This timeline of prehistory covers the time from the appearance of Homo sapiens approximately 315,000 years ago in Africa to the invention of writing, over 5,000 years ago, with the earliest records going back to 3,200 BC.
Postulated reconstruction of a Terra Amata hut[1]Speculative reconstruction of 130,000 year old white-tailed eagle talon jewellery from the Krapina Neanderthal site, Croatia (arrows indicate cut marks)kya=kilo years ago
320 kya – 305 kya: Populations at Olorgesailie in Southern Kenya undergo technological improvements in tool making and engage in long-distance trade.[2]
230 kya: Latest proposed date for the Terra Amata site, home of the first confirmed purpose-built structure and probably made by Homo heidelbergensis.[6]
210 kya: Modern human presence in southeast Europe (Apidima, Greece).[7]
200 kya: Oldest known grass bedding, including insect-repellent plants and ash layers beneath (possibly for a dirt-free, insulated base and to keep away arthropods).[8][9][10]
139 ± 17 kya: Levallois core reductions, pointed tools and a variety of retouched artefacts at Retlapalle, India.[17]
130 kya: Oldest evidence of ancient seafaring, from Crete (an island isolated from land for millions of years prior to human arrival).[18]
125 kya: The peak of the Eemian interglacial period.
120 kya: Possibly the earliest evidence of use of symbols etched onto bone.[19][20]
120 kya: Use of marine shells for personal decoration by humans, including Neanderthals.[21][22][23]
120 kya – 90 kya:Abbassia Pluvial in North Africa—the Sahara desert region is wet and fertile.
120 kya – 75 kya:Khoisanid back-migration from Southern Africa to East Africa.[24]
100 kya: Earliest structures in the world (sandstone blocks set in a semi-circle with an oval foundation) built in Egypt close to Wadi Halfa near the modern border with Sudan.[25]
75 kya:Eruption of the Toba supervolcano.
It was originally thought that this event led to a genetic bottleneck
in humans and perhaps other species, but more recent evidence makes this
doubtful.[26]
70 kya: Earliest example of abstract art or symbolic art from Blombos Cave, South Africa—stones engraved with grid or cross-hatch patterns.[27]
"Epipaleolithic" or "Mesolithic" are terms for a transitional period
between the Last Glacial Maximum and the Neolithic Revolution in Old
World (Eurasian) cultures.
80 kya – 40 kya: Evidence of Australian Aboriginal Culture.[28][29]
42 kya: Time frame of the Laschamp event, the first geomagnetic excursion studied and one of the few full global magnetic field reversals known. Although many effects upon life on Earth and human evolution from the increase in cosmic rays have been tentatively proposed, the effects are not considered to have been strong enough (further refuted by paleoecological evidence) to have significantly affected natural or human history.[37]
42 kya: Earliest evidence of advanced deep sea fishing technology at the Jerimalai cave site in East Timor—demonstrates
high-level maritime skills and by implication the technology needed to
make ocean crossings to reach Australia and other islands, as they were
catching and consuming large numbers of big deep sea fish such as tuna.[39][40]
37 kya: A population of Basal Eurasians migrate to Europe. Unlike the Early European modern humans that inhabited Europe earlier, these populations form part of the ancestry of modern Europe.[35]
30 kya: Rock paintings tradition begins in Bhimbetka rock shelters in India, which presently as a collection is the densest known concentration of rock art. In an area about 10 km2, there are about 800 rock shelters of which 500 contain paintings.[57]
28.5 kya:New Guinea is populated by colonists from Asia or Australia.[58]
24 kya – 15 kya: General time frame for the Mal'ta–Buret' culture near Lake Baikal,[63] the archaeological culture whose human remains serve as the type for the Ancient North Eurasian
(ANE) population which appeared some time prior. Mal'ta-Buret' sites
consisted of temporary mammoth-bone huts for reindeer hunters, yet their
art is among the most sophisticated of their time, having many
parallels with carvings elsewhere in Eurasia (for example, their Venus figurines), indicative of long-distance exchange of ideas. Both Europeans and American Indians share significant ANE ancestry.
