−56 Ma
Palaeoclimate
56 million years ago, a warming like ours devastated forests for 100,000 years
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Ph
−7 Ma
First Hominins
Sahelanthropus tchadensis (Toumaï) in Chad: the oldest known hominin, already bipedal, marks the start of a 7-million-year evolutionary journey towards Homo sapiens.
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−7 Ma
Toumai, the New Ancestor
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Au
−4 Ma
−3,4 Ma
−3,2 Ma
−2,6 Ma
−2,6 Ma
Paleoanthropology
The Taung Child Dated to 2.58 Million Years: A New Chronology and the AH Hypothesis
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Hh
−2 Ma
News
The Oldest Hominin Molecules Yet: Paranthropus robustus Tooth Enamel Gives Up Its Proteins
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−2 Ma
Paleoanthropology
Paranthropus robustus Walked Upright: What the New Swartkrans Fossils Reveal
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−2 Ma
Palaeoanthropology
Drimolen: a bone forgotten for thirty years in a drawer pushes Homo erectus back to two million years
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−2 Ma
He
−1,9 Ma
−1,8 Ma
Human Evolution
Prehistoric Fire: From Capture to Mastery , 1.8 Million Years of Revolution
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−1,8 Ma
Lower Palaeolithic
Kokiselei (Kenya): the oldest known Acheulean site, dated to 1.76 million years ago. Hominins of the Homo ergaster type already produce bifacial handaxes, a technology that will persist for 1.46 million years across three continents.
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−1,4 Ma
Hominins
Lake Turkana: footprints of eight Paranthropus boisei reveal a 1.8-metre cousin that lived in groups
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−1 Ma
−1 Ma
Middle Pleistocene
Lower & Middle Palaeolithic · 780 000–130 000 BP
−780 000
Lower Palaeolithic
Gesher Benot Ya'aqov (Israel): hominins cook fish on the banks of the Jordan River, pushing back the oldest known fish-cooking episode by 530,000 years.
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−773 000
Lower Palaeolithic
Hominid Cave (Thomas Quarry I, Casablanca, Morocco): skull fragments of Homo erectus dated to 773,000 years ago, basal to the lineage leading to Homo sapiens. Published in Nature in January 2026, the study fills a 400,000-year gap in the African fossil record.
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Hd
−700 000
Palaeontology / News
700,000 years ago, in the Jordan Valley, early humans shared their world with giant elephants
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−430 000
Middle Palaeolithic
Sima de los Huesos (Atapuerca, Spain): 29 Homo heidelbergensis individuals deposited at the bottom of a natural shaft, possibly humanity's first organised funerary gesture.
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−430 000
Hn
−400 000
Lower Palaeolithic
Bilzingsleben (Germany): Homo heidelbergensis systematically hunts the Eurasian beaver. 94 individuals with skinning marks, the earliest direct evidence of specialised fur hunting in Europe.
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−400 000
Palaeoanthropology
Homo erectus enamel proteins reveal a link with the Denisovans
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Dv
−350 000
Lower Paleolithic
Fureidis, the Sealed Cave That Awakens a Forgotten Prehistoric Clan
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−335 000
Hs
−300 000
Palaeoanthropology / News
The face of the oldest known Homo sapiens, reconstructed from the Jebel Irhoud fossils
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−300 000
The Denisovans: the Dragon Man skull and the reconstruction of their face
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−200 000
Middle Stone Age
Border Cave (Lebombo, South Africa): the oldest known plant-based beds. Fresh grass laid on ash to repel insects and moisture, bedding burned before each renewal — sustained over 150,000 years.
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−200 000
Palaeolithic
Wooden tools of prehistory: spears, bows and canoes, the forgotten age
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−190 000
−175 000
−160 000
Middle Palaeolithic
A Denisovan jaw on the Tibetan Plateau: Denisovans, revealed by DNA, already occupied high Asia.
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−153 000
−150 000
Palaeoanthropology
Bété I: Homo sapiens Lived in Africa's Tropical Rainforest 150,000 Years Ago
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−140 000
Late Pleistocene
Neanderthals & Sapiens · 130 000–40 000 BP
−130 000
Middle Palaeolithic / Palaeogenetics
What did Denisovans look like? Xujiayao gives them a face
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−120 000
Middle Palaeolithic
Es-Skhul (Mount Carmel): a child with mixed features, possibly the oldest sapiens–Neanderthal hybrid.
