Draft:Original research/History

What is history?
History starts with events, particularly in human affairs.

These events are in the past.

As these events are no longer here in the present, they cannot be studied directly.

Sometimes there is a whole series of events connected with someone or something.

A continuous, typically chronological, record of important or public events or of a particular trend or institution is studied as a history of these events.

History can be as long as a few seconds ago to hundreds of years ago.

Does history begin with the Copper Age or the Paleolithic?

Radiation
An evolutionary radiation is an increase in taxonomic diversity or morphological disparity, due to adaptive change or the opening of ecospace. Radiations may affect one clade or many, and be rapid or gradual; where they are rapid, and driven by a single lineage's adaptation to their environment, they are termed adaptive radiations.

Perhaps the most familiar example of an evolutionary radiation is that of [Eutheria] placental mammals immediately after the extinction of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous, about 65 million years ago. At that time, the placental mammals were mostly small, insect-eating animals similar in size and shape to modern shrews. By the Eocene (58–37 million years ago), they had evolved into such diverse forms as bats, whales, and horses.

The Hawaiian lobelioids [in the image on the left] are a group of flowering plants in the [Campanula] bellflower family, Campanulaceae, all of which are endemic to the Hawaiian Islands. This is the largest plant radiation in the Hawaiian Islands, and indeed the largest on any island archipelago, with over 125 species.

History as creative writing
A compilation of historical writings History as creative writing| that created social transformation.

Theoretical history
Def. a period of time that has already happened, in contrast to the present and the future is called a past.

Def.
 * 1) an occurrence; something that happens,
 * 2) a point in spacetime having three spatial coordinates and one temporal coordinate,
 * 3) a possible action that the user can perform that is monitored by an application or the operating system, or
 * 4) a set of some of the possible outcomes; a subset of the sample space

is called an event.

Def.
 * 1) the aggregate of past events,
 * 2) the branch of knowledge that studies the past; the assessment of notable events,
 * 3) a set of events involving an entity,
 * 4) a record or narrative description of past events,
 * 5) the list of past and continuing medical conditions of an individual or family,
 * 6) a record of previous user events, especially of visited web pages in a browser, or
 * 7) something that no longer exists or is no longer relevant

is called history.

Entities
"History and experience act as a filter that can distort as much as elucidate. It is largely forgotten now, overlooked in the one-line description of Tony Blair and George W Bush as the men who lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, but there was a wider context to their conviction." Bold added.

Types of history
History is broken up into many different categories that define what time period and event that it was.

Terms such as Era, Eon, Age and so on, are used to describe and classify what the time period is or what the period had to offer.

Recent
The recent history period dates from around 1,000 b2k to present.

"While the human groups are many and diverse, they are conveniently combined in two categories: first, the natural or consanguineal or kinship group in which the unit is the ethnos; and second, the artificial or essentially social group in which the unit is the demos. The ethnos, or ethnic group, is the homologue of the varietal or specific group of animals; it is the dominant group in lower savagery, but its influence on human life wanes upward, to practically disappear in enlightenment except as retained in the structure of the family. The demos is the product of intelligence applied to the regulation of human affairs; it has no true homologue among animals; its importance waxes as that of the ethnos wanes from savagery through barbarism and civilization and thence into enlightenment."

"Few concepts are as emotionally charged as that of race. The word conjures up a mixture of associations—culture, ethnicity, genetics, subjugation, exclusion and persecution. But is the tragic history of efforts to define groups of people by race really a matter of the misuse of science, the abuse of a valid biological concept?"

20th Century
Bottle, Tswa peoples, Rwanda, Early-mid 20th century, Ceramic, resin, commercial paint, wax: Potters--primarily women--hand-build a variety of vessels that they embellish with beautiful colors, designs and motifs before firing them at low temperatures. Containers made for daily use hold water or serve as cooking utensils. They also make vessels to be used in special ceremonies or that become part of an assemblage of objects placed in a shrine. The brilliant red, bold zigzag motif was probably rendered with imported paint and applied to the body after firing. The surface was covered with wax to enhance the natural color of the clay. The paint and wax may have been applied to the bottle by someone other than the potter.

19th Century
The painting Napoleon I on his Imperial Throne dates to 1806 by artist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.

"This blanket [in the image centered] was woven at the end of the "wearing blanket era," just as the railroad came into the Southwest in 1881. The heavier handspun yarns and synthetic dyes are typical of pieces made during the transition from blanket weaving to rug weaving."-Ann Hedlund, Arizona State Museum.

Charred material from the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, Mexico, was radiocarbon dated at 1715-1895 AD (120 b2k intercept).

Little Ice Age
The Little Ice Age (LIA) appears to have lasted from about 1218 (782 b2k) to about 1878 (122 b2k).

18th Century
The more recent dated logboat of Ireland is from or known as Bond's Bridge, Cos AmlaghJTyrone, to 245 ± 15 b2k.

Taken from the observation platform at the top of the Jantar Mantar, the image on the right shows smaller architectural sundials. The Jantar Mantar is a collection of architectural astronomical instruments, built by Maharaja Jai Singh II at his then new capital of Jaipur between 1727 and 1733. The City Palace is behind then Govindji Temple. Nahargarh Fort is on the Hill.

17th Century
A logboat from Northern Ireland designated GrN-14744 dates to 305 ± 30 b2k.

The Keplerian Telescope was invented by Johannes Kepler in 1611.

16th Century
A logboat from Ireland (Derryloughan B, Co. Tyrone) designated GrN-14738 dates to 410 ± 35 b2k.

Angamuco "occupied 26 square kilometers of land instead of 13 square kilometers."

"That is a huge area with a lot of people and a lot of architectural foundations that are represented."

"If you do the maths, all of a sudden you are talking about 40,000 building foundations up there, which is [about] the same number of building foundations that are on the island of Manhattan."

Angamuco "had an unusual layout, with big structures like pyramids and open plazas situated around the edges rather than in the center."

"The Purépecha people existed at the same time as the Aztecs. While they are nowhere near as popular as their rivals, they were still a major civilization and had an imperial capital called Tzintzuntzan in western Mexico. Based on [...] LiDAR scans, though, Angamuco is even bigger Tzintzuntzan. It likely wasn't as densely populated, but [...] it's now the biggest city in western Mexico during that period that we know of."

"In I523 Cortes quietly appropriated for himself the great Tarascan-held silver district of Tamazula (Jalisco)."

Vázquez de Coronado set out from Compostela on February 23, 1540, at the head of a much larger expedition composed of about 400 European men-at-arms (mostly Spaniards), 1,300 to 2,000 Mexican Indian allies, four Franciscan friars (the most notable of whom were Juan de Padilla and the newly appointed provincial superior of the Franciscan order in the New World, Marcos de Niza), and several slaves, both natives and Africans. The painting on the left is titled: Coronado Sets Out to the North, by Frederic Remington.

Late Middle Ages
The Late Middle Ages extends from about 700 b2k to 500 b2k.

Italian humanism began in the first century of the late Middle Ages (c.1350-1450).

The processed image at the right in the images on the right is the product of the application of digital filters. Digital filters are mathematical functions that do not add any information to the image, but transform it in such a way that information already present in it becomes more visible or easier to appreciate by the naked eye. The processed image was produced by inverting the brightness of the pixels in the positive image but without inverting their hue, and then by increasing both the brightness contrast and the hue saturation. Finally noise and so-called “salt and pepper” filters automatically removed the noisy information from the original image which hinders the appreciation of the actual face. To my knowledge the resulting image is the best available and indeed the only one that reveals the color information hidden in the original.

Radiocarbon dating of a corner piece of the shroud placed it between the years 1260 and 1390, in the High to Late Middle Ages, which is consistent with "its first recorded exhibition in France in 1357."

"Italy from the peace of Lodi to the first French invasion (1454-94): the era of equilibrium" is near the end of the late Middle Ages.

Charred materials from the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, Mexico, were radiocarbon dated at 1170-1300 AD (680 b2k intercept), 1230-1315 AD (665 b2k intercept), 1300-1415 AD (605 b2k intercept), 1320-1535 AD (540 b2k intercept) and 1320-1435 AD (500 b2k intercept).

High Middle Ages
The High Middle Ages date from around 1,000 b2k to 700 b2k.

Mitochondrial "DNA analysis (HVRI sequences and RFLPs) [have been performed from] aborigine remains around 1000 years old. The sequences retrieved show that the Guanches possessed U6b1 lineages that are in the present day Canarian population, but not in Africans. In turn, U6b, the phylogenetically closest ancestor found in Africa, is not present in the Canary Islands. Comparisons with other populations relate the Guanches with the actual inhabitants of the Archipelago and with Moroccan Berbers. This shows that, despite the continuous changes suffered by the population (Spanish colonisation, slave trade), aboriginal mtDNA lineages constitute a considerable proportion of the Canarian gene pool. Although the Berbers are the most probable ancestors of the Guanches, it is deduced that important human movements have reshaped Northwest Africa after the migratory wave to the Canary Islands."

The "sublineage U6b1 is the most prevalent of the U6 subhaplogroup in the Canarian population,4 and has still not been detected in North Africa."

"This survey includes 131 teeth, corresponding to 129 different individuals, belonging to 15 archaeological sites sampled from four of the seven Canary Islands and dated around 1000 years old [image on the right]."

"The Canarian-specific U6b1 sequences are also found in high frequency (8.45%), corroborating the fact that these lineages were already present in the aboriginal population. Three additional founder haplotypes4 were also detected (260, 069 126 and 126 292 294), all of them showing equal or higher frequencies than in the present day Canarian population."

"The detection in the Guanches of the most abundant haplotype of the U6b1 branch, also found in present day islanders,4 points to a significant continuity of the aboriginal maternal gene pool."

"The [...] estimated age of the [U6b1] subgroup is around 6000 years,29 which predates the arrival of the first human settlers to the Islands.1"

Charred materials from the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, Mexico, were radiocarbon dated at 970-1,170 AD (885 b2k intercept) and 1,010-1275 AD (775 b2k intercept).

Medieval Warm Period
The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) dates from around 1150 to 750 b2k.

"A proof-of-concept self-calibrating chronology [based upon the Irish Oak chronology] clearly demonstrates that third order polynomials provide a series of statistical calibration curves that highlight lacunae in the samples."

As indicated in the figures, the data used in the plots comes from radiocarbon dating of Irish Oaks.

Gaps occur near the 1070s and 1470s b2k during the rising Δ14C values.

"The number of suitable samples of wood, which connect Antiquity and the Middle Ages is very small [shown in the third figure on the left]. But only a great number of samples would give certainty against error. For the period about 380 AD we have only 3, for the period about 720 AD only 4 suitable samples of wood (Hollstein 1980,11); usually 50 samples serve for dating."

"The center of the graph [in the fourth image on the left] shows the time axis of conventionally dated historical events. Upper and lower coordinates show reconstructed time tables. The black triangles mark the phantom years."

"In Frankfurt am Main archaeological excavations did not find any layer for the period between 650 and 910 AD."

Early Middle Ages
The Early Middle Ages date from around 1,700 to 1,000 b2k.

There "appears to be evidence for a major outbreak of [Yersinia pestis]-plague peaking at the end of the “733–960 AD”4 time span."

"At Birka, [near Stockholm, Sweden] “a sea level drop estimated up to 5 m has separated the lake from the nearby Baltic Sea of which it was once an inlet, and resulted in the harbour structures being located considerably inland as compared to their original situation”7" From coin finds, Birka was abandoned around 960.

"Truso [around Hansdorf near Elbing, situated on Lake Drużno near the Baltic Sea just east of the Vistula River] had undergone “isostatic adjustments (vertical crustal movements) [and] eustatic movements (fluctuations in the sea level due to climatic changes). / [The] in-fill consisted of a layer of black/brown sand with a high content of charcoal and ash”8."

"In [Great Moravia] some 30 major fortresses, at least nine of them with stone churches, are utterly devastated: "The most recent burnt horizons give evidence for a gigantic annihilation that is roughly datable to the time of 900 CE“11. More recently, the demise of the Great Moravia Empire is dated into the early part of the 10th century"12."

"Salzburg, [Austria]’s most important Early Medieval center, becomes “multiple times smaller”13 after a devastation in the 10th century when it resorts to primitive wooden houses for the few survivors.14"

"“There was a rapid, sometimes catastrophic, collapse of many of the pre-existing tribal centers. These events were accompanied by the permanent or temporary depopulation of former areas of settlement. Within a short time new centers representative of the Piast state arose on new sites, thus beginning [in 966] the thousand-year history of the Polish nation and state.”15 In the future Piast realm “the local traditional territorial structure was undergoing deep and dramatic changes. Actions which resulted in the abandonment of some of the old strongholds and the building in their place of new ones were associated irrevocably with mass population movement, […] the emergence of new forms and zones of settlement“16. Previously unsettled areas “became densely settled and strongholds appeared; in the second quarter of the tenth century, these were built on a unified model in Bnin, Giecz, Gniezno, Grzybowo, Ostrów Lednicki, Poznan and Smarzewo“17."

