Prehistory
3 Million B.C.–50,001 B.C.
3 million B.C.: science
An upright-walking australopithecine ape-man appears on the earth in the late Pliocene period and has thumb-opposed hands in place of forefeet, permitting him and his female counterpart to use tools (Cleveland Museum of Natural History archaeologist Donald Carl Johanson will find the half-complete fossil of a teenaged female at Hadar in Ethiopia's Awash Valley in 1974 A.D. and call her "Lucy.") Paleontologists will later conjecture that, unlike a quadruped, which is sexually receptive to males only during limited periods of estrus, the erect ape-woman can conceive and bear children at any time of year. Her pelvic canal has narrowed as she has evolved, and natural selection has favored those individuals who bear premature infants small enough to emerge from these narrowed canals. Because such infants cannot stand on their feet immediately after birth and require longer postnatal care, female australopithecines become increasingly dependent on males for food and protection while they nurse their babies (further finds will turn up in 1975 A.D.).
3 million B.C.: food and drink
Homo erectus erectus is unique among primates in having a high proportion of meat relative to plant foods in his diet, but like other primates he is omnivorous, a scavenger who competes with hyenas and other scavengers while eluding carnivores such as leopards (dinosaurs, pterodactyls, and other reptilian forms of life have been extinct for millennia, but mammoths and other large animal species remain). Later generations will argue whether primitive man was a carnivore or vegetarian when in all likelihood he was omnivorous, using his superior brain to outwit other species while living on roots, berries, nuts, termites, and bone marrow.
1.75 million B.C.: technology
Anthropoids use patterned tools (Oldowan choppers) (see science [Leakey], 1959 A.D.).
1 million B.C.: science
Australopithecine ape-man becomes extinct as the human species becomes more developed.
400,000 B.C. to 360,000 B.C.: food and drink
Homo erectus hominid of the Middle Pleistocene period (Peking man) may use fire to cook venison, supplementing his diet of berries, roots, nuts, acorns, legumes, and grains. By conserving his energies, he can track down swifter but less intelligent animals (but he still splits bones to get at the marrow because he does not use fire effectively to make the marrow easily available) (see science [Black], 1927 A.D.).
120,000 B.C. to 75,000 B.C.: science
Neanderthal man of the Upper Pleistocene period has large front teeth that he may use as tools. Less than half of his surviving infants reach age 20, 9 out of 10 of these die before age 40 (see 1856 A.D.).
75,000 B.C.: communications, media
Neanderthal can communicate by intelligible sounds, setting him apart from other mammals, but whether these sounds represent speech will remain questionable.
75,000 B.C.: environment
A new ice age in Europe creates a drought in Africa that leads a group to begin migrating north and eastward along the shores of open seas, a journey that will take them and their descendants as far as Siberia and Australia (time approximate).
75,000 B.C.: food availability
Neanderthal man is like all other creatures on earth in that he devotes virtually every waking hour to his quest for the food he needs to sustain life for himself and his family.
75,000 B.C.: nutrition
Humans require larger caloric intake than many of their fellow creatures to meet the demands of their larger brains. They cannot digest the long-chain carbohydrates, cellulose, lignins, and tannins in the plant tissues consumed by other species, their excessive protein needs are dictated in part by the fact that they cannot synthesize as many amino acids as some other mammals can, and—because of a metabolic defect (lack of the enzyme L-gulonalactone oxidase in the liver) shared with anthropoid apes, guinea pigs, a certain fruit-eating bat, some insect groups, and some birds that include the red-vented bulbul—they must have dietary sources of vitamin C (ascorbic acid) that most other animals, birds, and insects can synthesize. Without enough vitamin C (abundant not only in citrus fruits, capsicums [peppers] and cabbage but also in animal organ meats), humans cannot synthesize collagen, the adhesive protein substance that holds cells together, and without collagen their wounds do not heal, old scars may burst open, and they may exhibit symptoms of scurvy (see 80 A.D.).
75,000 B.C.: food and drink
Neanderthal man has become a skilled hunter, able to bring down large, hairy elephant-like mammals (Mammonteus primigenius), saber-toothed tigers, and other creatures that will become extinct.
Neanderthal man cares for his sick and aged but engages in cannibalism when necessary.
50,000 B.C.–10,001 B.C.
