4th millennium BC

Culture

• Mesopotamia
• *4100–3100 BC – the Uruk period, with emerging Sumerian hegemony during the Uruk Expansion and development of Proto-cuneiform writing; base-60 mathematics, astronomy and astrology, civil law, complex hydrology, the sailboat, potter's wheel and wheel; the Chalcolithic proceeds into the Early Bronze Age.
• *3500–2340 BC – Sumer: wheeled carts, potter's wheel, White Temple ziggurat, bronze tools and weapons.
• *First to Fourth dynasty of Kish in Mesopotamia.
• *Sumerian temple of Inanna at Eridu erected.
• *Temple at Al-Ubaid and tomb of Mes-Kalam-Dug built near Ur, Chaldea.
• *3000 BC – Tin is in use in Mesopotamia soon after this time.
• *The cuneiform script proper emerges from pictographic proto-writing in the later 4th millennium. Mesopotamia's "proto-literate" period spans the 35th to 32nd centuries BC. The first documents unequivocally written in the Sumerian language date to the 31st century BC, found at Jemdet Nasr.
• *Kura-Araxes culture expands Southwards towards Sumer.
• *Possible reigns of Lugalbanda and Enmerkar prior to 3250 BC.
• *Long distanced trade with polities in modern-day Afghanistan.
• *Dams, canals, stone sculptures using inclined plane and lever in Sumer.
• *Urkesh founded during the fourth millennium BC possibly by the Hurrians.
• *The Courtyard is introduced to Mesopotamia.
• Persian plateau
• *4000 BC – Susa is a center of pottery production.
• * – Beaker from Susa is made. It is now at Musée du Louvre, Paris.
• *Proto-Elamite from 3200 BC.
• Anatolia and Caucasus
• * to 3000 BC – The Maykop culture of the Caucasus, contemporary to the Kurgan culture, is a candidate for the origin of Bronze production and thus the Bronze Age.
• *3400–2000 BC – Kura-Araxes: earliest evidence found on the Ararat plain.

• Egypt
• * 4000–3000 BC – Naqada culture on the Nile. First hieroglyphs appear thus far around 3500 BC as found on labels in a ruler's tomb at Abydos.
• * Predynastic pharaohs Tiu, Thesh, Hsekiu, Wazner, Ro, Serket, Narmer.
• *3500–3400 BC – Jar with boat designs, from Hierakonpolis is created. Predynastic Egypt.
• *c. 3150 BC – Predynastic period ended in Ancient Egypt. Early Dynastic period started. The period includes 1st and 2nd Dynasties.
• * – Narmer Palette.
• *Sails used in the Nile.
• *Mastabas, the predecessors of the Egyptian pyramids.
• *Harps and flutes played in Egypt.
• *Lyres and double clarinets played in Egypt.
• *Earliest known numerals in Egypt.

