1 Million BC - 3300BC
Go to home
1Mil BC DNA evidence in 2008
suggested that the black rat originated in South-East Asia about this
time and then split into 6 lines, one of which colonized India and the
Middle East and then spread to Europe.
(Econ, 3/15/08, p.97)
1Mil BC The Jaramillo event occurred and serves as a
paleomagnetic marker. In 1982 William Glen authored “The Road to
Jaramillo: Critical Years of the Revolution in Earth Science.” The
book's title comes from the Jaramillo magnetic event discovered in
rocks from Jaramillo Creek in the Jemez Mountains in New Mexico.
(PacDis., Spg. 96,
p.46)(www.asa3.org/ASA/book_reviews/12-92.htm)
1Mil BC A homo erectus skull from Daka, Ethiopia,
from this time was identified in 2001 as an ancestor to all modern
humans. Tim D. White and Berhani Asfaw led the team that discovered the
fossils in 1997.
(SFC, 3/21/02, p.A1)
1Mil BC Homo erectus arrived in Java about this time.
In 1891 Eugene Dubois, Dutch health officer, discovered the skull of a
human in Java, Indonesia that he named Pithecanthropus erectus [Java
Man]. The first Homo erectus skullcap was found near Trinil, Java.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p.434)(RFH-MDHP, p.153)(SFC,
12/13/96, p.A4)(SFC, 11/14/00, p.A9)
1Mil BC A Grand Canyon lava dam created a lake larger
than Lake Mead and Lake Powell combined. It extended from Toroweap
Canyon back through Lake Powell to beyond Moab, Utah-- a distance of
more than 400 miles.
(NH, 9/97, p.39)
1Mil BC The mean residence time
for the water in Lake Vostok was one million years as compared to 6
years for Lake Ontario. Scientists in 1999 discovered living bacteria
and theorized that the lake was warmed either by hot magma beneath the
Earth's crust or by the downward pressure of ice.
(SFC, 12/11/99,
p.A2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Vostok)
c1Mil BC The Haleakala volcano created the eastern
half of Maui.
(SFEC, 8/27/00, p.T8)
c1Mil BC A star in the constellation Scorpius
exploded in a super nova and evidence revealed in 1999 that a black
hole was formed.
(SFC, 9/9/99, p.A10)
1Mil BC-2000 In the last million or more years
several continental glaciations have chilled much of the northern
hemisphere and no small portion of the south.
(DD-EVTT, p.281)
950000BC An alteration in the Earth's magnetic field
occurred.
(E&IH, 1973, p.94)
900000BC In 2004 Scientists from the US, Britain and
Kenya reported that a skull fragment of a small adult with some
characteristics of Homo erectus was about 900,000 years old. It was
found in 2003 in Olorgesalie, 100 miles southeast of the capital,
Nairobi, Kenya.
(AP, 7/3/04)
890000BC An alteration in the Earth's magnetic field
occurred.
(E&IH, 1973, p.94)
840000BC-420000BC A large migration of people from
Africa to Asia and Europe took place over this period. A 2nd migration
period occurred from 150k-80k.
(SFC, 3/7/02, p.A2)
800000BC Soleilhac, in the Massif Central of France,
is the oldest unquestionable site of hominid occupation in Europe. It
offers faunal remains and tools, but no hominid bones.
(NG, Nov. 1985, p.612)
800000BC A few months ago a team of fossil hunters
reported 800,000 year-old hominids from the Gran Dolino site in the
Atapuerca Mountains in northern Spain. The date was older by 300,000
years than any other human remains in Europe. They called the new
species Homo antecessor. Among modern characteristics were a prominent
brow line and multiple roots for premolar teeth, characteristics of
early hominids.
(PacDis., Spg. 96, p.46)(SFC, 5/30/97, p.A8)
800000BC Some Indonesian and Dutch archeologist have
presented evidence that early hominids in Asia made it to the island of
Flores in the Javan archipelago.
(PacDis., Spg. 96, p.48)
800000BC The Haleakala shield volcano on Maui,
Hawaii, appeared about this time.
(SFEM, 3/16/97, p.28)
800,000BC-450,000BC In 2007 researchers dated DNA from Greenland mud
under 1.2 miles of ice to about this time. The DNA indicated the
presence of pine, yew and alder trees, as well as insects. Due to
uncertainties in the dating, scientists could not rule out that the
samples dated to the last interglacial, 130,000 to 116,000 years before
the present.
(SFC, 7/6/07, p.A14)
780000BC Spanish scientists in 1997 announced a new
human species from a 780,000 year old fossil.
(www.anomalous-images.com/news/news049.html)
c760000BC Mono Lake in California has existed since
at least this time.
(PacDis, Summer '97, p.38)
c760000BC The Long Valley Caldera, a 10 by 20 mile
crater in central-eastern California, was created by a volcanic
eruption in what later became the Bishop area. Mammoth Lakes was later
set on the edge of the caldera, 215 miles northeast of LA. In 2003 it
was reported that the Long Valley dome had been thrusting upward about
an inch a year for the last 8 years.
(SFC,11/15/97, p.A4)(SFC,12/11/97, p.A8)(SFC,
12/20/99, p.A8)(SFC, 12/8/03, p.A4)
c750000BC California's Mono Lake was formed about
this time as the Sierra Range lifted and the Great Basin sank.
(SSFC, 9/28/03, p.C12)
740000BC The Red Mountain cinder cone at Flagstaff,
Arizona, dated to this time.
(SSFC, 7/23/06, p.G4)
730000BC A meteor crashed in Tasmania making Darwin
glass from the friction of hitting.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p.466)
730000BC Stegodons, extinct elephant-like animals,
lived on the Indonesian island of Flores in association with stone
flakes.
(AM, Mar/Apr 97 p.20)
700,000BC End of the Early Pleistocene.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 447)
700,000BC A pyroclastic flow (hot gasses, pumice and
other dry volcanic materials that roar down a volcano's slopes at one
hundred km an hour) in California's Long Valley was so huge that it
topped the Sierra Nevada.
(PacDisc. Spring/'96, p.31)
700,000BC In 2005 scientists said that 32 black flint
artifacts, found in river sediments in Pakefield in eastern England,
date back 700,000 years and represent the earliest unequivocal evidence
of human presence north of the Alps.
(AP, 12/14/05)
670,000BC-400,000BC Homo erectus occupied the
Longushan cave. The Dragon Bone Hill site is 30 miles southwest of
Beijing. The bones were found in the 1920s-1930s and were popularly
referred to as Peking Man.
(Arch, 5/04, p.52)
69000BC An alteration in the Earth's magnetic field
occurred.
(E&IH, 1973, p.94)
640000BC Volcanic eruptions in northwest Wyoming,
extending to Idaho and Montana, created a caldera some 40 miles long
and 30 miles wide. The surface collapsed thousands of feet into a magma
pool and marked the area later known as Yellowstone. Continuing
eruptions caused climactic changes around the world.
(SFEC, 10/18/98, p.T5)(HC, 10/10/06)
600000BC The EETA 79001 meteorite was blasted from
Mars about this time and contained evidence of "microbially produced
methane." Its formation was dated to about 175 million years ago.
(SFC, 11/1/96, p.A16)
600000BC A skull of this age from Bodo, Ethiopia,
exhibits the largest nasal width of any Homo fossil.
(AM, May/Jun 97 p.32)
600000BC Dr. Leakey discovered oldest human skull to
date, 600,000 years old, on Jul 17, 1959.
(MC, 7/17/02)
600000BC-500000BC The last common ancestor of
modern humans and Neanderthals lived about this time most likely in
Africa.
(SFC, 7/11/97, p.A17)
600000BC-300000BC Excavations begun in 1921 at
Zhoukoudian, China, suggested evidence that Peking Man had mastered
fire and practiced cannibalism over this period.
(NH, 3/1/04, p.46)
600000BC-250000BC Homo heidelbergensis. Described in
1996 by Donald Johanson and Blake Edgar in: "From Lucy to Language: The
Record of Human Evolution."
(SFC, 12/29/96, BR p.11)
c560000BC Tectonic uplifting caused the California
Central Valley inland Corcoran Lake to rise and cut an exit to drain
into the Bay Area. This carved Carquinez Strait and plugged the Salinas
Valley outlet to Monterey Bay.
(SFC, 12/20/99, p.A8)
512000BC-510000BC Anthropologists in 2005 identified
fossil chimp teeth and stone tools from this period that indicated
humans and chimps inhabited a similar environment in Africa’s Great
Rift Valley.
(SFC, 9/1/05, p.A2)
c500000BC The Medicine Lake Volcano created lava
tubes that later became known as Lava Beds National Monument in
northern California.
(SFC, 5/29/04, p.B4)
500000BC In Boxgrove England, a fossilized rhinoceros
shoulder blade with a projectile wound was found recently and dated to
this time.
(AM, May/Jun 97 p.25)
c500000BC A human jawbone of about this age, homo
Heidelbergensis, was found in Heidelberg, Germany, in 1907.
(SFEC, 9/26/99, p.T9)
500000BC-250000BC Homo sapiens
(archaic). Skull of adult male found by Greek villagers at Petralona,
Greece in 1960.
(NG, Nov. 1985, p. 572)
500000BC-200000BC In Ethiopia a hominid skull from
this period was discovered in 2006 at the Gawis river drainage basin in
the Afar region.
(Reuters, 3/24/06)
450000BC-180000BC In 2007
scientists using sonar reported that at least 2 massive floods during
this period cut Britain off from the European continent. Evidence of
humans living in Britain began to show up only from about 60,000 BC.
(SFC, 7/19/07, p.A7)
c435000BC A major eruption by Mount Lassen in
California left sediment called the Rockland Ash that could later be
seen in the sea cliffs of Fort Funston on the SF coast.
(SFC, 12/20/99, p.A8)
c430000BC A prolonged warm period that lasted 28,000
years reached its peak about this time.
(SFC, 6/10/04, A15)
420000BC-290000BC The youngest Homo erectus
(from China) date in this period.
(NH, 4/97, p.70)
400000BC Irish Elk (Megaloceros giganteus) lived in
temperate climates throughout Europe and western Asia from about this
time to a last record in Ireland at 10,600 years ago.
(NH, 8/96, p.17)
400000BC Human and wolf bones have been found in the
same place from about this time.
(SFC, 6/13/97, p.A10)
400000BC In 1998 researchers at Duke Univ., studying
hypoglossal canals in fossil skulls, suggested that Neanderthals could
well have developed speech at this time. The research was disputed in
1999.
(SFC, 2/16/99, p.A2)
400000BC Researchers in 2000 found evidence from a
homo erectus skull, Sm 3, of this period that individuals communicated
with each other.
(SFC, 11/14/00, p.A9)
400000BC-380000BC Researchers in Germany in
1997 unearthed wooden spears made of spruce of this age from an ancient
lakeshore hunting ground. The spears were found in a coal mine in
Shöningen, near Hanover.
(SFC, 2/27/97, p.A6)(AM, May/Jun 97 p.25)
400BC-300000BC Articulate speech becomes possible
according to Dr. Laitman, anatomist at the Mt. Sinai School of
Medicine. His studies show that the degree to which the base of the
skull is flexed, or bent, is indicative of whether the larynx can move
up or down. Early Homo skulls are only slightly flexed at the base, so
that full command of articulate speech was a later development.
(NG, Nov. 1985, p. 600)
380000BC The skull of an archaic member of the genus
Homo was later found in Zambia. It exhibited a hypoglossal canal
similar to modern humans, which indicated at least the potential for
speech.
(SFC, 4/28/98, p.A5)
370000BC-260000BC The site of
Diring Yuriakh in central Siberia has stone flakes and simple tools
known as unifacial choppers that date by thermoluminescence to this
period.
(AM, May/Jun 97 p.21)
c350000BC Humans left tracks in the volcanic ash of
the Roccamonfina volcano in Italy.
(SFC, 3/13/03, p.2)
300000BC Erectus seems to give way to his successor,
Homo sapiens.
(NG, Nov. 1985, K.F. Weaver, p.600)
300000BC-250000BC In 1981 Russian
Archeologist Yuri Mochanov of the Yakutish Academy of Sciences
announced the discovery of human habitation in northern Siberia that
dated back to at least 30,000 years. More precise techniques later
measured the stone artifacts at the site to 250k-300k BC.
(SFC, 2/28/97, p.A15)
300000BC-200000BC Swanscombe
skull. Fragments of sapiens skull representing Britain's oldest known
human remains.
