Earth History

Earth History

Why?

Why do a chronology of major events in the Earth's history? Many timelines concerning the history of civilisation, including dates of battles and rulers, have been published, as have many good academic and reference books on changes in global climate, migration of land masses and so on. There is also much useful and thought-provoking material on the Web.

What interests me, however, is the vast expanse of time, BC, in which the recording of important events is patchy and increasingly elusive the further back one searches : a field of play where scientists, pseudoscientists and proponents of religious dogma enthusiastically and sometimes intolerantly vie to convince the world at large (and sometimes themselves) of their pet theory. Taken at face value the theory can be persuasive, but where dates are involved, how does it stack up against existing evidence and the arguments of others?

Where do the various myths and legends of prehistory fit in ? Could putting all the dates together in context give a new twist to the history of civilisation or pre-history?

The Bible alludes to actual historical events and leaders as well as being a vehicle for myth, prophecy, poetry and moral authority. For example, Noah' s Flood, which various scholars have attempted to date: was it truly global, or more of a regional - nonetheless devastating - event for the Middle Eastern chroniclers? A similar event features in other non Judeo-Christian traditions. Did they coincide with the disappearance of Atlantis?

Global warming is very much on our minds at present, but historical, geographical and biological evidence prove that the climate of Europe has been even warmer before. Are there parallels between dramatic climate change and mass extinctions?

It is no longer assumed the Earth has remained unchanged for millions of years. The biosphere is vulnerable because Earth is still geologically active ; there are cycles of change within the Solar System, and unpredictable threats from asteroids, comets and meteorites remain. Some of these have left their mark on Earth history, from the fossil record to the the era of human civilisation.

This chronology records events which generally indicate that the Earth is much older than ancient peoples believed. Where is the evidence for this, and are the dating methods consistent? Well, the passage of the years and seasons are recorded in nature - in everything from stalactite growth layers, to ice cores, to pollen remains, to lake and sea deposition sediments. All are available to reveal that there have been tens of thousands of years of history beyond the limited range of tree ring dating (dendrochronology).

The chronology started out as a personal attempt to contextualise a mass of information gleaned from reading, watching television or, latterly, surfing the Internet. It is therefore the flawed and incomplete chronology of an amateur. It is idiosyncratic; it is also 'work in progress'. I have not found anything quite like it anywhere else, and in 2007 I felt it was the time to put it out on the Internet.

Over to you - I welcome constructive suggestions, corrections and any further, sourced information that may improve it.



You may contact me, Howard, via:

earthshistory@googlemail.com








Friday 27 April 2007

Chronology A

Chronology A: Known and possible dates of major events in Earth history.
* All entries before 10,000 BC (or BCE, Before the Common Era) are in years Before Present (BP). Most dates are approximate, or rounded up, and may be adjusted as new discoveries come to light.  I use the abbreviation ''m" for an estimated date 'millions of years ago'. 'Mya' is more often used in the literature.


* Terms such as 'Mesolithic' are relative, depending on geography, i.e. the era was replaced by the Neolithic earlier in the Middle East than in the British Isles.


* In British English, a billion used to be equivalent to a million million (i.e. 1,000,000,000,000), while in American English it has always equated to a thousand million (i.e. 1,000,000,000). British English has now adopted the American figure, though, so that a billion equals a thousand million in both varieties of English (Oxford Dictionaries). I intend that a billion equals a thousand million in this blog.


* For other abbreviations, see end of Chronology.


* Sources, including TV programmes, books and internet sites follow the list of abbreviations.



* LATEST UPDATE: February 2021.


1. Cycles

every
300 - 500 million years:
The Wilson Cycle: approximate period in which super continents have formed and broken apart (In Our Time: The Geological Formation Of Britain, BBC Radio 4, 22/10/09).

every
225 - 250 m yrs:
Sun orbits the core of our galaxy.

every
200 - 250 m yrs:
Frequency of magnetic pole reversals over the last 10 - 20 million years. This is much more frequent than, say, 1.5 to 2.9 billion years ago when the likely frequency was only 5 million years (Veikkolainen, Geophysical Journal International, December 2014).

every
30 m yrs:
Solar system passes through densest - and most dangerous, for collisions - part of our galaxy (Space, BBC1, 29/7/2001).

every 
450,000 yrs:
Average frequency at which pole reversals occur. Process of reversal can take between 1,000 and 10,000 years (Wikipedia).

every
413,000 yrs:
Period between maximum and minimum ellipticity of Earth Orbit (Milankovitch). 

every
100,000 yrs:
Stretch cycle as Earth’s orbit varies from more circular to more elliptical, distance from the Sun varying between 92 and 95 million miles. N.b. about every 110,000 years of the last 500,000 years of Earth history global temperatures have reached peaks/troughs. A further cycle whereby the Earth's orbit drifts up and down relative to the orbits of most of the other planets, esp. Jupiter (The Invariable Plane) takes around 100,000 years but the cycle relative to the Earth's present orbit is about 70,000 years. Cycles of Quaternary glaciation tend to conform to a 100,000 year cycle but changes in precession and obliquity are thought to be more significant (Wikipedia: Milankovitch cycles: the 100,000 year problem).

every 
71,000 yrs:
Precession caused by other planets in the Solar System, though considerably inferior to the effects of the Sun and Moon. They also cause an oscillation in the ellipticity of the Earth's orbit.

every
41,000 yrs:
Cycle of variation of the obliquity of the ecliptic, or angle of tilt of Earth in relation to the plane of its orbit around the Sun. Currently it is 23.44 degrees from vertical in a cycle of 22.1 to 24.5 and back again (Milankovitch). This tilt is in the decreasing phase of its cycle and will reach its minimum value by approximately 11,800 AD (Common Era, CE).

