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| | | Timeline 02 British Museum World History 100 Objects |
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| c. 15 million years ago |
| | A primate of this period, at ease both in the trees and on the ground, is probably the common ancestor of gorillas, chimpanzees and humans | |
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| c. 6 million years ago |
| | Various species of ape develop the habit of walking upright on two feet | |
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| c. 4.5 million years ago |
| | Certain primates, in eastern and southern Africa, are by now sufficiently like humans to be classed as hominids | |
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| c. 4.4 million years ago |
| | Ardi, the earliest known individual of partially human type (or hominid), is of the species Ardipithecus, in the Awash valley region of Ethiopia | |
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| c. 3.6 million years old |
| | Two or three hominid individuals, probably Australopithecus Afarensis, walk upright through volcanic ash at Laetoli, 30 miles south of Olduvai Gorge, and their footprints are preserved within subsequent ash deposits | |
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| c. 3.2 million years ago |
| | A female of the species Australopithecus Afarensis (nicknamed Lucy when her skeleton is found), lives in the Afar Depression in Ethiopia within 50 miles of where her predecessor Ardi was unearthed | |
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| c. 2.6 million to 14,000 years ago |
| | The Palaeolithic era or Old Stone age begins, characterized by hominid and human use of unpolished chipped stone tools | |
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| c. 2.6 to 1.2 million years ago |
| | The earliest Palaeolithic era, known as the Lower Palaeolithic, covers the period before the emergence of homo sapiens in the form of Neanderthal man | |
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| c. 2.6 to 1.2 million years ago |
| | Australopithecus Boisei lives in East Africa, and is possibly the first hominid species to use stone tools | |
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| c. 2.5 million years ago |
| | The earliest known chipped stone tools are made by hominids at Gona, in the Awash Valley in Ethiopia, close to the region where Ardi and Lucy lived many millennia earler | |
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| c. 2.2 million years ago |
| | Creatures of the genus Homo, classified as early modern humans, are living in east Africa | |
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| c. 2.2 to 1.4 million years ago |
| | Homo Habilis, the earliest widely acknowledged species in the genus Homo, lives in East Africa with a brain size much greater than the contemporary Australopithecus Boisei | |
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| c. 1.85 million years ago |
| | A hominid, nicknamed Twiggy and thought to be in the species Homo habilis, is living in East Africa | |
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| c. 1.8 million years ago |
| | A species of human in east Africa, Homo erectus, is probably the first identifiable ancestor of modern man | |
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| 1931 |
| | On his first expedition to the Olduvai Gorge, Louis Leakey finds the oldest object now in the British Museum - the chopping tool from about 1.8 million years ago | |
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| 1959 |
| | Mary Leakey finds in the Olduvai Gorge the first specimen of a new hominid species, now known as Australopithecus Boisei | |
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| 1968 |
| | Peter Nzube finds the oldest skull yet discovered in the Olduvai Gorge and names the specimen Twiggy, after the British fashion model of the time | |
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| 1974 |
| | Donald Johanson and Tom Gray find an almost complete Australopithecus female skeleton at Hadar in Ethiopia, and nickname her Lucy after the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds | |
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| 1976 |
| | Mary Leakey and her team find footprints, about 3.6 million years old, of bipedal hominids walking upright at Laetoli in Tanzania | |
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| 1994 |
| | The fossilized skeleton of an Ardipithecus female, nicknamed Ardi and 4.4 million years old, is found in the Awash valley region of Ethiopia | |
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| 2003 |
| | Michael Rogers, in a team led by Sileshi Semaw, discovers the world's oldest known chipped stone tool, at Gona in Ethiopia | |
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