A timeline of human evolution, history, technology, and the fates of human societies.
This is History, history understood as a single, coherent, evolutionary process, when taking into account the experience of all peoples in all times.
See an updated version here.
(For my reference. All dates approximate. Suggestions welcome..)
=====> All dates B.P. (Before Present) unless otherwise noted. <=====
250 million-Present | A regular 26 to 34 million year cycle of catastrophe for the Solar System may be in effect
65 million | Asteroid impact might not have killed the dinosaurs. See article on ‘Impact Hyperbole’
13 million | Last common ancestor of all apes, including humans. A specimen of tree-dwelling Pierolapithecus catalaunicus was discovered in Spain.
5.5 million | Unknown last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees.
4 million | First bipedal human ancestor. Bipedalism appears suddenly in the fossil record. Could be Ardipithecus ramidus, a hominid that lived in the wooded grasslands of the Horn of Africa.
1.8 million-100,000 | Homo erectus in Africa, Asia, and Indonesia (and Europe?). First use of crude stone tools and may have harnessed naturally occuring fire (1.5 Myr, Swartkrans, South Africa). Genetic studies indicate modern humans are not descended from H. erectus, which appears as an evolutionary side-branch and dead end.
340,000 | Geminga supernova, 300 light-years away
200,000-150,000 | Genetic Eve (or “mitochondrial Eve”), the most recent common female ancestor of all living humans (from mitochondrial DNA, mtDNA, dating). The mtDNA from Eve merely acts as a tracer that links all present-day humans to a single population of ancient humans, who lived in Africa.