50,000 B.C.: science
Neanderthal man may be on the west coast of the Western Hemisphere and may even have reached the continent 20,000 years earlier (as determined by racemization tests that record the extent to which molecules of aspartic acid in a specimen have altered in their figuration from the form that occurs in living bone to its mirror image; such tests will be conducted in the A.D. 1970s on bones found between 1920 A.D. and 1935 A.D., but the rate of change is affected by such factors as temperature, so the tests will not be conclusive).
50,000 B.C.: food availability
Date palms flourish in parts of Africa and Asia, where they will become an important food source.
42,000 B.C.: exploration, colonization
The continent that will be called Australia is populated by the earth's first seafaring people. Colonists whose ancestors left Africa perhaps 30 millennia ago have arrived across a narrow expanse of ocean from the Asian mainland (see New Guinea, 28500 B.C.).
38,000 B.C.: science
Homo sapiens emerges in Africa. Although physically less powerful, he has a more prominent chin, a much larger brain volume, and superior intelligence. Homo sapiens will split into six major divisions, or stocks—Negroids, Mongoloids, Caucasoids, Australoids, Amerindians, and Polynesians, and some of these will have subdivisions (Caucasoids, for example, will include Alpine, Mediterranean, and Nordic stocks).
38,000 B.C.: food and drink
His control of fire, his development of new, lightweight bone and horn tools, weapons, and fishhooks, and his superior intelligence permit homo sapiens to obtain food more easily and to preserve it longer. Hunters provide early tribes with meat from bison and tigers, while other tribespeople fish and collect honey, fruits, and nuts (as shown by cave paintings near Aurignac in southern France).
38,000 B.C.: population
Increased availability of food in the next few thousand years will lead to an increase in human populations.
36,000 B.C.: exploration, colonization
Homo sapiens reach the northern continent of the Western Hemisphere, where Neanderthal man has probably preceded them.
33,000 B.C.: science
Homo sapiens become the dominant species on earth, with no serious rivals to their supremacy.
28,500 B.C.: exploration, colonization
The island that will be called New Guinea is populated by colonists who arrive either from Australia or from the Asian mainland (see 42000 B.C.).
27,000 B.C.: exploration, colonization
Homo sapiens reach the islands that will be called Japan and may have arrived in the islands as much as 5,000 years earlier over ice sheets or land bridges (see 660 B.C.).
25,000 B.C.: marine resources
Fishermen in Europe's Dordogne Valley have developed short baited toggles that become wedged at an angle in fishes' jaws when the line, made of plant fibers, is pulled taut.
25,000 B.C.: food and drink
Homo sapiens use small pits lined with hot embers or pebbles preheated in fires to cook food that may be covered with layers of leaves or wrapped in seaweed to prevent scorching.
12,000 B.C.: science
Inhabitants of the Near East use dogs as sentinels and for tracking game (fossil remains found in a cave near Kirkuk in Iraq in the 1950s A.D. will be dated in the 1970s A.D. by fluorine analysis). The dog has been domesticated from the Asian wolf since at least 14,000 B.C., and later research will suggest that domestication began 100,000 years before that. (Bones of wolves will be found in human settlements dating to 400,000 B.C., but while archaeologists will agree that dogs were the first animals to be domesticated, experts will say that the wolf bones were from animals that were merely tamed, not domesticated.)
12,000 B.C.: food and drink
Halfan tribespeople on Egypt's lower Nile use grinding stones to produce a kind of flour from the seeds of wild cereal grasses. Limestone upper and lower grinding stones are used in Nubia, on the upper Nile, where flint-bladed reaping knives are employed to harvest wild cereals, which have begun to flourish since the end of the Ice Age has brought a warmer and more moist climate.
Potters on the islands that will come to be known as Japan begin to make clay cooking pots and storage containers (jōmonshikidoki) (see 6000 B.C.). The people live by hunting, fishing, and gathering shellfish, some of which are dried, smoked, and stored along with nuts.
11,000 B.C.: environment
Vast fields of wild grain appear in parts of the Near East as the glaciers begin to retreat.
11,000 B.C.: food and drink
Human hunter-gatherers eat animal protein and some fish but live chiefly on roots, seeds, fruits, tender leaves, and shoots found most often on land that has recently been burned over or flooded and is growing back. Fire is sometimes used to clear land for food production (see agriculture, 8000 B.C.).
