Humanity timeline

Documented and published events

Information about main hominin species can be found here: Our ancestors: hominids and hominins

1.8 MYA to 10,000 years ago - Pleistocene epoch

(Neogene Period - Cenozoic era)

• 10,000 years ago - a global shift from foraging to farming (Neill D., 2007)
• ~13,000 years ago - beginning of Neolithic era (New Stone Age) in the Middle East; an increase in human population growth rates
• ~28,000 years ago - extinction of Neanderthals in their last refugium in Gibraltar (Shipman P., 2008)
• 40,000 years ago - evidence for controlled use of fire in northern Europe associated with Homo heidelbergensis (Wells JC, Stock JT., 2007)
• ~50,000 years ago or earlier - humans occupied Australia
• 70,000 years ago - appearance of speech-enabled humans
• 35,000 (Neill D., 2007) - 78,000 (Wells JC, Stock JT., 2007) years ago - arrival and dispersal of humans to temperate zones of Europe where Neanderthals had existed for ~200,000 years already without major changes in culture
• 100,000-200,000 years ago - documented fossils of H. sapiens/H. heidelbergensis-like ancestors in sub-saharan Africa (Martin RD. (2007)); normal human FOXP2 around this time (Enard W at al., 2002)
• 600,000-150,000 years ago - further encephalization burst (referenced in Wells JC, Stock JT., 2007)

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5.332 MYA - 1.806 MYA - Pliocene epoch

(Neogene Period - Cenozoic era)

• 1.8-1 MYA - documented fossils of Homo erectus in Africa, Asia, and Europe; advanced bipedalism; the handaxe, a multipurpose tool with sharp edges and a pointed tip, was the hallmark of Homo erectus technology (Acheulean technology)
• around 1.5 MYA - estimated time for beginning of Acheulean technology (Mode II): handaxes
• around 1.8 MYA - dramatic aridification of environment - savanna and steppe stretched from Eastern and Northern Africa through the Levant and central Asia; possible dependence of early hominins on carnivory occured
• 2.4-5.3 MYA (according to different studies) - the time of frame-shift inactivation of MYH16 (sacromeric myosin) in hominins, a main structural component of muscle tissue, which is associated with marked reduction of chewing musculature (Stedman HH et al., 2004)
• 2.5 MYA-2 MYA - estimated time for beginning of Oldowan technology (Mode I): making rough, all-purpose tools capable of chopping, scraping, or cutting S
• 4.2 MYA - fossils of Australopithecus anamensis from Kenya (Leakey MG at al., 1998)

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23.03 MYA - 5.33 MYA - Miocene epoch

(Neogene Period - Cenozoic era)

• 4.4 MYA - occurence of morphological characteristics in fossils that might be indicative of development of bipedalism (Wells JC, Stock JT., 2007)
• 7-5 MYA - separation from common human-chimpanzee ancestor (Glazko GV, Nei M. (2003)); around this time two aminoacid substitutions occured in very conservative FOXP2 gene (gene associated with speach) (Enard W at al., 2002)
• 7 MYA - fossils of the earliest hominin, Sahelanthropus tchadensis, from Chad (Brunet M at al., 2005)

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33.9 - 23 MYA - Oligocene epoch

(Paleogene Period - Cenozoic era)

• ~25-23 MYA - Old World Monkeys (Cercopithecoidea) and apes (Hominoidea) lineages diverged (Marques-Bonet T et al., 2009)

55.8 - 33.9 MYA - Eocene epoch

(Paleogene Period - Cenozoic era)

• ~40 MYA (Middle Eocene) - fossils of stem anthropoid (Anthropoidea) primates of genus Eosimias in China (Miller ER et al., 2005)

Middle Eocene adapiform primate Darwinius masillae

Franzen JL et al.
PLoS One. 2009 May 19;4(5):e5723.