(NG, Nov. 1985, p. 612)
300000BC-200000BC In the Sierra de
Atapuerca fossil remains of 32 people from this time were found at Sima
de los Huesos (Pit of Bones) in northern Spain. They represented an
early stage in the development of Neanderthals. Grooves were observed
in the roots immediately under the crowns of rear teeth, probably from
the use of toothpicks.
(AM, May/Jun 97 p.31)
300000BC-30000BC The Neanderthal man of the type
first found in 1856 lived over this period. Detnal evidence in 2004
indicated that they reached adulthood by about age 15.
(SFC, 7/11/97, p.A17)(WSJ, 4/29/04, p.A1)
300000BC-12000 During the periodic ice ages the Loess
Hills formed along the eastern side of the Missouri River when westerly
winds blew the silty sediments of the melted glaciers along the low
walls of the river valley.
(NH, 11/96, p.76)
c280000BC A mastodon tooth and camel jaw of about
this time were found in 1997 in tunnels under Los Angeles in 1997.
(SFC, 2/12/97, p.A11)
c250000BC About this time the human brain size
stopped its slow trend toward enlargement. It may correspond with the
human attainment of the rudiments of language.
(NH, 9/97, p.6)
c250000BC The ice dome at Summit, the center of the
Greenland ice cap, was about this age at its bedrock.
(SFC, 10/9/97, p.C18)
c250000BC In Siberia stone tools along a river near
Irkutsk were dated by radioisotope to about this time.
(SFC, 2/17/98, p.A2)
250000BC-100000BC The period of
the Lower Paleolithic.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 447)
c200000BC In 1911 a broken wooden spear shaped
earlier than this age was found at Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, UK.
(SFC, 6/28/97, p.E3)
200000BC A recent theory suggests that we're all
descended from one African "Eve" who lived some 200,000 years ago. The
theory is based on DNA studies from the placentas of 147 women of
different racial backgrounds.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p.434,460)
200000BC Within the past 200,000 years our own
species, Homo sapiens, dispersed out of Africa.
(PacDis., Spg. 96, p.46)
200000BC It is speculated that the Neanderthals and
Homo Sapiens split from a common ancestor about this time. DNA research
in 2008 indicated that shortly after this time Homo Sapiens split into
2 groups. Most people in 2008 represented one group, while the bushmen
of southern Africa represented the other.
(SFC, 10/1/96, p.A2)(Econ, 4/26/08, p.101)
200000BC About this time a major earthquake in Hawaii
caused a large tsunami that crossed the Pacific in 4 hours and up the
shoreline of Japan for 300 yards.
(SFC, 2/17/97, p.A4)
200000BC Human speech began no earlier than about
this time.
(SFC, 1/10/00, p.A6)
200000BC-30000BC The Neanderthals lived in Europe and
southwest Asia. In 1996 it was discovered that skulls of Neanderthals
showed oblong, vertical swellings in the bone along the sides of the
nasal hole. Researchers also claimed that their noses were unusually
large.
(WH, 1994, p.21)(SFC, 10/1/96, p.A2)
195000 BC Human fossils found in Ethiopia in 1967
were dated in 2005 to be about 195k years old.
(SFC, 2/17/05, p.A6)
186000BC Human footprints that dated back to this
time were discovered along Langebaan Lagoon some 60 miles north of Cape
Town, South Africa, in Sep, 1995. The 117,000 year-old prints were cut
out and moved to the South African Museum in 1998.
(SFC, 8/15/97, p.A1,17)(SFC, 2/27/98, p.D3)(SFC,
6/24/98, p.A12)
186000BC An ice age began about this time.
(SFC, 8/15/97, p.A17)
180000BC On Malta the Ghar Dalam cave near the harbor
of Marsaxlokk revealed bones of an extinct pygmy hippo and elephant.
(AM, Jul/Aug '97 p.42)
c170000BC In 2000 the Mitochondrial Eve, the single
female ancestor of all humans, was dated to this time.
(NH, 3/1/04, p.32)
170000BC A supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud
occurred and was not detected until its light reached earth in 1987CE.
It was a catastrophic implosion of matter in less than a second to a
dense object about 15 miles across, a neutron star.
(NG, 5/88, p.629,635)
164000BC In 2007 scientists reported that shellfish
evidence from the a cave at Pinnacle Point near Mossel Bay, South
Africa, indicated human habitation at this time and that red ochre at
the site indicated a cognitive world enriched by symbols.
(SFC, 10/18/07, p.A8)
160000BC An ice-core drilled by Russian scientists at
Vostok Station in East Antarctica was analyzed by a group of scientists
in Grenoble, Switzerland and is bound to go back to an ice-age of this
period.
(NOHY, Weiner, 3/90, p.67)(See Nature 329, 10/87)
160000BC-154000BC Fossils of human skulls, found in
1997 near Herto, Ethiopia, were dated in 2003 to this period. Tim D.
White and colleagues made the find.
(SFC, 6/12/03, p.A10)
150000BC The La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, Ca.,
are no older than 150k years.
(SFC, 4/8/05, p.A17)
c150000BC In 1980 evidence of Aboriginal habitation
in Australia were discovered in charcoal remains deep in the bed of the
Great Barrier Reef and dated to this time.
(SFEC, 2/28/99, p.T4)
c150000BC Humans moved out beyond Africa about this
time.
(WSJ, 7/13/01, p.W16)
150000BC-80000BC A large migration of people from
Africa to Asia and Europe took place over this period. An earlier
migration period occurred from 840k-420k.
(SFC, 3/7/02, p.A2)
140000BC-70000BC DNA evidence indicated that a
hunter-gatherer group diverged from an original common ancestor in
Africa about this time and migration out of Africa followed.
(SFC, 6/9/03, p.A4)
135000BC DNA evidence in 1997 indicated that the
modern dog has been around since about this time.
(SFC, 6/13/97, p.A10)(MT, Fall 02, p.14)
135000BC-90000BC Severe droughts impacted Eastern Africa over this
period.
(WSJ, 4/25/08, p.A2)
130000BC The "first true Homo sapiens" about this
time from Ethiopia. It is described in 1996 by Donald Johanson and
Blake Edgar in: "From Lucy to Language: The Record of Human Evolution."
(SFC, 12/29/96, BR p.11)
130,000BC The lineage that includes the domestic cat
and its wild relatives originated about this time. Genetic analysis in
2007 suggested that the transformation of a vicious predator into a
docile tabby took place about 10,000 years ago.
(www.livescience.com/animals/070628_cat_family.html)
130000BC-30000BC The Middle Stone Age.
(SFC, 4/28/95, p.A-1)
125000BC Neandertal Homo sapiens indicates that brain
size and organization were basically modern. The Neandertals were the
first people known to bury their dead. The Neandertals spread all
across Europe, the Middle East, and western and central Asia.
(NG, Nov. 1985, p. 612, 614, 616)
125000BC Scientists in 2000 identified human stone
tools of this time from a fossil reef along the Red Sea coast of
Eritrea. They identified the area as the "world's first oyster bar."
(SFC, 5/5/00, p.A2)
125000BC A long period of global warming began that
lasted to about 11.5k BC.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ice_Age_Temperature.png)
120000BC End of the Middle Pleistocene. Middle
Pleistocene began 700,000 years ago.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 447)
120000BC A Chinese fossil skullcap, named Maba, is
stored in Beijing at the Inst. of Vertebrate Paleontology.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p.464)
120000BC The ice age that began around 186,000BC
receded about this time.
(SFC, 8/15/97, p.A17)
120000BC An alteration in the Earth's magnetic field
occurred.
(E&IH, 1973, p.94)
120000BC-80000BC Bone fragments from this period of
Neanderthals from the Moula-Guercy cave site in France were reported in
1999 to show evidence of cannibalism.
(SFC, 10/1/99, p.A3)
120000BC-60000BC The Klasies River Mouth fossils,
found in caves in a bluff overlooking the Indian Ocean on the southern
tip of (Africa) the continent. Although fragmented, the fossils
indicated early modern man.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 460)
120000BC-10000BC In Thailand the site at Chiang Saen
indicates long term occupation that dates back to the late Pleistocene.
(AM, Mar/Apr 97 p.G)
114000BC Controversial data from the Jinmium
rock-shelter in northern Australia suggests humans may have reached the
continent at this time.
(AM, Mar/Apr 97 p.21)
110000BC An alteration in the Earth's magnetic field
occurred.
(E&IH, 1973, p.94)
110000BC A Homo sapiens skull of this time was later
found near the Kebara site in Israel. It had a hypoglossal canal the
size of modern humans, which was thought to be indicative of speech.
(SFC, 4/28/98, p.A5)
100000BC The last high stand of the sea at the middle
coast of California was about this time. (GH-CEH, p.20)
100000BC In 2008 DNA evidence indicated that much of
the human population had descended from a small band of migrants that
left Africa for the Middle East about this time.
(SFC, 2/22/08, p.A4)
100000BC Neanderthal man began to bury his dead.
(NG, Nov. 1985, R. Leakey & A. Walker, p.629)
100000BC Spear-like tools are found in eastern Zaire
near Lake Rutanzige. Three sites along the Semlike River in the Katanda
region of Africa's Great Rift Valley show tools made from the rib bones
of large mammals. The tools have rows of barbs cut along one edge of
the bone. New testing techniques for age determination were used; i.e.
thermoluminescence, electron spin resonance, and uranium series dating.
The three ranges were: 180,000BC-75,000; 160,000BC-89,000; and
173,000BC-139,000. [see 88k]
(SFC, 4/28/95, p.A-1)
100000BC Small stone tools found in Gaojia near
Fengdu on the banks of the Yangtze indicate a tool workshop. More than
a 1,000 tools have been found and were probably used to collect roots.
(NH, 7/96, p.32)
c100000BC In 1943 construction workers in Millbrae,
Ca., uncovered elephant bones that dated to about this time.
(Ind, 9/21/02, 5A)
100000BC About this time another major earthquake in
Hawaii caused a large tsunami that crossed the Pacific in 4 hours and
up the shoreline of Japan for 300 yards. [see 200,000BC]
(SFC, 2/17/97, p.A4)
100000BC The Caribbean rodent Amblyrhiza, a 300-pound
rat, died out about this time.
(NH, 4/97, p.84)
100000BC Hunters stalked giant camels in the Syrian
desert about this time. Bones of the “Syrian Camel,” as tall as some
modern-day elephants, were discovered 150 miles north of Damascus in
2005.
(AP, 10/11/06)
100,00BC-80000BC In 2007 a human skull from this time, consisting of 16
pieces, was dug up after two years of excavation at a site in Xuchang
in China’s Henan province.
(AFP, 1/23/08)
100000BC-50000BC The 200-pound Genyornis newtoni, an
ostrich-like bird, and the 25-foot Megalonia lizard were among the
megafauna that flourished in Australia during this period.
(SFC, 1/8/99, p.A2)
100000BC-35000BC This is the approximate Mousterian
cultural period.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 447)
100000BC-35000BC This is the Middle Paleolithic.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 447)
95000BC In 2003 a 3-foot-tall adult female skeleton
was found in a cave believed to be 18,000 years old on the equatorial
island of Flores, located east of Java and northwest of Australia.
Scientists named the extinct species Homo floresiensis. Scientists in
2005 said the group emerged some 95,000 years earlier and went extinct
about 12,000 years ago.
(AP, 10/27/04)(SFC, 10/28/04, p.A1)(SFC, 3/4/05,
p.A2)
90000BC An Israeli-French team working in Israel use
the technique of thermoluminescence to show early modern humans from
Qafzeh cave. A Neandertal from Kebara cave showed an age of 60,000
years. The study was meant to find out the relationship between the two
groups.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 460)
90000BC Humans migrated into the Levant if not Europe
proper by this time.
(NH, 7/96, p.72)
90000BC Potassium-argon dating and thermoluminescence
can be used to date pieces of pottery back to about this time.
(SFEC, 12/15/96, BR p.7)
88000BC The Katanda site in Zaire (Congo) was dated
to this time. Evidence in the 1990s showed bone points showed barbs on
3 edges and rings carved in the base to tie them to shafts.
(SFC, 1/11/02, p.A2)
80000BC In 1983 an international expedition of
American, Polish and Egyptian anthropologists in the Aswan region
unexpectedly came upon the skeleton of a prehistoric man thought to be
about 80,000 years old, the oldest human skeleton ever found in Egypt.
Early modern humans were present in the Levant between 130,000-80,000
BP.
(http://tinyurl.com/2l2rmz)(www.athenapub.com/8shea1.htm)
80000BC-70000BC The human population declined
suddenly according to evidence from the mutation rate of mitochondria
evaluated in 2000. The survivors provided the gene pool for all humans
thereafter.