Archaeology "confirms that [Southern Baltic Ports] mysteriously “undergo discontinuity”18 in the 10th c. CE. The indigenous names for some of the deserted ports are not known to this very day."

"In [Hungary], the Early Medieval town of Mosaburg with its strikingly Roman style stone Basilica of Zalavár-Récéskút (9th/10th c.) “had become ruinous by the Arpadian age. / Dateable finds from the multilayer cemetery could all be dated to the years from the second third or middle of the 9th century to the early 10th century, namely to its first few decades. / / Not just Mosaburg/Zalavár became depopulated, but also its surrounding area“19."

Bulgaria "had the most splendid 9th/10th c. Slavic cities that – to the excavators‘ surprise – had been built in the 700 year earlier style of Rome’s 2nd/3rd c. CE period. Notwithstanding all their stone and brick massiveness, its metropolis, Pliska, comes to a terrible end: “A dark grey (most probably erosion) layer“20 (Henning 2007, 219; bold GH) had strangled that urban jewel for good [...] “Between the 11th and 15th c. CE, [Bulgaria’s; GH] Pliska basin was turned into a desert landscape“22."

The Classic Maya "culture of the [Yucatan] collapsed around the same time25 (or [Tiwanaku/Bolivia] dated to ca. 1000 CE26)"

“In Baghdad, the first half of the tenth century had a greater frequency of significant climate events and more intense cold than today, and probably also than the ninth century and the second half of the tenth century”27.

"The eleventh century marked another turning-point in Rome's urban history. Excavations have revealed that this period [of the beginning of the High Middle Ages; GH] is characterized, in all strata, by a significant rise in paving levels, and the consequent obliteration of many structures and ancient ruins."28

"The destruction of [Constantinople] must have taken place in the early 10th century when the Port of Theodosius was covered by mud."

"After Octavian/Augustus (31 BCE – 14 CE) had, in 30 BCE, turned Egypt into an imperial province of the Roman Empire, Memphis continued to thrive. Suetonius (69-122) writes about the city in his Life of Titus (part XI of The Twelve Caesars)."

"Egypt’s most famous export item, writing material made of sheets of papyrus (Cyperus papyrus or Nile grass) ceased to be cultivated around the 10th c. CE43: “All in all, we can say that after the 11th century no writing materials were produced from the papyrus plant"44. The plant had been virtually wiped out".

"The collapse of the [Balhae Empire was established under the name Jin] (Chinese: Bohei), stretching from [North Korea via China to Manchuria], is conventionally dated to 926 CE. It should have been noticed in Japan. Yet, a chronicle from a Japanese temple that reports "white ash falling like snow" is currently dated to 946. A recent survey tries to tie the explosion of Changbaishan volcano (also called Mount Paektu) –– located in Southern China close to North Korea, i.e., within the borders of the Balhae Empire –– to the chronicle’s observation:"

“The Millennium eruption has fascinated scientists and historians for decades because of its size, potential worldwide impacts. […] Its eruption in 946 was one of the most violent of the last two thousand years and is thought to have discharged around 100 cubic kilometers of ash and pumice into the atmosphere –– enough to bury the entire UK knee deep."46

"Eldgjá, has created the largest volcanic canyon in the world. It is some 40 km long, 270 m deep and 600 m wide. The eruption (dated to 934 or 939 CE) resulted in the most massive formation of flood basalt in historical time. 219 million tons of sulfur dioxide were blown into the atmosphere where they reacted with water and oxygen and became 450 million tons of sulfuric acid. These corrosive aerosols must have covered a large part of the Northern Hemisphere47."

“Throughout the Mediterranean Basin, the Levant, Iran, and southeast Arabia, many valleys display two alluvial fills of which the older dates from about 30,000-10,000 yr BP and the younger from about A.D. 400-1850. […] The younger fill is well sorted and stratified and, as in Mexico, displays silt-clay depletion as well as iron loss when compared with the older fill deposits from which it is often derived. […]. The younger fill is seen in many widely separated areas to cover structures of Roman age as the period of deposition extended into Byzantine and even medieval times. […] The sections in W. Libya are typical in showing the younger fill deposits in channels eroded into the earlier fill. In most areas, the surface of the older fill was the usable land in Roman times. Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and medieval sherds are found in the younger fill, which also covers entire cities, notably, Olympia in Greece.49”.

"Three hundred years [prior to 829 AD, 1171 b2k], it would seem, have left almost no trace in the ground. Truly, it would appear, that these years were indeed dark. Not only did men forget how to build in stone, they seem to have lost the capacity even of creating pottery; and the centuries in England that are generally designated Anglo-Saxon have left little or nothing even in this necessary domestic art. Pottery making does appear again in the tenth century."

"The history of the Anglo-Saxon court is largely lost and unknown."

"The Anglo-Saxons, from homelands [in Germany] where the necessary materials scarcely existed, probably had no tradition of building in stone."

"Attempts to demonstrate conclusively significant continuity in specific urban or rural sites have run afoul of the near archaeological invisibility of post-Roman British society."

"Whatever the discussion about the plough in Roman Britain, at least it is a discussion based on surviving models and parts of ploughs, whereas virtually no such evidence exists for the Period A.D. 500-900 in England. [...] In contrast to the field system of the 500 years or so on either side of the beginning of our era, little evidence has survived in the ground for the next half millennium."

"The Saxons tended to avoid Roman sites possibly because they used different farming methods."

"[We] learn from Prof. Fleming [2016] that Roman conquerors introduced many — perhaps as many as 50 — new and valuable food plants and animals (such as the donkey) to its province of Britannia, where these crops were successfully cultivated for some 300 years. Among the foodstuffs that Roman civilization brought to Britain are walnuts, carrots, broad beans, grapes, beets, cabbage, leeks, turnips, parsnips, cucumbers, cherries, plums, peaches, almonds, chestnuts, pears, lettuce, celery, white mustard, mint, einkorn, millet, and many more. These valuable plants took root in Britain and so did Roman horticulture. British gardens produced a bounty of tasty and nourishing foods. [...] Following the collapse of Roman rule after 400 AD, almost all of these food plants vanished from Britain, as did Roman horticulture itself. Post-Roman Britons [...] suddenly went from gardening to foraging. Even Roman water mills vanished from British streams. But similar mills came back in large numbers in the 10th and 11th centuries, along with Roman food plants and farming techniques."

"After all, Alfred the Great (871-899) as well as other Anglo-Saxon rulers take pride in wearing a Roman diadem and/or a Roman chlamys. Offa of Mercia (757-796), e.g., issued a coin that shows him "in the style of a Roman emperor with an imperial diadem in his hair." [See the coin images third down on the right.]"

Embossed "clay vessels attributed to Angle-Saxons follow the pattern of Anglo-Saxon coinage because they, too, point to a “deliberate imitation of Roman silver or glass ware” of the 1st/2nd century (Myres 1969, 30)."

There are "the rich Roman strata in Anglo-Saxon capitals, like Alfred’s (Venta Belgarum) (Winchester)".

For "authors of the 9th century AD, like Harun ibn Yahya, a Syrian traveler writing in 866, there is no doubt that Britain (Bartīniyah) is the “the last of the lands of the Greeks [Rum/Romans], and there is no civilization beyond them” (Green 2016)."

The unknown author of "the Persian Hudud al-'Alam (982 AD) in which Britain (al-Baritiniya) "is the last land of Rum [Rome] on the coast of the Ocean" (Watson 2001)."

"Stratigraphically, there is no problem with such a statement since—between the year 1 and the 930s AD—there are only enough building strata with streets, residential quarters, latrines, aqueducts etc. for a period of some 230 Roman years in Britain. Since they are contingent with the High Middle Ages of the 10th century AD, these massive Roman strata cannot help but belong to the 8th-10th century period, whatever the textbook chronology requires."

"Everything we know from Early Medieval texts pertaining to 8th/9th century Anglo-Saxons confirms that they thrived in a classical culture, in a genuine Roman environment. That makes sense only when the hard evidence of the period dated 1st to 3rd century receives the 8th-10th century dates of its stratigraphic location immediately before the onset of the High Middle in the 10th century AD:"

"Anglo-Saxon England was peopled with learned men and women, highly educated in Latin and English, who circulated and read Classical texts as well as composing their own. [...] There survives a large corpus of literature showing a deep understanding of the physical and the metaphysical [...]. Charters show that laws, administration and learning were not just for an educated elite. Laypeople were involved in the ceremonies and had documents created for them: land grants, wills, dispute settlements. [...] The coinage across the period shows an elaborate and controlled economy. This was a well-managed society not given to lawlessness and chaos. [...] They drew influence from Classical art and developed their own distinct artistic styles. [...] They had trade routes stretching across the known world and were familiar with and able to buy spices, pigments and cloth from thousands of miles away (many manuscripts use a blue pigment made from lapis lazuli, brought from Afghanistan. [...] The English church was in close contact with Rome, with correspondence travelling back and forth; new bishops would be sent to Rome to collect the pallium; and King Alfred visited the city as a young boy."

At left is an attempt to correlate the change in 14C with time before 1950. The different data sets are shown with different colored third order polynomial fits to each data set.

"The Δ14C values in a chronology can clearly be used to identify catastrophic gaps and catastrophic rises in carbon-14."

The first four gaps have a jump up in 14C with a fairly quick return to the calibration curve shown in the figure on the second left. However, from about 2000 b2k there is a steady rise in the Δ14C values.

Zea mays from the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, Mexico, was radiocarbon dated at 900-1,000 AD (1010 b2k intercept).

"After the sword [center image] was found we have made two surveys, we found a fibula from the period 300-400 A.D."

"It’s still unclear if the sword is from the same period, we need more scientific analyzes to find out."

Imperial Antiquity
"Felix Romuliana is regarded as an ideal embodiment of a purely Late Antique (4th-6th c.) city in the Roman province of Moesia (today's Gamzigrad in Serbia), because in the earlier Imperial Antiquity of the 1st to early 3rd centuries there appears to be simply nothing at all in that splendid urban space erected around 305 CE for Emperor Galerius (293-311 CE)."

"Felix Romuliana [was] erected around 305 CE for Emperor Galerius (293-311 CE)."

"Felix Romuliana can boast a rich urban history up to the end of the 1st c. BCE"

It "has “a long settlement continuity from the Neolithic period over the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, the Late Antiquity into the Middle Ages”2 (DAIST 2013, see already Petkovic 2011a, 40)."

Between "1 and 1,000 CE there are only some 300 years with building strata in Felix Romuliana."

"Just between the 1st and 3rd c. CE the city’s evolution is totally and mysteriously stalled."

"Only during the Late Antique period (3rd to 6th c.), which appears to emerge out of thin air, does evolution pick up again with “different construction and expansion phases”3 (DAIST 2013). Since the German-Serbian excavations (2004 to 2012), one even knows “the localization of a necropolis belonging to the palace and its succession of settlements [up to the 6th c.], whose evidently dense occupation indicates a large population”4 (DAIST 2013)."

"For the more than 400 years between the late 6th and early 11th centuries, there was, however, no building evolution in the emergency accommodations. There are no archeological remains for some 400 years of use. There is substantial evidence for only a few decades, or even less. Those 400 years were written into the excavation report to meet a textbook chronology that is not understood but deeply venerated."

"Imperial Antiquity [apparently] did not leave any buildings [in Felix Romuliana] between Augustus (31 BCE - 14 CE) and Severus Alexander (222-235 CE)."

"Since Marcus Licinius Crassus (consul in 30 BCE) had already conquered Moesia in 29 BCE, it remains an enigma why suddenly the fertile area of Felix Romuliana, which had been in full use since the Neolithic period, was suddenly abandoned."

"Galerius’s Late Antique palace complex in Felix Romuliana was built by Legio V Macedonica (the bull and eagle were its symbol), a Roman legion that had been set up in 43 BCE by Octavian and Consul Gaius Vibius Panza Caetronianus (who fell in 43 BCE against Mark Antony)."

"It is indisputable that in 6 CE the legion was in the province of Moesia, with sufficient time to build something. It is also known that right there, in 33/34 CE (now under Emperor Tiberius), the legion did road-construction along the Danube (Clauss EDCS, 1649)."

"The Legio V Macedonica also participates in the construction of the gigantic Danube Bridge (1135 m; 103-105 CE) under Emperor Trajan (98-117). All this happens in close vicinity of Felix Romuliana, where the legion supposedly did not work before the 3rd/4th c. CE."

"Also, for around a quarter of a millennium (1st-3rd c. CE), there are no Aeolian layers in Felix Romuliana with vegetation or small animal remains, etc., which are to be expected if a city lies fallow for such a long time."

In Felix Romuliana, "the construction [...] is [...] Imperial Antique (1st-3rd c.), and sometimes even late Hellenistic, [in] appearance."

