Timeline of prehistory

Middle Paleolithic

• 320 kya – 305 kya: Populations at Olorgesailie in Southern Kenya undergo technological improvements in tool making and engage in long-distance trade.
• 315 kya: Approximate date of appearance of Homo sapiens.
• 270 kya: Age of Y-DNA haplogroup A00.
• 250 kya: First appearance of Homo neanderthalensis.
• 230 kya: Latest proposed date for the Terra Amata site, home of the first confirmed purpose-built structure and probably made by Homo heidelbergensis.
• 230 kya – 150 kya: Age of mt-DNA haplogroup L.
• 210 kya: Modern human presence in southeast Europe.
• 200 kya: Oldest known grass bedding, including insect-repellent plants and ash layers beneath.
• 195 kya: Omo remains.
• 194 kya – 177 kya: Modern human presence in West Asia.
• 170 kya: Humans are wearing clothing by this date.
• 164 kya:  Humans diet expands to include marine resources
• 160 kya: Homo sapiens idaltu.
• 150 kya: Peopling of Africa: Khoisanid separation, age of mtDNA haplogroup L0.
• 139 ± 17 kya: Levallois core reductions, pointed tools and a variety of retouched artefacts at Retlapalle, India.
• 130 kya: Oldest evidence of ancient seafaring, from Crete.
• 125 kya: The peak of the Eemian interglacial period.
• 120 kya: Possibly the earliest evidence of use of symbols etched onto bone.
• 120 kya: Use of marine shells for personal decoration by humans, including Neanderthals.
• 120 kya – 90 kya: Abbassia Pluvial in North Africa—the Sahara desert region is wet and fertile.
• 120 kya – 75 kya: Khoisanid back-migration from Southern Africa to East Africa.
• 100 kya: Earliest structures in the world built in Egypt close to Wadi Halfa near the modern border with Sudan.
• 80 kya – 70 kya: Recent African origin: separation of sub-Saharan Africans and non-Africans.
• 75 kya: Eruption of the Toba supervolcano. It was originally thought that this event led to a genetic bottleneck in humans and perhaps other species, but more recent evidence makes this doubtful.
• 70 kya: Earliest example of abstract art or symbolic art from Blombos Cave, South Africa—stones engraved with grid or cross-hatch patterns.

  Upper Paleolithic

• 80 kya – 40 kya: Evidence of Australian Aboriginal Culture.
• 67 kya – 40 kya: Neanderthal admixture to Eurasians.
• 65 kya – 50 kya: Oldest site of human habitation in Australia, at Madjedbebe.
• 50 kya: Earliest evidence of a sewing needle, made and used by Denisovans.
• 50 kya – 30 kya: Mousterian Pluvial in North Africa. The Sahara region is wet and fertile. Late Stone Age begins in Africa.
• c. 50 kya: Denisova hominin lives in the Altai Mountains, with oldest estimated to be c. 76 kya.
• 45 kya: The earliest known representational art: a painting of three Celebes warty pigs in Leang Tedongnge cave, Sulawesi.
• 45 kya – 43 kya: The first waves of Homo sapiens arrive in Europe, comprising the Early European modern humans.
• 45 kya – 40 kya: Châtelperronian cultures in France.
• 42 kya: Time frame of the Laschamp event, the first geomagnetic excursion studied and one of the few full global magnetic field reversals known. Although many effects upon life on Earth and human evolution from the increase in cosmic rays have been tentatively proposed, the effects are not considered to have been strong enough to have significantly affected natural or human history.
• 42 kya: Paleolithic flutes in Germany.
• 42 kya: Earliest evidence of advanced deep sea fishing technology at the Jerimalai cave site in East Timor—demonstrates high-level maritime skills and by implication the technology needed to make ocean crossings to reach Australia and other islands, as they were catching and consuming large numbers of big deep sea fish such as tuna.
• 40 kya: Extinction of Homo neanderthalensis.

• 40 kya: Aurignacian culture begins in Europe.
• 40 kya: Oldest known figurative art the zoomorphic Löwenmensch figurine.
• 40 kya: Oldest known figurative art of a human figure as opposed to a zoomorphic figure.