The Earth's orbit is elliptical, so during part of the year it is further away from the Sun (aphelion) than at the opposite time (perihelion). Currently the northern hemisphere winter occurs when the Earth is closest to the Sun so it receives slightly more warmth than would be experienced with its winter at aphelion. When in the cycle this situation is reversed, with the northern hemisphere pointing towards the sun at aphelion and away at perihelion it would predispose the hemisphere to slightly warmer summers but colder winters. In the time of this author, Summer in the Northern Hemisphere occurs when the Earth is furthest from the Sun and this mitigates against other cycles which may predispose us towards global warming. However the Earth is in a more circular orbit than average and the angle of tilt is mid-way between the expected extremes.

every
25,920 yrs:
The 'Platonic Year', whereby the Sun completes a path through all 12 Zodiacal signs, averaging one sign every 2,160 years.  Specifically, the Sun crosses the equator at the vernal equinox moving backwards against the fixed stars from one year to the next at the rate of one degree in seventy-two years. In astrological theory an 'astrological age' such as the age of Aquarius, is slightly different, with one cycle represented as 25,860 years, but "astrologers do not agree upon exact dates for the beginning or ending of the ages, with given dates varying hundreds of years." - Wikipedia.

every
25,776 yrs:
The Earth's 'wobble': cycle of precession of the Earth's axis, influenced by the gravitational pull of the larger planets, but controlled by the Moon (Frozen Earth, p.78). Thus Polaris will eventually cease to be seen as the northern Pole Star (to be replaced by Vega in 13,000 years) before returning to its present position on completion of the cycle. Thus, the wobble concerns the celestial direction the Earth's axis points to, not the tilt itself. Archaeo-astronomers attach great importance to this 26,000 year cycle (Plato's 'Great Year'), using it generally to argue that ancient structures like the Great Pyramid must be older than assumed by orthodox archaeologists.

every 5,730 +/- 40 years:
Half-life of carbon-14, used to measure age of relatively recent remains. Cosmic rays enter Earth's atmosphere. Contain neutrons. Free neutrons can release a proton from a nitrogen atom but retaining the total number of neutrons and protons in that atom:14. The nitrogen atom has become the unstable carbon-14. It will revert, but as old carbon-14 decays, new is created to replace it. Scientists say the amount is therefore constant. Any carbon-14 in the atmosphere is absorbed by plants and animals while they live, but when they die it is no longer replaced in their remains; half will have gone in 5,730 years. This discovery by Willard Libby was tested on archaeological remains in labs and the successful results published in 1949.

every
2,160 yrs:
 Earth's axis shifts about one degree every 72 years, giving rise to a slow transition of the Sun's position at the beginning of the vernal (spring) equinox each year. Measured in the constellations of the ecliptic - the Zodiacal ones - which occupy 30 degrees each - this translates into a different one of the twelve every 72 x 30, i.e.  2160 years. There is some disagreement over the calculation as to when a sign is entered and left. For a substantial part of this Chronology the ages are those of Gemini, Cancer, Taurus, Aries and Pisces, in which sign we are still, arguably, in.

every
1,500 yrs+/- 500 yrs:
Solar-driven global climate cycle hypothesis developed by Dansgaard, Oeschger and Lorius. Awarded Tyler prize in 1996 for discovering regular pattern of warming/cooling. E.g. 900 AD-1300 AD = Medieval warming.

every 210 and 87 years: 
Solar cycles, related to the shorter sunspot cycle (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research). In combination, these could produce a 1,470 cycle (see every 1500 years, above).

every 58 years:
Perihelion (when Earth is closest to the Sun in its annual orbit) wanders a day every 58 years due to gravitational influences from other planets in our Solar System. 

every
18.6 yrs:
Cycle of northerly and southerly monthly extremes of lunar declination. This is also the 223 month 'Saros' cycle, or nutation after which the pattern of lunar eclipses repeats.

every
11 yrs:
Maximum/minimum Sunspot cycle.


















2. Chronology

(N.B. Billion = American usage, i.e. 1,000 million):

13.82bn BP: Big Bang: Revised age of the Universe based on new European Planck Telescope data (BBC website, 21/3/13). Matter now 31.7% (4.9% matter, 26.8% dark matter), dark energy 68.3%.

13.81bn BP: Universe becomes transparent (Cosmic Microwave Background) - telescopes can, in 2014, 'see' universe events as far back as this (Wikipedia, 'Dark Flow').

 13.24bn BP: Europe's Planck satellite data analysis of the Cosmic Microwave Background indicates significant numbers of stars had formed "to alter the cosmic environment" by this time (news media, February 2015). This reconciles with Hubble observations.

13bn BP: Est. age of Universe based on Cepheid variables measured by Wendy Freedman (National Geographic, Sept 2001).

10bn BP: Oldest stars detected (Rees, M. Just Six Numbers).

10bn BP: Milky Way forms.