(DC, 7/1/00)
75000BC In 2002 evidence from the Blombos Cave in
South Africa indicated possible symbolic thinking. Sophisticated tools
of stone and carve bone had etchings that indicated complex behavior.
Evidence of ornamental bead-making was reported in 2004.
(SFC, 1/11/02, p.A2)(SFC, 4/16/04, p.A2)
75000BC Human head lice and body lice diverged about
this time, which means that human clothing began about this time.
(Econ, 12/24/05, Survey p.7)
74000BC The major Toba volcanic eruption occurred in
Sumatra about this time. It was later believed that this eruption
caused a major temperature drop and reduction in the human population.
An ice age soon followed. Analysis of mitochondrial DNA seemed to
corroborate a significant reduction in human population around this
time.
(DC, 9/2/02)(Econ, 12/24/05, Survey p.9)
70000BC Two Neanderthal skulls from France of this
time were later found. They had a hypoglossal canal the size of modern
humans, which was thought to be indicative of speech.
(SFC, 4/28/98, p.A5)
70000BC Genetic studies in 2008 estimated that the
human population at this time may have shrunk to as low as 2000 in
Eastern Africa due to a long period of severe droughts there.
(WSJ, 4/25/08, p.A2)
c65000BC Geneticists in 2005 used DNA evidence to
conclude that human emigration from Africa took place about this time
from the southern end of the Red Sea and then pushing along the coast
of India and Southeast Asia. The Orang Asli people of Malaysia likely
descended from this 1st migration.
(SFC, 5/13/05, p.A7)(Econ, 12/24/05, Survey p.5)
60000BC A Neandertal from Kebara cave (Israel) showed
an age of 60,000 years. An Israeli-French team working in Israel use
the technique of thermoluminescence to study the relationship between
early humans and Neandertals.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 460)
60000BC At Shanidar, a large cave in the Zagros
mountains of northeastern Iraq soil samples from a grave of a
[Neanderthal] man of this time indicated pollen grains from 8 different
types of flowers. [2nd ref dated at c.10,000BC]
(WH, 1994, p.21)(SFEM, 6/7/98, p.52)
60000BC-10000BC The Acheulian Age or early Stone Age
culture lasted over this period.
(Enc. of Africa, 1976, p.165)
57000BC Scientists in 2000 estimated that a
Y-chromosome African male, nicknamed Adam, dated to about this time.
Genetic analysis traced all modern human males back to this ancestor.
(NH, 3/1/04, p.34)(NG, 8/04, p.42)
53000BC-50000BC During this period the first humans
migrated to Australia from the islands of Indonesia. It is believed
that they came in bamboo rafts from Indonesia and also from southern
China.
(SFC, 1/8/99, p.A2)(NG, Oct. 1988, p.467)
53000BC-45000BC Australia's early human population
wiped out the continent's megafauna over this period.
(SFC, 6/8/01, p.A8)
53000BC-27000BC Prehuman fossils from a site on the
Solo River near the Javanese town of Ngandong were dated in 1996 to
this period, and identified as belonging to the species of Homo
erectus. Brain size was equivalent to modern humans.
(SFC, 12/13/96, p.A4)(NH, 4/97, p.70)(NH, 9/97, p.6)
51000BC The fossil of a Diprotodon, a giant marsupial
from this time, was excavated in 2001 from Cox's Creek in New South
Wales.
(SFC, 6/8/01, p.A8)
50000BC Homo sapiens sapiens, man the doubly wise,
appeared about this time. In 2000 DNA evidence indicated that modern
man evolved out of Africa as recently as this time.
(NOHY, Weiner, 3/90, p.5)(SFC, 12/7/00, p.A3)
50000BC The stone age culture of Papua New Guinea
goes back this time.
(SFC, 5/29/96, p.A8)
50000BC Arizona’s Barringer Crater was created about
this time by a meteor. Named after mining engineer Daniel Barringer, it
measures 3/4 of a mile wide and 640 feet deep and is suspected to have
resulted from a meteor of about 100 feet in diameter. An iron meteor
100 feet in diameter and weighing about 60,000 tons crashed into the
desert at about 45,000 miles per hour near Winslow, Az. A crater 4,000
feet wide and 570 feet deep was created. 85% of it melted and the rest
broke into bits called Canyon Diablo meteorites.
(SFC, 7/2/99, p.A7)(www.barringercrater.com/science/)
50000BC-40000BC Homo sapiens (Neandertal). Skull of
adult male found by D. Peyrony and L. Capitan at La Ferrassie, France
in 1909. Neandertal is the German site of discovery in 1856.
(NG, Nov. 1985, p. 573)
50000BC-40000BC A Homo neanderthalensis skull was
found at the Amud cave in Israel in 1961.
(NH, 4/97, p.22)
50000BC-20000BC Archaeologists later identified
evidence of stone age technology in Aq Kupruk, and Hazar Sum dating to
this period. Plant remains at the foothill of the Hindu Kush mountains
indicate, that North Afghanistan was one of the earliest places to
domestic plants and animals.
(www.afghan, 5/25/98)
48000BC In 2004 archeologists claimed to have found
evidence of human habitation at a site along the Savannah River in
Allendale County, SC.
(SFC, 11/18/04, p.A7)
c48000BC An iron meteor 100 feet in diameter and
weighing about 60,000 tons crashed into the desert at about 45,000
miles per hour near Winslow, Az. near the current Lowell Observatory.
Meteor Crater measured 4,000 feet wide and 570 feet deep. 85% of it
melted and the rest broke into bits called Canyon Diablo meteorites.
This was the first crater to be identified as being caused by a meteor.
(SFC, 7/2/99, p.A7)
c48000BC Charcoal from camp fires in the Pedra Faruda
site of Piaui state, Brazil, were carbon dated in 1987 to this time.
(SFEC, 2/20/00, p.A18)
48000BC-44000BC In Australia about 85% of the
land-dwelling megafauna weighing over 100 pounds went extinct about
this time. It was later suspected that systematic burning of the
forests by humans contributed to the extinction. Some 55 species died
off including the 230-pound flightless "thunder bird" called Genyornis.
(SFC, 1/8/99, p.A2)(SFC, 6/8/01, p.A8)
45000BC The extinction of most of Australia’s large
animals occurred about this time, shortly after the arrival of humans.
(SFC, 7/8/05, p.A2)
45,000BC-42,000BC Archeologists in 2007 reported on
human teeth, tools, beads, carved ivory and other artifacts dug up at
the Kostenki archeological site on the Don River in Russia, about 250
miles south of Moscow. They dated these artifacts to 45,000 to 42,000
years ago, an age similar to other items found in Western Europe.
(Reuters, 1/11/07)
43000BC A flute-like instrument made of bear bone was
found by archeologist Janez Dirjec at the Divje Babe site in the valley
of the Idrijca River in Slovenia. It was believed to be about 45,000
years old.
(SFC, 10/31/96, p.A12)
c43000BC About this time some 7 women led to the
descendants of the population of modern Europe. In 2001 geneticist
Bryan Sykes authored "The Seven Daughters of Eve."
(WSJ, 7/13/01, p.W16)
43000BC Scientitsts in 2008 reported that one of two
genetically distinct mammoth groups went extinct about this time.
(www.science.psu.edu/alert/Schuster6-2008.htm)
41000BC Scholars surmised that diggers in Africa's
Swaziland began to seek iron about this time.
(SFEC, 5/11/97, Z1 p.7)
41000BC In 2006 archeologists reported evidence of
cannibalism about this time from Neanderthal bones at the El Sidron
cave in the Asturias region of Spain.
(SFC, 12/11/06, p.A1)
41000BC The skull of a giant kangaroo dating to this
time was found in a cave in the thick rainforest of the rugged
northwest of Tasmania in 2000. Scientists used the skull to argue that
that man likely hunted to death the giant kangaroo and other very large
animals on the southern island of Tasmania.
(AP, 8/12/08)
40700BC In 1992 rock engravings in South Australia
are carbon dated at 42,700 years.
(SF E&C, 1/15/1995, T-4)
40000BC This date approximately marks the Aurignacian
cultural period represented by characteristic stone and bone tool kits.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 447)(AM, 7/00, p.30)
40000BC The oldest Asian Homo sapiens are about this
age.
(NH, 4/97, p.70)
40000BC The earliest evidence for personal ornaments
appeared in anatomically modern humans about this time.
(AM, 7/00, p.30)
40000BC The bones of a Neanderthal baby from this
time were found in southwestern France in 1914. The "Le Moustier 2"
bones were put away and re-discovered in 1996.
(SFC, 9/5/02, p.A16)
40000BC In later Washington state Mount St. Helens
was born and intermittent eruptions continued to about 500BC.
(SFEC, 8/16/98, p.A15)
c40000BC Volcanic activity began forming the craters
and mountains around Mono Lake, Ca.
(PacDis, Summer '97, p.2)
40000BC-20000BC DNA evidence indicated that 4
distinct population lineages entered the New World across the Bering
Sea during this period.
(SFC, 2/17/98, p.A2)
40,000BC-12,000BC A great river of ice formed in
Oregon’s Wallowa Valley. The moraines around Wallowa Lake remained
after the glacier melted.
(SSFC, 7/9/06, p.G4)
40000BC-2000 Sea level seems to have dropped at least
four times in this period.
(DD-EVTT, p.300)
39000BC In 2005 scientists suggested that a supernova
took place about this time at a distance of 250 light years from Earth.
A shock wave of iron rich grains hit Earth 7,000 years later. Slower
debris accumulated into comet-like objects. They suggested that one may
have hit North America about 11,000BC and caused the extinction of
mammoths.
(SFC, 9/24/05, p.B2)
38000BC Stone-age humans came to Europe, probably
from central Asia and the Middle East, in 2 waves of migration that
began about this time. DNA evidence from Y-chromosomes in 2000 CE
suggested that 4 of 5 European men shared a common ancestor from this
1st wave.
(SFC, 11/10/00, p.A7)
c38,000BC In 2003 British scientists found
40,000-year-old human footprints in central Mexico, shattering theories
that mankind arrived in the Americas tens of thousands of years later
from Asia. The footprints were found in an abandoned quarry close to
the Cerro Toluquilla volcano and were subsequently studied and dated by
a multinational team of scientists.
(AFP, 7/5/05)
38000BC The carbon dating process can be used to date
specimens that were alive as long as 40,000 years ago.
(SFEC, 12/15/96, BR p.7)
c38000BC Volcanic activity on Kauai, Ha., ended about
this time.
(SFEC, 8/29/99, p.T6)
38000BC One group of wooly mammoths died off in North
America about this time for unknown reasons. The demise of a 2nd group
took place about 10,900BC.
(SFC, 6/14/07, p.A22)
38000BC-1996 Scientists in Australia said that they
found a shrub in Tasmania that began growing 40,000 years ago. Dubbed
"King's Holly," the plant clones itself and now covers 2 secluded river
gullies in the remote southwest.
(SFC, 10/26/96, p.A17)
36000BC A woolly mammoth died on the Texas Gulf
Coast. It was unearthed in 2004 and tentatively dated to this time.
(AP, 1/13/04)
36000BC-34000BC In 2002 the jawbone of a cave-man
living in what is now Romania was found in Pestera cu Oase. It was
reported as the oldest fossil from an early modern human to be found in
Europe and was carbon-dated to this time.
(AP, 9/22/03)
35000BC Human kind does not seem to have been
addicted to war throughout its history on earth. Paleontologists
believe that before about 35,000BC men many have dealt with one another
the way higher apes do today. There is conflict among the higher apes,
but no warfare.
(V.D.-H.K.p.408)
35000BC This date approximately marks the Neandertal
Chatelperronian cultural period with characteristics copied from
Aurignacian neighbors.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 447)(AM, 7/00, p.30)
35000BC In 2008 archeologists unearthed tools dating
back at least 35,000 years in a rock shelter in Australia's remote
northwest, making it one of the oldest archaeological finds in that
part of the country.
(AP, 4/7/08)
35000BC-23000BC In Australia Aboriginal rock
paintings were made as far back as this time.
(SFEC, 2/28/99, p.T4)
35000BC-10000BC The Upper Paleolithic Period. There
was considerable variation in the types of tools that were used and
according to prehistorian J.D. Clark, a new self-awareness or concern
for matters that had no relation to fulfilling biological needs. This
is shown by the burial of the dead together with food and weapons.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 447)(Enc. of Africa, 1976, p.165)
35000BC-10000BC A rich Paleolithic site, Diuktai
Cave, was discovered on the Aldan, a tributary of the Lena in Siberia
by Dr. Yuri Mochanov ~1968.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p.464)
34000BC A Neanderthal skeleton from this time was
found near the village of St. Cesaire, France, in 1979. It indicated
survival following a fractured skull.
