Our Earth's History

Timeline: Prehistory

before 3500 BC · 48 articles, earliest first. Browse this era by continent.

  1. 3,660,000 BC · AfricaThree walkers, then five, then two kinds: the Laetoli footprints
  2. 2,500,000 BC · AfricaTaung Child: the skull Dart named in Nature on February 7, 1925
  3. 1,600,000 BC · AfricaKNM-WT 15000: the Nariokotome boy, 1.6 million years old, found 1984
  4. 850,000 BC · EuropeFootprints on a Norfolk beach, May 2013: the Happisburgh prints
  5. 770,000 BC · East AsiaDecember 2, 1929: the first Peking Man skull and the casts that remain
  6. 385,000 BC · South AsiaFebruary 1, 2018: Attirampakkam and a 385,000-year Middle Paleolithic
  7. 300,000 BC · AfricaFound in a Moroccan mine in 1961: the Jebel Irhoud fossils
  8. 231,000 BC · AfricaFrom 195,000 to at least 233,000 years: Omo I and Omo II redated
  9. 200,000 BC · East AsiaA handaxe on the Hantan River bank, 1978: the Jeongok-ri site
  10. 160,000 BC · South AsiaHathnora, 1982: the Narmada skull cap and its changing names
  11. 146,000 BC · East AsiaFound in 1933, named in 2021, identified in 2025: the Harbin skull
  12. 72,000 BC · South AsiaStone tools below and above the Toba ash at Jwalapuram, since 2007
  13. 71,000 BC · AfricaWhat is the oldest known drawing, and who made it?
  14. 70,000 BC · Central AsiaIbex horns around a child's skull, 1938, at Teshik-Tash
  15. 70,000 BC · Central AsiaWhat was the child found in layer 16 at Obi-Rakhmat in 2003?
  16. 63,000 BC · OceaniaHow do we know people were in Australia 65,000 years ago?
  17. 60,000 BC · West AsiaA cut feature beside the flower burial: Shanidar Cave, 1960 and 2020
  18. 50,000 BC · Central AsiaThe Denisovans: a human population known first from a finger bone
  19. 47,000 BC · OceaniaA 92 mm Diprotodon bone and 49,000 years: Warratyi rock shelter
  20. 46,000 BC · South AsiaBone arrowheads at Fa-Hien Lena cave, Sri Lanka, 48,000 years old
  21. 38,000 BC · OceaniaJuly 15, 1968: Mungo Lady, a 40,000-year-old cremation on a dry lake
  22. 34,000 BC · EuropeWho painted Chauvet and Lascaux, and how are the paintings dated?
  23. 22,000 BC · Central AsiaMA-1, the Mal'ta boy: a Hermitage humerus and a 24,000-year genome
  24. 21,000 BC · OceaniaMary Pappin Jr.'s find: 124 Ice Age footprints became 563 by 2007
  25. 21,000 BC · The AmericasRuppia seeds, pollen, quartz: White Sands footprints at 23,000 years
  26. 18,000 BC · East AsiaTwo caves, two dates: earliest pottery at Xianrendong and Yuchanyan
  27. 14,000 BC · The AmericasCooper's Ferry: 16,560 years in one model, after 15,000 in another
  28. 13,000 BC · East AsiaWhy did Japan's Jōmon foragers make pots and villages without farming?
  29. 12,500 BC · The AmericasHow did Monte Verde in Chile end the "Clovis first" story?
  30. 12,300 BC · The AmericasCoprolites in an Oregon cave: Paisley and the 14,300-year question
  31. 11,000 BC · The AmericasMurray Springs, Arizona: a Clovis camp, a mammoth and a black mat
  32. 10,000 BC · West AsiaFifty tortoise shells and a leopard pelvis: the Hilazon Tachtit grave
  33. 10,000 BC · OceaniaTwenty-four mud-wasp nests date the Gwion figures to 12,000 years
  34. 9500 BC · West AsiaWho built Göbekli Tepe, and why does it upset the farming-first story?
  35. 9300 BC · EuropeStar Carr by the count: 227 barbed points, 33 antler frontlets
  36. 8000 BC · West AsiaA stone tower at Jericho, 8.2 meters tall, still disputed
  37. 8000 BC · South AsiaWhat is painted at Bhimbetka, and how are the paintings dated?
  38. 7100 BC · West AsiaHouses entered from the roof: Çatalhöyük on the Konya plain, 7100 BC
  39. 7000 BC · South AsiaA copper amulet cast by lost wax: Mehrgarh, Pakistan, 6,000 years ago
  40. 7000 BC · East AsiaCrane-bone flutes from Jiahu, Henan, played again after 9,000 years
  41. 6750 BC · West AsiaReeds, lime plaster and bitumen: the statues buried at 'Ain Ghazal
  42. 6500 BC · The Americas'Almost impossible to establish any relationship': Kennewick Man
  43. 4600 BC · OceaniaStone channels for eels at Budj Bim: 6,600 years of Gunditjmara work
  44. 4600 BC · EuropeVarna's Copper Age gold: 270 burials by one count, 315 by another
  45. 4500 BC · Central AsiaTwo feet a day: Pumpelly's 1904 dig at Anau and the oasis theory
  46. 3500 BC · Central AsiaBotai, 3500 BC: mare's milk in the pots, horses that were Przewalski's
  47. 3300 BC · EuropeA copper ax and 61 tattoos: what Ötzi carried, September 19, 1991
  48. 2900 BC · EuropeA midden fifteen feet high: Skara Brae from the storm of 1850 to 2017