7 -
6bn BP:  Around this time it is theorised that the Universe starts to expand at an accelerated rate. Gravity seems to be less effective in attracting mass on the largest scale. Scientists have introduced the concept of 'dark energy' to explain this, and although invisible to us it must constitute 70% of the Universe. 

4.6bn BP: Formation of The Sun from the gravitational collapse of a giant molecular cloud (Wikipedia). The planets (we assume all) of the Solar System form. Due to plate tectonics the oldest surface rock on Earth today is somewhat less aged.

4.567bn BP: The composition of the Allende meteorite fragment that fell on Mexico in 1969 is the oldest so far discovered - 30 million years older than the Earth (Wikipedia). 4,567,000,000 yrs also the estimated age of solar system (Stargazing, BBC January 2013).

4.5bn BP: Proto-Moon and proto-Earth collide, leaving the present Earth-Moon system.

4.5 -
3.16bn BP: Approximate age of oldest highland, and basaltic Moon rocks as measured radiometrically.

4.47bn years: The half life of uranium 238, after which the isotope decays to become lead 206. Counting the number of uranium 238 and lead 206 atoms in an igneous or metamorphic rock is a way of finding out how old it is in millions/billions of years - assuming the rate of decay has always been the same, of course. Most ancient sedimentary rocks cannot be dated radiometrically, however, so the 'cross-cutting' (intrusions, volcanic ash layers, etc.) of the other types is used to infer an date. The layering of sedimentary rocks and their 'index fossils' is then used to confirm chronological relationships. See also 50,000 BP and 13,000 BP.

4.4bn BP: Age of zircon crystal found in Western Australia in 2014, the oldest surviving fragment of the Earth's crust discovered so far (BBC website, 24/2/2014).

4.3bn BP: Oldest known rock on Earth: some pinkish basalt caught up in a chunk of granite on the eastern coast of Hudson Bay (Miller, p.122). 

4bn BP: Analysis of Martian dust suggests the planet lost its magnetic field by this time (Magnetic Flip, Channel 4 11/5/03). Environment “watery” before this era (ESA Mars Mission). Afterwards, it was volcanic/sulphurous.

4bn BP: 'Planetary pinball' in the Solar System (BBC Horizon, 3/3/2015). Leads to 'late heavy bombardment' of inner planets and moons. Formation of Uranus and Neptune closer to the centre of the Solar System?

4bn BP: A team at Leiden University conclude that the Sun 'stole' frozen dwarf planets from a passing star 4 billion years ago - including the eccentrically orbiting Sedna (New Scientist, June 2015).

4.1 -
3.8bn BP: Late bombardment of Moon and inner planets according to theory in which Jupiter disturbs material in the Asteroid Belt as it edged closer to the Sun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Heavy_Bombardment

See also 500 million years BP.

3.8bn BP: It is believed that around this time that complex molecules started to create life on Earth, possibly in the environment of the hydrothermal vents at the mid-ocean ridges.

3.8bn BP: 'Vast asteroid' must have impacted the Moon, creating the Man In The Moon's 'left eye' (as seen from Earth), according to scientists (Nature, July 2016).

3.8 -
3.1bn BP: Approximate age of Mare (basalt) Moon rocks (Wilkinson, John. Probing The New Solar System, p.129).

3.75bn BP: Oldest sedimentary rocks on Earth ? Via Isua in Greenland (Gould, Stephen Jay Wonderful Life, p.57). Disputed in New Scientist 22/2/03 pp 28-31; other scientists think this rock metamorphosed. See 2,700 m.y. BP.

3.6 -
3.5bn BP: About this time the Martian environment became less volcanic and more like today's (ESA).

3.5bn BP: Oldest complete fossil of life-form on Earth yet found: single celled microbe clusters in sandstone on Western Australia (Independent, 14/11/2013). See also Gould, Stephen Jay Wonderful Life p.58.

 3.2bn BP: Rock brought back by Apollo Mission dated to 3.2 billion years ago and associated with a lava flow on the Moon.

3 -
2bn BP: Formation of pebbles on alluvial fan on Mars - NASA'a Curiosity Rover, May, 2013.

2.7bn BP: Around this time it is thought that two different kinds of single cell organism, archaean and bacterial, developed a symbiotic relationship with the bacterial cell being absorbed into the former, evolving into a mitochondrion. Hence the eventual emergence of the eukaryotic cell on which life forms from humans to amoebas share a common ancestry.

2.5bn -
543m BP: Proterozoic eon on Earth.

2.4bn BP: A new type of bacteria, cyanobacteria, appear, using sunlight to split the water molecule. They consume carbon dioxide with oxygen as a by-product, helping create the necessary conditions for Earth based life forms to thrive. Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences discovered geologically detectable oxygen from 2.4 billion year old rocks in 2018 suggesting the element had already been produced by photosynthetic organisms. The Gaoyuzhuang fossils may have been of multi-cellular organisms after all.

2.4 -
2.1bn BP:  First (Huronian) Proterozoic Ice Age. One of the most longest and most severe in geological history. Evidence from South Africa (MacDougall, pp142-). The first of five known; next: the Cryogenian (850 million years ago).

2bn BP: Estimated age of Vredefort Crater, Free State, South Africa: the largest so far discovered at 118 miles (190 km) across - National Geographic.

2bn BP: Roughly around this time, some free living bacteria begin to develop symbiotic relationship with a larger single celled organism. They are to become mitochondria, the energy producing organelles within eukaryotes and hence kick-start life forms of increasing size and complexity (Lane, Power, Sex, Suicide).  