24 kya: The cave bear is thought to have become extinct.[64]
24 kya: Evidence suggests humans living in Alaska and Yukon North America.[65]
23 kya: A population of wolves are hypothesized to have begun cohabiting with Ancient North Eurasians for shared food, protection, and (possibly later) hunting success. This commensal relationship is thought to have led to the domestication of the dog, which genetic studies show their ancestry diverging from wolves at this time along with an increase in population.[66][67] At the Yana Rhinoceros Horn Site, smaller wolf-like canids with neotenous features and signs of being cared for have been observed.[68]
20 kya – 10 kya:Khoisanid expansion to Central Africa.[24]
18 kya – 12 kya: Though estimations vary widely, it is believed by scholars that Afro-Asiatic was spoken as a single language around this time period.[76]
18 kya: The Magdalenian culture
appears in Europe. They are responsible for some of the most complex
and famous artistic traditions of Ice Age Europe, creating the cave
paintings of Lascaux and Altamira, as well as numerous carvings in ivory and stone.[77]
13 kya – 10 kya: End of the Last Glacial Period, climate warms, glaciers recede.
13 kya: A major water outbreak occurs on Lake Agassiz in central North America, which at the time could have been the size of the current Black Sea and the largest lake on Earth. Much of the lake is drained in the Arctic Ocean through the Mackenzie River.[84][85][86]
12.9 kya – 11.7 kya: The Younger Dryas, a period of sudden cooling and return to glacial conditions.
12 kya: Volcanic eruptions in the Virunga Mountains blocked Lake Kivu outflow into Lake Edward and the Nile system, diverting the water to Lake Tanganyika. Nile's total length is shortened and Lake Tanganyika's surface is increased.
The terms "Neolithic" and "Bronze Age" are culture-specific and are mostly limited to cultures of select parts of the Old World, namely Europe, Western and South Asia. Chronological periodizations
typically base their periods on one or more identifiable and unique
markers associated with a culturally distinct era (within a given
interaction sphere), but these markers are not necessarily intrinsic to
the cultural evolution of the era's people.
As such, the terms become less applicable when their markers
correlate less with cultural evolution. Therefore, the Neolithic and the
Neolithic Revolution have little to do with the Americas, where several different chronologies are used instead depending on the area (e.g. the Andean Preceramic, the North American Archaic and Formative periods). Similarly, since there is no appreciable cultural shift between the use of stone, bronze, and iron in East and Southeast Asia,
the term "Bronze Age" is not considered to apply to this region the
same as western Eurasia, and "Iron Age" is essentially never used.[89][90] In sub-Saharan Africa, iron metallurgy was developed prior to any knowledge of bronze and possibly before iron's adoption in Eurasia[91] and despite Postclassic Mesoamerica developing and using bronze,[92][93][94] it did not have a significant bearing on its continued cultural evolution in the same way as western Eurasia.
Cave painting of a battle between archers, Morella, Spain, the oldest known depiction of combat. These paintings date from 7200 to 7400 years ago.[95]
9700 BC: An abrupt period of global warming begins. This is taken as the beginning of the Holocene geological epoch.
9600 BC:Jericho has evidence of settlement dating back to 9,600 BC. Jericho was a popular camping ground for Natufian hunter-gatherer groups, who left a scattering of crescent microlith tools behind them.[96]
9000 BC: Earliest date recorded for construction of temenoi ceremonial structures at Göbekli Tepe in southern Turkey, as possibly the oldest surviving proto-religious site on Earth.[98]
8900 BC – 8300 BC: The Indigenous peoples of the southwestern Amazon basin domesticate cassava,
the first domestic crop in the New World, followed by squash and dozens
of tree species. They also begin intensively modifying the Amazonian
landscape, foresting open savannahs and permanently increasing the
biomass and biodiversity of the modern Amazon rainforest.[99][100][101]
8800 BC – 7000 BC:Byblos appears to have been settled during the PPNB period. Neolithic remains of some buildings can be observed at the site.[102][103]
8000 BC – 7000 BC: In northern Mesopotamia, now northern Iraq, cultivation of barley and wheat begins. At first they are used for beer, gruel, and soup, eventually for bread.[106] In early agriculture at this time, the planting stick is used, but it is replaced by a primitive plow in subsequent centuries.[107]
Around this time, a round stone tower, now preserved to about 8.5
metres (28 ft) high and 8.5 metres (28 ft) in diameter is built in Jericho.[108]
8000 BC – 6000 BC: The post-glacial sea level rise decelerates, slowing the submersion of landmasses that had taken place over the previous 10,000 years.