"Felix Romuliana still amazes [...] by its absence of Christian traces, despite its cultural proximity to the Greek part of the empire where Christianity had been in full development since the 1st c. CE. During the governorship (111-113 CE) of Pliny the Younger (61/61-113 CE) in Pontus-Bithynia, Christianity was, e.g., no longer stoppable. It had “spread not only to the cities but also to the villages and farms” of Asia Minor (Pliny: Letters 10:96)."

"Many [British] building sequences appear to terminate in the 2nd and 3rd centuries [1900-1700 b2k]. [...] The latest Roman levels are sealed by deposits of dark coloured loam, commonly called the 'dark earth' (formerly 'black earth'). In the London area the 'dark earth' generally appears as a dark grey, rather silty loam with various inclusions, especially building material. The deposit is usually without stratification and homogeneous in appearance, It can be one meter or more in thickness. [...] The evidence suggests that truncation of late Roman stratification is linked to the process of 'dark earth' formation."

“Parts [of Londinium] / were already covered by a horizon of dark silts (often described as 'dark earth') / Land was converted to arable and pastoral use or abandoned entirely. The dark earth may have started forming in the 3rd century."

"[Roman sites and buildings dated to Britain’s Late Antiquity, i.e., to the 5th/6th century AD] never have 1st-3rd century building strata with streets, residential quarters, latrines, aqueducts etc. that are—after the Crisis of the Third Century—built over by new streets, residential quarters, latrines, aqueducts etc. reflecting new styles and technologies. At best, there are alterations of 1st-3rd c. structures that retain the style of the 1st-3rd century AD. An example may be provided by the small basilica in the 2nd century forum of Lindum Colonia (Lincoln) that is currently dated 5th/6th c. but stylistically would perfectly fit the late 2nd early 3rd century AD. The situation is comparable for pottery dated to Late Antiquity that cannot be tied to settlements. E.g., a "small later Roman pottery assemblage" from Mucking is dated "to a period without major occupation" (Lucy 2016)."

"The Strood causeway to Mersea Island was thought to be Roman, built in the 1st c. AD. It leads to Mersea’s Roman burial mound (barrow) where a typical Roman lead covered box with a no less typical Roman glass urn (tentatively dated between 100 and 120 AD) was retrieved [in the image on the right]. Oak piles in typical Roman cut were discovered in 1978. Up to the 1980s it was never doubted that the dam was built by Romans in the 1st c. AD to reach their settlements on the Island."

"Scientific dating methods have been applied to some substantial oak piles discovered beneath the Strood in 1978, when a water-main was being laid. They indicate that the structure was probably built between A.D. 684 and 702. The piles were discovered at the south end of the causeway where the trench was at its deepest—they were about 1.6m below the present ground level and were sealed by a series of road surfaces. Seven piles were recovered and samples were submitted to Harwell laboratory for radiocarbon dating to get a rough idea of the date. Samples from four of the piles were sent to the University of Sheffield for tree ring dating (dendrochronology). The remaining three piles are now in the Colchester and Essex Museum. The dating of the construction to AD 684 to 702 was regarded as conclusive."

"From a stratigraphic viewpoint there is nothing wrong with the term "Saxon date," if Saxons and Romans lived side by side from the 1st century BC to the 3rd century AD. Since archaeologically this period is contingent with the High Middle Ages of the 10th century AD—there are no building strata with residential quarters etc. in between—, its dates cannot help but move into the 7th to 10th century AD time span."

"[2nd/3rd century AD] Ptolemy’s PHA-BIRABON is identified with Bremen though there are other candidates, too. Rich evidence for Roman period. Settlements of 1st century are continued."

"[1st century AD] Saxon Chauci create rich building evidence. 50 m long houses (three aisles) with integrated stables are found all over the city and many suburbs; blacksmith shops; charcoal kiln technology etc."

"A succession of fires allowed the preservation of all the elements in place, when the inhabitants ran away from the catatrophe, transforming the area into a real little Pompei of Vienne [second image down on the right]."

"The fire brought the top floor, the roof and the terrasse of a sumptuous dwelling to collapse, both caved in floors being preserved, with the furniture left in place. The house, dating from the the second half of the first century and surrounded by gardens, was baptised "House of the Bacchae" because of a mosaic with a cortege of bacchae surrounding a Bacchus."

"With many others, a superb mosaic preserved in its near-totality in the "House of Thalia and Pan" has been lifted with much precaution earlier this week, to be restored at the ateliers of the gallo-roman museum of Saint-Romain-en-Gal."

"The Roman city of Vienne, in Southeast France, was at a crossroads of communications, between the Rhône River and the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis, on a "highway" connecting Lyon, the capital of Gaul, to the city of Arles. Another axis of circulation had most probably preceded it and the excavations «provide also an exceptional opportunity to analyze the anterior states of the Roman road of Gallia Narbonensis, or Transalpine Gaul, "one of the most important of this time.""

"Besides the two luxurious houses, the neighborhood included shops dedicated to metalwork, food stores and other artisanal production; a warehouse full of jugs for wine; and a hydraulic network that allows for cleaning and drainage. The neighborhood appeared to be built around a market square, apparently the largest of its kind to be discovered in France."

Classical history
The classical history period dates from around 2,000 to 1,000 b2k.

"There is absolutely no justification for believing there to have been a historical figure of the fifth or sixth century named Arthur who is the basis for all later legends. / There is, at present, no cogent reason to think that there was a historical post-Roman Arthur."

The Dunhuang map from the Tang Dynasty of the North Polar region at right is thought to date from the reign of Emperor Zhongzong of Tang (705–710). Constellations of the three schools are distinguished with different colors: white, black and yellow for stars of Wu Xian, Gan De and Shi Shen respectively. The whole set of star maps contains 1,300 stars.

The Dunhuang Star Atlas, the last section of manuscript Or.8210/S.3326. It is "the oldest manuscript star atlas known today from any civilisation, probably dating from around AD 700. It shows a complete representation of the Chinese sky in 13 charts with over 1300 stars named and accurately presented."

"The Dunhuang Star Atlas [above center] forms the second part of a longer scroll (Or.8210/S.3326) that measures 210 cm long by 24.4 cm wide and is made of fine paper in thirteen separate panels."

"The first part of the scroll is a manual for divination based on the shape of clouds. The twelve charts showing different sections of the sky follow these. The stars are named and there is also explanatory text. The final chart is of the north-polar region. The chart is detailed, showing a total of 1345 stars in 257 clearly marked and named asterisms, or constellations, including all twenty-eight mansions."

"The importance of the chart lies in both its accuracy and graphic quality. The chart includes both bright and faint stars, visible to the naked eye from north central China".

The last known celestial globe shown at the right dates from 1850 to 1780 b2k. The constellation illustrations from the Mainz celestial globe are shown at the left.

Early history
The early history period dates from around 3,000 to 2,000 b2k.

The "Late La Tène time span [is] between the conquests of 55 BC and 54 BC [2055 and 2054 b2k] under Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) and the time of Christ. In the rare cases where pottery and tableware are attributed to Saxons of the 4th/5th c. AD, "astonishingly La Tène art styles [more than 300 years out of fashion] re-emerge as dominant in the northern and western zone." (Hines 1996, 260)"

"Stamped pottery has had a long and varied history in Britain. There have been periods when it flourished and periods when it almost totally disappeared. This article considers two variations of the rosette motif (A 5) and their fortunes from the late Iron Age to the Early Saxon period. [...] The La Tène ring stamps [which end in the 1st century BC; GH ] are found in a range of designs, from the simple negative ring (= AASPS Classification A 1bi) to four concentric negative rings (= AASPS A 2di). These motifs are also found in the early Roman period [1st century AD; GH]. [...] The 'dot rosettes' (= AASPS A 9di) on bowls from the [Late Latène] Hunsbury hill-fort (Fell 1937) use the same sort of technique as the dimple decoration on 4th-century 'Romano-Saxon' wares." (bold: GH)

In "Šarnjaka kod Šemovca (Dalmatia/Croatia), e.g., contain 700-year-older La Tène and Imperial period items (1st century BC to 3rd century AD) [...]:"

"A large dugout house (SU 9) was discovered in the course of the investigation in 2006. Its dimensions are 4.8 by 2.1 metres, with a depth of 34 centimetres, and an east-west orientation, deviating slightly along the NE-SW line. It contained numerous sherds of Early Medieval pottery, two fragments of glass, and a small iron spike. Three sherds of Roman pottery [1st-3rd c. CE; GH] and ten sherds of La Tène pottery [ending 1st c. BCE; GH] were also recovered from the house." (bold: GH)

"The contemporaneity of Rome’s Imperial period textbook-dated to the 1st-3rd century AD with the Early Middle Ages (8th-10th century AD) is also confirmed for Poland [in the stratigraphic table above]. There, too, Late Latène (conventionally ending 1st c. BC) immediately precedes the Early Medieval period of the 8th-10th c. CE."

"In [the Roman Empire] capital cities, Rome and Constantinople (Heinsohn 2016) [they] build residential quarters, streets, latrines, aqueducts, ports etc. only in one of the three periods—Imperial Antiquity, Late Antiquity, and Early Middle Ages—dated between 1 and 930s AD. In Rome, they are assigned to Imperial Antiquity (1st-3rd c.); in Constantinople, to Late Antiquity (4th-6th c.)."

"Roman churches of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages [...] would suffice to confirm the existence of these two periods. The churches are there. However, we never find churches of the 8th or 9th century superimposed on churches of the 4th or 5th century that, in turn, are superimposed on pagan basilicas of the 1st or 2nd century. They all share the same stratigraphic level of the 1st and 2nd/early 3rd century. Moreover, the ground plans of the 4th/5th—as well as the 8th/9th—century churches slavishly repeat the ground plans of 1st/2nd century basilicas, as already pointed out 75 years ago by Richard Krautheimer (1897-1994). It is this period of Imperial Antiquity (with its internal evolution from the 1st to 3rd centuries) that alone builds the residential quarters, latrines, streets, and aqueducts so desperately looked for in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Thus, Rome does not have more stratigraphy for the first millennium AD than England or Poland."

"Germanic tribes, not only Anglo-Saxons and Frisians but also Franks, had been competing with Rome for the conquest of the British Isles since the 1st century BC".

"1st century BC "Astonishingly LA TÈNE art styles" (Hines 1996) dominate pottery of SAXONS [and] Powerful LA TÈNE Celts with King Aththe-Domarous of Camulodunum [is the] greatest ruler."

"Saxons begin their attack on Britain as early as the 1st century BC. They compete with the Romans, who may have employed Germanic Franks as auxiliary forces. The Saxons invade from the East, i.e., from the German Bight."

From "the stratigraphy of the Saxon homeland, located around Bremen/Weser inside today’s Lower Saxony [it] is mainly inhabited by Chauci and Bructeri [...] Saxon tribes that are [...] at war with the Romans in the time of Augustus (31 BC-14 AD) and Aththe-Domaros of Camulodunum (Aθθe-Domaros, also read as Addedom-Arus; c. 15-5 BC)."

"Jastorf (La Tène) culture [3rd to 1st century BC] with bronze and iron technology. Rich building evidence in downtown Bremen."

Iron Age
The iron age history period began between 3,200 and 2,100 b2k.

The three-age system was introduced in the first half of the 19th century for the archaeology of Europe in particular, and by the later 19th century expanded to the archaeology of the Ancient Near East.

Tin's low melting point of 231.9 °C and copper's relatively moderate melting point of 1,085 °C placed them within the capabilities of the Neolithic pottery kilns, which date back to 6000 BC and were able to produce temperatures greater than 900 °C.

The earliest tentative evidence for iron-making is a small number of iron fragments with the appropriate amounts of carbon admixture found in the Proto-Hittite layers at Kaman-Kalehöyük and dated to 2200–2000 BC. Akanuma (2008) concludes that "The combination of carbon dating, archaeological context, and archaeometallurgical examination indicates that it is likely that the use of ironware made of steel had already begun in the third millennium BC in Central Anatolia". Souckova-Siegolová (2001) shows that iron implements were made in Central Anatolia in very limited quantities around 1800 BC and were in general use by elites, though not by commoners, during the New Hittite Empire (∼1400–1200 BC).

Similarly, recent archaeological remains of iron working in the Ganges Valley in India have been tentatively dated to 1800 BC. Tewari (2003) concludes that "knowledge of iron smelting and manufacturing of iron artifacts was well known in the Eastern Vindhyas and iron had been in use in the Central Ganga Plain, at least from the early second millennium BC". By the Middle Bronze Age increasing numbers of smelted iron objects (distinguishable from meteoric iron by the lack of nickel in the product) appeared in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and South Asia. African sites are turning up dates as early as 1200 BC.

Between 1200 BC and 1000 BC diffusion in the understanding of iron metallurgy and use of iron objects was fast and far-flung. Anthony Snodgrass suggests that a shortage of tin, as a part of the Bronze Age collapse and trade disruptions in the Mediterranean around 1300 BC, forced metalworkers to seek an alternative to bronze. As evidence, many bronze implements were recycled into weapons during that time. More widespread use of iron led to improved steel-making technology at lower cost. Thus, even when tin became available again, iron was cheaper, stronger and lighter, and forged iron implements superseded cast bronze tools permanently.

