History of Humans on Planet Earth
By K. Kris Hirst, About.com Guide to Archaeology
Archaeologists study humans and human behaviors, and the data they produce help us to understand the past, present and future. The time lines they study begin with the hominin called Australopithecus and continue down to the present day. Here you'll find resources on archaeological information gathered about all of these time periods.
- Stone Age (2.5 million-20,000 years ago)
- Hunters and Gatherers (20,000-12,000 years ago)
- First Farming Societies (12,000-5,000 years ago)
Stone Age (2.5 million-20,000 years ago)
The Stone Age or Paleolithic Period is the name archaeologists have given to the beginning of archaeology--that part of the earth's history that includes the genus Homo and our immediate ancestor Australopithecus. It began approximately 2.5 million years ago, in Africa, when Australopithecus began making stone tools, and ended about 20,000 years ago, with big-brained and talented modern humans spread all over the world. Traditionally, the Paleolithic period is broken into three parts, the Lower, Middle and Upper Paleolithic periods.
- Stone Age / Paleolithic Timeline
- Lower Paleolithic (2.5 million-200,000 years ago)
- Middle Paleolithic (200,000-40,000 years ago)
- Upper Paleolithic (40,000-20,000 years ago)
Hunters and Gatherers (20,000-12,000 years ago)
For a good a long time after modern humans had evolved and won out over all of our cousins everywhere on the planet, we humans relied on hunting and gathering as a way to live. This ersatz category of mine lumps the more formalized periods in the Near East called the Epi-paleolithic and Natufian, the American Paleoindian and Archaic, the European Mesolithic, and the Asian Hoabinhian and Jomon.
First Farming Societies (12,000-5,000 years ago)
Beginning about 12,000 years ago, humans begin to invent a whole range of useful behaviors that together we call the Neolithic Revolutions. Most importantly, humans began to tend and then deliberately grow crops and animals, including a range of domesticated animals and plants
- Pre-Pottery Neolithic (8500-5500 BC)
- Predynastic Egypt (6000-3050 BC)
- Linearbandkeramik Culture (5500-4900 BC)
Early Civilizations (3000-1500 BC)
Evidence for fairly sophisticated political and social organization has been identified in Mesopotamia as long ago as 4700 BC; but most of the post-Neolithic societies that we consider 'civilizations' are dated beginning just about 3000 BC.
- Mesopotamia 4700-600 BC
- Harappan/Indus Valley 3200-1900 BC
- Minoan 2600-1100 BC
- Caral Supe/Norte Chico 2600-1500 BC
- Old Kingdom Egypt 2575-2134 BC
- Longshan Culture 2500-1900 BC
- Middle Kingdom Egypt 2040-1640 BC
- Shang Dynasty 1700-1050 BC
- Mycenaean 1700-1100 BC
Ancient Empires (1500-0 BC)
About 3000 years ago, towards the end of what archaeologists call the Late Bronze Age and beginning of the Iron Age, the first true imperialist societies appeared; however, not all societies which appeared during this time period were empires.
- Kush 1700-1500 BC
- New Kingdom Egypt 1550-1070 BC
- Middle Assyrian 1370-1150 BC
- Lapita 1400-900 BC
- Hittites 1340-1200 BC
- Olmec 1200-400 BC
- Zhou Dynasty 1050-256 BC
- Dong Son 1000-1 BC
- Greek Civilization 800-169 BC
- Persian Empire 648 BC-AD 637
- Zapotec civilization 500 BC-AD 700
- Qin Dynasty 221-206 BC
- Teotihuacan 150 BC-AD 600
- Roman Empire 49 BC-AD 476
Developing States (AD 0-1500)
The first 1500 years of the modern era saw the rise and societies throughout the world. Not many of them became long-lasting states, but almost all modern states have their immediate roots in this period.