(WSJ, 4/23/02, p.B1)
34000BC Researchers have confirmed that Neanderthals
of this time in central France had more sophisticated stone tools than
their predecessors. The tools may have been acquired by trade with
Cro-Magnons. The site of the artifacts was Auxierre, France.
(SFC, 5/16/96, p.A-7)
33000BC In 2004 archaeologists of the University of
Tuebingen said a 35,000BC-year-old flute made from a woolly mammoth's
ivory tusk had been unearthed in a German cave and pieced together from
31 fragments. In 2009 a flute from about this same time, made from
vulture bone, was displayed. Its 12 pieces had been found in the Hohle
Fels cave in southern Germany.
(AP, 12/11/04)(SFC, 6/25/09, p.A4)
33000BC Av ivory carving dating to about this time
depicted a busty woman. It was found in 2008 in a German cave and was
unveiled in 2009 by archaeologists who believed it to be the oldest
known sculpture of the human form. The carving found in six fragments
in Germany's Hohle Fels cave depicts a woman with a swollen belly,
wide-set thighs and large, protruding breasts.
(AP, 5/14/09)
33000BC About this time scattered hunter-gatherer
groups underwent a cultural revolution. For the first time, humans
began to create symbols of themselves, of the animals around them, and
perhaps of the passage of time.
(NG, Oct. 1988 , p. 440)
c33000BC About this time, or more recently, a
catastrophic earthquake carved out the Golden Gate and the waters of
the Pacific rushed into the exposed plain to form the SF Bay. [see
8000BC]
(SFEC, 2/9/97, p.W4)
33000BC-9000BC Europe's Upper Paleolithic age.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 440)
32000BC Late Neandertal skeleton excavated in 1979
CE at St. Cesaire in southwestern France, and studied by French
anthropologist Bernard Vandermeersch. The associated stone tools found
with the remains were those of Upper Paleolithic man, who displaced the
Neandertals.
(NG, Nov. 1985, p.615-616)
32000BC-21000BC In 2004 Some 70 clay hearths of this
age were identified in a single cave in the northwestern Peloponnese.
(Arch, 1/05, p.13)
31000BC In the northern Moluccas humans were visiting
the coastal caves of Golo and Wetef on Gebe Island at this time.
(AM, Mar/Apr 97 p.21)
31000BC Stone tools from Monte Verde, Chile, indicate
that people lived there about this time.
(SFC, 5/23/98, p.A13)
c30400BC Radiocarbon date for the Cave paintings at
Chauvet, France. The first period of cave art is called Aurignacian.
(NH, 7/96, p.18,70)
30000BC An ivory pendant strung by a hole at the
narrow end bears rows of dots, a common motif 32,000 years ago.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 451)
30000BC Carved body of a man whose arms bear
striations was excavated from a cave at Hohlenstein, West Germany. The
head is shaped as a lion muzzle.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p.467)
30000BC-22000BC This marks approximately the
Gravettian cultural period. [see 26-20k]
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 447)
30000BC-14000BC Scientists in 2007 said that
prevailing winds in North America during this period blew from the East
Coast. The Laurentide Ice Sheet covered much of the eastern two-thirds
of the continent deep into the Midwest and the later Middle Atlantic
states.
(SFC, 2/15/07, p.A20)
c29000BC Bones with Neanderthal traits from this time
were later found in a cave in Mladec, Czech Republic. Some scientists
believed they represented interbreeding between Neanderthals and Home
Sapiens.
(SSFC, 6/19/05, p.F2)
28,000BC Neanderthals persisted to about this time at
the site of Zafarraya in Andalucia, Spain.
(Arch, 9/00, p.53)
28000BC In 2001 Russian and Norwegian archeologists
reported evidence that date to about this time of humans camped at
Mamontovaya Kurya on the Usa River at the Arctic circle. A tusk was
dated at 36,600 years of age and plant remains at 30,000.
(SFC, 9/6/01, p.E2)
28000BC In 2003 Russian scientists reported evidence
of a hunting site on the Yana River, Siberia, 300 miles north of the
Arctic Circle that dated to about this time.
(SFC, 1/2/04, p.A2)
28000BC The Ainu were the aboriginal inhabitants of
the Japanese islands back to this time. They had European features,
wavy hair and thick beards before they intermarried with the Japanese.
(SFC, 8/23/97, p.A10)
28000BC Homo sapiens (modern). Skull of adult male
found by French workmen (L. Lartet) at Cro-Magnon, France in 1868.
(NG, Nov. 1985, p. 573)
28000BC The Cussac cave in France was found in 2000
to contain drawings from this time. Bones of 5 people from the
Neolithic era were also found.
(SFC, 7/5/01, p.A8)
28800BC-12200BC Analysis of core sediment from the
bottom of Lake Pata in the western Amazon River basin in 1996 indicated
that the area remained covered with lush tropical rain forest during
this time of maximum glacial coverage in the northern latitudes.
(LSA, Spg/97, p.32)
27000BC In 2000 DNA analysis of a Neanderthal infant
skeleton from this time showed a 7% difference in DNA to modern humans,
which indicated that modern humans did not descend from them.
(SFC, 3/29/00, p.A8)(WSJ, 3/29/00, p.A1)
27000BC-26000BC Neanderthals lived in Croatia. Their
remains were later found at the Vindija cave and dated to this time in
1999 with accelerator radiocarbon dating.
(SFC, 10/26/99, p.B3)
26000BC France's Dordogne Valley is the site of caves
in Le Conte cliff where items such as the illustrated ivory bead or
button have been found.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 451)
26000BC Experts in 2006 reported that charcoal
evidence indicated that small bands of Neanderthals took refuge in
Gorham’s Cave in Gibraltar about this time.
(SFC, 9/14/06, p.A9)
26000BC In Sungir, an open-air settlement northeast
of later-day Moscow, people were being buried with thousands of carved
ivory beads and little wheel-shaped bone ornaments.
(Econ, 12/22/07, p.131)
26000BC-20000BC This marks approximately the
Gravettian (see 30-22k) cultural period. It was named after the
southern French site of La Gravette.
(AM, 9/01, p.12)
26000BC-16000BC Africa’s oldest known rock art dated
to about this time at a site in Namibia.
(Econ, 5/3/08, p.56)
25000BC San Francisco and the Bay Area were home to
mammoths indicating cold temperatures of an Ice Age. In 1934 a 10-pound
mammoth tooth from this time was found by engineers working on the new
Bay Bridge.
(SSFC, 1/15/09, DB p.43)
25000BC In 2005 archaeologists in northern Austria
reported finding the remains of two newborns dating back 27,000 years
while excavating a hillside near Krems. The newborns were buried
beneath mammoth bones and with a string of 31 beads, suggesting that
the internment involved some sort of ritual.
(AP, 9/26/05)
25000BC In 2006 France took over ownership of a cave
in the Vilhonneur forest where a human skeleton that dated to this time
was found in a decorated room.
(SFC, 6/3/06, p.A2)
25000BC The earliest known atlatl dated to this time.
This example from France of the device, use to throw a spear, was made
of reindeer antler.
(Econ, 4/12/08, p.90)
25000BC Sand rock art from Namibia, part of an art
exhibit of African Art, is dated to this period.
(WSJ, 11/16/95, p.A-18)
24000BC An early representation of a human was carved
from mammoth ivory about 26,000 years ago. It was discovered in Brno,
Czechoslovakia. The tiny "Venus of Dolni Vestonici," more than
25,000 years old, is the earliest known sculpture of a human figure.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 440)(SFEC, 5/23/99, DB p.43)
24000BC A multiple burial was unearthed at Dolni
Vestonice, Czechoslovakia. Three skeletons whose skulls were adorned
with circles of arctic fox and wolf teeth and ivory beads.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p.466)
23000BC An ivory head known as the Venus of
Brassenpouy named after the site of its recovery in France bears
distinct facial features and coiffure. A bird bone flute of similar age
is here illustrated.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 449)
23000BC Homo erectus survived in Indonesia to about
this time.
(Arch, 1/05, p.14)
23000BC The oldest known baked clay figurine (11 cm)
is from Dolni Vestonice, now at the Moravian museum.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 459)
23000BC Lake Bonneville crested and covered some
20,000 sq. miles over what is now Utah, Nevada, and Idaho.
(NH, 9/96, p.62)
23000BC Puget Sound off the state of Washington was
carved by glaciers 25,000 years ago.
(AAM, 3/96, p.84)
23000BC-10000BC The Sandia Cave in New Mexico
provided human shelter back to this period and was excavated by
archeologist Frank Hibben in the 1930s after it was discovered by Boy
Scouts.
(SFEC, 5/30/99, p.T8)
23000BC-18000BC The last glacial maximum took place
over this period.
(SFC, 1/2/04, p.A2)
22500BC On Nov 28, 1998, Portuguese archeologists led
by Dr. Joao Zilhao found the skeleton of a young boy (the Lagar Velho
child) in the Lapedo Valley, who reportedly exhibited both Neanderthal
and Homo sapiens features, the first possible hybrid to be found.
(SFEC, 4/25/99, p.A4)(AM, 7/00, p.25)
c22000BC The last ice age began and humans in Europe
retreated to Spain, the Balkans and the Ukraine.
(SFC, 11/10/00, p.A7)
22000BC-18000BC This marks approximately the
Solutrian cultural period. Researcher in 1999 proposed that people of
this culture crossed the Atlantic from the Iberian peninsula and
settled on the eastern American seaboard.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 447)(SFC, 11/1/99, p.A9)
c21000BC Plant remains from this time were found at
the Ohalo II site on the shore of the Sea of Galilee indicating use of
barley and perhaps other grains in the human diet.
(SFC, 6/22/04, p.A3)(SFC, 8/16/04, p.A6)(Econ,
8/7/04, p.65)
c21000BC In Mexico the Popocatepetl volcano
erupted with a force equal to the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens in
Washington.
(SFEC, 5/16/99, Z1 p.8)
21000BC-18000BC In 2008 researchers reported that DNA
evidence indicated that 95% of native Americans had descended from 6
women of this period. It was believed that the women had lived in
Beringia, a land bridge that stretched from Asia to North America
during this time.
(SFC, 3/14/08, p.A12)
21000BC-18000BC The site of Kostenki by the River Don
was inhabited for ~3,000 years when glaciers moved in. Shelters were
built partly underground for warmth with large mammoth bones. The site
was first excavated in 1879 CE and includes human burials, animal
bones, female figures of limestone and ivory, necklaces of arctic fox
teeth, and headbands of mammoth ivory.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 449)
20000BC In Australia scientists in 2005 said hundreds
of human footprints dating back 20,000 years were discovered in a dry
lake bed near Willandra Lakes, southwest of Sydney.
(Reuters, 12/21/05)
20000BC Some scientists believe that ancient people
from Siberia crossed the Bering land bridge about this time and began
their southward migration into the Americas. In 2001 skull measurements
indicated that members of the Jomon-Ainu of Japan made the first
crossings.
(SFC, 5/23/98, p.A13)(SFC, 7/31/01, p.A4)
20000BC-10000BC This was a generally wet period.
(NH, 9/96, p.32)
20000BC-5000BC In 2004 Stephen Mithen authored “After
the Ice: A Global Human History,” an account of human survival during
this period.
(Arch, 1/05, p.54)
18000BC Innovations in weapon design included the
spear thrower invented about this time.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 451)
c18000BC In 1999 a French-led expedition chopped
clear the fully preserved carcass of a 20 thousand-year-old woolly
mammoth, the "Jarkov Mammoth," from the permafrost of Siberia at
Khatanga, Russia.
(SFC, 10/21/99, p.A1)
c18000BC Researchers in 1999 proposed that Solutrean
people crossed the Atlantic from the Iberian peninsula and settled on
the eastern American seaboard.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 447)(SFC, 11/1/99, p.A9)
c18000BC In Zimbabwe caves in the Matopos Hills were
decorated with paintings.
(WSJ, 12/9/98, p.A13)
18000BC-11000BC This marks approximately the
Magdalenian cultural period. It was named after the site of La
Madeleine, France, marked by fine art and tool-making and the use of
bone for harpoons, spear points, and other purposes.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 489,495)
17800BC-12800BC Tasmania, a Paleolithic site was
filled with bones and stones and the charcoal from cooking hearths. The
remains are 90% wallaby and 8% wombat.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p.466)
17500BC Dr. D.J. Mulvaney in 1961 and
1964 unearthed human artifacts at Carnarvon National
Park in Queensland, Australia, subsequently dated at 19,500 years.