The Iron Age in the Ancient Near East became known with the discovery of iron smelting and smithing techniques in Anatolia or the Caucasus and Balkans in the late 2nd millennium BC (c. 1300 BC).

In the Mesopotamian states of Sumer, Akkad and Assyria, the initial use of iron reaches far back, to perhaps 3000 BC. One of the earliest smelted iron artifacts known was a dagger with an iron blade found in a Hattic tomb in Anatolia, dating from 2500 BC.

In the Black Pyramid of Abusir, dating before 2000 BC, Gaston Maspero found some pieces of iron. In the funeral text of Pepi I, the metal is mentioned. A sword bearing the name of pharaoh Merneptah as well as a battle axe with an iron blade and gold-decorated bronze shaft were both found in the excavation of Ugarit. Tutankhamun's meteoric iron dagger with an iron blade was found in Tutankhamun's tomb, 13th century BC, was recently examined and found to be of meteoric origin. The "blade’s composition of iron, nickel and cobalt was an approximate match for a meteorite that landed in northern Egypt. The result “strongly suggests an extraterrestrial origin"".

Ancient history
The ancient history period dates from around 8,000 to 3,000 b2k.

"Ancient history" is the aggregate of past events from the beginning of recorded human history and extending as far as the Early Middle Ages or the post-classical history. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, beginning with Sumerian Cuneiform script, the oldest discovered form of coherent writing from the protoliterate period around the 30th century BC.

Although the ending date of ancient history is disputed, some Western scholars use the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD (the most used), the closure of the Platonic Academy in 529 AD, the death of the emperor Justinian I in 565 AD, the coming of Islam or the rise of Charlemagne as the end of ancient and Classical European history.

In India, ancient history includes the early period of the Middle Kingdoms,  and, in China, the time up to the Qin dynasty.

The "Scandinavian [last ice age] 2000 years earlier [8,000 b2k]."

Bronze Age
The bronze age history period began between 5,300 and 2,600 b2k.

"From a cuneiform tablet of a later origin, King Assurbanipal, conventionally80 assigned to the 7th century B.P. [2600 b2k], boasts that he "finds pleasure in reading the stones of the time from before the flood."81 Indeed, his library, unearthed in Nineveh, revealed archaic written tablets which date back to the beginning of the Bronze Age (conventionally dated between 3100 and 2750 B.P.),82 which therefore stem from a period upon which more flood catastrophes would follow".

"In those times [after the flood of Deucalion] the kings of Greece initiated the worship for the pagan gods, which were to rekindle in annually renewed festivities the memory of the Flood and the salvation of the people, as well as the difficulties of the life of those who were at first resettled into the mountains, then into the plains."83

"The first (purely typological) studies on Early Bronze Age (EBA) assemblages in the Jordan Valley settled on the turn of the 4th/3rd millennium BC [mark] the beginnings of the earliest Bronze Age culture (Albright 1932; Mallon 1932)."

"In the Chalcolithic/earliest Bronze Age I period (c. 4500±3000 cal BC), copper was mined in open galleries from the massive brown sandstone deposit, which consisted of thick layers of the copper carbonate malachite and chalcocite, a copper sulphide."

Late Bronze Ages
The Late Bronze Ages begin about 3550 b2k and end about 2900 b2k.

The Pátzcuaro Basin is "on the Central Mexican Altiplano [19° 36′ N 101° 39′ W 2,033–3,000 meters above sea level (m asl)] [...] The earliest occupation is indicated by maize pollen in lake cores [sometime between 1690 and 940 B.C. (43, 47, 49)]."

The "abandonment of lakeshore Swiss pile-dwellings has been dated to around 1520 BC [3520 b2k] (Menotti 2001). [Slightly] "later in time episodes of flood events and lake-level highstand at 3100 BP (1415/1311 2σ cal. BC) and 2800 BP (996/914 2σ cal. BC) have been recently detected in the Southern Alps, in the sediment cores extracted from the Lake Ledro, located in the province of Trento (Joannin et al. 2014)." Radiocarbon "data indicate that the New Kingdom of Egypt started between 1570 and 1544 B.C.E [3570 - 3544 b2k]."

Middle Bronze Ages
The Middle Bronze Ages begin about 4100 b2k and end about 3550 b2k.

The Fisherman is a Minoan Bronze Age fresco from Akrotiri, on the Aegean island of Santorini (classically Thera), dated to the Neo-Palatial period (c. 1640–1600 BC). The settlement of Akrotiri was buried in volcanic ash (dated by radiocarbon dating to c. 1627 BC [c. 3626 b2k]) by the Minoan eruption on the island, which preserved many Minoan frescoes like this.

High precision radiocarbon dating of 18 samples from Jericho, including six samples of carbonized cereal from the burnt stratum, gave the age of the strata as 1562 BC, with a margin of error of 38 years [3562 ± 38 b2k].

"In Berber, the name "Siwa" means "prey bird and protector of sun god Amon-Ra." It is derived from the name of the indigenous inhabitants, Tiswan, who speak Tassiwit, a dialect related to Berber spoken in the Sahara and North Africa. Siwa is one of the most arid oases in western Egypt near the border of Libya at a depression of 18 meters below sea level, and it is 300 kilometers southwest of the Mediterranean port city of Marsa Matruh. The oasis is 82 kilometers long and has a width ranging between 2 and 20 kilometers. The oasis was occupied since Paleolithic and Neolithic times. It was first mentioned more than 2,500 years ago in the records of the pharaohs of the Middle and New Kingdoms (2050-1800 B.C. and 1570-1090 B.C.)"

Early Bronze Ages
The Early Bronze Ages begin about 5300 b2k and end about 4100 b2k. A logboat from Ireland (Inch Abbey, Co. Down) was dendrochronology dated to 4140 b2k.

A logboat made from alder from Denmark (Verup l) designated K-4098B was radiocarbon dated to 4220 ± 75 b2k.

A logboat from Ireland (Ballygowan, Co. AmJagh) designated GrN-20550 was radiocarbon dated to 4660 ± 40 b2k.

The "Atlantic period [is] 4.6–6 ka [4,600-6,000 b2k]."

The petroglyph on the right contains spirals way over to the right in the image. This petroglyph is IV-II millemium BCE and shows a cup-and-ring mark and deer hunting scenes.

These petroglyphs from Galicia look like the petroglyphs from the Canary Islands shown on the left.

Copper Age
The copper age history period began from 6990 b2k to about 5300 b2k.

"An archaeological site in [Serbia] has shown its metal. This ancient settlement contains the oldest securely dated evidence of copper making, from 7,000 years ago, and suggests that copper smelting may been invented in separate parts of Asia and Europe at that time rather than spreading from a single source."

"Until now, experts said that only stone was used in the Stone Age and that the Copper Age came a bit later. Our finds, however, confirm that metal was used some 500 to 800 years earlier, [which indicates that humans were using metals in Europe by 7,500 years ago]."

A step pyramid exists in the archaeological site of Monte d'Accoddi, in Sardinia, dating to the 4th millennium BC, shown in the image on the right: "a trapezoidal platform on an artificial mound, reached by a sloped causeway. At one time a rectangular structure sat atop the platform ... the platform dates from the Copper Age (c. 2700–2000 BC), with some minor subsequent activity in the Early Bronze Age (c. 2000–1600 BC). Near the mound are several standing stones, and a large limestone slab, now at the foot of the mound, may have served as an altar."

Boreal transition
"In recent years, the German oak chronology has been extended to 7938 BC [9938 b2k]. For earlier intervals, tree-ring chronologies must be based on pine, because oak re-emigrated to central Europe at the Preboreal/Boreal transition, at about 8000 BC [10,000 b2k]."

"The age range, 7145-7875 BC [9145-9875 b2k], is represented by the oak chronology, 'Main9'."

"The age range, 7833-9439 BC [9833-11439 b2k], is covered by the 1784-yr pine chronology."

Pre-Boreal transition
The last glaciation appears to have a gradual decline ending about 12,000 b2k. This may have been the end of the Pre-Boreal transition.

"About 9000 years ago the temperature in Greenland culminated at 4°C warmer than today. Since then it has become slowly cooler with only one dramatic change of climate. This happened 8250 years ago [...]. In an otherwise warm period the temperature fell 7°C within a decade, and it took 300 years to re-establish the warm climate. This event has also been demonstrated in European wooden ring series and in European bogs."

"The last remains of the American ice sheet disappeared about 6000 years ago [6,000 b2k], the Scandinavian one 2000 years earlier [8,000 b2k]."

10000 b2k
Evidence of a massacre near Lake Turkana, Kenya indicates upper paleolithic warfare. For early depiction of interpersonal violence in rock art see: Australia's Ancient Warriors: Changing Depictions of Fighting in the Rock Art of Arnhem Land, N.T.

"Here we report on a case of inter-group violence towards a group of hunter-gatherers from Nataruk, west of Lake Turkana [...] Ten of the twelve articulated skeletons found at Nataruk show evidence of having died violently at the edge of a lagoon, into which some of the bodies fell. The remains [...] offer a rare glimpse into the life and death of past foraging people, and evidence that warfare was part of the repertoire of inter-group relations among prehistoric hunter-gatherers."

">10,500-year-old human-modified bones for the extinct elephant birds Aepyornis and Mullerornis, [in the image on the right] show perimortem chop marks, cut marks, and depression fractures consistent with immobilization and dismemberment."

"Our evidence for anthropogenic perimortem modification of directly dated bones represents the earliest indication of humans in Madagascar, predating all other archaeological and genetic evidence by >6000 years and changing our understanding of the history of human colonization of Madagascar."

Younger Dryas
The "Alleröd/Younger Dryas transition [occurred] some 11,000 years ago [11,000 b2k]."

From "stable isotope measurements of the pine series (Becker, Kromer & Trimborn 1991) [...] an age of 11,050 cal BP for the beginning of climatic amelioration in central Europe [is obtained]."

First evidence of human settlement in Cueva de las Manos, Argentina.

The Arlington Springs Man dies on the island of Santa Rosa, off the coast of California, United States.

Human remains deposited in caves which are now located off the coast of Yucatán, Mexico.

Creswellian culture settlement on Hengistbury Head, England, dates from around this year.

Holocene
The Holocene starts at ~11,700 b2k and extends to the present.

Allerød Oscillation
The "Allerød Chronozone, 11,800 to 11,000 years ago".

"Kamminga and Wright (1988), Wright (1995) and Neves and Pucciarelli (1998) have demonstrated, however, that the Zhoukoudian Upper Cave (UC) cranium 101 display marked similarities with Australo-Melanesians. Cunningham and Wescott (2002) has shown that although highly variable, none of the three specimens from this site (UC 101, UC 102, UC 103) resembles modern Asian populations. Matsumura and Zuraina (1999:333) reported the presence of the “Australo-Melanesian lineage” in Malaysia as late as the terminal Pleistocene. If we consider that UC is dated to between 32,000 BP and 11,000 BP, the fixation of the classical Mongoloid morphology in North Asia could have been a recent phenomenon (terminal Pleistocene/early Holocene), a hypothesis favored by several authors (see Cunningham and Wescott, 2002 for a review)."

"Accordingly, an Australo-Melanesian-like population present in North Asia by the end of the Pleistocene could have been the source of the first Americans. This would explain the presence of a non-Mongoloid morphology in the New World without invoking a direct transpacific route departing from Australia, as suggested by Rivet (1943)."

"Lahr (1995) has argued that human diversity in northern Asia was probably higher in the final moments of the Pleistocene than today, at least as far as cranial morphology is concerned. Therefore, non-Mongoloid Asians could have arrived in the Americas using the Behring Strait as the gate of entry following either the shore of Beringia or a land bridge."

"[Before the pharaohs and pyramids of the Dynastic period starting about 3,100 BC], about 9,300-4,000 BC, enigmatic Neolithic peoples flourished. [It] was the lifestyles and cultural innovations of these peoples that provided the very foundation for the advanced civilisations to come."

12000 b2k
Wooden buildings in South America (Chile).

First pottery vessels (Japan).

Neolithic
The base of the Neolithic is approximated to 12,200 b2k.

Mesolithic
The mesolithic period dates from around 13,000 to 8,500 b2k.

"The Siwan people are mostly Berbers, the indigenous people who once roamed the North African coast between Tunisia and Morocco. They inhabited the area as early as 10,000 B.C., first moving toward the coast but later inland as conquering powers pushed them to take refuge in the desert."

"Bruine Bank, an area in the North Sea, is known to fishermen for mainly two things: the excellent catch rates when the weather is cold – and the bones, mammoth teeth, and even artefacts which frequently get caught in the nets [...] The bones, teeth and artefacts stem from a long lost land, Doggerland. Until the end of the last Ice Age, about 8000 years ago, the North Sea was still a part of the continent, even beyond the British Isles. [...] The oldest find is a fragment of a Neanderthal skull which is at least 35,000 years old – possibly even much older, up to 75,000 would be possible. 35,000 old stone tools of the Paleolithic have more than once been dragged inadvertendly to the surface by the fishermen with their mussel vacuum harvesters."

