Timeline of prehistory

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. Prehistory covers the time from the Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) to the beginning of ancient history.

All dates are approximate and subject to revision based on new discoveries or analyses.

Middle Paleolithic

Postulated reconstruction of a Terra Amata hut)
Speculative reconstruction of 130,000 year old white-tailed eagle talon jewellery from the Krapina Neanderthal site, Croatia (arrows indicate cut marks)
  • 230 kya - 150 kya: Age of mt-DNA haplogroup L ("Mitochondrial Eve").
  • 210 kya: Modern human presence in southeast Europe (Apidima, Greece).
  • 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).
  • 195 kya: Omo remains (Ethiopia).
  • 194 kya - 177 kya: Modern human presence in West Asia (Misliya cave in Israel).
  • 170 kya: Humans are wearing clothing by this date.
  • 164 kya: Humans diet expands to include marine resources
  • 160 kya: Homo sapiens idaltu.
  • 150 kya: Peopling of Africa: Khoisanid separation, age of mtDNA haplogroup L0.
  • 130 kya: Oldest evidence of ancient seafaring, from Crete (an island isolated from land for millions of years prior to human arrival).
  • 125 kya: The peak of the Eemian interglacial period.
  • 120 kya: Possibly the earliest evidence of use of symbols etched onto bone.
  • 120 kya: Use of marine shells for personal decoration by humans, including Neandertals.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 80 kya - 70 kya: Recent African origin: separation of sub-Saharan Africans and non-Africans.
  • 75 kya: Toba Volcano supereruption that may have contributed to human populations being lowered to about 15,000 people.
  • 70 kya: Earliest example of abstract art or symbolic art from Blombos Cave, South Africa—stones engraved with grid or cross-hatch patterns.

Upper Paleolithic

"Epipaleolithic" or "Mesolithic" are terms for a transitional period between the Last Glacial Maximum and the Neolithic Revolution in Old World (Eurasian) cultures.

Painted king scallop ornament (likely Neanderthal) from Cueva Antón, 43,000 years ago.
Lion-man sculpture (Aurignacian, 40,000–35,000 years old)
Gwion Gwion rock paintings found in the north-west Kimberley region of Western Australia
Magdalenian cave paintings of a woolly mammoth and ibex from Rouffignac Cave, France

Holocene

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. In sub-Saharan Africa, iron metallurgy was developed prior to any knowledge of bronze and possibly before iron's adoption in Eurasia and despite Postclassic Mesoamerica developing and using bronze, 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 la Vella, Spain, the oldest known depiction of combat. These paintings date from 7200 to 7400 years ago.
  • 9600 BC: An abrupt period of global warming accelerates the glacial retreat; 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.
  • 9400 BC: Earliest supposed date for the domestication of the pig.
  • 9200 BC - 9000 BC: Meltwater pulse 1B, a sudden rise of sea level by 7.5 m (25 ft) within about 160 years.
  • 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.
  • 9000 BC: Giant short-faced bears and giant ground sloths go extinct. Equidae goes extinct in North America.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 8500 BC: Earliest supposed date for the domestication of cattle.
  • 8000 BC: Earliest dates suggested for the domestication of the goat.
  • 8000 BC: The Quaternary extinction event, which has been ongoing since the mid-Pleistocene, concludes. Many of the ice age megafauna go extinct, including the megatherium, woolly rhinoceros, Irish elk, cave bear, cave lion, and the last of the sabre-toothed cats. The mammoth goes extinct in Eurasia and North America, but is preserved in small island populations until ~1650 BC.
  • 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. In early agriculture at this time, the planting stick is used, but it is replaced by a primitive plow in subsequent centuries. 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.
  • 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.
  • 7500 BC - 3500 BC: Neolithic Subpluvial in North Africa. The Sahara desert region supports a savanna-like environment. Lake Chad is larger than the current Caspian Sea. An African culture develops across the current Sahel region.
  • 7500 BC: Çatalhöyük urban settlement founded in Anatolia.
  • 7500 BC: Earliest supposed date for the domestication of the cat.
  • 7200 BC: First human settlement in Amman, Jordan; ʿAin Ghazal Neolithic settlement was built spanning over an area of 15 hectares (37 acres).
  • 7176 BC: Earliest confirmed Miyake event, an extreme peak of solar activity which showers the solar system with cosmic rays and radiation.
  • 7000 BC - 6000 BC: Early European Farmers arrive in Europe through Anatolia. They replace Western Hunter Gatherer populations in many areas, intermix in others, and introduce agriculture into Europe.
  • 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.
  • 7000 BC: The Kuk Swamp in the highlands of Papua New Guinea becomes a cradle of agriculture. Early farmers dig canals that transform the swamp into arable land. They domesticate bananas, sugarcane, taro, lesser yam, and raise cassowaries from captured eggs (which had been done as early as 18,000 years ago).
  • 7000 BC: Jiahu culture begins in China.
  • 7000 BC: First large-scale fish fermentation in southern Sweden.
  • 7000 BC: Human settlement of Mehrgarh, 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.
  • 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.

4th millennium BC


Research

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. A timeline dating first occurrences and earliest evidence may therefore be an often inadequate approach for describing humanity's (pre-)history.

Post-historical prehistories

  • 3,800 years ago (1800 BC): Currently undeciphered Minoan script (Linear A) and Cypro-Minoan script developed on Crete and Cyprus.
  • 3,450 years ago (1450 BC): Mycenaean Greece, first deciphered writing in Europe
  • 3,200 years ago (1200 BC): Oracle bone script, first written records in Old Chinese
  • 3,050–2,800 years ago (1050 BC to 800 BC): Alphabetic writing; the Phoenician alphabet spreads around the Mediterranean
  • 2,300 years ago (300 BC): Maya script, the only known full writing system developed in the Americas, emerges.
  • 2,260 years ago (260 BC): Earliest deciphered written records in South Asia (Middle Indo-Aryan)
  • 1800s AD: Undeciphered Rongorongo script on Easter Island may mark the latest independent development of writing.

See also


This page was last updated at 2024-02-18 06:40 UTC. Update now. View original page.

All our content comes from Wikipedia and under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.


Top

If mathematical, chemical, physical and other formulas are not displayed correctly on this page, please useFirefox or Safari