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The timeline of human evolution outlines the major events in the evolutionary lineage of the modern human species, Homo sapiens, throughout the history of life, beginning some 4 billion years ago down to recent evolution within H. sapiens during and since the Last Glacial Period.
The timeline of the evolutionary history of life represents the current scientific theory outlining the major events during the development of life on planet Earth. Dates in this article are consensus estimates based on scientific evidence , mainly fossils .
For events dating from the formation of the planet to the rise of modern humans see: Timeline of natural history, Timeline of the evolutionary history of life and Timeline of human evolution. For events dating from the first appearance of Homo sapiens to before the invention of writing see: Timeline of prehistory
Human history is the record of humankind from prehistory to the present. Modern humans evolved in Africa around 300,000 years ago and initially lived as hunter-gatherers.They migrated out of Africa during the Last Ice Age and had spread across Earth's continental land except Antarctica by the end of the Ice Age 12,000 years ago.
Overview map of the peopling of the world by early humans during the Upper Paleolithic, following the Southern Dispersal paradigm. The so-called "recent dispersal" of modern humans took place about 70–50,000 years ago. [60] [61] [62] It is this migration wave that led to the lasting spread of modern humans throughout the world.
Human evolution is the evolutionary process within the history of primates that led to the emergence of Homo sapiens as a distinct species of the hominid family that includes all the great apes. [1]
This timeline of prehistory covers the time from the appearance of Homo sapiens approximately 315,000 years ago in Africa to the invention of writing, over 5,000 years ago, with the earliest records going back to 3,200 BC. Prehistory covers the time from the Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) to the beginning of ancient history.
By the early 1860s, as summarized in Charles Lyell's 1863 book Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man, it had become widely accepted that humans had existed during a prehistoric period—which stretched many thousands of years before the start of written history. This view of human history was more compatible with an evolutionary origin ...