10,500 B.C.: science
Human habitations appear even at the southernmost parts of the Western Hemisphere, where cavemen pursue guanaco and hunt a horse species that will become extinct (fossil evidence found 1,200 miles south of Buenos Aires in 1970 A.D.).
10,000 B.C.–5001 B.C.
10,000 B.C.: environment
Climatic changes in Europe produce growths of birch, hazel, and oak forests on what once were bare steppes. Mammoths have disappeared. The reindeer move north, and wild cattle, red deer, and wild pigs begin to populate the continent.
10,000 B.C.: agriculture
Goats are domesticated by Near Eastern hunter-gatherer tribespeople who have earlier domesticated the dog.
10,000 B.C.: population
Homo sapiens increases in number to roughly 3 million.
9000 B.C.: technology
The New Stone Age begins in Egypt and Mesopotamia.
Bows and arrows come into use for stalking animals in European forests, but spears remain the weapons most commonly used by hunters.
8500 B.C.: environment
Climate changes in the Near East bring heavy rainfalls and warmer temperatures, leading to large encampments of hunter-gatherers who previously led more nomadic lives but now find perennial sources of wild grains (see agriculture, 8000 B.C.).
8500 B.C.: food and drink
Goats' milk becomes a food source in the Near East, where goats have been domesticated for the past 1,500 years (as determined by carbon 14 radioactivity decay studies on fossil evidence found at Asiab, Iran) (see science [Libby], 1947 A.D.).
8000 B.C.: environment
Temperatures in northern Europe become more temperate as glaciers recede, marking the end of the Ice Age; forests begin replacing tundra as these final postglacial climatic improvements begin, and while some humans have remained in the region, living on reindeer meat and milk, others now begin to move in with bows and arrows, fish traps, hooks, and other tools needed to obtain food from the land and waters, eating fish caught in nets of hair, thongs, and twisted fiber, along with shellfish, goose, and honey.
8000 B.C.: agriculture
Agriculture begins at the end of the Pleistocene era in the Near East. Women use digging sticks to plant and cultivate the seeds of wild grasses on small plots of cleared land (see 8500 B.C.). When the seeds are seen to produce crops of grain in the fall (or the following spring), and when it is observed that 25 acres are enough to support a family by farming instead of the hundreds or even thousands needed for each family that lives by hunting and gathering, more people will be encouraged to give up their nomadic life, live in one place, raise families, and start communities. Settled agricultural communities will be the basis of civilization, and agriculture will remain virtually the only culture for most of the world throughout the next ten millennia (see 7000 B.C.).
8000 B.C.: nutrition
Some modern observers will call this paleolithic period the "golden age" of nutrition when man's cardiovascular system, taste buds, and food supply are all in harmony.
8000 B.C.: population
Earth's human population soars to 5.3 million, up from 3 million in 10,000 B.C., as agriculture provides a more reliable food source. Where it has taken 5,000 acres to support each member of a hunter-forager society, the same amount of land can feed 5,000 to 6,000 people in an agricultural society.
7700 B.C.: environment
Desert predominates over fertile lands in the arc extending from the head of the Persian Gulf through the Tigris-Euphrates Basin to the eastern Mediterranean and then south to the Nile Valley. Men and animals are crowded in oases in the region that will be called the "Fertile Crescent" by U.S. archaeologist James Henry Breasted (1865-1935 A.D.).
7700 B.C.: food and drink
Ewes' milk becomes a food source and supplements goats' milk and mothers' milk as lamb and mutton begin to play a large role in human diets in the Near East, where sheep are domesticated. (Sheep remains that vastly outnumber goat remains will be found at Asiab in Iran, and a large majority of the sheep remains will be from yearlings, good archaeological evidence that sheep have been domesticated.)
7300 B.C.: science
Dogs are domesticated by tribes in the British Isles (evidence from carbon 14 bone studies of fossil remains found at Star Carr in Yorkshire).
7200 B.C.: agriculture
Sheep are domesticated in Greece (Argissa-Magula) (see 7700 B.C.). Because of the country's mountainous terrain, goat meat and goats' milk will be more widely consumed in much of Greece than lamb, mutton, or ewes' milk.