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−120 000
Hf
−100 000
Middle Palaeolithic
Intentional Homo sapiens burials in the Near East. Coexistence with Neanderthals.
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−88 000
Middle Palaeolithic
Nefud Desert (Saudi Arabia): the Al Wusta phalanx, the oldest Homo sapiens bone found outside Africa and the Levant. Green Arabia, humanity's overlooked crossroads.
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−75 000
Middle Stone Age
Blombos Cave (South Africa): shell beads, engraved ochre and a drawing, symbolism 30,000 years before Europe.
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−75 000
Middle Palaeolithic / Neanderthal
Shanidar A: the oldest human killed by a spear?
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−75 000
Palaeogenomics
Norway: a cave yields Europe's oldest Arctic ecosystem, 75,000 years frozen in stone
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−74 000
Middle Palaeolithic
Toba supereruption (Sumatra): the largest volcanic eruption of the past two million years (VEI 8, ~2,800 km³). A famous but now contested theory holds that it reduced humanity to a few thousand individuals.
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−70 000
Out of Africa
Major Homo sapiens expansion out of Africa; interbreeding with Neanderthals and Denisovans.
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−65 000
Peopling
Madjedbebe: Homo sapiens reaches Sahul (Australia) after the oldest known open-water voyage.
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−60 000
Upper Palaeolithic
Homo floresiensis, the Flores 'hobbit', vanishes with the arrival of Homo sapiens in South-East Asia.
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−60 000
Middle Palaeolithic
Umhlatuzana (KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa): quartz microliths carry alkaloids from Boophone disticha. The oldest known poisoned projectiles, testifying to remarkable pharmacological knowledge.
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−60 000
Palaeogenetics
The Persian Plateau, the "hub" where Homo sapiens lived for 20,000 years before conquering Eurasia
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−60 000
−54 000
−53 000
Middle Palaeolithic
Amud Cave (Israel): Amud 7, a 6-month-old Neanderthal infant, already had the size of a 13-month-old Homo sapiens child. Growth rate twice as fast as our own.
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−52 500
Middle Palaeolithic / Palaeogenetics
Neanderthals in Belgium: what Meuse Valley DNA reveals about their diversity
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−50 000
Middle Palaeolithic / Neanderthal
Abric Romaní: the forgotten wooden world of the Neanderthals
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-48 000
Palaeolithic
Pedra Furada: When Brazil Challenges the Timeline of the Americas Peopling
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−47 000
Upper Palaeolithic
Belgium and northern France: genomes of 27 Neanderthals reveal normal genetic health — no inbreeding, good diversity. Their extinction remains an enigma.
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−47 000
Palaeogenetics
Neanderthal DNA, the X chromosome and the genetics of prehistoric mating
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−45 000
−45 000
Middle to Upper Palaeolithic
MP/UP transition: Neanderthals and Homo sapiens coexist. Châtelperronian, Aurignacian, ornaments, mixed DNA. Collège de France colloquium 2026.
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Upper Palaeolithic
Homo sapiens in Europe · 40 000–10 000 BP
−40 000
Upper Palaeolithic
Neanderthal extinction: climate, low genetic diversity and blood incompatibility combine.
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−40 000
Aurignacian
Venus of Hohle Fels: the oldest known female figurine, in mammoth ivory.
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−40 000
−36 000
Aurignacian
Chauvet Cave: over 1,000 drawings, 425 animal figures. The oldest known masterpiece.
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−36 000
−35 000
Upper Palaeolithic / Prehistoric art
Cro-Magnon and the Origins of Cave Art: When Homo sapiens Invented the Image
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−30 000
Gravettian
Venus of Willendorf. Peak of portable art and female figurines in Europe.
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−30 000
Funerary rites
Sungir: the children buried with thousands of beads 30,000 years ago
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−30 000
News
The great plain of the hunters: the Upper Palaeolithic of Russia and Siberia
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−29 000
Upper Palaeolithic
The Gravettian: Venus figurines, mammoths and societies of the cold
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−28 000
Gravettian
Arcy-sur-Cure Great Cave: France's oldest still-visible paintings (mammoths, lioness).
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−27 000
Gravettian
Cosquer Cave (Marseille): hand stencils and a marine bestiary in a cave now drowned beneath the Mediterranean.