8000 BC – 3000 BC:Identical ancestors point:
sometime in this period lived the latest subgroup of human population
consisting of those that were all common ancestors of all present day
humans, the rest having no present day descendants.[109]
7000 BC:Maize is domesticated in southern Mexico from the wild (and significantly different) teosinte
and quickly becomes the dominant staple of Mesoamerica, heralding the
beginning of agriculture and further domestications in the region.[116]
7000 BC: First large-scale fish fermentation in southern Sweden.[119]
7000 BC: Human settlement of Mehrgarh, Pakistan is one of the earliest sites with evidence of farming and herding in South Asia. In April 2006, Nature
note that the oldest (and first early Neolithic) evidence for the
drilling of human teeth in vivo (i.e. in a living person) was found in
Mehrgarh.[120]
6200 BC – 6000 BC: The 8.2-kiloyear event, a sudden decrease of global temperatures, probably caused by the final collapse of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, which leads to drier conditions in East Africa and Mesopotamia.
6200 BC – 5600 BC: Sudden rise in sea level (Meltwater pulse 1C) by 6.5 m (21 ft) in less than 140 years; this concludes the early Holocene sea level rise and sea level remains largely stable throughout the Neolithic.[121]
6000 BC: Evidence of habitation at the current site of Aleppo dates to about c. 8,000 years ago, although excavations at Tell Qaramel, 25 kilometres (16 mi) north of the city show the area was inhabited about 13,000 years ago,[124]Carbon-14 dating at Tell Ramad, on the outskirts of Damascus, suggests that the site may have been occupied since the second half of the seventh millennium BC, possibly around 6300 BC.[125] However, evidence of settlement in the wider Barada basin dating back to 9000 BC exists.[126]
6000 BC – 5000 BC: The earliest New World ceramics are created in the Amazon basin.[127]
4130 BC:Toggling harpoons
are invented somewhere in eastern Siberia, spreading south into Japan
and east into North America, where they are ancestral to the
sophisticated designs of the Inuit and later European whalers.[133]
4000 BC – 2000 BC: The Dene-Yeniseian languages split into Na-Dene in North America and Yeniseian languages in Siberia. The connection is commonly thought to have been the result of a back-migration of early American Indians in Beringia back into Siberia, forming the Yeniseian peoples that were once widespread throughout Eurasia.[134] However, recent studies indicating the existence of a linguistic and technological continuum extending into the Common Era make the directionality of migration and the homeland of Dene-Yeniseian more difficult to determine.[135]
3600 BC: The first monumental buildings are constructed in Sechin Bajo, an urban center in what is now coastal Peru. It belonged to the Casma–Sechin culture, possibly the oldest civilization in the Americas.[139]
3500 BC: Earliest conjectured date for the still-undeciphered Indus script.
3500 BC: End of the African humid period possibly linked to the Piora Oscillation: a rapid and intense aridification event, which probably started the current Sahara Desert dry phase and a population increase in the Nile Valley due to migrations from nearby regions. It is also believed this event contributed to the end of the Ubaid period in Mesopotamia.
3200 BC – 2500 BC: The Norte Chico or Caral–Supe civilization
begins on the coast of Peru with a wave of monumental construction and
founding of the first cities in the Americas. It is generally considered
the oldest civilization in the Americas.[149]
Researchers deduced in a scientific review
that "no specific point in time can currently be identified at which
modern human ancestry was confined to a limited birthplace" and that
current knowledge about long, continuous and complex – e.g. often
non-singular, parallel, nonsimultaneous and/or gradual – emergences of
characteristics is consistent with a range of evolutionary histories.[154][155]
A timeline dating first occurrences and earliest evidence may therefore
be an often inadequate approach for describing humanity's
(pre-)history.
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