(SF E&C, 1/15/1995, T-4)
17000BC A site at Meadowcroft ,Pa., has been carbon
dated for human habitation to this age.
(USAT, 2/11/97, p.A1)
17000BC-15000BC The Cactus Hill site, 45 miles south
of Richmond, Va., was reported in 2000 to contain evidence of human
settlers from this period.
(SFC, 4/7/00, p.A2)
16000BC The last major glaciation reaches its
maximum. The English channel was dry; Australia adjoined Tasmania and
New Guinea. Venice lay 200 miles from the sea.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 446)
16000BC A mile-high glacier covered the area of
Connecticut.
(WSJ, 9/3/98, p.A16)
16000BC On Manhattan Island the ice was a half-mile
thick. In western North America, the ice covered parts of Washington,
Idaho, Montana, and all of Western Canada. In Europe it buried
Scandinavia and Scotland, most of Great Britain, Denmark, France,
Germany, much of Poland and much of the Soviet Union. In the Southern
Hemisphere, there was ice in Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina. See
levels fell by 350 feet.
(NOHY, Weiner, 3/90, p.102)
16000BC The glaciers in North America from New
Jersey to Seattle began to recede.
(NH, 5/96, p.30)
16000BC The west coast of North America deglaciated
by this time allowing people, who had crossed the Bering Strait land
bridge, to move south.
(SFC, 4/4/08, p.A4)
16000BC In Sep, 2003, a 3-foot-tall adult female
skeleton was found in a cave believed to be 18,000 years old. A trove
of fragmented bones accounted for as many as seven primitive
individuals that lived on the equatorial island of Flores, located east
of Java and northwest of Australia. Scientists have named the extinct
species Homo floresiensis. Scientists in 2005 said the group emerged
some 95,000 years earlier and went extinct about 12,000 years ago. In
2009 new studies suggested the people, dubbed hobbits, were a
previously unknown species altogether.
(AP, 10/27/04)(SFC, 10/28/04, p.A1)(SFC, 3/4/05,
p.A2)(AP, 5/7/09)
16000BC-9000BC Sculptures of stone, bone, ivory and
clay record animals familiar to the Cro-Magnon peoples, whose artistic
expertise peaked in France and Spain during this time.
(NG, Nov. 1985, p. 620)
15000BC The cave art of Paleolithic man of Lascaux,
France dates to this time. It contains some 600 paintings, 1,500
engravings, and innumerable mysterious dots and geometric
figures.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p.434,485)
c15000BC The San Francisco west coast extended out 6
miles past the Farallon Islands.
(SFC, 12/20/99, p.A8)
c15000BC Dogs first began to associate with some
humans as people began to form settlements.
(WSJ, 11/22/02, p.B1)
15000BC-13000BC During the last Ice Age dams of
glacial meltwater repeatedly failed and eroded land in southeastern
Washington state and Oregon. This exposed petrified logs in what later
became Gingko Petrified Forest State Park. An ice dam, which blocked
the Clark Fork River in Montana and created lake Missoula, broke at
least 40 times and caused cataclysmic floods. One Missoula flood left
Portland under 400 feet of water.
(CW, Fall ‘03, p.20)(SSFC, 9/12/04, p.D9)
15000BC-12000BC The Solutrean phase of the Upper
Paleolithic is named after the Roche de Solutre near Macon, France.
(SFEC, 11/21/99, p.T4)
15000BC-10000BC The Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age.
(WH, 1994, p.19)
14000BC A 35 cm (14-inch) stone head that seems to be
half man and half lion or leopard, found in the El Juyo cave, in the
foothills southwest of Santander, Spain. Anthropologists suggest the
cave held a sanctuary for religious rituals.
(NG, Nov. 1985, p. 623)
14000BC Several thousand engravings are made at La
Marche, France, mostly of animals but also including some humans.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 448)
14000BC The bas-relief of a bison on a limestone slab
was found in a shelter at Angles-sur-l'Anglin, France.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 452)
14000BC The earliest fossils of domestic dogs date to
this time. They were found in Germany.
(MT, Fall 02, p.14)
14000BC-10000BC Rock art was inscribed in the Coso
Mountains of California. In 2005 the area was designated as the Coso
Rock Art National Historic Landmark.
(SSFC, 10/23/05, p.F12)
13500BC A sandstone tablet from the Enlene cave in
the French Pyrenees, excavated by R. Begouen and J. Clottes. Fragments
were found between 1930 and 1983 and reveal possible human figures and
a definite bison.
(NG. Nov. 1985, p. 618)
13000BC Archeologist Tom Dillehay and others believe
that the first people arrived in the Americas about this time.
(AM, Mar/Apr 97 p.62)
c13000BC Human teeth and skull fragments from the
Pedra Faruda site of Piaui state, Brazil, were carbon dated to this
time. Niede Guidon began excavations at the site in 1970.
(SFEC, 2/20/00, p.A18)
13000BC Early Natufian settlements began in the
Middle East according to archeological evidence later found in Jordan.
A drying climate from 10,800 BC to 9,500 BC made them nomadic again. A
2nd attempt to settle began around 9.500 BC and became known as
Pre-Pottery Neolithic.
(Econ, 6/27/09, p.86)
13000BC An ivory plaque excavated at Malta in Siberia
was designed with circles of dots, a possible indication of marking
time.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 440)
13000BC About this time the Barents Ice Shelf, a vast
piece of ice that sat north of Scandinavia, collapsed into the sea. It
may have raised sea level by more than ten feet per century for nearly
five centuries.
(NOHY, Weiner, 3/90, p.109)
13000BC The Lake Missoula Floods occurred as recently
as 15,000 years ago.
(Smith., 4/95, p.50)
13000BC The Great Lakes originated about this time.
(NH, 7/98, p.68)
13000BC A supernova explosion occurred about 15,000
years ago that is revealed as the Cygnus Loop, the expanding blast wave
of the explosion.
(NH, 8/96, p.72)
13000BC Mt. St. Helen's in Washington State erupted
about this time. It left a sediment of ash in between layers of
sediment from the glacial floods of Lake Missoula. This evidence
indicates that there may have been as many as a hundred gigantic floods
from Lake Missoula repeatedly breaking the glacial ice build-up.
(Smith., 4/1995, p.58)
13000BC-8000BC Stanley J. Olsen, author of the
"Origins of the Domestic Dog" (1985), posits that Paleolithic
hunter-gatherers domesticated various subspecies of wolf during this
time period in northern Europe, North America, the Near East and China.
(Nat. Hist. 3/96, p.36)
c12500BC The Altamira Cave in Spain and its wall
paintings dated to this time. The cave was rediscovered in 1879 by
Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, a lawyer and amateur archeologist.
(WSJ, 9/18/01, p.A20)
12300BC In 2008 scientists reported that fossilized
human feces found in 8 caves near Paisley, Ore., dated to about this
time. The coprolites contained DNA with characteristics matching those
of living Amerindians.
(SFC, 4/4/08, p.A4)(Econ, 4/5/08, p.84)
12000BC The last ice age ended about this time
flooding the land bridge between Alaska and Siberia.
(SFC, 4/4/08, p.A4)
c12000BC The Broken Mammoth settlement in central
Alaska dated to this time.
(SFC, 7/25/03, p.A1)
c12000BC In 2004 archaeologists in Kansas working
near the Colorado-Kansas border reported radiocarbon dating results
finished in February that showed mammoth and prehistoric camel bones
dating back to about this time.
(AP, 6/13/05)
12000BC In 2008 evidence from Monte Verde, Chile,
indicated that a small band of people inhabited the area. Initial
evidence was found in a peat bog there in 1977.
(SFC, 5/9/08,
p.A8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Verde)
12000BC Bison are shaped from moist clay in the Tuc
d'Audoubert cave of the French Pyranees, discovered in 1912 CE.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 443)
12000BC The Niaux cave in Tarascon, France, dated
back to the Ice Age.
(SFEC, 5/30/99, p.T1)
12000BC As the earth warmed, the rain forest came up.
It pushed away the wallabies, the wombats, the possums, and so the
people (of Tasmania) had to follow their food.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p.467)
c12000BC During the last ice age the Channel Islands
off California were part of one vast island geologists call Santarosae.
The northern islands were linked, but probably not with the mainland.
(SFEC, 4/26/98, p.T11)
12000BC Lake Lahontan, which spread across northwest
Utah, reached its highest level during the last phase of the last Ice
Age.
(NH, 9/96, p.35)
12000BC The first known fossil evidence of
human-canine cohabitation dates to about this time.
(SFC, 6/13/97, p.A10)
12000BC-10000BC A site along the Nile River in Sudan
has a graveyard (Site 117) of this period that indicates warfare
between communities.
(NH, Jul, p.31)
11500BC-10200BC A site near Kenosha, Wisc., indicates
human butchery of woolly mammoths during this period.
(Arch, 7/02, p.50)
11050BC-10900BC Clovis points (from Clovis New
Mexico), tools of Paleo-Indian hunters (known as Clovis people), were
dated in 2007 to this period. They pursued ice-age mammoths, camels,
bison and horses. These people were ancestral to the Folsom culture and
were believed to have arrived across a land bridge from Asia. Clovis
culture was reported to be very similar to Solutrean.
(NH, 2/97, p.22)(SFC, 11/1/99, p.A9)(Arch, 7/02,
p.51)(SFC, 2/23/07, p.A4)
11000BC The last warming period began about 13,000
years ago. It melted the glaciers and put Beringia back under the
Bering Sea.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p.434)
11000BC A cooling period in the northern hemisphere,
called the Younger Dryas, began about this time and lasted for over a
thousand years.
(Econ, 5/26/07, p.94)
11000BC A mass extinction about this time occurred in
parts of North America and coincided with the growing population of
Indian hunters [see 10,900BC].
(SFC, 1/8/99, p.A2)
11000BC Scientists in 2005 said archeological sites
dating to this time in Michigan, Canada, Arizona, New Mexico, and the
Carolinas showed evidence, magnetic metal spherules, for a comet impact
that may have wiped out North American mammoths and many other animals
[see 10,900BC].
(SFC, 9/24/05, p.B2)
11000BC In 2008 Colorado landscapers in Boulder
stumbled onto a cache of more than 83 ancient tools buried by the
Clovis people, ice age hunter-gatherers, dating back 13,000 years.
(AP, 2/27/09)
11000BC Scientists in 2001-2002 discovered skeletons
in caves along Mexico’s Yucatan coast that dated to about this time.
(SFC, 9/10/04, p.A2)
11000BC Peñon Woman, found in central Mexico
in 1959, dated to about this time. She shared many of the features
found in the Kennewick Man (1996) of Washington State.
(Econ, 7/16/05, p.77)
11000BC The earliest amber artifacts are from this
time and were found in caves in Cheddar, England. The British Isles
were connected to Europe and the English Channel could be walked across.
(PacDis, Winter/'97, p.9)
11000BC A Paleolithic burial in San Teodoro Cave,
Sicily, revealed an arrowhead embedded in the pelvis bone of an adult
female. Another arrowhead is known from the vertebra of a child buried
in the Grotte des Enfants on the Italian coast.
(AM, May/Jun 97 p.24)
11000BC A meteorite from Mars (ALH 84001), discovered
in 1984, landed in Antarctica about this time. It had been knocked into
space from Mars around 16 million BC. Scientists in 1996 claimed to
have found evidence of organic minerals, polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbons, in the meteorite that formed some 3.6 billion years ago.
(SFC, 8/7/96, p.A1,9)(SSFC, 2/19/06, p.M6)
11000BC-9000BC A woman's bones were discovered in
1959 at Arlington Canyon on Santa Rosa Island, one of the Channel
Islands off California. Two tests in 1999 dated the bones as 11,000 and
13,000 years of age.
(SFC, 4/12/99, p.A1,15)
11000BC-4000BC Trinidad was once part of the South
American continent. The lowlands to the continent flooded either after
the melt of the last Ice Age or more recently from erosion caused by
the Orinoco River of Venezuela.
(SFEC,2/16/97, p.T5)
10900BC Wildfires about this time broke out across
the US and Canada after an object, roughly a kilometer across, grazed
the Earth and broke up in the atmosphere depositing its oomph as heat.
A mass extinction about this time occurred in parts of North America
and coincided with the growing population of Indian hunters.
Archeologists later identified a layer of charcoal and glass-like beads
of carbon as evidence of the event. Fires melted substantial portions
of the Laurentide glacier in Canada sending waves of water down the
Mississippi that caused changes in the Atlantic Ocean currents. This
started a 1,300-year ice age known as the Younger Dryas.