Paleolithic
The paleolithic period dates from around 2.6 x 106 b2k to the end of the Pleistocene around 12,000 b2k.

Upper Paleolithic
The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) also called the Late Stone Age is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 12,000 (the beginning of the Holocene) and 50,000 years ago.

14000 b2k
Decline of the West Antarctica ice sheet occurred between 14,000 and 15,000 years ago, consistent with evidence for another abrupt rise in the sea level about 14,500 years ago.

Older Dryas stadial, Allerød oscillation, Allerød interstadial.

Paleo-Indians searched for big game near what is now the Hovenweep National Monument.

Bison, on the ceiling of a cave at Cave of Altamira, Altamira, Spain, is painted. Discovered in 1879. Accepted as authentic in 1902.

Younger Dryas stadial.

The Holocene extinction began.

15000 b2k
Bølling oscillation, Bølling interstadial.

Bison, Le Tuc d'Audoubert, Ariège, France.

Paleo-Indians move across North America, then southward through Central America.

Pregnant woman and deer (?), from Laugerie-Basse, France was made. It is now at Musée des Antiquités Nationales, St.-Germain-en-Laye.

16000 b2k
The LGM is referred to in Britain as the Dimlington Stadial, dated to between 31,000 and 16,000 years.

"Radiocarbon dates from the site at Dimlington led Rose (1985) to designate this area as the UK type site for the Late Devensian Chronozone or 'Dimlington' Stadial."

17000 b2k


Spotted human hands are painted at Pech Merle cave, Dordogne, France. Discovered in December 1994.

Oldest Dryas stadial.

Hall of Bulls at Lascaux in France is painted. Discovered in 1940. Closed to the public in 1963.

Bird-Headed man with bison and Rhinoceros, Lascaux, is painted.

Lamp with ibex design, from La Mouthe cave, Dordogne, France, is made. It is now at Musée des Antiquités Nationales, Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

Paintings in Cosquer Cave are made, where the cave mouth is now under water at Cap Margiou, France.

18000 b2k
Spotted Horses, Pech Merle cave, Dordogne, France are painted. Discovered in December, 1994.

Ibex-headed spear-thrower, from Le Mas-d'Azil, Ariège, France, is made. It is now at Musée de la Préhistoire, Le Mas d'Azil.

Mammoth-bone village in Mezhyrich, Cherkasy Oblast, Ukraine is inhabited.

19000 b2k
Growth of ice sheets for the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) commenced 33,000 years ago and maximum coverage was between 26,500 years and 19–20,000 years ago, when deglaciation commenced in the Northern Hemisphere, causing an abrupt rise in sea level.

20000 b2k
{{legend|#e65600|Solutrean and Proto Solutrean Cultures; Franco-Cantabrian region}} {{legend|#e600c9|Epi Gravettian Culture}} Map was made from, which is GFDL v1.2, outline of ancient coast and extent of ice added from "After the Ice: A Global History" by Steve Mithen. Information about human refugia from "Origins of the British" by Stephen Oppenheimer and "Out of Eden by Stephen Oppenheimer. These were sketched in from information supplied by these books. Coloured areas are the furthest extent of the cultures between 15 kya and 20 kya.

40000 b2k
The early modern humans who expanded into Europe, commonly referred to as the Cro-Magnons, left many sophisticated stone tools, carved and engraved pieces on bone, ivory and antler, cave paintings and Venus figurines.

The Neanderthals continued to use Mousterian stone tool technology and possibly Châtelperronian technology which disappeared from the archeological record at around the same time the Neanderthals themselves disappeared from the fossil record, about 40,000 cal BP.

Older Dryas
"Older Dryas [...] events [occurred about 13,400 b2k]".

"The most negative δ 18O excursions seen in the GRIP record lasted approximately 131 and 21 years for the [inter-Allerød cold period] IACP and [Older Dryas] OD, respectively. The comparable events in the Cariaco basin were of similar duration, 127 and 21 years. In addition to the chronological agreement, there is also considerable similarity in the decade-scale patterns of variability in both records. Given the geographical distance separating central Greenland from the southern Caribbean Sea, the close match of the pattern and duration of decadal events between the two records is striking."

In the figures on the right, especially b, is a detailed "comparison of δ 18O from the GRIP ice core24 with changes in a continuous sequence of light-lamina thickness measurements from core PL07-57PC. Both records are constrained by annual chronologies, although neither record is sampled at annual resolution. The interval of comparison includes the inter-Allerød cold period (12.9-13 cal. kyr BP) and Older Dryas (13.4 cal. kyr BP) events (IABP and OD from a). The durations of the two events, measured independently in both records, are very similar, as is the detailed pattern of variability at the decadal timescale."

Marine Isotope Stage 1
The Earth is currently experiencing an interglacial period (warming) during the present Quaternary Ice Age, identified as the "Marine Isotope Stage 1" (MIS1) in the Holocene epoch (or recently the Anthropocene epoch).

Bølling Oscillation
The "intra-Bølling cold period [IBCP is a century-scale cold event and the] Bølling warming [occurs] at 14600 cal [calendar years, ~ b2k] BP (12700 14C BP)".

"The second wave to Australia according to the old model were the Carpinterians. They came 10-15,000 YBP and are thought to have come from India. Logically these were Indian Australoid/Veddoid types from the south. All Indians looked like Aborigines (Australoid) until 8,000 YBP. The transition towards Caucasoid only occurred in the last 8,000 years. It may well have been this Carpinterian group that brought the dingo digs along with themselves in a seaward movement to Australia ~13,000 YBP."

"Another group that may well be remnants of the Ancient NE Asians may be the Ainu, but they only showed up 14,000 YBP, and by that time, the Ancient Northeast Race was well underway. However, the Ainuid types seem to have spread out quite a bit. Remains from Northern China from 9,000 YBP appear Ainuid. Ainuid or Australoid types were the first people to come to the Americas. There are a few tribes left who seem to be the remnants of these ancient people. One was an extinct tribe in Baja California called the Guaycuru. I am thinking that the Gilyak may also be part of this ancient race. In phenotype, the Gilyak look more Japanese to me than anything else."

Marine Isotope Stage 2
Termination I, also known as the Last Glacial Termination, is the end of Marine isotope stage 2.

Oldest Dryas
"During the Late Weichselian glacial maximum (20-15 ka BP) the overriding of ice streams eventually lead to strong glaciotectonic displacement of Late Pleistocene and pre-Quaternary deposits and to deposition of till."

The "minimum point of GIS-2b (Greenland Stadial sub-event b) [is] identified by Bjork et al. 1998 [at] 17.687 ka BP".

"More than 15,000 years ago, humans began crossing a land bridge called Beringia that connected their native home in Eurasia to modern-day Alaska. Who knows what the journey entailed or what motivated them to leave, but once they arrived, they spread southward across the Americas."

Meiendorf Interstadial
The period spans starting at the far right of the image on the right from Lascaux interstadial to Heinrich event H1, and to Meiendorf/Bölling warm stage, and Allegöd warm stage, to Younger dryas and early holocene.

The Meiendorf Interstadial is typified by a rise in the pollens of dwarf birches (Betula nana), willows (Salix sp.), sandthorns (Hippophae), junipers (Juniperus) and Artemisia.

The beginning of the Meiendorf Interstadial is around 14,700 b2k.

Heinrich event H1
This stadial starts about 17.5 ka, extends to about 15.5 ka and is followed after a brief warming by H1.

Lascaux interstadial
The Lascaux interstadial begins about 21 ka and extends to about 18 ka.

Jylland stade
"After c. 22 ka BP [which is] during the Jylland stade (Houmark-Nielsen 1989)".

"There is a theory about the peopling of Australia that the present day Aborigines are not even the aboriginal people. The Kow Swamp people were an earlier group, and they were even more primitive than Aborigines. Some think the Kow Swamp person is not even Homo Sapiens. The skull is quite Erectus-like. It is nearly a relict hominid."

Laugerie Interstadial
The weak interstadial corresponding to GIS 2 occurred about 23.2 kyr B.P.

"GIS 2 (start) 21.556 [to] GIS 2 (end) 21.407 ka BP".

Heinrich Event 2 (H2) extends "22-25.62 ka BP".

The δ18O values from GISP-2 follow the diagram of Wolfgang Weißmüller. The positions of the Dansgaard-Oeschger events DO1 to DO4 and the Heinrich events H1 to H3 are also indicated. DV 3-4 and DV 6-7 are cold events marked by ice wedges in the upper loess of Dolní Veštonice.

Letzteiszeitliches Maximum
This glacial advance begins about 26 ka and ends abruptly at about 23.4 ka.

"Stadial Duration 3.781 ka".

"One wave was called Murrayians. This is an Ainu or Vedda-like group from the Thailand area. Skulls from Thailand 25,000 YBP resemble Aborigines."

"Australoid types were present long before in India and Southeast Asia as skulls from India and Thailand 25,000 YBP are said to resemble Aborigines."

GIS 3
The stronger GIS 3 interstadial occurred about 27.6 kyr B.P.

Heinrich Event 3 (H3) "occurs at 26.74 ka BP, coincident with the start of the transition into GIS 4."

"GIS 3 (start) 25.571 [to] GIS 3 (end) 25.337 ka BP".

Stadial
"Stadial duration 0.768 ka".

Møn interstadial
The Møn interstadial corresponds to GIS 4.

"GIS 4 (start) 26.627 [to] GIS 4 (end) 26.339 ka BP".

Klintholm advance
This advance occurred after the Møn and ended with GIS 6.

"Stadial duration 2.899 ka".

GIS 5
GIS 5 interstadial occurred during the Klintholm advance about 33.5 kyr B.P.

"GIS 5 (start) 30.013 [to] GIS 5 (end) 29.526 ka BP".

"The archeological evidence of human residence on [the Japanese] Archipelago goes back to >30 000 years [30,000 b2k.] Recent admixture with the Mainland Japanese was observed for more than one third of the Ainu individuals [...] The Ainu population seems to have experienced admixture with another population [...] The Ainu and the Ryukyuan are tightly clustered [...] the origins of the Jomon and the Yayoi people still remain to be solved."

Stadial
Stadial duration 0.836 ka""

Based on radiocarbon dating a thick stratum of diatomite under the bottom of Lake Pátzcuaro, Mexico, the lake formed ≈30,500 + 1,700−1,400 14C yr B.P. (43, 49).

Ålesund Interstadial
The Ålesund interstadial began with GIS 6 and ended after GIS 8.

"GIS 6 (start) 31.218 [to] GIS 6 (end) 30.849 ka BP".

Stadial
"Stadial duration 0.932 ka".

GIS 7 interstadial
"GIS 7 (start) 32.896 [to] GIS 7 (end) 32.15 ka BP".

Stadial
"Stadial duration 0.642 ka".

Huneborg interstadial
The Huneborg interstadial is a Greenland interstadial dating 36.5-38.5 kyr B.P. GIS 8.

The Denekamp interstadial corresponds to the Huneborg interstadial.

"GIS 8 (start) 35.716 [to] GIS 8 (end) 33.977 ka BP".

Heinrich Event 4
Heinrich Event 4 "33-39.93 ka BP".

Hengelo interstadial
The Hengelo interstadial [is] > 35 ka BP".

The "Hengelo Interstadial [is] (38–36 ka ago)."

"GIS 9 (end) 37.461 ka BP".

"DNA from the left shinbone of a skeleton, known as K14, which was excavated in 1954 [was analyzed]. K14 is one of the oldest fossils of a European modern human — a man who lived between 36,200 and 38,700 years ago in the area that's now Kostenki, in western Russia [whose skull is shown on the right]."

Hasselo stadial
The "Hasselo stadial [is] at approximately 40-38,500 14C years B.P. (Van Huissteden, 1990)."

The "Hasselo Stadial [is a glacial advance] (44–39 ka ago)".

"Modern humans replaced Neandertals ∼40,000 y ago. Close to the time of replacement, Neandertals show behaviors similar to those of the modern humans arriving into Europe, including the use of specialized bone tools, body ornaments, and small blades. [The] identification of a type of specialized bone tool, lissoir, previously only associated with modern humans [with] microwear preserved [...] is consistent with the use of lissoir in modern times to obtain supple, lustrous, and more impermeable hides. These tools are from a Neandertal context proceeding the replacement period and are the oldest specialized bone tools in Europe. As such, they are either a demonstration of independent invention by Neandertals or an indication that modern humans started influencing European Neandertals much earlier than previously believed."

Moershoofd interstadial
The Moershoofd interstadial has a 14C date of 44-46 kyr B.P. and corresponds to GIS 12 at 45-47 kyr B.P.