Domestication of swine is delayed by the facts that pigs need shade from the sun, cannot be milked, cannot digest grass, leaves, or straw, and must therefore be given food that man himself can eat—acorns, nuts, cooked grain, or meat scraps. But in some places pigs have been domesticated earlier than other animals.
7200 B.C.: population
Populations in the Middle East will increase in the next two millennia, and more permanent camps will be established by people who have lived until now in small groups that shifted camps every 3 or 4 months. Seed collecting will become more important to the food supply.
7000 B.C.: environment
Glaciers begin to recede in the northern and southern continents of the Eastern and Western hemispheres, enabling hunters to pursue game in the new forests that have sprung up and permitting settlements in areas once too climatically forbidding for humans. The islands that will later be called Britain remain connected to the European continent, but configurations of land and sea throughout the world will change dramatically in the next thousand years as water floods into plains that have been dry in past millennia (see Great Flood, 5600 B.C.).
7000 B.C.: marine resources
Greek fishermen catch fish at sea that are too large to be caught from shore, but most of the world lacks seaworthy ships.
7000 B.C.: agriculture
Southeast Asia and Australasia will begin to have agriculture in the next thousand years as inhabitants deliberately cultivate crops in lands where they have lived since the end of the Ice Age (see 6500 B.C.).
Emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccum) grows in the Kurdistan area lying between what will someday be southeastern Turkey and northwestern Iran, having been domesticated from the wild Triticum dicoccoides (domestication involves a genetic change from wild-occurring plant populations).
Greeks in Thessaly cultivate barley (Hordeum spolitalieum), millet (Panicum miliaceum), and certain legumes, including lentils; they may also have domesticated dogs and pigs (based on evidence found in excavations at Argissa-Magula).
7000 B.C.: population
The Jordanian town of Jericho has a population of some 2,500, attracted by the area's perennial spring. Situated 840 feet above sea level, the city will soon be walled to protect it from attack.
6800 B.C.: exploration, colonization
The Kurdistan village of Jarmo is founded with some 30 dwellings that cover three acres and house 200 people. It is one of the first permanent agricultural settlements. (Excavations in 1947 A.D. by University of Chicago team.)
6500 B.C.: technology
Lead is discovered in what later will be Turkey (year approximate). The metal can be toxic but will play a major role in industrial development. Production on a significant basis will begin in about 3000 B.C.
6500 B.C.: agriculture
The aurochs will be domesticated in the next two centuries if it has not been domesticated earlier (Obre I, Yugoslavia). Ancestor of domestic cattle, the fierce beast will be the last major food animal to be tamed for use as a source of milk, meat, power, and leather.
Chinese agriculture will begin in the next 500 years as farmers in the northern part of the country plant and harvest domesticated foxtail millet (Setaria italica) and panic millet while raising chickens, dogs, and pigs (see 7000 B.C.; Near East, 8000 B.C.; rice, 2300 B.C.).
6000 B.C.: agriculture
People living along the Euphrates will dig miles of canals in the next 2,000 years to harness the river's annual floodwaters and increase crop yields. They begin to use plows, drawn by oxen, to open up grasslands to crop cultivation (see 5000 B.C.).
Swiss lake dwellers collect wild flax (Linum usitatissimum) or cultivate it and use its strong fibers to make lines and nets for fishing (and for animal traps and ropes and cords for building construction and navigational purposes).
Inhabitants of the Swiss lake regions have domesticated dogs and plow oxen.
Village farmers begin to replace food-gathering tribespeople in much of Greece (see 7000 B.C.).
6000 B.C.: food and drink
Swiss lake dwellers make bread of crushed cereal grains and keep dried apples and legumes (including peas) in the houses they build on stilts (evidence from excavated remains of the houses and their contents). Bread represents an advance over the cakes of meal—cereal grains soaked and pressed into cakes that are dried in the sun or on hot stones—which humans have eaten for millennia.
Peoples of the Near East and Europe produce their first true pottery, permitting new forms of cookery (although food has earlier been boiled in gourds, shells, and skin-lined pits into which hot stones were dropped) (see Japan, 12000 B.C.). The Chinese have made Jomon pottery for at least 1,000 years, and there have also been potters in other parts of northern and southeast Asia.