(SFC, 1/8/99, p.A2)(Econ, 5/26/07, p.94)(SFC,
1/2/09, p.A2)
10800BC-10300BC A village in Monte Verde, Chile was
identified to be this old by a team of anthropologists. The site is
described in the 1997 book: "Monte Verde: A Pleistocene Settlement in
Chile" by Tom Dillehay. Dillehay later reported that new excavations
revealed evidence that human bones and tools may date back to about
28,000BC.
(USAT, 2/11/97, p.A1)(AM, Mar/Apr 97 p.61)(SFC,
2/17/98, p.A2)
10800BC-9500BC People of Early Natufian settlement in
the Middle East were forced to go nomadic again due to a drying climate
over this period. A 2nd attempt to settle began around 9,500 BC and
became known as Pre-Pottery Neolithic.
(Econ, 6/27/09, p.86)
10700BC Melting glaciers caused a deluge of some
2,000 cubic miles of fresh water from a prehistoric lake in
southwestern Ontario. This impacted the Atlantic thermohaline
circulation and sent temperatures over the North Atlantic plummeting.
Temperatures in Greenland dropped by 18 degrees Fahrenheit.
(WSJ, 7/17/03, p.A1)(WSJ, 5/14/04, p.B1)
c10500BC The climate of the Earth abruptly warmed by
20 degrees or more and ended an ice age. Ice cores from Greenland later
revealed a temperature increase of almost 59 degrees in the north polar
region within a 50-year period.
(SFC, 10/2/98, p.A10)
10200BC-10400BC In 2003 Scientists reported that
human bone fragments found in a cave from Aveline's Hole in the Mendip
Hills of southwest England date from this period.
(AP, 9/23/03)
10000BC The Paleolithic period comes to a close.
(NG, Nov. 1985, p. 623)
10000BC The Nez Perce are a North American Indian
people of the Sahaptin family. The name is from the French and means
pierced nose. They lived in the Wallowa Valley of Oregon, Washington
and Idaho for some 12,000 years.
(WUD, 1994, p.964)
10000BC Little Petroglyph and an adjacent canyon in
the Coso Mountains, northwest of the Mojave Desert, contains carvings
dated to this time.
(PacDis, Summer '97, p.8,10)
c10000BC Petroglyphs dating to this time were later
discovered in the Big Smokey Valley of Nevada, where Lake Tolyabe and
Lake Tonopah provided for human habitation.
(USDI, 2004)
10000BC The 1st known outbreaks of smallpox occurred
about this time among agricultural settlements in northeastern Africa.
(SFC, 10/19/01, p.A17)
10000BC This marks the approximate time of the
Natufian cultural stage, just before the domestication of plants and
the spread of settled farming groups. The Natufians were the last group
to occupy Kebara cave in Israel for a long period.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p.463)
c10000BC Hunter gatherers settled for part of the
year at a site later called Wadi Hammeh in the Jordan Valley.
(NH, 11/1/04, p.15)
10000BC In 2008 archeologists in northern Israel
found a female skeleton in a grave containing 50 tortoise shells, a
leopard pelvis, a cow tail and part of an eagle wing and believed they
were the remains of a witch doctor from the Natufian culture.
(AP, 11/18/08)
10000BC Ice from this period is stored at the Physics
Inst. of the Univ. of Bern, Switzerland.
(NOHY, 3/1990, p.240)
10000BC An alteration in the Earth's magnetic field
occurred.
(E&IH, 1973, p.94)
10000BC The world’s human population was about 5
million.
(Econ, 12/24/05, Survey p.9)
10000BC-3500BC The Neolithic or New Stone Age.
(WH, 1994, p.19)
10000BC-400BC The Jomon culture of Japan is
associated with the introduction of rice agriculture and the use of
metal and probably came from the Asian mainland.
(AM, Mar/Apr 97 p.34)
9600BC Radiocarbon date for the cave paintings at Le
Portal, France. The last period of cave art is called Magdalenian.
(NH, 7/96, p.18)
9600BC A site of human habitation in Peru was dated
to about this time. Later excavations indicated complex stone tools
that appeared to date back to at least 28,000BC.
(SFC, 2/17/98, p.A2)
9600BC-8500BC Some dozen villages piled one on top of
the other occupied the site of Jerf el-Ahmar at a bend of the Euphrates
River. In 1999 Syria flooded the area under the Tishrin Dam.
(AM, 11/00, p.56)
c9500BC A female skull, aged 20-25, from this period
was found near Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in c1995 and named Luzia. It was
found to have characteristics similar to people from the South Pacific.
(SFC, 5/23/98, p.A13)
9500BC Romito 2, a dwarf from a cave in Italy's
Calabria region, suffered from a form of chondrodystrophy, a lack of
normal cartilage growth and stood no more than four feet. That he lived
to about 17 years of age indicates group support. He was found buried
with an old woman, possibly his mother.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 452)
c9500BC Two cultures of migrating
hunters lived in the present territory of Lithuania in the 2nd half of
the 10th millennium BC. One group came from the banks of the middle
Vistula river in the south-west. The other was from the north-west of
Europe.
(DrEE, 10/12/96, p.2)(TB-Com, 10/11/00)
9500BC People of the Early Natufian settlements in
the Middle East began to settle for a 2nd time following 1300 years of
drying climate. They became known as Pre-Pottery Neolithic.
(Econ, 6/27/09, p.86)
9500BC-6100BC The Neolithic site of Abu Hureyra, 40
miles downstream from Jerf el-Ahmar, Syria, was flooded under the
waters of the Taqba Dam in the 1970s.
(AM, 11/00, p.58)
9,400BC-9,200BC In 2006 researchers reported the discovery of nine
carbonized fig fruits stored in Gilgal I, an early Neolithic village,
located in the Lower Jordan Valley, which dated to this time.
(Reuters, 6/2/06)
9000BC Humans reached Florida at least by this time,
before the end of the Ice Age. Sea level was lower and the peninsula
was much larger.
(NH, 11/96, p.46)
9000BC Harpoon heads of intricate design were in use
by this time. They were hafted to wooden shafts and easily replaced.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 451)
9000BC The wooly mammoth became extinct about 11,000
years ago. [article about the atlatl, i.e. spear thrower]
(WSJ, 10/24/95, p.A-1)
9,000BC Fisher in the late 1980's, while he was
excavating an 11,000-year-old mastodon found at the Heisler site in
southern Michigan, found evidence of butchery and under water meat
caching by Ice Age hunters in North America.
(LSA, Fall 1995, p.38)
9000BC Caribou lived in the area of Connecticut.
(WSJ, 9/3/98, p.A16)
9000BC Human middens began piling up along the coast
of Peru reflecting a diet of tropical mollusks.
(SFC, 9/13/96, p.A2)
9000BC The town of Chemi Shanidar, later part of
Iraq, was the largest city of the time with 150 people.
(SFEC, 8/27/00, Z1 p.2)
c9000BC Plato later wrote that the island continent
of Atlantis existed about this time. In 1998 Richard Ellis wrote an
account of the Atlantis literature: "Imagining Atlantis."
(SFEC, 7/26/98, BR p.3)
9000BC In 2007 French archaeologists discovered an
11,000-year-old wall painting underground in northern Syria which they
believe is the oldest in the world. The 2 square-meter painting, in
red, black and white, was found at the Neolithic settlement of Djade
al-Mughara on the Euphrates, northeast of the city of Aleppo.
(Reuters, 10/11/07)
c9000BC-8000BC In Neolithic times Mongolia was the
home of small groups of hunters, reindeer breeders, and nomads.
(www.gobiexpeditions.com)
9000BC-4000BC The finest record of Mesolithic and
Neolithic peoples exists in Denmark, due to the country's numerous bogs.
(PacDis, Winter/'97, p.9)
8600BC Irish Elk (Megaloceros giganteus) lived in
temperate climates throughout Europe and western Asia from about this
time to a last record in Ireland at 10,600 years ago.
(NH, 8/96, p.17)
8200BC Archaeologists in 2007 found tools in the
seabed off Cyprus at two sites indicating they were used by seafaring
foragers who frequented the island well over 10,000 years ago, before
the first permanent settlers arrived around 8,200 BC.
(AP, 7/19/07)
8000BC The Holocene (completely-recent) Epoch, our
current age began 10,000 years ago.
(CEH, GHMC,1979, p.24)(LSA, Spg/97, p.6)
8000BC In 1958 anthropologist Frank Livingstone
proposed that Plasmodium falciprum, the deadliest of 4or 5 parasites
that cause human malaria, hopped from chimps to humans about this time
and human hunter-gatherers began settling on farms.
(Econ, 8/8/09, p.69)
8000BC In 2007 new genetic analysis suggested that
the transformation of a vicious predator into a docile tabby took place
about this time in the remote deserts of the Middle East.
(www.livescience.com/animals/070628_cat_family.html)
8000BC A genetic mutation among northern Europeans
about this time made lactose tolerance continue beyond childhood.
(WSJ, 2/12/0/09, p.A11)
8000BC About this time the Lathrop Wells Cone, less
than a mile from Yucca Mountain, the proposed site for long-term
storage of radioactive waste, erupted.
(Smith., 5/95, p.44)
8000BC About this time Vulcan’s Throne was formed
from a volcanic eruption near the rim of the inner gorge of the Grand
Canyon over Toroweap Canyon, Az.
(NH, 9/97, p.40)
8000BC In 2007 workers digging at the future site of
a Wal-Mart store in suburban Mesa, Az., unearthed the bones of a
prehistoric camel that's estimated to be about 10,000 years old.
(AP, 4/28/07)
8000BC About 10,000 years ago a tribe of Indians
lived in the Florida panhandle at the Aucilla River for a few
generations near the present town of Perry. The site was nearly 100
miles inland. Within a hundred years rising water flooded the village
and sealed the remains under a layer of clay.
(SFC, 11/11/96, p.D1)(AM, Mar/Apr 97 p.17)
8000BC Early bison hunters of the American southwest
were named the Folsom People after a nearby town. Bones of the Bison
antiquus were initially discovered by cowboy George McJunkin in 1908 in
eastern New Mexico.
(NH, 2/97, p.17)
8000BC Researchers in 1986 dated a clay floor in
Stanislaus National Forest, 150 miles east of SF, to this time.
(SFC, 9/19/97, p.A3)
8000BC About 10,000 years ago Thingvallavatn Lake, a
flooded graben in southwestern Iceland, was born in a valley gauged
from volcanic rock and ash by the Langjokull Glacier.
(NH, 6/96, p.48)
c8000BC Traces of a man-made shelter from this time
were found in northern South Africa north of Johannesburg.
(SFC, 1/15/99, p.A14)
8000BC The potato was first cultivated some 10,000
years ago by South American Indians. In the 16th century Spanish
explorers brought potatoes back to Europe, where it was first used
primarily as livestock feed. The potato was introduced to North America
in the 17th century. In the 18th century, the poor of Europe began to
use potatoes as a replacement for cereals in their diets. The failure
of the potato crop in Ireland in 1845-46 led to great famine and pushed
tens of thousands of Irish to emigrate to the United States. In 2008 it
was reported that genetic studies by potato experts indicated that all
potatoes originated over 10,000 years ago from a single ancestor,
Solanum brevicaule, found on the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca.
(HNQ, 5/10/98)(SSFC, 10/5/08, p.A15)
8000BC Asian peoples settled the island of Taiwan
about this time.
(SSFC, 2/18/07, p.G6)
c8000BC The West Antarctic ice sheet started
retreating at a rate of about 2 inches per year.
(SFC, 1/3/03, p.A7)
8000BC There is good evidence that the continental
crust is capable of some plastic flow, and the rebound is shown most
dramatically in parts of the Baltic, the Arctic and the Great Lakes
regions of North America where Pleistocene beaches and coastal features
are now raised high above sea level and some are tilted. The process
seems to have been going on for the last 10,000 years and is still
continuing.
(DD-EVTT)
8000BC Sand of Ocean Beach and on hills of western
San Francisco. Alluvium of river bottoms. Silts and muds of Sacramento
Delta.
(GH-CEH, p.25)
c8000BC Rising ocean waters flowed into the Golden
Gate and formed the nascent SF Bay.
(SFC, 12/20/99, p.A8)
8000BC Pigmy mammoths browsed on the Channel Islands
off the California coast.
(SFEC, 1/18/98, Z1 p.1)
8000BC Grinding tools from this time were found in
1999 in the Cross Creek site of San Luis Obispo. Beads, shells, tools,
seeds and carved stone fish suggested that humans came to the area by
sea and did not rely on hunting for subsistence.
