Pots appeared 8,000–9,000 years before farming.

18,000 BC · 9000 BC · apart: 9000 years

Sherds from Xianren Cave in China are 19,000–20,000 years old, the earliest pottery known, made by hunter-gatherers at the end of the Ice Age.

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The event

• The dawn of farmingc. 9000 BC · Fertile Crescent. Around 11,000 years ago people in the Fertile Crescent began sowing wheat and barley, and later tamed goats, sheep and cattle. Farming also arose independently in China, Mesoamerica, the Andes and New Guinea. Settled life brought population growth and villages, then cities, states and writing.

Prehistory

More amazing facts

• 22,000 BC · 12,500 BC A boy buried 24,000 years ago near Irkutsk was a genetic relative of both Native Americans and Europeans.
• 21,000 BC · 12,500 BC Human footprints in New Mexico are dated to 21,000–23,000 years ago, millennia before people were thought to have reached the Americas.
• 17,000 BC · 1940 Lascaux was found thanks to a dog. In 1940, 18-year-old Marcel Ravidat noticed his dog poking into a hole left by an uprooted tree; inside were paintings 17,000 to 22,000 years old.
• 16,000 BC · 1879 Altamira's paintings were found thanks to an eight-year-old girl — and her father was accused of forgery.
• 16,000 BC A puppy 18,000 years old turned up in the Yakutian permafrost with its fur and whiskers.
• 14,000 BC · 2560 BC · 300 BC Japan's Jōmon period lasted some 14,000 years.

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