The mammoths painted in Chauvet Cave 36,000 years ago could still be seen alive in the age of the pharaohs: the last ones, on Wrangel Island, died out around 2000 BC.

34,000 BC · 2000 BC · apart: 32,000 years

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The events

• The paintings of Chauvet Cavec. 34,000 BC · Chauvet Cave, France. Hundreds of images of cave lions, rhinos, mammoths and horses were made about 36,000 years ago. The artists used perspective, shading and the rock's relief so the animals seemed to move by torchlight. The cave was only found in 1994; it is closed to visitors, and an exact replica stands nearby.
• Last woolly mammothsc. 2000 BC · Wrangel Island. Woolly mammoths died out on the mainland about 10,000 years ago, but an isolated population on Wrangel Island survived, according to the latest finds, until about 2000 BC. By then the pyramids of Giza had already stood for centuries.

Prehistory · 20th century BC

More amazing facts

• 9500 BC · 3000 BC Göbekli Tepe was built around 9500 BC, 6,500 years before Stonehenge.
• 9500 BC · 2560 BC The Shigir Idol from the Urals was carved about 11,500 years ago. When the Great Pyramid was built, it was already almost 7,000 years old, older than the pyramid is today.
• 5050 BC · 2560 BC Chinchorro fishermen on the Chilean coast were mummifying their dead by about 5000 BC; their mummies predate Egypt's by some two thousand years.
• 3300 BC · 3200 BC Ötzi died in the Alps around 3300 BC, about when writing appeared in Sumerian Uruk.
• 2600 BC · 2560 BC The Peruvian city of Caral, with its stepped pyramids, flourished in the same age as Egypt's pyramids — more than 4,000 years before the Incas.
• 2560 BC · 2000 BC When the Great Pyramid of Giza was built, woolly mammoths still lived on Wrangel Island — the last of them died out only around 2000 BC.

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