This timeline of prehistory covers the time from the first appearance of Homo sapiens in Africa 315,000 years ago to the invention of writing, over 4,000 years ago, with the earliest records going back to 3,200 BC. Prehistory covers the time from the Middle Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) to the very beginnings of ancient history.
All dates are approximate and subject to revision based on new discoveries or analyses.
∼320,000 to 305,000 years ago: Populations at Olorgesailie in Southern Kenya undergo technological improvements in tool making and engage in long-distance trade.[1]
210,000 years ago: modern human presence in southeast Europe (Apidima, Greece).[2]
200,000 years ago: oldest known grass bedding, including insect-repellent plants and ash layers beneath (possibly for a dirt-free, insulated base and to keep away arthropods).[3][4][5]
130,000 years ago: oldest evidence of ancient seafaring, from Crete (an island isolated from land for millions of years prior to human arrival).[9]
125,000 years ago: the peak of the Eemian interglacial period.
~120,000 years ago: possibly the earliest evidence of use of symbols etched onto bone.[10][11]
~120,000 years ago: use of marine shells for personal decoration by humans, including Neandertals.[12][13][14]
120,000–90,000 years ago: Abbassia Pluvial in North Africa—the Sahara desert region is wet and fertile.
120,000–75,000 years ago: Khoisanid back-migration from Southern Africa to East Africa.[15]
100,000 years ago: 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.[16]
82,000 years ago: small perforated seashell beads from Taforalt in Morocco are the earliest evidence of personal adornment found anywhere in the world.[17]
75,000 years ago: Toba Volcano supereruption that may have contributed to human populations being lowered to about 15,000 people.[18]
70,000 years ago: earliest example of abstract art or symbolic art from Blombos Cave, South Africa—stones engraved with grid or cross-hatch patterns.[19]
"Epipaleolithic" or "Mesolithic" are terms for a transitional period between the Last Glacial Maximum and the Neolithic Revolution in Old World (Eurasian) cultures.
40,000–80,000: Evidence of Australian Aboriginal Culture.[20][21]
42,000 years ago: 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.[28][29]
30,000 years ago: 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.[37]
20,000 years ago: theorized earliest date of development of traditional Inuit skin clothing.[44]
20,000–10,000 years ago: Khoisanid expansion to Central Africa.[15]
20,000–19,000 years ago: earliest pottery use, in Xianren Cave, China.[45]
18,000–12,000 years ago: Though estimations vary widely, it is believed by scholars that Afro-Asiatic was spoken as a single language around this time period.[46]
15,000–14,700 years ago (13,000 BC to 12,700 BC): Earliest supposed date for the domestication of the pig.
14,800 years ago: The Humid Period begins in North Africa. The region that would later become the Sahara is wet and fertile, and the aquifers are full.[49]
14,200 years ago: The oldest agreed domestic dog remains belongs to the Bonn-Oberkassel dog that was buried with two humans.
13,000 years ago: A major water outbreak occurs on Lake Agassiz, 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.
12,900–11,700 years ago: The Younger Dryas, a period of sudden cooling and return to glacial conditions.
c. 12,000 years ago: 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 the Old World. Many populations of the New World remain in the Mesolithic cultural stage until European contact in the modern period.
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.[50]
11,600 years ago: 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.[51]
11,200–11,000 years ago: Meltwater pulse 1B, a sudden rise of sea level by 7.5 m (25 ft) within about 160 years.
11,000 years ago (9,000 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.[52]
10,800–9,000 years ago: Byblos appears to have been settled during the PPNB period, approximately 8800 to 7000 BC. Neolithic remains of some buildings can be observed at the site.[53][54]
10,000–9,000 years ago (8000 BC to 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.[55] In early agriculture at this time, the planting stick is used, but it is replaced by a primitive plow in subsequent centuries.[56] 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.[57]
10,000–5,000 years ago (8,000–3,000 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.[58]
9,500–5,500 years ago: 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.
9,200 years ago: First human settlement in Amman, Jordan; ʿAin GhazalNeolithic settlement was built spanning over an area of 15 hectares (37 acres).[59]
9,000 years ago (7000 BC): Jiahu culture begins in China.
9,000 years ago: large first fish fermentation in southern Sweden.[60]
9,000 years ago: 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.[61]
8,200–8,000 years ago: 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.
8,000 years ago: 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,[63]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.[64] However, evidence of settlement in the wider Barada basin dating back to 9000 BC exists.[65]
6300 or 6350 years ago: Akahoya eruption creates the Kikai Caldera and ends the earliest homogeneous Jomon culture in Japan. When the Jomon culture recovers, it shows regional differences.[68][verification needed]
5,800–5,600 years ago: (3800–3600 BC): Mġarr phase A short transitional period in Malta's prehistory. It is characterized by pottery consisting of mainly curved lines.
5,700 years ago (3700 BC): Trypillian build in Maidanets (Ukraine) settlement which reached 12,000–46,000 inhabitants,[72] and built three-story building.[73]
5,500 years ago (3500 BC): Earliest conjectured date for the still-undeciphered Indus script.
5,500 years ago (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.
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.[77][78] A timeline dating first occurrences and earliest evidence may therefore be an often inadequate approach for describing humanity's (pre-)history.
