Era · Before c. 3000 BC
From the formation of Earth and the age of dinosaurs to the first cave art and monuments, before writing was invented.
Excavated in the 1960s and moved uphill before the Iron Gate I dam flooded its original location, Lepenski Vir became a key site for understanding the transition from foraging to farming in south-east Europe.
Einkorn, emmer and barley became the staple cereals of the first farmers and later of Europe, North Africa and western Asia.
An early Neolithic monumental site, excavated since 2019, that shows Göbekli Tepe was part of a wider regional culture of builders.
Star Carr became the best-known Mesolithic site in Britain and one of the most important in Europe for understanding life after the last Ice Age.
A seasonal meeting place of Saharan herders whose megaliths and cattle burials are among the earliest ceremonial monuments in Africa.
One of the earliest known village cultures in southern China, with pottery and evidence for the early stages of rice cultivation.
A long-lived early farming village whose architecture, ritual buildings and copper working illuminate the Neolithic of upper Mesopotamia.
The aurochs was domesticated into taurine cattle in the Near East and into zebu cattle in South Asia, creating one of humanity's most important farm animals.
Sheep and goats became the first domestic livestock, giving farmers a reliable supply of meat, milk, hides and later wool.
Excavated in 1983–1991, the site revealed early monumental sculpture and T-shaped pillars before it was submerged by the Atatürk Dam reservoir in 1992.
Neolithic Jericho built a massive stone tower and wall, among the earliest known monumental structures, and later produced plastered human skulls.
Foraging and fishing communities adopted pottery, village life and millet farming, before giving way to the rice-growing Mumun period around 1500 BC.