(SFC, 6/25/99, p.A6)
8000BC Wine was produced in the region known as
Colchis (later Georgia) as early as this time.
(Econ, 11/15/08, p.100)
8000BC About this time the inhabitants of Mesopotamia
(centered about modern Iraq) began using distinctively shaped clay
tokens- spheres, disks, cones, cylinders, triangles, among others- to
keep track of foodstuffs, livestock, and land.
(I&I, Penzias, p.42)(V.D.-H.K.p.10)
c8000BC-7000BC In the early Mesolithic the climate
warmed and settlers of the Paleolithic followed the deer north. Those
who stayed mixed with the fisherman who moved from the west to form the
ethnic groups of Baltic culture.
(DrEE, 10/12/96, p.2)(TB-Com, 10/11/00)
8000BC-1500CE This period is covered by Barry
Cunliffe in his 2001 book: “Facing the Ocean: The Atlantic and Its
Peoples 8000BC – 1500 AD.
(Arch, 7/02, p.20)
c7975BC Humans lived in a cave near Oaxaca, Mexico,
named Guila Naquitz (White Cliff). Scattered remains of tools, seeds
and plants were found in 1966 by archeologist Kent Flannery and some of
the seeds were dated to this time. The squash seeds showed signs of
cultivation.
(SFC, 5/9/97, p.A2)
7542BC In 2008 Umeaa University said the world's
oldest living tree on record, a spruce, took root about this time in
central Sweden.
(AP, 4/17/08)
7500BC Pre-historic Indians inhabit areas of N.
Cascades in Washington state at elevations of 6,600 ft. It appears that
the local chert was used to fabricate stone tools.
(NG March 1990, Geographica)
7500BC The Illinois River Valley, where humans have
lived since this time lost 5-10% of its archeological record in the
great Mississippi flood of 1994 CE.
(NG, Geographica, Jan, 94)
c7500BC The Twin Dutch Site in Illinois is the
location of the oldest house in the Midwest US.
(SFEC, 11/24/96, C17)
c7500BC A research team in 2004 uncovered a carefully
buried cat on Cyprus, placed just inches from a human burial that also
contained polished stones, shells, tools and jewelry. The graves were
estimated to be 9,500 years old.
(AP, 4/9/04)
7500BC-7000BC Evidence of human habitation has been
found from this time at El Portal in Yosemite.
(SFEC, 5/18/97, Z1 p.4)
c7400BC In 1998 specimens of sandals were analyzed
from a Missouri cave that dated to this time.
(SFC, 7/3/98, p.A2)
7400BC The mummy, known as the Spirit Cave Man, was
found in Nevada in 1940, but in 1996 was dated to be more than 9,400
years old. The mummy was discovered by archeologists S.M. and Georgia
Wheeler in a cave 13 miles east of Fallon. The mummy was wrapped in a
skin robe and sewn into two mats woven of a marsh plant called tule.
(SFC, 4/27/96, p.A-5)
7200 BC A skeleton of about this age was found in
July, 1996, by the Columbia River in Kennewick, Wa. It became known as
the "Kennewick Man" or "Richland Man." The 9,200 year old bones were
later studied and determined to be most closely related to Asian
people, particularly the Ainu of northern Japan. It was concluded in
2000 that he was an American Indian. The bones were dated to 7514-7324
BC.
(SFC, 10/16/99, p.A11)(SFC, 1/14/00, p.A7)(SFC,
9/26/00, p.A5)(Econ, 7/16/05, p.76)
c7000BC Some American Indian graves in Newport Beach,
CA., were believed to be this age.
(SFC, 3/10/97, p.A16)
7000BC An alteration in the Earth's magnetic field
occurred.
(E&IH, 1973, p.94)
c7000BC A flute dating to this time was found in the
1980s in Jiahu. 6 flutes from the hollow wing bones of cranes were
found in Zheng-zhou province from about this time.
(SFC, 9/23/99, p.A8)(SFC, 4/29/00, p.D4)
7000BC Scientists in 2004 found the earliest evidence
of winemaking from pottery shards dating from 7,000BC in northern China.
(Reuters, 12/7/04)(SFC, 12/7/04, p.A1)
c7000BC Early Danish Mesolithic: In the Maglemose
culture large amber pendants were hardly changed.
(PacDis, Winter/'97, p.8)
c7000BC In 1903 a skeleton of a man, 9,000 years old,
was discovered in the underground caves at Cheddar, 130 miles west of
London, England.
(SFC, 3/8/96, p.A8)
c7000BC The Ain Ghazal farming settlement in Jordan
dated to this time. It was uncovered in 1974 during road construction
near Amman.
(SSFC, 11/9/03, p.C7)
c7000BC The site of Catalhoyuk in south-central
Turkey was settled about this time and vanished after about 1,200
years. It marks the world’s first urban center.
(AM, Mar/Apr 97 p.72)(SFC, 4/18/05, p.A6)
c7000BC The first regular milking of animals was
begun in the Shara about this time.
(SFEC,11/2/97, Z1 p.6)
c6800BC Jarmo in northern Iraq was later said to be
the first town.
(SFEC, 7/16/00, Z1 p.2)
6200BC The archeological record shows traces of
domesticated cattle back to this time.
(Acad, Jul/Aug 1996)
6200BC In Germany the Adonis of Zschernitz, a male
fertility figurine dating to this time, was excavated near Leipzig in
2003. In 2005 a female counterpart was found at the same site.
(SFC, 8/17/09, p.12)
6200BC The development of irrigation in Mesopotamia
at this time seems to coincide with a cool dry period.
(Econ, 12/20/03, p.114)
6200BC The glacial lake Agassiz-Ojibway, body of
water so vast that it covered parts of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, North
Dakota, Ontario and Minnesota, massively drained, sending a flow of
water into the Hudson Strait and the Labrador Sea. The sudden flood of
fresh water diluted the saltiness of the Gulf Stream weakening its flow.
(Econ, 9/9/06, Survey p.6)(AFP, 2/24/08)
6000BC Carbon levels began to rise about this time
and caused a deviation in the climatic patterns called the Milankovitch
cycles. These cycles were regulated by the Earth's orbit and angle
towards the sun.
(Econ, 12/20/03, p.115)
6000BC The Wappo Indians settle in the area northern
California around Mt. Konocti 8,000 years ago. The eruption of Mt.
Konocti millions of years earlier left a fissure in the earth through
which ground water reaches the hot magma at 4,000 feet, and resurfaces
as Indian Springs' three thermal geysers at 212 degrees. The water
rises through old sea beds adding rich mineral and salt traces.
(Flyer on Indian Springs, 7/95)
c6000BC The Hokan Indians preceded the Miwoks in
Northern California.
(SFEC, 10/4/98, p.B5)
c6000BC Remains of a probable human structure in
Hells Gap, Wyoming, were dated to this time.
(SFC, 9/19/97, p.A3)
c6000BC A more advanced Neolithic people migrated to
Europe from the Middle East bringing with them a new Y chromosome
pattern and an agricultural way of life.
(SFC, 11/10/00, p.A7)
6000BC The site of Lepenski Vir on the Danube River
at the Iron Gates gorges was occupied by people living in huts.
Sculpted boulders at the site represent the first monumental art from
central and eastern Europe.
(AM, Mar/Apr 97 p.24)
c6000BC Bronze age settlements were established and
later found in Moldova.
(SFC, 1/28/97, p.A5)
6000BC Ash from ancient campfires of this time were
found in Muscat, Oman, in 1983.
(AM, May/Jun 97 p.48)
c6000BC Lead beads were fashioned in Anatolia by
craftsmen whose forced-air furnaces were able to reach 1,100 degrees,
the melting point of galena, a common mineral of lead.
(NH, 7/96, p.50)
c6000BC The milodon, a giant sloth, became extinct in
South America.
(SFEC, 11/24/96, T6)
6000BC Researchers in 2007 reported that evidence for
the use of chili peppers date back to this time in Ecuador. Botanists
if general agreed that chili peppers originated in Bolivia. Evidence
for early use was also found in the Bahamas, Colombia, Panama, Peru and
Venezuela.
(SFC, 2/16/07, p.A7)
6000BC In 2008 scientists reported that robust
hunter-gathers, known as Kiffians, apparently abandoned the Gobero
region of Niger during a long drought that dried up a lake about this
time. The dried-up lake in the Sahara was found brimming with the
skeletons of people, fish and crocodiles who thrived when the African
desert was briefly green.
(Reuters, 8/15/08)
6000BC-5500BC In 2005 archaeologists in northern Greece uncovered
traces of two prehistoric farming settlements dating back to this
period.
(AP, 11/28/05)
6000BC-4000BC The Pleistocene-Holocene date line,
i.e. the 'end' of the glacial epoch, is perhaps best marked at the end
of the last rapid rise in sea level between 6 & 8 thousand years
ago.
(DD-EVTT, p.298)
c5600BC The Mediterranean Sea, swollen be melted
glaciers, breached a natural dam that separated it from the fresh water
lake later known as the Black Sea. Sea water from the Mediterranean
poured in for as long as 2 years. An ancient coastline with this date
was verified in 1999. [see 2348BC]
(SFC, 9/28/99, p.A14)(SFC, 11/18/99, p.C6)(SFC,
9/13/00, p.A7)
5,500BC Hahnhofersand Man was dated in 2001 to about
this time by Oxford University’s Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit. German
Prof. Reiner Protsch von Zieten had earlier dated the fossils to about
34,300BC. In the 1980s the Hahnhofersand fossils were said to have both
Neanderthal and human characteristics.
(Arch, 5/05, p.15)
5500BC-4000BC In Japan the Sannai Maruyama site in
northern Honshu uncovered postholes of houses and longhouses, graves,
figurines and animal remains of the early to middle Jomon period.
(AM, Mar/Apr 97 p.72)
5400BC-5000BC Archeologists have determined that wine
was made in villages in Iran's remote Zagros Mountains about this time.
Wine jars were dug up near the ruined village called Hajii Firuz Tepe
and analyzed to have contained a retsina type of wine.
(SFC, 6/6/96, p.A3)(Reuters, 12/7/04)
5200BC-4500BC In 2008 Egypt’s supreme council of
antiquities said a team of US archaeologists had discovered the ruins
of a city dating back to this period of the first farmers in the Fayyum
oasis.
(AFP, 1/29/08)
c5100BC A slate plaque from pre-dynastic Egypt was
carved with scenes of battlefield carnage on one side and leaf munching
antelope on the other. It was part of an exhibit at the Guggenheim.
(NYT, 6/7/96, p.B9)
c5100BC In 2001 evidence in Mexico was reported for
corn cultivation from sediments of this time.
(SFC, 5/18/01, p.A7)
5000BC War had become endemic in almost all human
societies.
(V.D.-H.K.p.408)
5000BC Since the last glacial phase, an interglacial
had been in effect, beginning about this time.
(DD-EVTT, p.301)
5000BC Stone age farmers and fisherman inhabited the
area around Byblos, Lebanon. Archeologists at Byblos found at least 12
layers of civilizations that dated back 7,000 years.
(NG, Aug., 1974, p.154)(SFEC, 4/13/97, p.T9)
c5000BC A complex of slabs and stones in southern
Egypt that may date this far back was found during field work that
ended in 1997. The site included 10 slabs, some 9 feet tall, 30
rock-lined ovals, 9 burial sites for cows, and a "calendar circle" of
stones. They were thought to have been constructed by cattle-herders
and used for astronomical observations.
(SFC, 4/2/98, p.A6)
5000BC Mt. Mazama in what is now Oregon blew up about
this time and left what is now called Crater Lake.
(SFEC, 7/27/97, Z1 p.7)(SFC, 10/26/06, p.B8)
5000BC Shell and fishbone middens indicated a fishing
village of this time at Ras al Hamra in Qurum, Oman.
(AM, May/Jun 97 p.48)
5000BC The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act gives
large portions of prime bear habitat to the Alutiiq people, who have
hunted and fished on the island for 7,000 years.
(NG, Jan. 94, p.141)
5000BC Native people were traveling through the
Barrens, northwest of Canada's Hudson's Bay,
(NH, 5/96, p.35)
5000BC In 2008 archeologists reported the discovery
of a farming village in Egypt’s Faiyum Oasis, 50 miles south of Cairo,
that dated to about this time. Residents grew wheat and barley, and
raised sheep, goats and pigs.
(SFC, 2/13/08, p.A11)
5000BC Dried-up riverbeds as well as cave paintings
indicate that at this time the Sahara was a land of flowing rivers,
lush green pastures, and forests.
