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| | | | World History timeline |
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| c. 1 million years ago |
| | | It is impossible to know when and how human beings first speak, but elementary speech may well go back a million years | |
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| c. 500,000 years ago |
| | | Peking man shelters in caves south of modern Beijing, leaving many scraps of evidence of his way of life | |
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| c. 500,000 years ago |
| | | Fire is used in China by Peking man, and may have been in use much earlier in Africa | |
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| c. 250,000 years ago |
| | | A spear of hardened yew, presumably flung or thrust by a human, fixes itself between the ribs of an elephant in what is now Saxony | |
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| c. 230,000 years ago |
| | | Humans evolve who can be classified as Homo sapiens - among them Neanderthal Man | |
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| c. 150,000 years ago |
| | | A possible second migration from Africa begins, involving at some time the ancestors of modern man, Homo sapiens sapiens | |
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| c. 90,000 years ago |
| | | Fossilized bones found in the caves of Skhul and Qafzeh, in modern Israel, are of anatomically modern humans | |
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| c. 60,000 years ago |
| | | The first human inhabitants of Australia make the crossing from southeast Asia | |
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| c. 45,000 years ago |
| | | Neanderthals carve a flute from the leg bone of a young bear, in the region that is now Slovenia | |
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| c. 35,000 years ago |
| | | Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers use mammoth tusks and bones to support hide-covered tents at Dolni Vestonice (in the Czech Republic) | |
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| c. 35,000 years ago |
| | | The Neanderthals vanish quite suddenly from the fossil record, leaving modern humans as the only surviving members of our species | |
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| c. 31,000 years ago |
| | | Rhinoceroses, lions and mammoth feature on the walls of the Chauvet cave, in southern France | |
|  | Rhinoceros in the Chauvet cave
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| c. 30,000 years ago |
| | | With the sea level falling, a land bridge (known as Beringia) forms between Siberia and Alaska, enabling humans to enter the continent of America | |
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| c. 30,000 years ago |
| | | Painted and engraved images, on the rock face in a cave near Twyfelfontein in Namibia, date from this period | |
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| c. 25,000 years ago |
| | | A Stone Age sculptor shapes a timeless image of female fecundity in the famous Willendorf Venus | |
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| c. 15,000 years ago |
| | | The La Brea tarpit in Los Angeles shows signs of human activity in the region | |
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| c. 15,000 years ago |
| | | The principle of the bow and arrow is developed, with yew or elm for the bow and points of flint on the arrows | |
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| c. 15,000 years ago |
| | | Needles of bone or ivory are now fine enough to take a thread as thin as horse hair | |
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| c. 12,000 years ago |
| | | A canine jaw, discovered in a cave in Mesopotamia, is the earliest evidence of the domestication of dogs | |
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| c. 8000 BC |
| | | Human communities in the Middle East cultivate crops and domesticate animals, in the Neolithic Revolution | |
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| c. 8000 BC |
| | | Wheat is grown in the Middle East - the first cereal cultivated by man | |
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| c. 8000 BC |
| | | Sheep are the first farm animals of which evidence of domestication survives, from a settlement in northern Iraq | |
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| c. 8000 BC |
| | | Jericho, often quoted as the first town, grows into a settlement covering ten acres | |
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| c. 8000 BC |
| | | Sun-dried bricks are used in the construction of buildings in Jericho | |
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| c. 8000 BC |
| | | The spindle develops naturally in the process of twisting fibres into thread by hand | |
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| c. 8000 BC |
| | | The tower at Jericho is the world's earliest surviving fortification | |
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| c. 8000 BC |
| | | Humans cross from eastern Siberia to the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, according to the earliest traces left by the Jomon culture | |
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| c. 7000 BC |
| | | Neolithic communities in eastern Anatolia make implements of hammered copper - the first tentative step out of the Stone Age | |
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| c. 6500 BC |
| | | Catal Huyuk, in Anatolia, is the most extensive surviving example of a neolithic town | |
|  | Catal Huyuk, wall painting
Photograph James & Arlette Mellaart
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| c. 6500 BC |
| | | The neolithic town of Catal Huyuk has rectangular rooms with windows, a design with lasting appeal | |
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| c. 6500 BC |
| | | The neolithic town of Khirokitia in Cyprus has a paved public street with lanes leading off to courtyards of round tent-like houses | |
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| c. 6500 BC |
| | | Pottery fragments of this date survive in the neolithic site of Catal Huyuk | |
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| c. 5800 BC |
| | | Fragments of cloth, woven in Catal Huyuk, survive because they are carbonized in a fire | |
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| c. 5000 BC |
| | | Squash and chili are the first plants to be cultivated in America, in the Tehuácan valley in modern Mexico | |
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| c. 5000 BC |
| | | The Sahara, damp enough for the hippopotamus, supports neolithic communities until it begins to dry up in about 3000 BC | |
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