Marine Isotope Stage 3
Three Neanderthal individuals were recovered from the cave. The first, Mezmaiskaya 1, was recovered in 1993 and is an almost complete skeleton in a well preserved state due to calcite cementation that covers and holds the arrangement in place. It was assessed to be an infant about two weeks old, making it the youngest Neanderthal ever recovered. Although no burial pit was found, circumstances suggest that the body was buried intentionally, explaining the good state of preservation and the lack of scavenger marks. Mesmaikaya 1 was recovered from Layer 3, the oldest Late Middle Paleolithic layer at the site. Mezmaiskaya 1 is indirectly dated to around 70-60,000 years old.

Additionally, 24 skull fragments of a 1-2 year-old Neanderthal child - Mezmaiskaya 2 - were found in 1994. A recovered tooth was assigned to Mezmaiskaya 3. Mezmaiskaya 2 was recovered from Layer 2, the youngest Late Middle Paleolithic layer, and directly dated to around 44,600-42,960 BP. DNA analysis reveals that Mesmaiskaya 2 was male.

Glinde interstadial
The Glinde interstadial has a 14C date of 48-50 kyr B.P. and corresponds to GIS ?13/14 with a GIS age of 49-54.5 kyr B.P.

Ebersdorf Stadial
"Genetics suggests Neanderthal numbers dropped sharply around 50,000 years ago. This coincides with a sudden cold snap, hinting climate struck the first blow."

This corresponds to the Skjonghelleren Glaciation of Scandinavia where ice crosses the North Sea between 50-40 ka BP.

"The first humans probably reached Australia around 50,000 years ago, which is the age of the oldest human skeletons and tools found."

All "the Aborigines likely descend from a single population, which reached the Australian continent 50,000 years ago. Populations then spread rapidly – within 1,500 to 2,000 years – around the east and west coasts of Australia, meeting somewhere in South Australia. Over the following millennia, the population groups remained practically isolated."

"Australia 50,000 years ago was part of the same landmass as New Guinea. So that the first Aborigines could have reached New Guinea by way of South East Asia and then have gone farther to Australia. There, they settled in groups over the whole continent."

Many "groups of Aborigines used similar tools and shared a similar language. If humans did not move, how could tools and languages?"

Oerel interstadial
The Oerel interstadial has a 14C date of 53-58 kyr B.P. and corresponds to GIS 15/16 with a GIS age of 56-59 kyr B.P.

Karmøy stadial
The Karmøy stadial begins in the high mountains of Norway about 60 kyr B.P. and expands to the outer coast by 58 kyr B.P.

The Schalkholz Stadial in North Germany is equivalent.

Odderade interstadial
The Odderade interstadial has a 14C date of 61-72 kyr B.P. and corresponds to GIS 21.

"Shanidar Cave is an archaeological site in the Bradsot mountain, Zagros Mountains in Erbil Governorate, Iraqi Kurdistan. The site is located in the valley of the Great Zab. It was excavated from 1957–1961 by Ralph Solecki and his team from Columbia University and yielded the first adult Neanderthal skeletons in Iraq, dating between 60–80,000 years BP. The excavated area produced nine skeletons of Neanderthals of varying ages and states of preservation and completeness (labelled Shanidar I – IX). The tenth individual was recently discovered by M. Zeder during examination of a faunal assemblage from the site at the Smithsonian Institution. The remains seemed to Zeder to suggest that Neandertals had funeral ceremonies, burying their dead with flowers (although the flowers are now thought to be a modern contaminant), and that they took care of injured individuals. One skeleton and casts of the others at the Smithsonian Institution are all that is left of the findings, the originals having been dispersed in Iraq."

Rederstall Stadial
Wisconsinian glacial began at 80,000 yr BP.

Marine Isotope Stage 4.

"During the Middle Stone Age of Southern Africa, technological and behavioral innovations led to significant changes in the lifeways of modern humans. The glacial episode of Marine Isotope Stage 4, about 57-71,000 years ago, resulted in cooler and drier climatic conditions and the expansion of grassland vegetation. Sea level dropped by as much as 80 meters below its current level. During this period the cultural phase known as the Howieson’s Poort appeared across much of Southern Africa, peaking at about 60-65,000 years ago, and then disappeared. The lithic industry of the Howieson’s Poort is exemplified by changes in technology, such as the use of the punch technique, an increase in the selection of fine-grained silcrete, and the predominance of retouched pieces including backed tools, segments, scrapers and points. Segments are the type fossil of the Howieson’s Poort and represent multi-purpose armatures that were hafted onto wooden spear shafts. The standardized design and refined style of segments convey information about the behavior of their makers and provide insight about group identity. Increasing use of ochre, the presence of engraved ostrich eggshells, and a bone tool industry are associated with these stone artifacts. Also evident is an intensified use of space. Taken together, these behaviors suggest that the Howieson’s Poort represents a clear marker of modern human culture."

Cenozoic
The Cretaceous/Cenozoic boundary occurs at 65.0 ± 0.1 Ma (million years ago).

Brørup interstadial
The "Brørup interstade [is about] 100 ka BP". It corresponds to GIS 23/24.

"A flint handaxe, recovered on a stretch of shore in St Ola, could be the oldest man-made artefact found in Orkney to date."

"Around 14cm long, the Orkney axe was picked up by Evie man, Alan Price, who passed it to county archaeologist, Julie Gibson. The axe has been broken and originally would have tapered to a point opposite the cutting edge. But at some point in antiquity, the point broke off and someone reworked the flint to its present straight edge."

"The only other suspected Palaeolithic axe found in Orkney came from Upperborough, in Harray. This axe was discovered in the early years of the 20th century and presented to the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland in 1913."

Herning Stadial
MIS Boundary 5.5 (peak) is at 123 ka.

Marine Isotope Stage 5 or MIS 5 is a Marine Isotope Stage in the geologic temperature record, between 130,000 and 80,000 years ago.

MIS Boundary 5/6 is at 130 ka.

Eemian interglacial
The "Cerutti Mastodon (CM) site [is] an archaeological site from the early late Pleistocene epoch, where in situ hammerstones and stone anvils occur in spatio-temporal association with fragmentary remains of a single mastodon (Mammut americanum)."

"Five large cobbles (hammerstones and anvils) in the CM bone bed display use-wear and impact marks, and are hydraulically anomalous relative to the low-energy context of the enclosing sandy silt stratum."

"230Th/U radiometric analysis of multiple bone specimens using diffusion–adsorption–decay dating models indicates a burial date of 130.7 ± 9.4 thousand years ago."

The "presence of an unidentified species of Homo at the CM site during the last interglacial period (MIS 5e; early late Pleistocene), indicating that humans with manual dexterity and the experiential knowledge to use hammerstones and anvils processed mastodon limb bones for marrow extraction and/or raw material for tool production."

"Note the controversially split Eemian period [in the figure at the right], the predecessor of our own warm period about 125,000 years ago. Did the Eem climate in Greenland really oscillate between 5° warmer and 5° colder than now? In Europe the climatic variability was less than in Greenland, during the glaciation as well as in the Eemian period."

"The Eem interglaciation is usually described as a warm and climatically stable period. It lasted from 131 to 117 kyr B.P. on our time scale. The sea level was 6-8 m higher than today, and a subtropical fauna invaded parts of Europe."

Was "the Eemian climate as unstable as suggested in [the figure at the right]? Or is the tripartition in the δ-record an artifact caused by the deep layers being disturbed by ice movements, for example by folding?"

The second image at the right shows "atmospheric concentration of methane during the Eem period measured on the ice cores from Vostok, East Antarctica (heavy curve) and GRIP, Central Greenland (the thin, strongly varying curve). The two curves “ought to have” the same trends, because the atmosphere is well mixed any time."

The "methane content in Emian ice in the Antarctic Vostok core changes quite smoothly, whereas it changes in phase with the tripartite δ-record at Summit. Since the atmosphere is quite well mixed at any time, its methane content cannot have varied so differently at the two poles. Thus the high δ Eemian ice at Summit must have been exposed to a couple of inserts of low δ ice from a cold period with low methane content in the atmosphere".

"Ocean sediment cores from [the Norwegian Sea] exhibit a split Emian almost like δ in the Summit ice core [as compared in the first figure at the left]."

"On the left [in the first figure at the left]: An ocean sediment core from the western part of the Norwegian Sea outlines the Eem as an unstable period, cf. the per cent occurrence of a foraminifera species (N pachyderma (s)) that thrives best in cold water. Note the reversed scale at the bottom (after Fronval et al.,1999) On the right: Greenland temperature deviations from present values calculated from the GRIP ice core δ record. Both of the time scales are given in millennia before present."

"Core MD95-2042 was collected using the CALYPSO Kullenberg corer aboard Marion Dufresne MD in 1995] at 37°48'N, 10°10'W in a water depth of 3146 m (Bassinot et al., 1996)."

The second figure on the left shows marine "and continental records of the last interglacial in core MD95-2042 on a time scale based on radiometric dates for uplifted corals [...]. From the top: Sedimentation rate [is] implied by the age controls marked; benthic δ 18O record (replicates averaged); planktonic δ 18O record (replicates averaged); sea surface temperature [SST] based on U37k alkenones; major groups of pollen taxa."

"The beginning of the Eemian is identified in the vegetational sequence by a simultaneous drop in steppic elements and a rise in Eurosiberian and Mediterranean trees; there is no ambiguity in its placement. This change coincides with a 5° rise in sea-surface temperature as indicated by the alkenone measurements; the coincidence with the planktonic δ 18O change (also indicating a sea-surface temperature rise) is equally striking. The age of this event on our timescale is 126 ka, significantly later than the attainment of the [Marine Isotope Stage] MIS 5e plateau in benthic δ 18O. This implies that in contrast to the base of the Holocene, the major ice sheets had completely melted before the beginning of interglacial climatic conditions in Northwest Europe. In view of the fact that immediately prior to this transition, cold water was offshore at the latitude of southern Portugal, it is very unlikely that the beginning of the vegetation-defined interglacial was any earlier at sites further to the North."

"The end of the Eemian is identified in the vegetational sequence by a simultaneous rise in steppic elements and a drop in Eurosiberian trees, and the disappearance of the Mediterranean elements. Again the placement of the boundary is relatively uncontroversial at least at a local level. This boundary is well within MIS 5d and indeed appears shortly before the most positive benthic δ 18O values are recorded, implying that the Laurentide ice sheet had grown considerably."

The "Great Barrier Reef was nearly destroyed roughly 125,000 years ago due to rapid sea-level rise from melting glaciers and polar ice sheets."

"Temperatures and sea levels were higher 125,000 years ago, during the Last Interglacial period, than they were today."

Sangamon Episode interglacial
"OSL dates also suggest that last interglacial (MIS 5; Sangamon Ep.) fluvial deposits are preserved locally."

Age "assignment of Sangamonian (sense alto = 80,000-ca. 220,000 yr BP) [is] to Illinoian (ca. 220,000-430,000 yr BP)".

MIS 6 is from 130 ka to 191 ka.

MIS Boundary 6/7 is at 191 ka.

"A broken skull chiselled from a lump of rock in a cave in Greece is the oldest modern human fossil ever found outside Africa. The partial skull was discovered in the Apidima cave on the Mani peninsula of the southern Peloponnese and has been dated to be at least 210,000 years old."

The "skull revealed that at least some modern humans had left Africa far earlier than previously thought and reached further geographically to settle as far away as Europe."

"Other fossils of early modern humans found in Israel already point to brief excursions out of Africa, where the species evolved, long before the mass exodus during which Homo sapiens;; spread from the continent about 70,000 years ago and colonised the world."

"Our results indicate that an early dispersal of Homo sapiens out of Africa occurred earlier than previously believed, before 200,000 years ago,” Karvati said. “We’re seeing evidence for human dispersals that are not just limited to one major exodus out of Africa."

"The story of the skull is unusual from the start. It was found during excavations of the Apidima cave, a hole in a limestone cliff that now towers over the sea, in the late 1970s. The fossil was encased in a lump of rock, mere inches from another skull and several bone fragments. The rock itself was wedged high up between adjacent walls of the cave."

"Once removed from the cave, the skulls were stored in a museum in Athens but received little attention until recently, in part because they are so damaged and incomplete. The second skull, which retains a face, was studied the most and identified as Neanderthal. The first skull [in the image on the right], consisting only of the back of the skull, was largely ignored."

The "second skull, which has a thick, rounded brow ridge, [was confirmed] as Neanderthal.

The "other partial skull most closely matched that of a modern human. The main evidence was the rounded back and the lack of a classic Neanderthal bulge that looks like hair tied back in a bun."

"The part that is preserved, the back of the skull, is very diagnostic in differentiating Neanderthals and modern humans from each other and from earlier archaic humans."

The "fossils [were dated] with a method that relies on the radioactive decay of natural uranium in the buried remains. The tests found the Neanderthal skull to be at least 170,000 years old and the Homo sapiens skull at least 210,000 years old, with the rock encasing them more than 150,000 years old. The range of ages could be explained by the skulls mixing together in a mudflow that later solidified in the cave."

