-14 billion years ago: the Big Bang
-5-6 billion BCE: Solar system and Earth
-6 million BCE: Likely appearance of the first human-like species
-4.4 million BCE: Ardipithecus ramidus (Ardi) earliest known bipedal hominids
-3.9 million BCE: Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy)
-2.5 million BCE: Homo habilis, the 'toolmaker' ad the beginning of the Ice Ages
-2 million BCE: Paleolithic
-1.8 million BCE: Homo erectus and migration out of Africa
-400,000 BCE: Homo sapiens and language
-135,000 BCE: Homo sapiens sapiens or modern humans
-100,000 BCE: Homo sapiens sapiens remains found over large areas
-10,000 BCE: Neolithic
-8,000 BCE: Agricultural and pastoral revolutions
-7,000-4,000 BCE: Agricultural communities in Jarmo (Iraq), Jericho (Jordan), Catal Huyuk (Turkey), Ban Po (China), Tehuacan Valley (Mexico)
Between 5 million BCE and 8,000 BCE, human beings developed physically (hominids became bipedal, increased their brain size, and developed the capability to speak), socially (hominids began to live in extended groups that worked effectively together to improve hunting and survival), technologically (humans fashioned tools to help them hunt and survive the cold weather of the ice ages), and spiritually into a from we are familiar with today (early humans developed a sense of time and learned behavior, ritual religious patterns based on animal spirits, and methods of artistic expression). This happened against a backdrop of geologic changes including four ice ages. Throughout the Paleolithic period, change was dominated by the slow process of adaption to the environment. During the Neolithic period the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture, humans began the process of changing the environment. The lives of humans were revolutionized through the domestication of plants and animal, which created a surplus of food, which allowed new towns to be established and allowed people to specialize in different occupations, allowing for the creation of new technologies to be created like the wheel, farm implements, irrigation procedures, building, timekeeping, and religions centered on the world of nature.
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| 801667085 | Pangea | The single super continent that existed whose center was present day Africa. Around 200 million years ago it broke into two large main land masses: Laurasia and Gondwanaland. | 1 | |
| 801667086 | Laurasia | The part of Pangea that went on to form the Northern continents. | 2 | |
| 801667087 | Gondwanaland | The part of Pangea that went on to form the southern continents. | 3 | |
| 801667088 | plate tectonics | The theory that postulates that rigid plates form the outer layer of the earth's surface, but that the plates float on a soft layer of magma or molten rock near the earth's core. The molten rock pushes continents apart and drifting plates collide, forming mountain ranges like the Himalayas. | 4 | |
| 801667089 | prehistory | A time before written history. | 5 | |
| 801667090 | paleontologists | Scientists who study the fossils of plants and animals. | 6 | |
| 801667091 | archeologists | Scientists who study the remains of ancient peoples, including fossils and artifacts. | 7 | |
| 801667092 | anthropologists | Scientists who study the physical and cultural characteristics of people. | 8 | |
| 801667093 | artifacts | Man-made objects. | 9 | |
| 801667094 | carbon 14 dating | A method used to determine the age of various archeological objects by measuring the amount of radioactive carbon left in an object (all living things absorb radiocarbon from the air and lose it after death at a specific rate over time). | 10 | |
| 801667095 | accelerator mass spectrometry | A machine that can separate smaller fossil samples and counts the carbon 14 atoms in the sample. | 11 | |
| 801667096 | DNA | Used to trace the evolutionary patterns of human beings. | 12 | |
| 801667098 | Great Rift Valley | A valley that was formed around 12 million years ago, running from north to south between northern Syria to western Mozambique in East Africa. The location where the most early fossils have been found due to the the preservation characteristics of the volcanic ash. | 13 | |
| 801667099 | Homo Erectus | Lived almost exclusively during the period of the most recent ice age (2.58 million years ago). They had many adaptive qualities which resulted in the expansion of territory occupied by humans, a 25% increase in brain size, a frame that was taller and narrower (suggesting that they were hunters rather than scavengers), were losing body hair that was replaced by the development of adaptive skin color. As southern Asia developed a warmer climate between 1 million and 2 million years ago, groups started to migrate to the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, China, Europe, and perhaps Australia. Their skills became more sophisticated as time went on including the use of fire, tools, clothing, and cooked foods. | 14 | |
| 801667100 | bipedalism | The ability to walk upright. | 15 | |
| 801667101 | Tim White | Beginning in 1944, his team and himself unearthed and analyzed the remains of about 37 individuals discovered in the Awash region of Ethiopia dated at 4.4 million years ago. | 16 | |
| 801667102 | Ardipithecus ramidus | The most complete skeleton found by Tim White and his team of a woman known as 'Ardi'. The skeleton reveals a torso that allowed for upright walking, feet that lacked an arch but were capable of locomotion, a big toe that allowed for grasping objects and climbing, flexible fingers, and teeth that lacked dagger-like upper canines typical in apes but the skull indicated that the brain size was small. 'Ardi' lived in woodlands and lived on a diet of plants, nuts, and small animals, which downplays the importance of open grassland to human development. | 17 | |