• Early Eocene - fossils of adapiform (Adapoidea) and omomyiform (Omomyoidea) primates (Miller ER et al., 2005)

65.5 - 55.8 MYA - Paleocene epoch

(Paleogene Period - Cenozoic era)

• ~66-55 MYA - the oldest possible true primate fossil Altiatlasius (Miller ER et al., 2005)

250 - 65.5 MYA - Mesozoic era

(Jurassic and Cretaceous periods)

• ~65 MYA - about 70% of all species then living on Earth disappeared within a very short period including the last of the great dinosaurs; the event is referred as the K-T event (Cretaceous-Tertiary Mass Extinction event); it is believed that during and after this event, mammals started gradually diversify gradually taking over the new dinosaur-depleted world
• ~81.5-77 MYA - divergence strepsirrhines from haplorhines (molecular data) (Miller ER et al., 2005)
• ~90-85 MYA - divergence primates from other mammalian groups (molecular data) (Miller ER et al., 2005)
• 120-80 MYA - divergence of human and mouse lineages
• 140 MYA - vivipary was present in the common therial ancestor of marsipuals and placentals (Martin RD., 2007)
• 200 MYA - emergence of lactation and suckling (Martin RD., 2007)

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Origin of Life

• 2,700 MYA - tentative evidence of presence of primitive Eukaryotes (Nisbet EG, Sleep NH., 2001)
• 3,600-4,000 MYA - geological evidence of first life forms on Earth (Nisbet EG, Sleep NH., 2001)

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Origin of Earth

• 4,500 MYA - the Earth was struck by another inner planet about the size of Mars; this impact spun and tilted the Earth and ejected enormous amounts of molten mantle into orbit, some of which formed the Moon (Nisbet EG, Sleep NH. (2001))
• 4,600 MYA - the Solar system began after one or more local supernova explosions (Nisbet EG, Sleep NH. (2001))

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References

• Martin RD. The evolution of human reproduction: a primatological perspective. Am J Phys Anthropol. 2007;Suppl 45:59-84.
• Nisbet EG, Sleep NH. The habitat and nature of early life. Nature. 2001 Feb 22;409(6823):1083-91.
• Enard W at al. Molecular evolution of FOXP2, a gene involved in speech and language. Nature. 2002 Aug 22;418(6900):869-72. Epub 2002 Aug 14.
• Glazko GV, Nei M. Estimation of divergence times for major lineages of primate species. Mol Biol Evol. 2003 Mar;20(3):424-34.
• Bracha HS. Human brain evolution and the "Neuroevolutionary Time-depth Principle: "Implications for the Reclassification of fear-circuitry-related traits in DSM-V and for studying resilience to warzone-related posttraumatic stress disorder. Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry. 2006 Jul;30(5):827-53. Epub 2006 Mar 23.
• Bellisari A. Evolutionary origins of obesity. Obes Rev. 2008 Mar;9(2):165-80.
• Wells JC, Stock JT. The biology of the colonizing ape. Am J Phys Anthropol. 2007;Suppl 45:191-222.
• Brunet M at al. New material of the earliest hominid from the Upper Miocene of Chad. Nature. 2005 Apr 7;434(7034):752-5. PMID: 15815627
• Leakey MG at al. New specimens and confirmation of an early age for Australopithecus anamensis. Nature. 1998 May 7;393(6680):62-6.
• Creely H, Khaitovich P. Human brain evolution. Prog Brain Res. 2006;158:295-309.
• Neill D. Cortical evolution and human behaviour. Brain Res Bull. 2007 Sep 28;74(4):191-205.
• Miller ER, Gunnell GF, Martin RD. Deep time and the search for anthropoid origins. Am J Phys Anthropol. 2005
• Shipman P. Separating "us" from "them": Neanderthal and modern human behavior. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2008 Sep 23;105(38):14241-2.
• Marques-Bonet T, Ryder OA, Eichler EE. Sequencing primate genomes: what have we learned? Annu Rev Genomics Hum Genet. 2009;10:355-86.
• Stedman HH et al. Myosin gene mutation correlates with anatomical changes in the human lineage. Nature. 2004 Mar 25;428(6981):415-8.