Prehistory

◍ Open on the globe

300,000 BC – 3500 BC · 19 events

What happened around the world

Whole world

c. 24,500 BC–17,000 BC The Last Glacial Maximum — Ice reaches Moscow and Chicago; seas sit 120 m lower

Europe

c. 38,000 BC The Neanderthals vanish — Our species' last close relatives fade from history
c. 34,000 BC The paintings of Chauvet Cave — Lions and rhinos painted 8 times as long ago as the pyramids
c. 6200 BC The sea swallows Doggerland — Britain becomes an island
c. 4500 BC The gold of Varna — The world's oldest worked gold, and its first rich men

Eastern Europe & Russia

c. 32,000 BC The Sungir burials — Tens of thousands of mammoth-ivory beads sewn on the dead
c. 9500 BC The Shigir Idol — The world's oldest wooden sculpture, from the Urals

Middle East

c. 9500 BC Göbekli Tepe — A stone sanctuary built by hunters, older than farming
c. 9000 BC The dawn of farming — Wheat, barley and goats: people settle down
c. 7400 BC–6000 BC Çatalhöyük — A town with no streets: people entered through the roof

Africa

c. 300,000 BC The earliest Homo sapiens — Our species already lives in Africa, with faces like ours
c. 71,000 BC The Blombos Cave patterns — Crosshatching in ochre, one of humanity's first signs
c. 60,000 BC Out of Africa — A small group leaves and goes on to people the world

Americas

c. 14,000 BC People reach the Americas — From Siberia across Beringia to the far south of Chile
c. 7000 BC Domestication of maize — A weedy grass with tiny ears becomes the world's top grain
c. 5050 BC Chinchorro mummies — The oldest artificial mummies, 2,000 years before Egypt's

Oceania

c. 48,000 BC People sail to Australia — The first great sea voyage in human history
c. 40,000 BC The Mungo burial — Ochre on the bones: Australia's oldest funeral rite
c. 5000 BC The gardens of Kuk Swamp — Papuans invented farming on their own, with no outside help