"If at least some early modern humans left Africa more than 210,000 years ago, they may have settled in the Levant before expanding west into Europe, which was already home to Neanderthals. Last year, a modern human fossil dating to nearly 200,000 years old was found in the Misliya cave in northern Israel. Any early human pioneers who did reach Europe died out there, before the Neanderthals themselves were replaced by an influx of Homo sapiens about 40,000 years ago."

"We began by examining the skulls, which were only partially preserved and which were of course not intact, with the help of a computer tomograph. On the basis of the pictures which we obtained, we have virtually reassembeld the single bone fragments with the help of the computer, in such a way that we were then able to measure the skulls very precisely and to compare them with other finds. Additionally, we were able to pin down the exact age of the skulls."

"The better preserved skull is ca 170,000 years old and belongs to a Neanderthal. The less well preserved skull is a good 210,000 years old and belongs to a modern human."

Modern "man left Africa more than 200,000 years ago and that he moved considerably farther than he was supposed to have done so far."

"Genetically, we Europeans are descendants from humans who arrived from Africa in a second, much later migration of Homo Sapiens, which occurred about 50,000 to 45,000 years ago. There is only one place where the early migrants may have left genetic traces going back 200,000 years ago."

"In the genetic make-up of the Neanderthals. Homo Sapiens hit upon this same human species, with which he shared common ancestors, than he did the second time around, 50,000 years ago. Why was it that, after their first meeting, it was Homo Sapiens who died out, whereas after the second one, it was Neanderthal man - that's a thrilling question. Why didn’t modern man succeed to survive here in his first migration wave? Maybe there were not enough people who came from Africa to Europe? Were the groups in which Homo Sapiens lived too small then? Did they miss some decisive element of technology, or did they nourish themselves differently than they did later? It’s a mystery I will be most eager to help solving."

Illinois Episode glaciation
"Ages of sediments immediately beneath the oldest till (Kellerville Mbr.) in the bedrock valley average 160 ka and provide direct confirmation that Illinois Episode (IE) glaciation began in its type area during marine isotope stage (MIS) 6. The oldest deposits found are 190 ka fluvial sands on bedrock in the deepest part of the valley. These correlate to earliest MIS 6. We now correlate the lowest deposits to the IE (Pearl Fm.)."

"Illinoian [is] (ca. 220,000-430,000 yr BP)".

"The [Jebel Irhoud site] Moroccan fossils [...] are roughly 300,000 years old. Remarkably, they indicate that early Homo sapiens had faces much like our own, although their brains differed in fundamental ways."

"We did not evolve from a single 'cradle of mankind' somewhere in East Africa. We evolved on the African continent."

"It now looks like Denisovans can be placed at the site from close to 300,000 years ago to about 50,000 years ago, with Neandertals there for periods in between."

MIS Boundary 7/8 is at 243 ka.

Yarmouthian interglacial
"Clay deposition in the Piauí River floodplain around 436 ± 51.5 ka occurred during a warmer period of the [Yarmouthian interglaciation] Aftonian interglaciation, corresponding to isotope stage 12 (Ericson and Wollin, 1968)."

"The extinctions and earliest known first occurrences of the 26 extant and 8 extinct cyst taxa in the three samples (with a minimum 430,000 yr BP Yarmouthian age) corroborate a likely assemblages with a maximum age of Illinoian (ca. 220,000-430,000 yr BP) in Unit I."

Yarmouthian spans 420,000-500,000 yr BP.

MIS Boundary 12/13 is at 478 ka.

MIS Boundary 11/12 is at 424 ka.

Kansan glacial
Kansan glacial spans 500,000-600,000 yr BP.

MIS Boundary 14/15 is at 563 ka.

MIS Boundary 13/14 is at 533 ka.

Aftonian
"Clay deposition in the Piauí River floodplain around 436 ± 51.5 ka occurred during a warmer period of the Aftonian interglaciation, corresponding to isotope stage 12 (Ericson and Wollin, 1968)."

"Stephen Munro from the Australian National University was studying a collection of fossilised bones of Homo erectus and mussel shells held by a museum in the Netherlands and collected from Java in the late 19th century. Closer examination of his photographs revealed man-made engravings on the mussel shells [image at top left and here on the right]. The engravings have been dated at between 430,000 and 540,000 years old. The previous oldest-known engravings were around 100,000 years old. It is unclear whether the pattern was intended as art, or served some other purpose. It is the first evidence of Homo erectus behaving in this way. The shells had been opened by drilling a hole through the shell, likely with a shark’s tooth, exactly at the point where the muscle is attached to the shell. This allows the shell to be opened, and the contents to be eaten."

Nebraskan glacial
Nebraskan glacial spans ca. 650,000-1,000,000 yr BP.

On the right is an image showing an "analysis of hominid tooth evolution, including specimens from Spanish Neandertals (top row), pushes back the age of a common Neandertal-human ancestor to more than 800,000 years ago. The bottom row shows Homo sapiens teeth."

"During hominid evolution, tooth crowns changed in size and shape at a steady rate."

"The Neandertal teeth, which date to around 430,000 years ago, could have evolved their distinctive shapes at a pace typical of other hominids only if Neandertals originated between 800,000 and 1.2 million years ago."

Calabrian
"The [Calabrian] GSSP occurs at the base of the marine claystone conformably overlying sapropelic bed ‘e’ within Segment B in the Vrica section. This lithological level represents the primary marker for the recognition of the boundary, and is assigned an astronomical age of 1.80 Ma on the basis of sapropel calibration."

"Paranthropus robustus is an example of a robust australopithecine; they had very large megadont cheek teeth with thick enamel and focused their chewing in the back of the jaw. Large zygomatic arches (cheek bones) allowed the passage of large chewing muscles to the jaw and gave P. robustus individuals their characteristically wide, dish-shaped face. A large sagittal crest provided a large area to anchor these chewing muscles to the skull. These adaptations provided P. robustus with the ability of grinding down tough, fibrous foods. It is now known that ‘robust’ refers solely to tooth and face size, not to the body size of P. robustus."

"When scientist Robert Broom bought a fossil jaw fragment and molar in 1938 that didn’t look anything like some of the Au. africanus fossils he’d found during his career, he knew he was on to something different. After exploring Kromdraai, South Africa, the site where the curious fossils came from, Broom collected many more bones and teeth that together convinced him he had a new species which he named Paranthropus robustus (Paranthropus meaning “beside man”)."

Gelasian
"The base of the Quaternary System is defined by the Global Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) of the Gelasian Stage at Monte San Nicola in Sicily, Italy, currently dated at 2.58 Ma."

"This species is not well documented; it is defined on the basis of one fossil cranium and four other skull fragments, although a partial skeleton found nearby, from about the same layer, is usually included as part of the Australopithecus garhi sample. The associated fragmentary skeleton indicates a longer femur (compared to other Australopithecus specimens, like ‘Lucy’) even though long, powerful arms were maintained. This suggests a change toward longer strides during bipedal walking."

"The human fossil record is poorly known between 3 million and 2 million years ago, which makes the finds from the site of Bouri, Middle Awash Ethiopia, particularly important. First in 1990 and then from 1996 to 1998, a research team led by Ethiopian paleoanthropologist Berhane Asfaw and American paleoanthropologist Tim White found the partial skull (BOU-VP-12/130) and other skeletal remains of an early humans dated to around 2.5 million years old. In 1997, the team named the new species Australopithecus garhi; the word ‘garhi’ means ‘surprise’ in the Afar language."

Paleolithic history
The paleolithic period dates from around 2.6 x 106 b2k to the end of the Pleistocene around 12,000 b2k.

Pleistocene
The Pleistocene dates from 2.588 x 106 to 11,700 b2k.

"Paranthropus aethiopicus is still much of a mystery to paleoanthropologists, as very few remains of this species have been found. The discovery of the 2.5 million year old ’Black Skull’ in 1985 helped define this species as the earliest known robust australopithecine. P. aethiopicus has a strongly protruding face, large megadont teeth, a powerful jaw, and a well-developed sagittal crest on top of skull, indicating huge chewing muscles, with a strong emphasis on the muscles that connected toward the back of the crest and created strong chewing forces on the front teeth."

Quaternary
The "whole change elapsed just opposite the course of events that characterized the great glacial oscillations with sudden warming followed by slow cooling. Therefore, the two phenomena hardly have the same cause."

Subdivision of the Quaternary period are according to the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), as of 2017. 'Chibanian' and 'Tarantian' are informal, unofficial names proposed to replace the also informal, unofficial 'Middle Pleistocene' and 'Upper Pleistocene' subseries/subepochs respectively.

In Europe and North America, the Holocene is subdivided into Preboreal, Boreal, Atlantic, Subboreal, and Subatlantic stages of the Blytt–Sernander time scale. There are many regional subdivisions for the Upper or Late Pleistocene; usually these represent locally recognized cold (glacial) and warm (interglacial) periods. The last glacial period ends with the cold Younger Dryas substage.

Piacenzian
"The base of the beige marl bed of the small-scale carbonate cycle 77 (sensu Hilgen, 1991b) is the approved base of the Piacenzian Stage (that is the Lower Pliocene-Middle Pliocene boundary). It corresponds to precessional excursion 347 as numbered from the present with an astrochronological age estimate of 3.600 Ma (Lourens et al., 1996a)."

Zanclean
"The boundary-stratotype of the stage is located in the Eraclea Minoa section on the southern coast of Sicily (Italy), at the base of the Trubi Formation. The age of the Zanclean and Pliocene GSSP at the base of the stage is 5.33 Ma in the orbitally calibrated time scale, and lies within the lowermost reversed episode of the Gilbert Chron (C3n.4r), below the Thvera normal subchron."

"The oldest-known potential hominid is Ardipithecus ramidus, represented by some fragmentary fossils from the 4.4-million-year-old site of Aramis in Ethiopia [...]."

Pliocene
The Pliocene ranges from 5.332 x 106 to 2.588 x 106 b2k.

Australopithecus afarensis is an extinct hominid that lived between 3.9 and 2.9 million years ago.

"Among the earliest known relatives of humanity definitely known to walk upright was Australopithecus afarensis, the species including the famed 3.2-million-year-old "Lucy." [Found at Hadar, Ethiopia] Australopithecines are the leading candidates for direct ancestors of the human lineage, living about 2.9 million to 3.8 million years ago in East Africa."

Prehistory
The prehistory period dates from around 7 x 106 b2k to about 7,000 b2k.

"The German Bight and the area around the island is known to have been inhabited since prehistoric times. Tools made of flint have been recovered from the bottom of the sea surrounding Heligoland."

"On the Oberland prehistoric burial mounds were visible until the late 19th century and excavations showed skeletons and artefacts. Moreover, prehistoric copper plates have been found under water near the island; those plates were almost certainly made on the Oberland (see Alex Ritsema, Heligoland, Past and Present, 2007, pp.21-23)."

Messinian
"The GSSP of the Messinian Stage, which per definition marks the base of the Messinian and, hence, the boundary between the Tortonian and Messinian Stages of the Upper Miocene Subseries, is Oued Akrech (Morocco) where the Messinian GSSP is now formally designated at the base of the reddish layer of sedimentary cycle no. 15. This point coincides closely with the first regular occurrence (FRO) of the planktonic foraminiferal Globorotalia miotumida group and the first occurrence (FO) of the calcareous nannofossil Amaurolithus delicatus, and falls within the interval of reversed polarity that corresponds to C3Br.1r. The base of the reddish layer and, thus, the Messinian GSSP has been assigned an astronomical age of 7.251 Ma."

"The correlation of characteristic sedimentary cycle patterns to the astronomical record resulted in an astronomical age of 7.24 Ma (Hilgen et al., 1995), in good agreement with the radiometric age estimates of Vai et al. (1993) and Laurenzi et al. (1997)."

The integrated magnetostratigraphy, calcareous plankton biostratigraphy and cyclostratigraphy of section Oued Akrech is diagrammed on the left.

"Sahelanthropus tchadensis is one of the oldest known species in the human family tree. This species lived sometime between 7 and 6 million years ago in West-Central Africa (Chad). Walking upright may have helped this species survive in diverse habitats, including forests and grasslands. Although we have only cranial material from Sahelanthropus, studies so far show this species had a combination of ape-like and human-like features. Ape-like features included a small brain (even slightly smaller than a chimpanzee’s), sloping face, very prominent browridges, and elongated skull. Human-like features included small canine teeth, a short middle part of the face, and a spinal cord opening underneath the skull instead of towards the back as seen in non-bipedal apes."

Tortonian
The Tortonian lasted from 11.63 Ma to 7.246 Ma.

Gigantopithecus is an extinct genus of ape that existed from perhaps nine million years to as recently as one hundred thousand years ago, at the same period as Homo erectus would have been dispersed, in what is now India, Vietnam, China and Indonesia placing Gigantopithecus in the same time frame and geographical location as several hominin species. The primate fossil record suggests that the species Gigantopithecus blacki were the largest known primates that ever lived, standing up to 3 m and weighing as much as 540 - 600 kg,  although some argue that it is more likely that they were much smaller, at roughly 1.8 - 2 m in height and 180 - 300 kg in weight.