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−26 000
Gravettian
Dolní Věstonice (Moravia): the Venus of Věstonice, the world's oldest fired ceramic figurine, and a 28,000-year-old kiln.
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−23 000
Last Glacial Maximum
Human footprints at White Sands: a far older human presence in the Americas than thought.
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−22 000
News / Peopling of the Americas
Parsons Island: Stone Tools That Would Push Human Arrival in America Back by 7,000 Years
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−20 000
−17 000
−17 000
News
Grotta delle Mura: an Ice Age baby tells the story of Italy 17,000 years ago
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−17 000
Cave art / Conservation
How Visitors Nearly Destroyed Lascaux: The Story of a Closure
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−16 000
Peopling of the Americas
The peopling of the Americas: Beringia, White Sands and the end of the Clovis model
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−15 000
Magdalenian
La Mouthe cave (Dordogne): its discovery will prove the existence of Palaeolithic cave art.
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−15 000
Upper Palaeolithic
The Magdalenian: Lascaux, harpoons and the return of the hunters
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−14 400
Upper Palaeolithic
Grotta della Bàsura (Toirano, Liguria, Italy): five humans including two children aged 3 and 6, and a 40 kg dog, explore a bear-inhabited cave by pine torchlight. Interleaved footprints testify to shared social life between humans and the domestic dog.
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−14 000
Upper Palaeolithic
Bonn-Oberkassel: first confirmed domestic dog, buried alongside humans on the Rhine.
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−13 300
Palaeolithic art
For the first time, Font-de-Gaume's bison paintings have an absolute date
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−13 000
Paleolithic / Peopling of the Americas
13,000 Years Ago, the First Americans Recycled Their Points: What 500 Stone Weapons Reveal
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Mesolithic & Neolithic
Agricultural revolutions · 10 000–3 300 BP
−10 000
Pre-Pottery Neolithic
Tell es-Sultan (Jericho): a stone tower 8.5 m high, the oldest known architectural structure. The world's oldest inhabited city is already walled.
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−10 000
Neolithic Revolution
Fertile Crescent: domestication of wheat, barley, sheep and cattle. Birth of villages.
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−10 000
−10 000
−10 000
−10 000
−9 600
Neolithic
Göbekli Tepe: a human statue walled up for 12,000 years, an offering from the first builders
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−9 500
Pre-Pottery Neolithic
Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe: monumental T-pillar sanctuaries, predating agriculture.
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−9 500
−9 500
−9 000
−9 000
−8 500
Mesolithic / Germany
At the bottom of Lake Arendsee, wood worked 10,500 years ago by hunter-gatherers
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−8 000
Mesolithic
Last hunter-gatherers: the high Pyrenees and the Seine banks (Vitry) in continuous use.
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−8 000
−8 000
Mesolithic
Beneath Greater Paris's cranes, a 10,000-year-old hunter-gatherer camp
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−7 000
−7 000
−6 900
−6 400
Mesolithic / Scandinavia
Egholm: an 8,400-year-old antler axe found with its wooden handle intact
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−6 200
Mesolithic
The Storegga tsunami sweeps Doggerland, the plain that linked Britain to the continent.
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−6 000
−6 000
−6 000
Rock art
Wadi Mathendous: giraffes carved in sandstone, the rock art of a forgotten Sahara
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−5 000
Palaeogenetics
Green Sahara: DNA from two mummies reveals a forgotten North African lineage
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−4 500
Breton Megalithism
Carnac (Brittany): 3,000 menhirs in alignments over 4 km, the world's largest megalithic complex.
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−4 500
Chalcolithic
6,500-year-old sprouted grains: Bulgaria's oldest beer was brewed in the salt town of Solnitsata
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−4 300
Chalcolithic
A 6,500-Year-Old Female Figurine Sheds Light on Copper Age Transylvania
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−4 000
−3 600
Megalithism
Ġgantija (Gozo, Malta): the world's oldest freestanding stone structures, 1,000 years older than Egypt's pyramids.
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−3 500
Botai: the first domesticated horses may not have been what we thought
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−3 500
−3 400
−3 400
Archaeology
Perdigões: the Portuguese prehistoric sanctuary that drew all of Europe
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Copper Age & Bronze Age
Metals · megaliths · writing · 3 300–800 BC
−3 300
Copper Age
Ötzi dies in the Alps: the oldest natural mummy, and a 5,300-year-old murder case.
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−3 300
Bronze Age
Invention of writing in the Near East: the end of prehistory. First city-states.
