The development of humanity and early civilizations – from the Stone Age to the Roman Empire

 

Some of the civilizations demonstrated on a timeline.

 

Palaeolithic Age (“Old Stone Age”) beginning 2.5 my (million years) BP (before present)

  • Migrations of hominid species out of Africa (homo erectus, archaic homo sapiens and modern homo sapiens or homo sapiens sapiens spread into Eurasia)

  • Anatomically modern humans arrive in Southeast Asia c. 70,000 years BP, in East Asia and Australia c. 65,000 BP, in Europe and Siberia c. 45,000 BP, in North America c. 24,000 BP (Alaska) and c. 12,000 BP (North American inland), in the Pacific (western part) c. 3500 BP

  • Early manifestations of symbolic activity (scratchings of visual symbols on a stone plate from Blombos Cave, South Africa); c. 77,000 BP

Upper Palaeolithic (“Later Stone Age”) c. 45,000–12,000 BP

  • Cave paintings in southwestern France (Cosquer, Chauvet, Lascaux, Pech-Merle) and northern Spain (Altamira); c. 35,000–18,000 BP

  • Mobiliary art (figurines) from Europe and Siberia (around Lake Baykal): the Hohlenstein-Stadel lion/human hybrid (perhaps female), female figurines, traditionally called “Venus figurines” such as the Swabian Eve, the Venus of Willendorf, the dancing Venus of the Galgenberg, the statuettes from Mal’ta near Lake Baykal; from c. 35,000 BP onward

  • Cave paintings in the Ural Mountains (Ignatievka) from c. 14,000 BP

  • The emergence of shamanistic traditions in Eurasia, Africa, and America, with local developments such as Shinto in Japan and dreamtime animism in Australia

 

The Danube River.

 

Mesolithic Age (“Middle Stone Age”) c. 13,000–10,000 BP

  • The earliest monumental temples, erected by hunter-gatherers, at Göbekli Tepe in eastern Turkey. (Engraving of a woman exposing her vulva in sacred display on a doorstep, most probably with an apotropaic function to ward off people who did not belong to the congregation.)

  • Sanctuary at Lepenski Vir in the Danube Valley (with the characteristic feature of trapezoid structures)

Neolithic Age (“Younger Stone Age”) c. 8000–3500 BCE (before common era), Copper Age (an extension of the Neolithic Age) 5000–3000 BCE

  • The beginnings of plant cultivation (independently in three regional centers at different times)

Middle East and ancient Egypt

East Asia (rice production in China)

the American Southwest

  • Çatalhöyük, Oldest agrarian settlement in Anatolia c. 7500–5600 BCE

  • The origins of pottery-making c. 7500 BCE

The emergence of early civilizations and the persistence of their cultural heritage in subsequent periods:

  • Old Europe (Danube civilization) c. 5500–3500 BCE

    • Metal-working, first writing, religious architecture, religion of a major female divinity, figurines in abstract style, egalitarian social structures, urbanization (with megacities in southern Ukraine and Moldova)

    • Ancient Aegean cultures

  • Mesopotamia (the oldest civilization being Sumerian; c. 4000–2000 BCE)

    • Monumental architecture (ziggurats), urbanization, literacy (early Sumerian pictography, later cuneiform), social hierarchy

    • Cuneiform spreads into Akkadian, Hittite, Hurrian, Ugaritic and Old Persian languages

Bronze Age c. 3500–1200 BCE

  • Divinities with anthropomorphic and zoomorphic features (e.g. the Egyptian Cat Goddess Bastet)

  • The establishment of trade networks in the Mediterranean (Mycenaeans, Phoenicians), in the Persian Gulf and in the Arabian Sea (merchants from Dilmun)

  • The beginnings of science in Babylonia and Egypt

  • The beginnings of alphabetic writing (Sinaitic)

  • Ancient Egypt c. 3300–30 BCE

    • Monumental architecture (pyramids, temples at Karnak), hieroglyphic writing, social hierarchy

    • Ancient Nubia

  • Elamite civilization c. 3050–2700 BCE

    • Major political center was Susa

 

Abu Simbel Temples in Egypt.

 

  • Ancient Indus civilization c. 2600–1800 BCE

    • Centers in Harappa and Mohenjo-daro

    • Egalitarian society

    • The emergence of Hinduism in India, with its origins in traditions of the Indus civilization. Further development under the influence of Indo-European (Aryan) culture that was transferred to India with the Aryan migrations around 1700 BCE

  • Mycenaean city states c. 1600–1200 BCE

Iron Age since c. 1200 BCE

  • Ancient China (Shang, Zhou, Qin and Han dynasties) c. 1200 BCE – 220 CE

    • Woodblock printing on paper

    • Chinese civilization influencing regional cultures such as Manchu, Tangut, Naxi and others; Buddhism and writing spreading from China to Korea and Japan

  • Precolumbian America (Olmec, Mayan, Aztec, Zapotec, Mixtec) c. 1200 BCE – 1500 CE

    • Urbanization, writing, social hierarchy

  • Greek antiquity (ancient Greece, classical Greece, Hellenistic Age) c. 700–27 BCE

    • The emergence of historiography, science and philosophy

    • Polytheism with a marked preference for pre-Greek Goddesses (Athena, Hera, Hestia, Artemis)

  • Roman civilization 753 BCE – 395 CE

    • The Romanization of pre-Roman populations in southern and western Europe

Harald Haarmann and Auli Kurvinen

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Harald Haarmann, Auli Kurvinen