• 40 kya – 30 kya: First human settlements formed by Aboriginal Australians in several areas that are today the cities of Sydney, Perth and Melbourne.
• 40 kya – 20 kya: Oldest known ritual cremation, the Mungo Lady, in Lake Mungo, Australia.
• 37 kya: A population of Basal Eurasians migrate to Europe. Unlike the Early European modern humans that inhabited Europe earlier, these populations form part of the ancestry of modern Europe.
• 36 kya: Evidence of humans using fibers in a cave in present-day Georgia.
• 33 kya: Earliest evidence of humanoids in Ireland.
• 33 kya – 22 kya: Gravettian period in Europe.
• 31 kya: Earth ovens in Central Europe.
• 31 kya – 16 kya: Last Glacial Maximum.
• 30 kya: Rock paintings tradition begins in Bhimbetka rock shelters in India, which presently as a collection is the densest known concentration of rock art. In an area about 10 km², there are about 800 rock shelters of which 500 contain paintings.
• 28.5 kya: New Guinea is populated by colonists from Asia or Australia.
• 28 kya: Oldest known twisted rope.
• 28 kya – 24 kya: Oldest known pottery—used to make figurines rather than cooking or storage vessels.
• 25 kya: A hamlet consisting of huts built of rocks and of mammoth bones is founded in what is now Dolní Věstonice in Moravia in the Czech Republic. Dolní Věstonice is the oldest human permanent settlement that has yet been found by archaeologists.
• 25 kya: Ancient North Eurasians migrate into eastern Siberia, intermixing with the local Ancient East Asian populations. Their descendants migrated into Beringia, where they became the Ancestral Native Americans.
• 24 kya – 15 kya: General time frame for the Mal'ta–Buret' culture near Lake Baikal, the archaeological culture whose human remains serve as the type for the Ancient North Eurasian population which appeared some time prior. Mal'ta-Buret' sites consisted of temporary mammoth-bone huts for reindeer hunters, yet their art is among the most sophisticated of their time, having many parallels with carvings elsewhere in Eurasia, indicative of long-distance exchange of ideas. Both Europeans and American Indians share significant ANE ancestry.
• 24 kya: The cave bear is thought to have become extinct.
• 24 kya: Evidence suggests humans living in Alaska and Yukon North America.
• 23 kya: A population of wolves are hypothesized to have begun cohabiting with Ancient North Eurasians for shared food, protection, and hunting success. This commensal relationship is thought to have led to the domestication of the dog, which genetic studies show their ancestry diverging from wolves at this time along with an increase in population. At the Yana Rhinoceros Horn Site, smaller wolf-like canids with neotenous features and signs of being cared for have been observed.
• 23 kya – 21 kya: The earliest known human footprints in North America are left at what is now White Sands National Park, New Mexico.
• 21 kya: Artifacts suggest early human activity occurred in Canberra, the capital city of Australia.
• 20 kya: Kebaran culture in the Levant: beginning of the Epipalaeolithic in the Levant.
• 20 kya: Theorized earliest date of development of traditional Arctic clothing like those used by Arctic Eurasians and Inuit.
• 20 kya – 19 kya: Earliest pottery use, in Xianren Cave, China.
• 20 kya – 18 kya: Minatogawa Man in Okinawa, Japan.
• 20 kya – 10 kya: Khoisanid expansion to Central Africa.
• 18 kya – 12 kya: Though estimations vary widely, it is believed by scholars that Afro-Asiatic was spoken as a single language around this time period.
• 18 kya: The Magdalenian culture appears in Europe. They are responsible for some of the most complex and famous artistic traditions of Ice Age Europe, creating the cave paintings of Lascaux and Altamira, as well as numerous carvings in ivory and stone.
• 17 kya: The earliest gene for blond hair is found among Ancient North Eurasians at the Afontova Gora site in Siberia.
• 16 kya – 11 kya: Caucasus hunter-gatherer expansion to Europe.
• 16 kya: Wisent sculpted in clay deep inside the cave now known as Le Tuc d'Audoubert in the French Pyrenees near what is now the border of Spain.
• 14.2 kya: The oldest agreed domestic dog remains belongs to the Bonn–Oberkassel dog that was buried with two humans.
• 14 kya: Y-chromosome haplogroup R1b, normally associated with the Near East at this time, appears in Italy.
• 14 kya: Western Hunter Gatherers of the Epigravettian culture expand into Europe and replace the Magdalenian culture.
• 14 kya – 12 kya: Oldest evidence for prehistoric warfare.
• 13 kya – 10 kya: End of the Last Glacial Period, climate warms, glaciers recede.
• 13 kya: A major water outbreak occurs on Lake Agassiz in central North America, which at the time could have been the size of the current Black Sea and the largest lake on Earth. Much of the lake is drained in the Arctic Ocean through the Mackenzie River.
• 13 kya – 10 kya: Earliest dates suggested for the domestication of the sheep, in Mesopotamia.
• 12.9 kya – 11.7 kya: The Younger Dryas, a period of sudden cooling and return to glacial conditions.
• 12 kya: Volcanic eruptions in the Virunga Mountains blocked Lake Kivu outflow into Lake Edward and the Nile system, diverting the water to Lake Tanganyika. Nile's total length is shortened and Lake Tanganyika's surface is increased.