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−3 200
Megalithism
Newgrange (Ireland): passage mound 85 m across aligned on the winter solstice sunrise, older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids.
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−3 000
Megaliths
First great stones of Stonehenge; its Altar Stone will come from Scotland, over 700 km away.
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−3 000
News
Abydos: fractured skulls shed light on human sacrifice in Egypt's First Dynasty
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−3 000
−3 000
Ancient Egypt
Jabal al-Tayr: a 5,000-year-old necropolis at the roots of pyramid architecture
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−3 000
Archaeology
A 5,000-year-old fortress emerges from a Romanian forest, revealed by LiDAR
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−2 800
Palaeogenetics
The first complete genome of an Old Kingdom Egyptian reveals his Mesopotamian roots
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−2 700
−2 650
Feature
The Step Pyramid of Djoser: when humankind invented stone built to last forever
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−2 600
Egyptian Old Kingdom
Egypt: from mastaba to Djoser's Step Pyramid. Birth of monumental stone architecture.
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−2 600
−2 600
−2 600
−2 600
Arte Documentary
Documentary, Egypt, the fall of the Old Kingdom (1/2): The end of a kingdom
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−2 600
Ancient architecture
What do we really know about Egyptian construction?, Interview with Franck Monnier
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−2 560
News
An Underground Anomaly Beneath the Giza Plateau: What the Sensors Really Detected
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−2 500
−2 500
Indus Civilisation
Mohenjo-daro: a 4,500-year-old metropolis with no visible king
Read the article →
−2 500
Protohistory / South Asia
Mohenjo-daro: the great Indus city that had neither king nor palace
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−2 400
−2 300
−2 200
Arte Documentary
Documentary, Egypt, the fall of the Old Kingdom (2/2): Climate change and civil war
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−2 100
Bronze Age
Arkaim and the Sintashta Culture: At the Source of the First War Chariots
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−2 100
−2 000
Megaliths
The Devil's Arrows: these 25-tonne standing stones were hauled 18 km from a chosen place
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−2 000
Bronze Age / Levant
Byblos, the Royal Necropolis That Gave the World Its Alphabet
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−1 700
Aegean Bronze Age
A Bronze Age gold hoard surfaces at Aegina, echoing a two-century-old mystery
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−1 500
−1 350
−1 323
Egyptian New Kingdom
Valley of the Kings (Luxor): Tutankhamun, pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty who died around age 18, is entombed in KV62. Rediscovered in 1922 by Howard Carter, his burial held over 5,000 extraordinarily preserved objects.
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−1 323
Ancient Egypt
Tutankhamun: radar and microgravity reveal possible hidden chambers next to tomb KV62
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−1 300
Ancient Egypt
Documentary, Saqqara: 52 unexplored tombs and the forgotten mummies of Teti
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−1 250
Bronze Age
The Ugarit Divorce: when repudiating a princess became a matter of state
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−900
Tartessos: the Lost Civilisation of the West
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Iron Age & Protohistory
Threshold of written history · 800–0 BC
−800
Iron Age
Levantine Iron Age geomagnetic anomaly: Judean jars record Earth's magnetic field in their clay.
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−800
Iron Age
The oldest known skyscraper? At Yeha, Ethiopia, a 2,800-year-old palace could have risen sixteen storeys
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−500
Mesopotamia / Near East
Nearly Two Thousand Gods to Learn by Heart: Inside the School of the Babylonian Scribes
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−500
−450
Iron Age
Casas del Turuñuelo: The Tartessian Sanctuary Rewriting the History of a Lost Civilisation
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−450
−300
Megalithism
The Senegambian stone circles: a thousand monuments along the River Gambia
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−200
Iron Age
Cerro de las Cabezas: two violent deaths and six deer antlers, the enigma of an Iberian 'bad death'
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−100
Rock art
Chukotka: 31 new petroglyphs discovered on the Arctic cliffs of the Pegtymel
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−52
Iron Age
Lutetia found? A burnt Gaulish rampart discovered beneath the Hôtel-Dieu in the heart of Paris
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−1 200
Late Bronze Age
Mediterranean polycrisis: the Hittite Empire collapses, Mycenaean palaces burn, Troy VIIa is destroyed, the Sea Peoples threaten Egypt.
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0
Threshold of our era
Europe enters recorded history. The prehistoric worlds come to a close.
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