1.9bn BP: Evidence of early life in fossils of Gunflint Chert, Ontario (New Scientist, 22/2/03 pp 28-31).

1.8bn BP: Appearance of eukaryotic organisms.

1.2bn BP: Palaeontologist Dr Michael Simms' research led him to conclude that an asteroid about 3kms wide slammed into Scotland around Lairg. Although overlain with other strata, the ejecta layer and stressed rocks cause a gravitational anomaly for miles around (BBC News 14/9/2016).

1.1bn -
750m BP: Hypothetical supercontinent, Rodinia. Its existence has been challenged. In 2013 a trace - Mauritia - was said to have been found, formerly a sliver between the crust of India and Madagascar. See also 600 million years BP.

850 -
635m BP: Second Proterozoic (Cryogenian) Ice Age (see also 2.4 billion years ago); glaciation extends to the equatorial zone.
http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/155427/

800 m BP: Evidence of true polar wander? http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S15/64/72A37/index.xml?section=newsreleases (2006).

750 -
570m BP: Earth's oceans may all have frozen several times (Nature December 1998) - caused by the inclination of the Earth's axis being tipped to 66.5 degrees? (Smith, p.183).

650m BP: Drop stones in Namibia suggest “Snowball Earth”? Only life - cyanobacteria and blue-green algae. Then after 10 million yrs without rain, volcanoes increase atmospheric CO2 to 10%. Then storms; rapid thaw (Horizon, 22/2/01).

600m BP: Fossilised excreta of worms dated to, Hebrides. Earliest evidence of gut (Times, 11/12/97.)

600 -
541m BP: Hypothetical supercontinent, Pannotia. It broke up at the end of the Pre-Cambrian period. See also 300 million years BP.

580m BP: An impact event estimated to have occurred during the Ediacaran Period, age not derived from the crater itself but from the position of ejecta from the Acraman crater, southern Australia, within nearby sedimentary basins. 

560m BP: “Sheep farmer in Australia discovers oldest vertebrate fossil” - BBC website news 24/10/03 (30 my older than previous contender from China).

542 -
522m BP: 'Cambrian explosion' of life into a myriad of multi-cellular organisms.

534m BP: The whole of Australia rotated 90 degrees; North America moves rapidly north, according to paleomagnetic evidence, say Caltech's Kirschvink (Science, 25/9/1997); the Flem-Aths would argue this was due to a crustal displacement with the poles moving to the Equator.

525 -
520m BP: Maotianshan Shales record pre-Burgess Shale assemblage of Cambrian fauna, containing examples of most arthropod ancestors.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maotianshan_Shales

500m BP: Another peak of activity in the bombardment of the Moon, according to the dating of Apollo rocks; albeit of smaller material than in the previous peak of 3.2 Billion BP.

500m BP: (Very approximate) - latest Sino-American research,based on the analysis of seismological waves, suggests Earth's core has two distinct regions with the iron crystals alligned differently (east-west vs. north-south). The planetary axis may have flipped from equatorial to the present polar orientation - possibly as a result of an impact. (BBC website, 10/2/2015).

460 -
430m BP: Andean-Saharan glaciation, during the late Ordovician and Silurian periods.
 
458m BP: Age of two craters, Lockne and Malingen in Northern Sweden, thought to have been caused by extra-terresrial impacts.

450m BP: Magnetic orientation of rocks suggest North Africa over South Pole? In the 1960's, scientists discovered signs of glaciation in the Sahara which support the finding (Feuerbacher, p.8).

450m BP: Estimated age of 3.8 km diameter Brent crater in Canada.

450 -
420m BP: Andean-Saharan Ice Age, at the end of the Ordovician period (Wikipedia); the third recognised Ice Age leading up to the present. Next: the Karoo, 360 million years before present.

440m BP: England/Scotland ocean - sea creatures (Earth’s Story).

439m BP: Ordovician-Silurian extinction, killing 60% of marine genera. Caused by drop, then rise in sea levels as glaciers formed/melted? (Siegel).

400m BP: Global glaciation/ice age. Devonian period: coral fossils, with their annular and daily growth rings, indicate a day then lasted 21hrs 55 minutes and a year around 400 days (Do We Really Need The Moon? BBC2, 25/9/14).

375m -
360m BP: Late Devonian extinctions killing 22% of marine genera (Siegel) and 50% of all life on Earth. Volcanism and impact clusters? Kellwasser Event, Hangenberg Event. http://theconversation.com/another-link-between-co2-and-mass-extinctions-of-species-12906

370m BP: Fossilised 'fish with legs' dated to (Miller, pp. 126-7).

360 -
260m BP: Karoo Ice Age, during the Carboniferous Period. Evidence from S. America and S. Africa. The last known Ice Age before the Quaternary.

325-
300m BP: Massive drop in sea levels (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level#Changes_through_geologic_time) suggesting much continental crust located over the poles, trapping water into ice.

305m BP: Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse (CRC), an extinction event probably caused by increased glaciation.

300m BP: Permo-Carboniferous Ice Age covering S. Pole super-continent of Gondwanaland - S. Africa, Australia, India (Earth’s Story, also MacDougall p.142) lasting 60 m. years. Coincides with all-time low CO2 levels.

