in Latgale in 1861, Latvian peasants bought their farms, founded newspapers and song festivals and became a modern nation. Independence was proclaimed on 18 November 1918 and defended in the War of Independence, but the republic was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940, by Nazi Germany in 1941 and by the Soviet Union again from 1944, years of deportation, the Holocaust, war and exile.

The Singing Revolution and the Baltic Way led to the restoration of independence in 1990–1991. Latvia joined NATO and the European Union in 2004 and the euro area in 2014. Explore the ten ages below through selected events from the timeline.