Miocene
The Miocene dates from 23.03 x 106 to 5.332 x 106 b2k.

"Hominoids diversified successfully in Europe up to 6 million–years ago, between the middle Aragonian Mammal Stage (14 Ma, Griphopithecus, Dryopithecus) and the beginning of the late Vallesian (9.7 Ma, Dryopithecus, Ankarapithecus, Graecopithecus; Andrews and Bernor, 1999; Agustí et al., 2001). At 9.6Ma, the Vallesian Crisis (Agustí and Moyà-Solà, 1990;	Agustí et al., 1997) led to the extinction of the hominoids in Europe, together with most of the highly diversified early Vallesian fauna. Hominoids like Ankarapithecus or Graecopithecus disappeared entirely from the fossil record, and only Oreopithecus in its Tuscan refuge, and Sivapithecus in South Western Asia, survived this extinction event. Dryopithecus is still found in some early late Vallesian localities dated at about 9.6 Ma (Can Llobateres 2, Viladecavalls; Agustí et al., 1996), but disappeared from the fossil record shortly after (this species may have survived until the early Turolian in the Caucasus, where some remains in the Georgian site of Udabno were described as Udabnopithecus, Gabunia et al., 2001)."

Neogene
The Neogene dates from 23.03 x 106 to 2.58 x 106 b2k.

Holarctic-Antarctic Ice Age
"This late Cenozoic ice age began at least 30 million years ago in Antarctica; it expanded to Arctic regions of southern Alaska, Greenland, Iceland, and Svalbard between 10 and 3 million years ago. Glaciers and ice sheets in these areas have been relatively stable, more-or-less permanent features during the past few million years."

Rukwapithecus is "an early member of the hominoids, the group containing the great apes (gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans and humans) and lesser apes (gibbons)."

"The fossil remnants ... date back 25 million years ago, filling a gap in the fossil record that reveals when apes and monkeys first diverged."

Oligocene
The Oligocene dates from 33.9 ± 0.1 x 106 to 23.03 x 106 b2k.

Eocene
The Eocene dates from 55.8 ± 0.2 x 106 to 33.9 ± 0.1 x 106 b2k.

Paleocene
The Paleocene dates from 65.5 ± 0.3 x 106 to 55.8 ± 0.2 x 106 b2k.

"Plesiadapis, the oldest known primate-like mammal, lived [58 million years ago.]"

"Infants were fully formed but helpless, so mothers must have provided a great deal of care. Resembling squirrel-like lemurs, Plesiadapis moms also spent a lot of time scurrying around the ground and in trees."

Paleogene
The Paleogene Period extends from 65.5 ± 0.3 to 23.03 ± 0.05 x 106 b2k.

Tertiary
The Tertiary Period extends from 65.5 ± 0.3 to 2.588 x 106 b2k.

Mesozoic
The Permian/Triassic boundary occurs at 248.2 ± 4.8 Ma (million years ago).

Cretaceous
The Cretaceous period is the third and final period in the Mesozoic Era. It began 145.5 million years ago after the Jurassic Period and ended 65.5 million years ago, before the Paleogene Period of the Cenozoic Era.

Jurassic
The Jurassic/Cretaceous boundary occurs at 144.2 ± 2.6 Ma (million years ago).

The Triassic/Jurassic boundary occurs at 205.7 ± 4.0 Ma (million years ago).

Triassic
The Triassic/Jurassic boundary occurs at 205.7 ± 4.0 Ma (million years ago).

The Permian/Triassic boundary occurs at 248.2 ± 4.8 Ma (million years ago).

Paleozoic
The Paleozoic era spanned 542.0 ± 1.0 to 251.0 ± 0.7 Mb2k.

Permian
The Permian lasted from 299.0 ± 0.8 to 251.0 ± 0.4 Mb2k.

The Permian/Triassic boundary occurs at 248.2 ± 4.8 Ma (million years ago).

Carboniferous
The Carboniferous began 359.2 ± 2.5 Mb2k and ended 299.0 ± 0.8 Mb2k.

Pennsylvanian
The Pennsylvanian lasted from 318.1 ± 1.3 to 299.0 ± 0.8 Mb2k.

Mississippian
The Mississippian lasted from 359.2 ± 2.5 to 318.1 ± 1.3 Mb2k.

Karoo Ice Age
The "Karoo [occurred] between 360 and 260 Ma [but] did not achieve a global extent."

Devonian
The Devonian spanned 416.0 ± 2.8 to 359.2 ± 2.5 Mb2k.

Silurian
The Silurian spanned 443.7 ± 1.5 to 416.0 ± 2.8 Mb2k.

Andean-Saharan ice age
The "Andean-Saharan [occurred] between 450 and 420 Ma […] did not achieve a global extent."

Ordovician
The Ordovician lasted from 488.3 ± 1.7 to 443.7 ± 1.5 Mb2k.

Cambrian
The Cambrian lasted from 542.0 ± 1.0 to 488.3 ± 1.7 Mb2k.

Phanerozoic
The Phanerozoic eon includes the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic. It lasted from 542.0 ± 1.0 Mb2k to the present

Precambrian
Def.
 * 1) the time and geology dated before the Phanerozoic or
 * 2) the eon (or supereon) and rock formations dated before 541.0±1.0 million years ago, coinciding with the first appearance of the fossils of hard-shelled animals

is called the precambrian.

Cryogenian ice age
The Cryogenian Ice Age, or the Stuartian-Varangian Ice Age, a Late Proterozoic ice age was apparently the greatest of all. Glacial strata are known from all modern continents (except Antarctica) with an overall time range of about 950 to 600 million years old.

Neoproterozoic
Def. a geologic era within the Proterozoic eon; comprises the Tonian, Cryogenian and Ediacaran periods from about 1000 to 544 million years ago, when algae and sponges flourished is called the Neoproterozoic.

Mesoproterozoic
Def. a geologic era within the Proterozoic eon; comprises the Calymmian, Ectasian and Stennian periods from about 1600 to 900 million years ago, when the Rodinia supercontinent was formed is called the Mesoproterozoic.

Paleoproterozoic
Def. the era from 2,500 Ma to 1,600 Ma, marked by a dramatic increase in atmospheric oxygen is called the Paleoproterozoic.

Huronian ice age
The Huronian Ice Age is known "mainly from Canada and the United States in North America, where dated rocks range from 2500 to 2100 million years old."

Makganyene glaciation
The "Makganyene glaciation begins some time after 2.32 Ga and ends at 2.22 Ga, the three Huronian glaciations predate the Makganyene snowball."

Proterozoic
Def. the eon from 2,500 Ma to 541.0±1.0 Ma, the beginning of the Phanerozoic, marked by the build up of oxygen in the atmosphere and the emergence of primitive multicellular life is called the Proterozoic.

Azoic
Def. destitute "of any vestige of organic life, or at least of animal life; anterior to the existence of animal life; formed when there was no animal life on the globe" is called an azoic.

Hypozoic
Def. "older than the lowest rocks which contain organic remains" is called a hypozoic.

Neoarchean
Def.
 * 1) a geologic era within the Archaean eon from about 2800 to 2500 million years ago or
 * 2) the era from 2,800 Ma to 2,500 Ma

is called the Neoarchean.

Pongola glaciation
The Pongola glaciation is dated "at 2.9 Ga".

"The oldest known midlatitude glaciation, recorded in the Pongola Supergroup diamictite, occurred at 2.9 Ga (10)."

"As the geological expression of oxygen does not appear during the ~2.8 Ga Pongola glaciation or during the Huronian glaciations, when glacial weathering should have elevated these fluxes, oxygenic cyanobacteria may not have evolved and radiated until shortly before the Makganyene Snowball."

The "Pongola glaciation in Southern Africa at 2.9—2.7 Gyr ago has at least three distinct units of diamictite that can be traced laterally over hundreds of square kilometers and that contain occasional small drop stones."

"Estimates of the severity of the Pongola and Huronian glacial advances indicate that they were more intense than those of the Quaternary (Hambrey and Harland 1981)."

If "cyanobacteria had evolved prior to either the Pongola (2.9-2.7 Ga) or the first two Huronian glaciations (2.45-2.35 Gyr ago), the "Great Oxygenation Event" should have happened sooner than the rock record suggests."

"Archaean diamictite occurs in the Pongola Sequence, exposed in the southeastern part of the African subcontinent. Four diamictite units are developed in a mudrock-dominated interval which is interbedded with arenites of the 5000 m thick Mozaan Group. The most prominent of these diamictites is 80 m thick. The rock is black and comprises a homogeneous matrix supporting sparse clasts that are characteristically varied in composition. Some clasts are striated and faceted. The diamictite essentially represents a mudflow deposit which was emplaced in a marine shelf environment. Sediment was delivered to a subsiding basin by downslope mass movement from a fault-bounded, elevated margin where highland glaciers are likely to have contributed clastic detritus. The diamictite would thus represent a reworked admixture of glacially-derived debris and argillaceous gravity flow sediment related to tectonic activity along the basin margin. Whereas the final depositional mechanism involved subaqueous mass-flow, the presence of striated stones, the heterogeneous clast composition, and major element chemical data support a glacial interpretation for the diamictite."

"Sulfur isotope mass-independent fractionation (S-MIF) is a unique geologic record of Archean atmospheric chemistry that provides important constraints on the evolution of the early Earth’s atmosphere and its impact on early life."

"[M]ultiple-sulfur (/, /, and /) isotope ratios of sulfide minerals and carbon (/) isotope ratios of organic carbon for shale in the ~2.96 to ~2.84 Ga Mozaan Group of the Pongola Supergroup, Southern Africa [have been measured]."

On the right is a stratigraphic column for the general "stratigraphy of the Mozaan Group of the Pongola Supergroup (left) and the location of the Pongola (hatched area) and Witwatersrand (grey) basins (top right). Arrows indicate the stratigraphic location of samples used for this study. The figure is modified from Beukes and Cairncross (1991) and Nhleko (2003)."

On the left is a microscope "photo of the sample PNG2-657.2 (plane polarized light) [from the Thalu formation of the Pongola glaciation]. Scale bar is 100 µm. Opaque minerals in the photo are pyrite and pyrrhotite. Quartz grains (white) are elongated due to compaction. The elongation of pyrite and pyrrhotite are parallel to that of quartz, suggesting early diagenetic origin of sulfide minerals."

Mesoarchean
Def. "a geologic era within the Archaean eon from about 3200 to 2800 million years ago; stromatolites have existed from this time" or the "era from 3,200 Ma to 2,800 Ma"

is called the Mesoarchean.

The earliest reefs date from this era, and were probably formed by stromatolites. The surface temperature during the Mesoarchean was likely not much higher than modern-day temperatures. Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration was only a few times higher than its pre-industrial value

There is a verdite lens in layered mafic-ultramafic dikes in shear zones in the Jamestown Schist Belt-Nelspruit Batholith transition area (the Nelspruit Batholith is Mesoarchean in age, 3.015 Ga); north or northwest of the town of Barberton, South Africa.

Paleoarchean
Def. "a geologic era within the Archaean eon from about 3600 to 3200 million years ago; the first aerobic bacteria appeared at this time" or the "era from 3,600 Ma to 3,200 Ma"

is called the Paleoarchean.

Archean
Archaean is an alternate spelling of Archean.

Def. "the geologic eon from about 3,800 to 2,500 million years ago; comprises the Eoarchean, Paleoarchean, Mesoarchean and Neoarchean eras; marked by an atmosphere with little oxygen, the formation of the first continents and oceans and the emergence of simple life" or the "eon from 2,500 Ma to 4,000 Ma"

is called the Archaean, or Archean.

The rock, in the images at left and right, a tonalite gneiss, of the Acasta Gneiss exposed on an island about 300 kilometres north of Yellowknife in the Slave craton in Northwest Territories, Canada, was metamorphosed 3.58 to 4.031 billion years ago and is the oldest known intact crustal fragment on Earth.

The metamorphic rock exposed in the outcrop was previously a granitoid that formed 4.2 billion years ago, an age based on radiometric dating of zircon crystals at 4.2 Ga.

Eoarchean
Def. "a geologic era within the Archaean eon from about 4600 to 3600 million years ago; the first single-celled life began at this time" or the "era from 4,000 Ma to 3,600 Ma" is called the Eoarchean.

Hadean
Def. "the geologic eon from about 4,600 to 3,800 million years ago; marked by the formation of the solar system, a stable Earth-Moon orbit and the first rocks" or the "eon before 4,000 Ma"

is called the Hadean.

Geography
"With some of it on the south and more of it on the north of the great main thoroughfare that connects Aldgate and the East India Docks, St. Bede's at this period of its history was perhaps the poorest and most miserable parish in the East End of London."

"US history is replete with examples of the confounding of dominant group and national interests."

"Throughout U. S. history, dominant groups have attempted to impose a set of values and norms on subordinate groups."