| 801667103 | Donald Johanson | He found skeletal remains of different new species in 1974, which came to be called Australopithecus afarensis. | 18 | |
| 801667104 | Australopithecus afarensis | The skeletal remains found by Donald Johanson in 1974, in Hadar that date back to 3.2 million years ago (although other fossils of this kind have been dated back to 3.9 million years ago. | 19 | |
| 801667105 | Hadar | The Awash region of Ethiopia where Donald Johanson discovered the remains of the Australopithecus afarensis. | 20 | |
| 801667106 | Lucy | The most complete Austrapolithecus afarensis skeleton found by Donald Johanson in Hadar. She was between 3-4 feet tall and weighed around 110. She was capable of walking upright and she had hands, feet, and teeth that were closer to modern hominids than those of 'Ardi,' although the size of her brain was about the same. | 21 | |
| 801667107 | Laetoli | A place in Tanzania, where Mary Leakey found the first evidence that the Austrapolithecus afarensis actually walked upright with the discovery of foot prints of an adult and of a child dated at 3.5 million years ago. | 22 | |
| 801667108 | Mary and Louis Leakey | The couple that discovered the Homo habilis species in the Olduavai Gorge in Tanzinia in 1962-1964. | 23 | |
| 801667109 | Homo habilis | This species lived around 2.5 to 1.6 million years ago and disproportionately long arms, a less protruding jaw, and a cranial capacity that was less than half the size of a modern human but over 50% larger than the Australopithecys afarensis. They are often referred to as the "handy man" because the remains are often accompanied by stone tools. | 24 | |
| 801667110 | Kamoya Kimeu | A member of Richard Leakey's team (the son of Mary and Louis Leakey) who discovered a skeleton that dated 1.6 million years ago near Lake Turkana in northern Kenya near the Ethiopian border. The almost complete skeleton was dubbed the 'Turkana Boy' and was a Homo Erectus. | 25 | |
| 801667111 | culture | Learned behavior, social organization, behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, and institutions of a group of people. | 26 | |
| 801667112 | Paleolithic | The old stone age, which lasted from 2 million years ago with the appearance of Homo habilis, to 10,000 BCE. During this period tools were fashioned from stone, wood, and bone by knocking and chipping away at the core. During this period groups of hunter-gathers migrated wildly, populating the vast majority of the globe. Due to the reduced distances between land masses during the ices age groups of hunter-gatheres started to cross from Asia to North America. | 27 | |
| 801667113 | Neolithic | The new stone age, which began in 8,000 BCE with the appearance if stone tools that were made by chipping. grinding, and polishing, which made them stronger and capable of cutting more deeply. Axes that were used to cut down trees to clear fields. The new tools seemed to be a response to the needs of the domestication of plants and animals that took place during the time period. | 28 | |
| 801667114 | Amurians | The first people to cross from Asia to North America. | 29 | |
| 801667115 | Mongoloids | The most recent people to cross from Asia to North America. | 30 | |
| 801667116 | Amerindians | American Indians are descended from the Mongoloids and the Amurians. | 31 | |
| 801667117 | Lascaux, France | The location of cave paintings made about 15,000 years ago that depict lifelike portraits of the animals they hunted and killed. The paintings are deep within the cave and were painted either to appease the spirits of the animals portrayed or to persuade the Earth Mother to be bountiful. | 32 | |
| 801667118 | agriculture | Seed selection and sowing of plants which seems to have developed independently throughout the world. It spread to the Nile Valley around 5,000 BCE. | 33 | |
| 801667119 | Jarmo, Iraq/ Jericho, Jordan | One of the fist places in Southwest Asia to develop agriculture along with the western slopes of the Zagros mountains in Iran between 10,000 and 9,000 years ago. | 34 | |
| 801667120 | slash-and-burn | The first successful type of agriculture, which was a system that allowed farmers to grow grain where it didn't grow naturally by burning trees that had died from girding so the ashes could improve fertility. | 35 | |
| 801667121 | girding | A technique which required the cutting the bark around trees to kill them, provide sunlight, and to keep out weeds. | 36 | |
| 801667122 | Huang he/Ban Po, China | The place where Chinese ancestors began farming millet in 7,000 BCE (the Yellow River). | 37 | |
| 801667123 | maize | corn | 38 | |
| 801667124 | root crops | Began in 5,000 BCE in Southeast Asia, probably where hunter fishermen stayed around the same harbors, the woman began planting live shoots instead of seeds. | 39 | |
| 801667125 | rice paddy farming | Developed in the monsoon areas of the world, it was probably developed using planting methods that had already been established. They were planted in standing water and developments in water irrigation technology made it easier as time went on. | 40 | |
| 801667126 | Tehuacan Valley, Mexico | The first place were evidence of cultivated maize was found. It was cultivated around 4,500 and 4,700 years ago. | 41 | |
| 801829784 | pastoralism | The domestication of animals (coincided with the development of agriculture). | 42 | |
| 801829785 | Hallen Cemi, Turkey | The location where the discovery of evidence of the domestication of the pig (the first animal to be domesticated for food) 10,000 years ago occurred. | 43 | |
| 801829786 | Catal Hayuk, Turkey | As a result of the Agricultural Revolution the city spread over 32 acres and at one time had 6,000 inhabitants in seventh millennium BCE. The houses formed defense walls of sun-dried mud brick. | 44 |
