~4.4 billion
Crusty
The planet has now sufficiently cooled to start forming a rocky crust
The planet has now sufficiently cooled to start forming a rocky crust
Several uranium rich mineral veins in the Oklo region of Gabon go critical and start a natural nuclear fission reaction which pulsed for several hundred thousand years.
For 2 billion years life on this planet was no more complex than single celled bacteria. Around 540 million years ago the fossil record starts to show many different multicelled creatures. Geologists call the rapid expansion in the diversity of life during this period the Cambrian Explosion
Plants start to colonise land.
Animals start to colonise land.
Vast outflow of basaltic lava form what is now called the Siberian Traps
Known as the Permian Triassic extinction event, over 90% of marine and 70% of terrestrial life forms become extinct.
Known as the Cretaceous Tertiary extinction event, many life forms become extinct including all the dinosaurs (except birds).
Marks left on animal bones found in the Lower Awash Valley of Ethiopia are believed to have been made by stone tools used to butcher meat.
Oldest known stone tools discovered by Lake Turkana in Kenya
Discoveries of footprints preserved in Happisburgh estuary's muds and stone tools have been dated to between 950,000 and 700,000BC making them the oldest traces of humans in Britain.
Modern Homo sapiens start to expand out of East Africa. Other human species expanded out of Africa much earlier in the past but are now all extinct.
Earliest Human Beds / sleeping mats found in South Africa
A supervolcano, which many believe is the largest volcano in the history of the planet, erupts at Toba, Sumatra (Indonesia)
Oldest known art - hand stencilling in a cave on the Indonesian Island of Sulawesi has been dated to be at least 39900 years old
Oldest known counting artefact, a notched baboon bone, discovered in Swaziland
Having coexisted with modern man for thousands of years Homo neanderthalensis, the closest species to modern man ever to have existed, finally becomes extinct.
Gravettian culture established in Central and Eastern Europe expands east and west reaching into Britain
Parts of a large pottery bowl, believed to be a cooking cauldron, found in southern China
The Ice Age ends. Glaciers retreat. Water levels rise by 40m mainly due to the melting of the North American ice sheet.
Absent for thousands of years due to the ice age, humans begin to return to Britain, which is still connected by land to Europe.
Dogs domesticated
It had been believed that widespread tooth decay started with the move
from hunter-gathering to farming but a stone age burial site in Morocco, has revealed
a prevalence of bad teeth.
(cf
tooth drilling ~7000BC,
earliest know dental filling ~4500BC)
Period of intense cold. Glaciers in Britain re-form
Chicken domesticated in Vietnam
Wheat domesticated in Levant
Rising sea levels flooded the gouge left by a large glacier and separated Ireland from Europe-Britain.
Sheep, Cats & Goats Domesticated.
Barley, chickpeas, peas, beans, flax & in the Fertile Crescent
Figs Trees domesticated around the Mediterranean
Rice domesticated in China
Between six and ten thousand years ago, somewhere around the black sea, a person was born with a freak genetic mutation that turned off the ability to have brown eyes - resulting in blue eyes. Everyone with blue eyes today inherited the mutated gene from this one person.
Pigs, cattle, barley, sesame, & eggplants are domesticated.
The oldest known drilling of teeth in living people was found in Baluchistan (Pakistan).
The drilled holes may have once had fillings of an organic material that decayed though there is no evidence either way.
(cf
tooth decay ~13000BC,
earliest know dental filling ~4500BC)
About 3000 years after Ireland became an island, continued melting ice raise the sea levels, flooding the lower lying coastal parts of continental Europe. Some outlying lands become islands, the largest of these islands is now called Great Britain.
Maize domesticated in Mexico
Oldest known arrow heads found in the Sibudu Cave in South Africa
Chilli peppers domesticated in Ecuador
Textiles are being woven in Turkey
Flint is rare in this region, but during the Ice Age glaciers moving along the Irish Sea deposited flint on the beaches around Aberystwyth. Evidence has been found of a Mesolithic(8000-400BC) settlement just south of the harbour. Flint was fashioned into tools and weapons and is believed to have been traded with inland tribes in this area.
Studies of charred cereals and pulses from several European Neolithic sites have show that their growth had been enhanced by manure.
Copper has already been used for thousands of years but it comes form rare minerals that include native copper. Copper chemically combined with other elements is more common and can be released by a process called smelting. The development of pottery kilns in Iran achieved the high temperatures required for smelting copper for the 1st time.
Examination of ancient pottery fragments found in Poland have been linked to the earliest known cheese making.
Linen cloth is being made in Egypt
Britain's earliest attempts at farming and forest clearing.
The oldest know dental filling was found in Slovenia. Made of beeswax it was used to cap a broken tooth.
(cf
tooth decay ~13000BC,
tooth drilling ~7000BC)
Horse 1st domesticated by nomads in Ukraine (Dereivka)
Honey Bees are being kept in clay pots in Egypt
Silk is being produced in China
Cotton is being woven in the Indus Valley, India
Sea levels continue to rise - now 8m below the current levels
Knap of Howar on Orkney is the oldest preserved stone house in Britain
This is a period of thousands of years and defined by the use of bronze. The period starts at different times in different parts of the world depending when they acquired the technology. The technology requires some understanding of mining, minerals, smelting, high temperature kilns and metalworking. It is accompanied by the cultural and military advances that came with having access to advanced bronze tools. Smelted copper was already known for thousands of years but adding tin or arsenic made the metal much easier to work. Copper and Tin ore was not available everywhere and it is very rare to find them close to each other, so trade and transportation also had to develop.
The bronze age started around 3300BC around the Eastern Mediterranean and to the east of the Black Sea. Around 300 years later is was in India but it would be another 700 years before it started to spread into Europe.
Decorative symbols developed into hieroglyphs (an early form of writing) developed in Egypt.
Earth circle built at Stonehenge. cf stones in 2300BC
Cuneiform (an early form of writing) developed in the city of Sumer - (Mesopotamia Iraq).
Iron is used in small quantities in the Middle East, it will take 1700 years for the knowledge of how to attain a temperature of 1537°C required for smelting iron to spread around Africa and Eurasia.
Earliest known game found at the city of Ur - (Mesopotamia Iraq). This is a recognisable precursor to backgammon.
Carved onto a basalt wall of the Kangjiashimenji grotto in the high Tien Shan Mountains (Xinjiang region of Northwest China) is an explicit scene depicting an ancient fertility ritual. The Kangjiashimenji Petroglyphs are a very rare depiction of human procreation in art of this age.