300 -
200m BP: Widespread glaciation.

 300 -
100m BP: Pangea supercontinent, comprising Laurasia and Gondwana(land).

290 m BP: Suspected age of 'double' craters, Clearwater East and West, in Canada, 26 and 36 kms in diameter.

290 -
245m BP: Permian period (DK UVE).

270m BP: Oldest surviving oceanic crust: the eastern Mediterranean, the remains of the Tethys Sea.

267m BP: Upper permian mass extinction, associated with warming.

260m BP: Prior to the Permian extinction there appears to have been another, causing 75-80% of land animals to perish (New Scientist, 28/4/2018). 

252m BP: Lava floods out of Siberian traps, resulting in a spike of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Rapid global warming, and acidification of the seas ensued decades later as the atmospheric dust cleared. Precipitates mass extinction event (see below).

251m BP: Permian-Triassic extinction. Earth's worst mass extinction, (possibly, until that recently initiated by mankind), but cause uncertain (Siegel). A site off Australia's NW coast where an object about six miles across may have smashed into the Earth at this time is a candidate for the cause (Singer and Avery p.77, taken from Washington Post 14th May, 2004). 84% of marine genera perished. The only known mass extinction of insects. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1184556.stm. According to George Monbiot in his blog (May 2015), the cause could be due to the eruption of the Siberian Traps, creating a huge CO2 spike. In turn this dramatically increased the temperature and acidification of the oceans. The volcanoes erupted through the Tunguska sedimentary basin, 'cooking' the coal, oil and methane it contained - burning fossil fuel.

214m BP: An asteroid about 3 miles across crashed into Canada (Manicouaghan crater). Produced, among other phenomena, a layer of molten glass detected in Triassic rocks nr. Bristol (Science, 14 Nov. 2002).

214 -
199m BP: End Triassic extinction, probably caused by lava erupting from the "central Atlantic magmatic province", an event that triggered the opening of the Atlantic Ocean and possibly global warming. 52% of marine genera perished (Siegel).

200m BP: Most of the Earth's oceanic crust is about this old, with the exception of the eastern Mediterranean - the remains of the Tethys Sea (at about 270 million years old). See 'Expanding Earth' theory on the Internet: this argues that some process within the Earth has caused it to swell gradually, 'cracking' apart the outer 'shell' of the Earth's crust. An increase in mass would cause an increase in gravity, limiting the size life forms could attain (hence giantism, exemplified by the dinosaurs, could only occur when it did (Hurrell).

150m BP: Estimated age of the oldest part of the Atlantic Ocean.

145m BP: Indian Ocean opens up.

145 -
70m BP: Relatively high sea levels. Super-continent Pangea breaks up.

143m BP: Estimated age of 22 km diameter crater at Gosses Bluff, Australia (Verschuur).

110m BP: Did Earth's tectonic plates slow down moving by 25%? Article also gives estimates that at 600, 1100 and 1850 million years ago they sped up with increased volcanic activity for a few tens of million years and today we are in an accelerating phase again. (New Scientist 7/11/2020 p.15).

98m BP: Estimated age of the Richat Structure, an annular dome in Mauretania. An impact crater?

90m BP: Tyrannosaurs 'suddenly' grow from man-size to giant T. Rex types during the Cretaceous.

90m BP: Marsupials thought to have diverged from placental mammals in evolutionary terms.

80m BP: North American and European plates start to separate.

80m BP: All nuclides with a half life of less than 80m years seem to be absent from the known geology of the Earth region of the Solar System -

http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/p14.htm

This implies a younger Earth is impossible given standard isotopic decay.

65.5m BP: Deccan Traps: over a a million cubic kilometres of lava poured out over central India. Howard Lee argues the effects of this eruption over an asteroid impact as the main reason most species, including the dinosaur ones, died out:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/So-what-did-in-the-dinosaurs.html

65m BP: Asteroid about 7 miles in diameter crashed into Yukatan Peninsula, coinciding with demise of dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period. Sea levels “fell markedly”. If this had never happened, mammal evolution would probably have been delayed for some time.

60 -
58m BP: Volcano activity from the Cuillins on Skye, leaving solidified lava flow as the Atlantic continues to open up.

56m BP: Palaeocene-Eocene (PETM) ‘thermal maximum’, lasting about 100,000 years. Ocean temperatures rose 5 degrees C - rapid in a geological sense. North Pole “Subtropical” (BBC News Online, 7/9/04).  According to ice cores and fossilised algae, average temperature was 20 C instead of present -1.5 C. Coal-yielding forests as far north as Spitzbergen (Svalbard) and Ellesmere Island, Canada. Was the North Pole somewhere else (see 80,000 BP)?

55m BP: Large undersea methane release may have caused explosions and mass extinctions. CO2 spike (PETM) heats Earth by about 8 degrees, technically the fastest period of warming in Earth's history, an effect which lasts for around 200,000 years - Anton Petrov, You Tube posting 16/9/2021 re. Nature Communications 12 article 5186, 2021. North Atlantic Igneous Province most active at this time. Fingal's Cave, Giant's Causeway formed.

55m BP: Tectonics: Glomar Challenger finds Rockall Ridge separated from Greenland and began sinking around this time. (Sullivan, W. Continents In Motion, MacMillan, 1974). Further sinking 40 and 15 my BP. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011210163439.htm' African plate pushes into the European creating the Alps and other ranges (Science Daily 5/5/2009).