^Brooks AS, Yellen JE, Potts R, Behrensmeyer AK, Deino AL, Leslie DE, Ambrose SH, Ferguson JR, d'Errico F, Zipkin AM, Whittaker S, Post J, Veatch EG, Foecke K, Clark JB (2018). "Long-distance stone transport and pigment use in the earliest Middle Stone Age". Science. doi:10.1126/science.aao2646.
^Harvati, K., Röding, C., Bosman, A. M., Karakostis, F. A., Grün, R., Stringer, C., ... & Gorgoulis, V. G. (2019). Apidima Cave fossils provide the earliest evidence of Homo sapiens in Eurasia. Nature, 571(7766), 500–504.
^ abRito T, Richards MB, Fernandes V, Alshamali F, Cerny V, Pereira L, Soares P. (13 November 2013). "The first modern human dispersals across Africa". PLoS One. 8(11):e80031. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0080031. "By ~130 ka two distinct groups of anatomically modern humans co-existed in Africa: broadly, the ancestors of many modern-day Khoe and San populations in the south and a second central/eastern African group that includes the ancestors of most extant worldwide populations. Early modern human dispersals correlate with climate changes, particularly the tropical African "megadroughts" of MIS 5 (marine isotope stage 5, 135–75 ka), which paradoxically may have facilitated expansions in central and eastern Africa, ultimately triggering the dispersal out of Africa of people carrying haplogroup L3 – 60 ka. Two south to east migrations are discernible within haplogroup L0. One, between 120 and 75 ka, represents the first unambiguous long-range modern human dispersal detected by mtDNA and might have allowed the dispersal of several markers of modernity. A second one, within the last 20 ka signalled by L0d, may have been responsible for the spread of southern click-consonant languages to eastern Africa, contrary to the view that these eastern examples constitute relics of an ancient, much wider distribution."
^ abTom Higham; Katerina Douka; Rachel Wood; Christopher Bronk Ramsey; Fiona Brock; Laura Basell; Marta Camps; Alvaro Arrizabalaga; Javier Baena; Cecillio Barroso-Ruíz; Christopher Bergman; Coralie Boitard; Paolo Boscato; Miguel Caparrós; Nicholas J. Conard; Christelle Draily; Alain Froment; Bertila Galván; Paolo Gambassini; Alejandro Garcia-Moreno; Stefano Grimaldi; Paul Haesaerts; Brigitte Holt; Maria-Jose Iriarte-Chiapusso; Arthur Jelinek; et al. (21 August 2014). "The timing and spatiotemporal patterning of Neanderthal disappearance". Nature. 512 (7514): 306–09. Bibcode:2014Natur.512..306H. doi:10.1038/nature13621. PMID25143113. S2CID205239973.
^Sandra Bowdler. "Human settlement". In D. Denoon (ed.). The Pleistocene Pacific. The Cambridge History of the Pacific Islanders. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 41–50. Archived from the original on 16 February 2008. Retrieved 26 February 2008 – via University of Western Australia.
^Gary Presland, The First Residents of Melbourne's Western Region, (revised edition), Harriland Press, 1997. ISBN0-646-33150-7. Presland says on page 1: "There is some evidence to show that people were living in the Maribyrnong River valley, near present day Keilor, about 40,000 years ago."
^Flood, J. M.; David, B.; Magee, J.; English, B. (1987). "Birrigai: a Pleistocene site in the south eastern highlands". Archaeology in Oceania. 22: 9–22. doi:10.1002/j.1834-4453.1987.tb00159.x.
^Ehret, Christopher (1995). Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic (Proto-Afrasian): vowels, tone, consonants, and vocabulary. University of California Press. ISBN0-520-09799-8
^Stuart, Gene S. (1979). "Ice Age Hunters: Artists in Hidden Cages". Mysteries of the Ancient World. National Geographic Society. pp. 8–10.
^Mithen, Steven (2006). After the ice: a global human history, 20,000–5000 BC (1st Harvard University Press pbk. ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 57. ISBN978-0-674-01999-7.
^Blanchon, P. (2011b) "Backstepping". In: Hopley, D. (Ed), Encyclopedia of Modern Coral Reefs: Structure, form and process. Springer-Verlag Earth Science Series, pp. 77–84. ISBN978-90-481-2638-5. Blanchon, P., and Shaw, J. (1995) "Reef drowning during the last deglaciation: evidence for catastrophic sea-level rise and icesheet collapse". Geology, 23:4–8.
^Towers, Roy; Card, Nick; Edmonds, Mark (2015). The Ness of Brodgar. Kirkwall, UK: Archaeology Institute, University of the Higlands and Islands. ISBN978-0-9932757-0-8.
^Childe, V. Gordon; Clarke, D. V. (1983). Skara Brae. Edinburgh: Her Majesty's Stationery Office. ISBN0-11-491755-8.
Kristian Kristiansen; Thomas B. Larsson (2005). The Rise of Bronze Age Society: Travels, Transmissions and Transformations. Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-0521843638.
![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.[50]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/35/Morella_%28combate-de-arquero.png/440px-Morella_%28combate-de-arquero.png)
