Archaeological periods

The timeline below runs from 5 million years ago (5 Mya), when early hominins roamed in Africa, to 2 thousand years ago (2 Kya), at the start of our Common Era, CE (sometimes referred to as anno Domini, AD). Its log-scale equally spaces successive intervals in time half way to the present from the last; for example, 1 Mya lies midway between 2 Mya and 500 Kya. This multiplicative scaling allows the same timeline to visualise earlier periods and manyfold shorter recent periods. For example, the Lower Palaeolithic, or Old Stone Age, encompassed 3 million years of hominins and humans using stone tools, before the 12× shorter Middle Palaeolithic, or Middle Stone Age, of Neanderthals dominating in Europe during 250,000 years. More recently, the Iron Age, lasted only about 700 years.

The beginning of each archaeological period approximately aligns with the spread of a new technology or culture, allowing for much variation across regions and continents. All of the -lithic ages refer to the use of stone tools, at first by African hominins 3.3 million years ago, and subsequently by the earliest humans from 2.8 million years ago, radiating out from Africa by at least 1.8 million years ago. The adoption of metal working began in North America, with copper mining and smelting around the Great Lakes at least 600 years before the Copper Age spread through the Fertile Crescent – the arc of lands stretching northeast from the Eastern Mediterranean to the upper Euphrates and Tigris rivers and following their courses southeast to the northern shore of the Persian Gulf.

Our current geological period is the Quaternary, starting 2.58 million years ago. It contains the Pleistocene Epoch, encompassing the four most recent major glaciations, with the Last Glacial Maximum from 26,000 to 20,000 years ago, followed from 11,700 years ago by the Holocene, our current epoch of warm and stable climate.

C.P. Doncaster, Timeline of the Human Condition, star index