• Crete: Rise of Minoan civilization.
• * – First Neolithic settlers in the island of Thera, Greece, migrating probably from Minoan Crete.
• Pontic–Caspian steppe
• * 3500–2300 BC – The Yamna culture, succeeding the Sredny Stog culture on the Pontic–Caspian steppe in the Caucasus and Central Asia. This culture is believed to have been the locus of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, and thus the Urheimat, or point of origin, of the Proto Indo-European language, according to the Kurgan hypothesis.
• * 5500–2750 BC – The Cucuteni–Trypillia culture has cities with 15,000 citizens, eastern Europe.
• *Kurgan culture of what is now Southern Russia and Ukraine; possibly the first domestication of the horse.
• Balkans
• *c. 3500 BC – Figures of a man and a woman, from Cernavodă, Romania, are made. They are now at National Historical Museum, Bucharest.
• *c. 3138 BC Ljubljana Marshes Wheel is a wooden wheel that was found in the Ljubljana Marsh in Slovenia. Radiocarbon dating showed that it is approximately 5,150 years old, which makes it the oldest wooden wheel yet discovered.
• c. 4000–2000 BC – People and animals, a detail of rock-shelter painting in Cogul, Lleida, Spain, are painted. It is now at Archaeology Museum of Catalonia, Barcelona.
• Arzachena and Ozieri cultures.
• MaltaFile:Ggantija Temples, Xaghra, Gozo.jpg|thumb|The Ġgantija temples are the earliest of the Megalithic Temples of Malta
• *3600 BC – Construction of the Ġgantija megalithic temple complex on the Island of Gozo: the world's oldest extant unburied free-standing structures, and the world's oldest religious structures.
• *3600–3200 BC – Construction of the first temple within the Mnajdra solar temple complex, containing "furniture" such as stone benches and tables, that set it apart from other European megalith constructions.
• *Great Neolithic Plague occurs from circa 5450 BC to circa 2700 BC. This ensures for the large scaled expansions of the later early bronze age.
• *3600–3000 BC – Construction of the Ta' Ħaġrat and Kordin III temples.
• *3250–3000 BC – Construction of three megalithic temples at Tarxien.
• *3200–2500 BC – Construction of the Ħaġar Qim megalithic temple complex, featuring both solar and lunar alignments.
• Northern Europe
• 4000–2700 BC – The Funnelbeaker culture, Scandinavia, originated in southern parts of Europe and slowly advanced up through today's Uppland.
• *3300–2900 BC – Construction of the Newgrange solar observatory/passage tomb in Ireland.File:Tustrup gravpladsen.Jættestue.Gang.2.47886.ajb.jpg|thumb|Tustrup-dysserne, the largest passage grave in Eastern Jutland, is an example of Funnelbeaker culture circa 3200 BC
• *c. 3100–2600 BC – Neolithic settlement at Skara Brae in the Orkney Islands, Scotland, is inhabited.
• *Construction in England of the Sweet Track, the world's first known engineered roadway.
• *Garth tsunami in the Northern Isles.
• * c. 3100 BC – The earliest phase of the Stonehenge monument.
• *The Céide Fields are developed, the first signs of the eventual complete deforestation of Ireland.
• c. 3300 BC – Ötzi the Iceman dies near the present-day border between Austria and Italy, only to be discovered in 1991 buried in a glacier of the Ötztal Alps. His cause of death is believed to be homicide.

• * 3500–2500 BC – Afanasevo: Siberia, Mongolia, Xinjiang, Kazakhstan—late copper and early Bronze Age.
• * – Horses are domesticated in the western Eurasian Steppes in what is now northern Kazakhstan.
• *Bactria Margiana civilization alongside trade routes connection with Proto-dynastic Egypt.

• Neolithic Chinese settlements. They produced silk and pottery, wore hemp clothing, and domesticated pigs and dogs.
• 4000–2500 BC – Vietnamese Bronze Age culture. The Đồng Đậu Culture, produced many wealthy bronze objects.

• Mehrgarh III–VI
• 3500 BC Metalcasting began in the Mohenjodaro area.
• 3300 BC – Bronze Age starts in Indus Valley.
• *Drainage and Sewage collection and disposal

• c. 3600 BC – In Colombia, first rupestrian art Chiribiquete.
• c. 3000 BC – First pottery in Colombia at Puerto Hormiga, considered one of the first attempts of pottery of the New World. First settlement at Puerto Badel.
• c. 3600 BC – Evidence of maize domestication appear in the Valley of Tehuacán.
• Norte Chico civilization in Northern Peru starts.

• c. 3000 BC – The Sydney rock engravings in present-day.

Environment

• The Older Peron transgression was a period identified in 1961 happening between 6,000 and 4,600 years BP when sea levels were 3 to 5 metres higher than today.
• Plants buried in the Quelccaya Ice Cap in the Peruvian Andes demonstrate the climate had shifted suddenly and severely to capture the plants and preserve them until now.
• c. 3750 BC – The last North American mammoths, on Saint Paul Island, Alaska, go extinct.
• Tree rings from Ireland and England show this was their driest period.
• Ice core records showing the ratio of two oxygen isotopes retrieved from the ice fields atop Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro, a proxy for atmospheric temperature at the time snow fell.
• Major changes in plant pollen uncovered from lakebed cores in South America.
• Record lowest levels of methane retrieved from ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica.
• End of the Neolithic Subpluvial, start of desertification of Sahara. North Africa shifts from a habitable region to a barren desert.
• c. 3150 BC – a lesser Tollmann's hypothetical bolide event may have occurred.
• 3051 BC – The oldest currently living non-clonal organism germinated in the present-day Grove of the Ancients, Inyo County, California.