5600 B.C.: environment
A Great Flood inundates the Mideast and much of the world following a sudden 130-foot rise in sea levels as a result of runoff from a rapid melting of a glacial ice sheet covering much of the northern continent of the Western Hemisphere (time is approximate and somewhat conjectural; see 7000 B.C.). The Mediterranean overflows into the Black Sea.
5508 B.C.: religion
Year of Creation that will be adopted in 7th century A.D. Constantinople and used in the Eastern Orthodox Church and secularly in Russia until early in the 18th century A.D.
5500 B.C.: technology
Copper smelted from malachite (copper carbonate) by artisans in Persia produces the first metal that can be drawn, molded, and shaped, but the metal is too soft to hold an edge (see bronze, 3600 B.C.).
5490 B.C.: religion
Year of Creation as it will be reckoned by early Syrian Christians.
5000 B.C.–3301 B.C.
5000 B.C.: political events
Villages begin to cluster together in the Fertile Crescent; villagers often cooperate to build primitive irrigation canals and ditches, but a common need for water sometimes leads to savage warfare.
5000 B.C.: agriculture
Domesticated cattle are common in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
Lands bordering the Nile River begin to dry out. The Egyptians build dikes and canals for irrigation and start to develop a civilization in North Africa.
Agricultural peoples inhabit the plains of southeastern Europe.
Corn (maize) and common beans grow under cultivation in the Western Hemisphere.
4350 B.C.: energy
Domesticated horses provide parts of Europe with a new source of power for transportation and agriculture. (Evidence from Derivka in the Ukraine) (see work collar, 901 A.D.).
4004 B.C.: religion
October 23: Date of Creation as it will be reckoned by Irish theologian James Ussher in 1650 A.D.
4000 B.C.: agriculture
Peoples of the Indus Valley raise wheat, barley, peas, sesame seeds, mangoes, and dates on irrigated fields, but the large fields of grain encourage a multiplication of insects, and the stores of dry grain bring an explosion in rodent populations. Asses, horses, buffalo, camels, and cattle are bred for meat and for use as draft animals. Bananas, lemons, limes, and oranges are cultivated as are grapes for wine, which is also made from flowers. (Evidence from excavations at Mohenjo-Daro beginning in 1922 A.D. and at Harappa 300 miles away beginning in 1945 A.D.)
4000 B.C.: population
The world's population reaches roughly 85 million.
3760 B.C.: religion
Year of Creation as it will be reckoned in the Hebrew calendar that will be used from the 15th century A.D. (see Judaism, 1700 B.C.).
3750 B.C.: technology
The wheel invented by Sumerians in the Tigris-Euphrates Basin will radically change transportation, travel, warfare, and industry (year approximate). Other parts of the world, including the Western Hemisphere, will never develop the wheel on their own and will not enjoy its benefits until it is introduced by foreigners. The wheel will not only speed transportation but will also facilitate construction and lead to many technological advances (see Egypt, 1900 B.C.).
3641 B.C.: religion
February 10: date of Creation as it will be reckoned by Mayan calendars in the Western Hemisphere (see 3114 B.C.).
3600 B.C.: technology
Bronze made by southwest Asian artisans is the first metal hard enough to hold an edge. Copper is alloyed with tin, which is even softer than copper, but the combination (5 to 20 percent tin) creates a metal with many more practical uses than copper (see 5500 B.C.; iron, 2500 B.C.).
3500 B.C.: political events
A Sumerian society that marks the beginning of human civilization develops in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, where annual floods deposit fresh layers of fertile silt. Agricultural tribespeople settle in communities and evolve an administrative system governed by priests.
3500 B.C.: transportation
The Sumerians develop animal-drawn wheeled vehicles and oar-powered ships (see 2500 B.C.; wheel, 3750 B.C.).
3500 B.C.: technology
Bronze enables the Sumerians to make objects that were impossible to make with softer, less fusible copper (see 3600 B.C.; iron, 2500 B.C.).
3500 B.C.: agriculture
Sumerian farmers harness domestic animals to plows, drain marshlands, irrigate desert lands, and extend areas of permanent cultivation. By reducing slightly the number of people required to raise food, they permit a few people to become priests, artisans, scholars, and merchants.
3 million B.C.–50,001 B.C. 50,000 B.C.–10,001 B.C. 10,000 B.C.–5001 B.C. 5000 B.C.–3301 B.C.