50m BP: London, had it existed then, may have had an estimated average temperature of 77 degrees F (25 Celsius).

47m BP: Eocene Period, formation of Messel pit of early mammalian fossils in Germany. Also insects, reptiles. Rainforest conditions; area 10 degrees further south than it is now.

40m BP: Trend towards global cooling (In Our Time, Radio 4, 22/10/09).

40m BP: Sahara was a seabed, created as Africa meetin Europe squeezed the Tethys ocean away.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVfvuokue1c How The Sahara Desert Was made (2009), AandE Television Networks.

37 -
34m BP: Wave of extinctions during Eocene-Oligocene transition; “sea levels again very low”;  Evidence in Chesapeake Bay that a bolide (comet or meteorite) a few miles in diameter gouged out a crater, nearly as deep as the Grand Canyon on impact around this time (Schoch, p.182). Australia completely separates from Antarctica, allowing cold circumpolar current to isolate the archipelago in a deep freeze (McCarthy, Here Be Dragons).

35m BP: Estimated age of Popigai crater, the joint fourth largest verified impact on the Earth. shock pressures had converted carbon into diamonds for miles around.

34m BP: Opening of the Drake Passage between Antarctica and South America.

33m BP: First Antarctic glaciers (Wikipedia).

30m BP: ‘Rubble pile’ meteor fireball exploded above Egyptian Sahara melting the sandstone at 1800 degs C. Similar to Tunguska event? (‘Tutankhamun Fireball’ Horizon 20/7/06).

30m BP: Estimated age of the Himalayas.

28m BP: On the 10th October 2013, New Scientist reported a black, glassy rock found in the Libyan Desert may be the remains of a comet rather than a meteorite.

24m  BP: Northern Australia edges northeast into tropical waters, according to plate tectonics theory. Shelf conditions become suitable for reef-building, though the forerunner of the Great Barrier Reef is not considered to have developed substantially until about 600,000 years BP.

23m BP: Congruence of mimimal eccentricity in Earth orbit and minimal eccentricity in obliquity (Milankovitch) cycles, reducing seasonality. Coincided with rapid growth in Antarctic ice sheet (Science, April 13th 2001).

20m BP: Early Miocene: a 12.5 mile wide crater is made in Canadian Arctic's Devon Island. Prior to this the local fauna and flora was quite different, e.g.shrews, rabbits, rhinos, birch etc., indicating a milder climate, similar to Minnesota (Schoch).

 20m BP: Trend towards lowering sea levels, from the Miocene to a million years ago (Lamb, p.113).

 15m BP: Hominid family emerges in Africa (Miller, p.129). Hominids includes gorillas and orangutans; Hominins only chimps and humans.

15m BP: Ancient Antarctica "warmer and wetter than expected" according to plant leaf remains found in sediment cores taken from below the Ross Ice Shelf (2012)

9m BP: Continuous West Antarctic Ice sheet develops.

8.7-
6.5m BP: Burst of radiation reaches Earth from supernova. See also 3.2m BP.

6m BP: Orrorin tugenensis, discovered 2001. Bipedal hominid, size of a chimp but closer to us than Lucy?

5.96m BP: Messinian Salinity Crisis, until 5.33m BP. During the Miocene epoch, Mediterranean cut off from the Atlantic leading to partial or complete evaporation.  Depth of evaporites indicates process must have been repeated several times.

5.8m BP: Oldest known human ancestor, Ardpithecus Ramidus Kaddaba, in Ethiopia (Species first discovered 1992).

5.33m BP: Re-inundation of Mediterranean basin though water did not match present level until 'great melt' about 12-10,000 BP. Black Sea remained cut off until at least 7,500 BP as suggested by mollusc fossils. Bosphorus overwhelmed about a thousand years later, reaching the same level as the Med.

5m BP: Panama isthmus forms - blocked ocean circulation, triggering Ice Age?

5m BP: Pliocene: first Mammoths.

4.6 -
2m BP: Closing of the Panama isthmus, affecting oceanic circulation and possibly the regional climate ( (Bell and Walker, Late Quaternary Environmental Change).

4.4m BP: Ardipithecus ramidus female, bipedal, earliest human ancestor? Guardian, 1/10/09.

4.0 -
3m BP: Evidence that humans were predominantly bipedal by this time (The Waterside Ape BBC R4 15/9/16): the 'Aquatic Ape hypothesis' which proposes humans foraged for fish and shellfish rather than food sources on the savannah - which in any case was not coterminous with this stage of human evolution - and thus gained all the necessary fats to foster an increase in brain size.

3.6m BP: Dating of new human ancestor, 'Little Foot' found in South Africa in 2018. The first to have longer legs than arms. 

3.5m BP:A cataclysmic energy flare burst from the black hole at the centre of our galaxy according to astronomers (BBC Website, 6/10/19).

 3.5m BP: Estimated date of the El'gygytgyn crater in Russia (18kn across).

 3.5 -
3.3m BP: Oldest hominin so far discovered, in Ethiopia. Named Australopithecus deyiremeda. Potentially one of four ancient species of human coexisting at roughly the same time (Nature, May 2015).