(ATC, p.108)
5000BC On Malta the Ghar Dalam cave near the harbor
of Marsaxlokk revealed bones of domesticated animals and potsherds.
(AM, Jul/Aug '97 p.42)
5000BC The Thracian village of Nebet Tepe, later
Plovdiv, Bulgaria, dated to about this time. It was redeveloped by the
Macedonians, Romans, Byzantines, Bulgars and Turks.
(SSFC, 7/16/06, p.G4)
c5000BC Research in 2003 indicated that bananas and
taro were cultivated in the highlands of Papua New Guinea as long as
7,000 years ago. The first signs of human habitation in the area
occurred c5,800BC and included a change from forest to grasslands and
increase in charcoal in the sediments. The earliest Asian influence on
the islands occurred about 1,500BC.
(AP, 6/19/03)
5000BC The human population was about 5 million at
this time.
(SFEC, 9/19/99, Z1 p.3)
5000BC-3500BC The predynastic period of Egypt.
(R4,1998)
5000BC-3000BC Pinto Man, a Native American nomad,
left arrow points in the desert basin near Twenty-Nine Palms in
Southern California.
(Sp., 5/96, p.64)
5000BC-2500BC Scientists in 2008 said a second group
settled the Gobero region of Niger during this period. These were
Tenerians, smaller, shorter people who hunted, herded and fished.
(Reuters, 8/15/08)
4800BC-4600BC More than 150 large temples,
constructed between during this period, were unearthed in fields and
cities in Germany, Austria and Slovakia in 2002-2005. A village at
Aythra, near Leipzig in eastern Germany, was home to some 300 people
living in up to 20 large buildings around the temple.
(AP, 6/12/05)
4713BC The most recent time that the three major
chronological cycles (28 year solar, 19 year lunar, and 15 year Roman
Indication) began on the same day as determined by Joseph Scaliger in
1582.
(CFA, '96,Vol 179, p.23)
4500BC Neolithic burial mounds dating to this time
were later discovered at Carnac, northwest France.
(Arch, 5/05, p.32)
4500BC Northern Oman has a ceramic tradition back to
this time.
(AM, May/Jun 97 p.52)
4500BC Horses were first domesticated in what is now
the Ukraine. Hunters who ate them wild found that they could milk them
tamed and ride them.
(SFC, 6/9/96, Zone 1 p.2)
4500BC-4200BC The Skorba phase on Malta was marked by
a growing population, with increased forest clearance for agriculture
and grazing that may have led to erosion. Obsidian on Malta from the
islands of Lipari and Panteleria indicate links to the outside world.
(AM, Jul/Aug '97 p.40)
4500BC-2000BC A sacrificial dump in Guanghan, Sichuan
Province, in China was uncovered in 1976. Large quantities of elephants
tusks reveal that elephants roamed the area. Human figures, monster
masks, and tree fragments made of bronze tubes were also found.
(WSJ, 9/27/96, p.A16)
4431BC Timbers of a possible ship of this time were
found off Hayling Island near Portsmouth, England, in 1997. The
structure might also have been a causeway.
(AM, Jul/Aug '97 p.13)
4200BC-3800BC On Malta the Zebbug phase indicated
evidence of collective burials.
(AM, Jul/Aug '97 p.40)
4241BC The Egyptian calendar was established.
(WSJ, 1/5/05, p.B1)
4004BC Oct 23, According to 17th century divine James
Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, and Dr. John Lightfoot of Cambridge, the
world was created on this day, a Sunday, at 9 a.m. "If you grew up with
the King James edition of the Bible that I did, you learned that the
world was created in 4004 BC."
(NG, Nov. 1985, edit. p.559)(HN, 10/23/98)
c4000BC People in the Yellow River Valley switched
from hunting and gathering to agriculture.
(SFC, 3/4/02, p.A3)
c4000BC Apples (Malus Sieversii) similar to modern
day varieties began to appear around Almaty, Kazakhstan. These
ultimately produced the Red Delicious and Golden Delicious in America.
The Red Delicious was hybridized into the Fuji and the Empire. The
Golden Delicious was hybridized into the Gala, the Jonagold, the Mutsu,
Pink Lady and Elstar.
(WSJ, 7/3/03, p.A1)
4000BC The Hittites settled around Cappadocia in
present day Turkey.
(Smith., 5/95, p.25)
4000BC Skilled goldsmiths [proto-Thracians] lived in
the area of Varna, now in Bulgaria, on the Black Sea.
(SFEC, 2/1/98, p.T3)(SFEC, 8/2/98, DB p.22)
4000BC Stone tablets show cheese as early as this
time.
(HFA, '96, p.121)
4000BC Evidence of tuberculosis was found in a
Neolithic burial ground near Heidelberg, where the skeleton of a young
man showed fusion of the fourth and fifth dorsal vertebrae.
(WP, 1951, p.5)
4000BC Circumcision was part of religious rites in
Egypt and Greece dating back to this time.
(SFC, 5/19/96, p.A-10)
c4000BC In Malta the Hypogeum, a complex of rock-cut
chamber tombs, dated to this time. They were discovered in 1902.
(SFEC, 9/17/00, p.T3)
4000BC The Orkney Islands were inhabited at least
since this time.
(SFEM, 10/10/99, p.23)
c4000BC In Poland the archeological site at Oslonki
uncovered some 30 longhouses and 80 graves.
(AM, Mar/Apr 97 p.73)
4000BC Chiefdoms of northern Europe were trading in
amber.
(PacDis, Winter/'97, p.10)
4000BC The comet Hale-Bopp visited the inner solar
system about this time. It next appeared in 1997.
(SFC, 3/28/97, p.A2)
c4000BC The Pistol Star, located between the Earth
and center of the Milky Way, was first seen with infrared equipment in
the early 1990s. It was measured to be 25,000 light-years away with a
radius of 93-140 million miles. It was estimated to have formed 1-3
million years ago and shed much of its mass in violent eruptions
estimated to have occurred about 6,000 years ago.
(USAT, 10/8/97, p.3A)
c4000 The last wooly mammoths,
Mammuthus primigenius, went extinct on Wrangel Island, north of the
Arctic Circle.
(NH, 12/98, p.78)
4000BC-3000BC The Indo-European language group
divided into different branches.
(DrEE, 9/21/96, p.1)
4000BC-2500BC A rock painting from this time in
Tassili n'Ajjer, southeastern Algeria, illustrates a battle between 2
prehistoric groups armed with bows and arrows.
(NH, Jul, p.29)
4000BC-1500BC Southern Britain was settled by
emigrants from what is now the Netherlands and the French province of
Brittany. They started farming, herding and burying their dead and are
called the "beaker people" after a distinctive drinking vessel found in
chambered mounds called "barrows." It is speculated that these people
and their descendants began worshiping inside "henges," circular areas
enclosed by big ditches and small banks of dirt. Four phases of
development at Stonehenge in the Salisbury plain have been defined.
(HT, 3/97, p.20,22)
3800BC The Supe people, a maritime farming community,
was established about this time along the coast of Peru.
(SFC, 1/20/09, p.A13)
3800BC-3200BC In Ireland at Poulnabrone Dolmen in
County Clare, one of some 120 wedge tombs, bodies were interred over a
600 year period that ended about 3200BC.
(SFEC, 11/12/00, p.T8)
3600BC-1000BC The Mesopotamian settlement of Nagar
(in northeastern Syria) grew to become one of the first large cities of
the Middle East. It began before 6,000BC and continued to about 1000BC.
(MT, summer 2003, p.11)
c3761BC The first year of the Jewish calendar that
begins with Rosh Hashana. [1997 was year 5758]
(SFC, 10/1/97, p.A16)(WUD, 1994, p.767)
3652BC Archeologists found ears of popcorn 5,600
years old in the Bat Cave in New Mexico in 1948.
(HFA, '96, p.66)
3600BC In 2005 a team working for five years in the
area of Kom El-Ahmar, Egypt, known in antiquity as Hierakonpolis,
excavated a complex thought to belong to a ruler of the ancient city
who reigned around this time. Archaeologists unearthed seven corpses
believed to date to the era, as well as an intact figure of a cow's
head carved from flint.
(AP, 4/22/05)
3600BC In Washington state the Osceola mudflow from
Mount Ranier covered an area from Rainier to Puget Sound.
(SFEC, 7/12/98, p.A22)
3600BC The Supe people, a maritime farming community
along the coast of Peru, disappeared about this time. In 2009
researchers found their disappearance coincided with earthquakes and
landslides followed by massive flooding.
(SFC, 1/20/09, p.A13)
3600BC-3500BC An Egyptian cemetery of working class
inhabitants at Hierankopolis of this time showed evidence of
mummification.
(AM, 9/01, p.13)
3600BC-3000BC On Malta the Gantija phase saw the
construction of the first megalithic temples.
(AM, Jul/Aug '97 p.43)
3600BC-1700BC Neolithic jade pieces represent some of
the oldest of Chinese art.
(WSJ, 2/19/98, p.A20)
3500BC Sumerians and Babylonians use a sexigesimal
(base 60) number system according to historian Eric Temple Bell.
(V.D.-H.K.p.27)
3500BC King Etena of Babylonia was pictured on a
coin, flying on an eagle’s back.
(NPub, 2002, p.2)
3500BC A linen shroud dating to this time was later
put on display at the Egyptian museum in Turin, Italy.
(SSFC, 1/22/06, p.E6)
3500BC-3100BC In Egypt the "Knife of Gebel-el-Arak"
was made with an ivory handle carved with hunting and battle scenes. It
is now in the French Louvre.
(WSJ, 1/29/98, p.A16)
3500BC-3000BC In 2008 a team of German and Peruvian
archaeologists reported the discovery of a ceremonial plaza near Peru's
north-central coast dating to this period.
(AP, 2/27/08)
3500BC-2400BC The Tower of Babel was built during
this period by people of one language who inhabited the land of Shinar
in the kingdom of Nimrod.
(Econ, 4/26/08, p.108)
3450BC The first cities appeared along the banks of
the Tigris and Euphrates just north of what is now the Persian Gulf.
The cities made up the Uruk culture named after the principal city of
Uruk, which corresponds to the Biblical Erech. The culture invented
writing, the lunar calendar, used metal and built monumental
architecture. The cities remained independent for almost a thousand
years.
(eawc, p.1)
3309BC Mar 10, A primordial Maya god, named GI by
scholars, began his mythical reign.
(AM, Jul-Aug/99, p.16)
3300BC – 1300BC xxxx
3300BC The beginning date of the Mayan calendar.
(L.C.-W.P.p.2-3)
3300BC Around this time the inhabitants of Sumer in
present day Iraq adopted the practice of storing tokens in sealed clay
jars. The tokens represented the counts of foodstuffs, livestock , and
land. The stored tokens provided a more permanent record but required
that jars be broken in order to examine the record. Then someone hit on
the idea of making marks in the soft clay covers of the jars to
represent the tokens inside. Archeological evidence shows that the
marked jars led almost immediately to a system of marks on clay tablets.
(I&I, Penzias, p.42)
3300BC Archaic cylinder seals [of Sumeria] of this
time were later collected by financier Pierpont Morgan.
(SFC, 2/15/97, p.D1)
3300BC In 1991 German hikers Erica and Helmut
Simon found a well-preserved prehistoric corpse, dated to about this
time. He was later named Oetzi (Frozen Fritz). He was found on Sep 19,
1991, in a glacier on the Hauslabjoch Pass, about 100 yards from
Austria in northern Italy. It was kept at the Univ. of Innsbruck for
study. In 1998 analysis indicated that the Ice Man had internal
parasites and carried the woody fruit of a tree fungus as a remedy.
Tattoos on the body were also found to be placed over areas of active
arthritis. A flint arrow was also found in his back. In 2007 forensic
researchers said he died either from hitting his head on a rock when he
passed out or because his attacker hit him in the head.
(SFC, 12/25/98, p.A4)(SFEC, 5/7/00, p.T4)(WSJ,
2/3/04, p.A1)(AP, 8/29/07)
3300BC-3200BC In 1998 clay tablets were reported from this date
from the tomb of an Egyptian king named Scorpion. The tablets had
writing that recorded linen and oil deliveries as a tithe to the king.
The tomb was in a cemetery at Gebel Tjauti in Suhag province, some 250
miles south of Cairo. Egyptologists John Coleman Darnell and wife
Deborah discovered the tableau in 1995.
(SFC, 12/15/98, p.C5)(SFC, 4/16/02, p.A4)
3300BC-1000BC The earliest known civilizations
occupied the Aegean world. The Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations rose
and fell over this period.
(eawc, p.1)
Go to 3300-1300BC