Timeline of Human Prehistory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_human_prehistory:
Mesolithic[edit]
- 20,000 years ago: Kebaran culture in the Levant.
- 20,000 years ago: oldest pottery storage/cooking vessels from China.[24]
- 16,500–13,000 years ago: first colonization of North America.
- 16,000 years ago: Wisent sculpted in clay deep inside the cave now known as Le Tuc d'Audoubert in the French Pyrenees near what is now the border of Spain.[27]
- 15,000–14,700 years ago (13,000 BC to 12,700 BC): Earliest supposed date for the domestication of the pig.
- 14,800 years ago: The Humid Period begins in North Africa. The region that would later become the Sahara is wet and fertile, and the aquifers are full.[28]
- 13,000–10,000 years ago: Late Glacial Maximum, end of the Last glacial period, climate warms, glaciers recede.
- 13,000 years ago (11,000 BC): A major water outbreak occurs on Lake Agassiz, which at the time could have been the size of the current Black Sea and the largest lake on Earth. Much of the lake is drained in the Arctic Ocean through the Mackenzie River.
- 13,000–11,000 years ago (11,000 BC to 9,000 BC): Earliest dates suggested for the domestication of the sheep.
- 12,000 years ago: Jericho has evidence of settlement dating back to 10,000 BC. Jericho was a popular camping ground for Natufian hunter-gatherer groups, who left a scattering of crescent microlith tools behind them.[29]
- 12,000 years ago (10,000 BC): Earliest dates suggested for the domestication of the goat.
- 12,000 years ago (10,000 BC): Land ice leaves Denmark and southern Sweden; start of the current Holocene epoch.
- 11,000 years ago (9,000 BC): Earliest date recorded for construction of temenoi ceremonial structures at Göbekli Tepe in southern Turkey, as possibly the oldest surviving proto-religious site on Earth.[30]
- 11,000 years ago (9,000 BC): Emergence of Jericho, which is now one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Giant short-faced bears and giant ground sloths go extinct. Equidae goes extinct in North America.
- 10,500 years ago (8,500 BC): Earliest supposed date for the domestication of cattle.
- 10,000 years ago (8,000 BC): The Quaternary extinction event, which has been ongoing since the mid-Pleistocene, concludes. Many of the ice age megafauna go extinct, including the megatherium, woolly rhinoceros, Irish elk, cave bear, cave lion, and the last of the sabre-toothed cats. The mammoth goes extinct in Eurasia and North America, but is preserved in small island populations until ~1650 BC.