3.3m BP: Worlds oldest stone tools dated to, by volcanic ash and minerals. Discovery made 2015 near Lake Turkana in Kenya. Thought to be a non-Homo genus such as Australopithecus afarensis or Kenyanthropus platyops (BBC, from Nature magazine, 20/5/15. Beats previous oldest from Oldowan in Tanzania - 2.6 million. Closer to modern humans than the australopiths?

3.2 -
1.7m BP: Traces of radioactive iron-60 on the sea floors around the globe suggest Earth was showered with some radiation from a supernova 325 light years away(Nature, April 2016). Corresponds with Pliocene-Pleistocene transition? Another burst at 8 million years BP.

3m BP: Sahara quickly switches from green to sandy. This is due to a climate switch produced by the Earth's wobble on a 20,000 year cycle. 

3m -
12,000 BP (10,000 BP): Estimated age of a 31km diamenter depression on the edge of the Greenland ice sheet, thought to have been caused by a 1.5 km wide 'iron' asteroid (BBC, 14/11/18).

2.58m BP -
date: Quaternary Period, the most recent Ice Age (there have been at least four others affecting the Earth, all recorded on this chronology). We are currently within an interglacial, with ice caps and glaciers retreated. Between 2.5 and 0.9 million years BP, glacial-interglacial cycles occurred every 41,000 years; since 0.9 million years BP every 100,000 years, due to changes in the Earth's orbit (Maslin, Global Warming p.12, Science Made Simple booklet, 2008).

2.5m BP: Earliest tools of hominid Homo rudolfensis) dated to around this time.

2.2m BP: Most eruptive known event in Yellowstone supervolcano history (most recent, 600,000 BP).

2.5m BP: Britain may still have been an island around this time (Pliocene Period) - Stringer.

2.1m -
400,000 BP: According to the cover article in the Dec.18th 2003 issue of Nature, a tilt of Mars' rotational axis greater than today's produced and advanced ice sheet at both poles to around 30 degrees latitude in both hemispheres. This subsequently melted (leaving river beds and ice deposits?) as the planet entered the current inter-glacial epoch.

2m BP: Australopithecus sediba, an erect humanoid with tiny hands, opposable thumbs and a human-shaped brain case, whose remains were discovered in a South African cave, the best candidate so far for a missing link between apes and Homo sapiens? Reported in Science, 8th September 2011.

1.9m BP: This was when the Earth's orbit was at its most elliptical in modern times.

1.9 -
1.7m BP: "The most profound period for Hominin evolution, with the highest recorded diversity of Hominin species...and major dispersal events out of East Africa into Eurasia. Ephemeral deep freshwater lakes appeared along the whole length of the East African Rift System, fundamentally changing the local environment". (Citation: Shultz S, Maslin M (2013) Early Human Speciation, Brain Expansion and Dispersal Influenced by African Climate Pulses. PLoS ONE 8(10): e76750. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0076750). Hominins experience rapid increase in brain size. According to Alan Templeton this period marked the first major migration of Hominins - of H. erectus -out of Africa. The next major emigration was around 700,000 BP.

1.8m BP: Skull and other bones found in Georgia are the oldest Hominids of our Genus, Homo discovered outside of Africa. Dmanisi people: shorter and with brains 40% smaller than typified by Homo erectus. This suggests an earlier wave of migration out of Africa than the orthodox 1m BP. They may have died out or returned to the mother continent. (Independent, 9/9/09.)

 1.8m -
20,000 BP: Homo erectus.

 1.8m -
10,000 BP: Pleistocene Period, when temperatures were probably 4-5 degrees C lower than at present (Wikipedia).

1.4m BP: Earliest evidence of the deliberate use of naturally occurring fire by humans, in Kenya. See also 7000 BC (National Geographic).

 1.4m BP: Estimated age of 3.4 km diameter crater in New Quebec, Canada (Verschuur).

1.3m BP: Supervolcano eruption in Idaho, U.S.

1.1m -
900,000 BP: Gradual Pole reversal, once established lasting until 780,000 BP (see below). Average frequency: every 200,000 years (Magnetic Flip).

1.03m BP: Estimated date of the Bosumtwi crater in Ghana.

1m BP: At this point in time a 100,000 year climate cycle - alternating between relatively warm and relatively cold global conditions - develops. Previously the 41,000 year cycle, matching the variation of the angle of tilt of the Earth, had dominated. Why this changed is a mystery, although the increase in greenhouse gases may have amplified the orbital effects. See http://www.aip.org/history/climate/cycles.htm

900,000 BP: Estimated date of the Zhamanshin crater in Kazakhstan.

 900,000 BP: Range to which ice cores can yield information about climate variations (Singer and Avery, p.6). National Geographic article dated July 5th 2007 claims 800,000 BP through the 3,260 metre ice core taken from central Antarctica.

850,000 BP: Early humans of unknown species first reach Doggerland (present day North Sea), according to BBC Focus magazine, November 2012.

 800,000 BP: ’Rubble pile’ believed to have ignited over huge area of SE Asia (Horizon, 20/7/06).

800,000 BP: Beginning of a long progressive lowering of sea levels (Lamb, H.H.) but presumably punctuated by temporary reversals which corresponded to the interglacials.

800,000 BP: Could humans have arrived in Britain nearly 1m yrs ago? "Earliest evidence of human footprints outside of Africa." Too early for radiocarbon dating, the Palaeomagnetic context and extant species give this approximate date for stone tools discovered in Happisburgh, Norfolk, UK  (Nature/BBC News July 2010, later confirmed by British Archaeology July-August 2021). Environmental data suggests cool temperatures. Most likely species Homo antecessor, dated to 0.8-1.2 m yrs ago and known from Northern Spain. 
 
