Before writing, the record is stone, bone and DNA. These articles cover human origins, the ice ages and the first farmers, up to the moment cities and script appear.
Site G's 1978 trackway was read as three walkers; Site S added two in 2016, and Site A, redug in 2019, led to a claim of two hominin kinds at Laetoli.
· 3,660,000 BCA skull blasted from a South African quarry in 1924 became Australopithecus africanus when Raymond Dart named it in Nature on February 7, 1925.
· 2,500,000 BCThe Homo erectus skeleton Kamoya Kimeu found beside the dry Nariokotome River in 1984, dated 1.60 ± 0.05 million years, with each institution's figures.
· 1,600,000 BCFootprints were exposed at Happisburgh, Norfolk, in May 2013; tides erased them within weeks. Ashton's team dated the surface to 1-0.78 million years.
· 850,000 BCPei Wenchung found the first Peking Man skull at Zhoukoudian on December 2, 1929; about 40 individuals by 1937, originals lost in 1941, casts survive.
· 770,000 BCNature, February 1, 2018: luminescence dated the end of the Acheulian at Attirampakkam, near Chennai, to 385 ± 64 ka; a Middle Paleolithic ran to 172 ka.
· 385,000 BCNature published two 2017 papers on skulls unearthed at Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, first in a 1961 mining accident, dated by thermoluminescence to 315,000 years.
· 300,000 BCOmo I and Omo II, found in the Kibish Formation, Ethiopia, in 1967, were dated to 195 ± 5 kyr in 2005; a 2022 Nature paper gives a minimum of 233 ± 22 kyr.
· 231,000 BCGreg Bowen, a US soldier at Dongducheon, found a stone handaxe by the Hantan River in 1978. Excavation began in 1979; the age is still disputed.
· 200,000 BCA calvaria found at Hathnora on the Narmada in 1982 was named Homo erectus narmadensis, called Homo sapiens in 1991 and dated by ESR in 2009.
· 160,000 BCA cranium found in Harbin in 1933 was named Homo longi in 2021 and dated to over 146,000 years. In 2025 its dental calculus yielded Denisovan mtDNA.
· 146,000 BCAt Jwalapuram in Andhra Pradesh, Middle Paleolithic tools lie under and over the 74,000-year Toba ash. Papers from 2007 to 2025 argue what the eruption did
· 72,000 BCNine ochre lines on a stone flake from Blombos Cave, South Africa, about 73,000 years old, drawn by Homo sapiens and reported in Nature in 2018.
· 71,000 BCIn 1938 Okladnikov found a child's skeleton ringed by ibex horns in an Uzbek cave. DNA in 2007 and a 2012 study call it Neanderthal; a 2009 study did not.
· 70,000 BCIn 2003 a child's teeth and 121 skull fragments came out of layer 16 at Obi-Rakhmat, Uzbekistan. The teeth read as Neanderthal; the skull did not settle it.
· 70,000 BCSingle sand grains put the lowest tools at Madjedbebe, on Mirarr country in Arnhem Land, at about 65,000 years. Some archaeologists dispute the date.
· 63,000 BCSolecki's 1951 to 1960 trench at Shanidar Cave held 10 Neanderthals. In 2020 a Cambridge-led team reported an adult buried in a pit dug beside Shanidar 4.
· 60,000 BCA fingertip bone dug up in 2008 at Denisova Cave in the Altai held DNA unlike any Neanderthal or modern human. Its kin live on in Tibetan and Papuan DNA.
· 50,000 BCA 2016 Nature paper put people in arid Australia by about 49,000 years at Warratyi, north of Adelaide. Its Diprotodon radius is still argued over.
· 47,000 BCScience Advances, June 12, 2020: 130 bone points at Fa-Hien Lena cave, Sri Lanka, are sized and hafted like arrows, dated to 48,000 to 34,000 years ago.
· 46,000 BCJim Bowler found burnt bones on the shore of Lake Mungo on July 15, 1968. Dated to 40,000 years in 2003, Mungo Lady and Mungo Man were reburied in 2022.
· 38,000 BCAurignacian hunters drew Chauvet about 37,000 to 33,500 years ago; Lascaux was painted about 21,500 years ago. Radiocarbon on charcoal and bone says so.
· 34,000 BCA Mal'ta humerus sampled at the Hermitage in 2009 dated to 24,000 years; the Siberian boy's genome sat between western Eurasians and Native Americans.
· 22,000 BCMary Pappin Jr. found the first Willandra Lakes footprints in August 2003. Optically dated to 19,000 to 23,000 years, the count rose from 124 to 563 by 2007.
· 21,000 BC
