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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.
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 Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (c. 3.3 million – c. 11,700 years ago) (/ ˌ p eɪ l i oʊ ˈ l ɪ θ ɪ k, ˌ p æ l i-/ PAY-lee-oh-LITH-ik, PAL-ee-), also called the Old Stone Age (from Ancient Greek παλαιός (palaiós) 'old' and λίθος (líthos) 'stone'), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone tools, and which represents almost ...
The oldest human skeletal remains are the 40ky old Lake Mungo remains in New South Wales, but human ornaments discovered at Devil's Lair in Western Australia have been dated to 48 kya and artifacts at Madjedbebe in Northern Territory are dated to at least 50 kya, and to 62.1 ± 2.9 ka in one 2017 study. [26] [27] [28] [29]
Paleolithic Europe, or Old Stone Age Europe, encompasses the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age in Europe from the arrival of the first archaic humans, about 1.4 million years ago until the beginning of the Mesolithic (also Epipaleolithic) around 10,000 years ago. This period thus covers over 99% of the total human presence on the European continent. [1]
Dates for the Paleolithic are given as Before Present (BP), which uses 1 January 1950 as the commencement date of the age scale. All later dates are given as Before Christ (BC), which uses the conventional Gregorian calendar with AD 1 as the commencement date of the age scale.
"The results for Ranis are amazing," Weiss said, adding that scientists should return to other European sites from this time period to check for similar evidence of an early Homo sapiens presence.
The list of fossils begins with Graecopithecus, dated some 7.2 million years ago, which may or may not still be ancestral to both the human and the chimpanzee lineage. For the earlier history of the human lineage, see Timeline of human evolution#Hominidae, Hominidae#Phylogeny.