790,000 BP: Tektites discovered over a large area from Australia to the Philippines to Madagascar suggest an asteroid impact (Geology Hub, 8/4/23).
 
781,000 BP: Last scientifically estimated major magnetic pole reversal, Brunhes Matuyama, (Magnetic Flip, op.cit, based on analysis of Hawaiian lava and metallic content of other sediments; also mentioned RI lecture 1995/6 BBC2). Hancock disagrees (see 12,500 BP), and see also Wikipedia, 'Geomagnetic Reversals'.

780,000 BP: was the last time the Earth's magnetic field turned by 180 degrees, according to calcite layers of Devils Hole, Nevada, as the scientists from the University of Innsbruck discovered in cooperation with the Leoben University of Mining Sciences in 2015. The temperature record of the cave, recorded in calcite deposits, ties in nicely with Antarctic data but is not fully compatible with Milankovitch theory. (The same study found the water table was much higher 20,000 years ago, approximately 9 meters.)

700,000 BP: Analysis of animal bones (butchery marks) at Westbury-sub-Mendip suggest hominid habitation 200,000 yrs earlier than Boxgrove Man. (Times, 4/6/02.)

700,000 BP: A second major emigration of Hominims out of Africa, according to Templeton (previous 1.9-1.7 million years BP, next 100,000 BP.

640,000 BP: Last known major eruption of supervolcano, 55 miles across, underneath Yellowstone National Park  (BBC news website 11/12/13).

600,000 BP: Earliest 'Proto-Neanderthals'. See also 250,000 BP.

600,000 BP: Earliest evidence of complete reef structures off the coast of north-eastern Australia, according to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.

540,000 -
430,000 BP: Oldest known attempt at engraving by a hominid? Zig-zag marks on an Indonesian seashell which is over 430,000 years old collected in 2007 but not shown to reveal the marking until 2014, by digital photography.

525,000 -
120,000 BP: Valley of the Bristol Avon forms (Pleistocene Period).

524,000 -
478,000 BP: Dating of tibia of 'Boxgrove Man' (Homo heidelbergensis), an ancestor of H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis.

500,000 BP: Scientists believe oldest and deepest ice formed in East Antarctica (Feuerbacher). 'Anglian' stage of ice age affecting Britain, Thames diverted south.

500,000 BP: DNA divergence data indicates that the split between modern humans and Neanderthals took place. Evidence from tools that Heidelberg man (Homo heidelbergensis) - related to Homo erectus - used Kents Cavern, Torquay. See also 44,000 BC.

450,000 BP: Maximum extent of 'Anglian' ice advance over England (and by implication the rest of the U.K.) Birth of Britain, Channel 4, 2010. Prior to this the Thames drained into the sea off Norfolk near Happisborough.

450,000 BP: Merged Scandinavian and Scottish ice sheets cover all except southern England. A large glacial lake between Kent and the Netherlands overflows the chalk ridge from the North Downs into France gouging out 'plunge pools' as the torrent sweeps past the Isle of Wight into the Atlantic. Britain is separated from Europe, but the land bridge is not permanently destroyed until about 150,000 BP (see below)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLUqs6-wgKI

430,000 BP: Termination V: Unusually long interglacial which lasted for 28,000 years. The warmth allowed humans and other warm blooded creatures to thrive. Temperatures similar to today, though CO2 levels are the highest now in 440,000 years ('Next Ice Age Is 15,000 Years Off", www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories 10/6/2004). Since Temination V, Ice Ages have increased in intensity but become shorter.

420,000 BP: A global temperature high, as measured by Vostok ice core, Antarctica (next: 330,000).

420,000 BP: Channel 4 documentary Walking Through Time (6/2/2016) argued this was roughly when one of the most southerly advances of the North Sea ice sheet compressed a glacial lake up against the chalk ridge connecting Kent and France causing a breach of the latter. The ensuing rush of water grooved out a valley mid-channel about 70 metres down which can now/can still be seen.

400,000 BP: Approximate age of Swanscombe (Kent, U.K.) skull and associated hand axes. Hoxnian interglacial, towards the end of the Lower Paleolithic. English Channel not yet formed, but giant freshwater lake trapped south of North Sea ice periodically overflowed and flooded towards the south west (see 9,000 BC). Siberian stalactites/stalagmites record warming of around 1.5 degrees C; if global warming now was as great, trillions of tonnes of greenhouse gases would be released into the atmosphere with severe economic and environmental consequences (BBC website 22/2/2013). Complete deglaciation of Southern Greenland, pushing sea levels up by 4-6 metres.

400,000 BP: 'Particularly warm inter-glacial' (Wikipedia).

400,000 BP: Neanderthals and Denisovans thought to have diverged, evolution-wise, from modern humans. It is now thought (New Scientist, 26/8/2017) that Neanderthals, Denisovans and H. sapiens could all have interbred ('admixed') from time to time, according to DNA research.

400,000 BP: End of most recent Martian ice age according to current thinking i, 26/4/2014).

350,000 -
300,000 BP:  'Hi-tech methods' date human skull found in Morocco much earlier than East African remains (BBC website 7/6/2017, taken from Nature). Professor Hublin's results indicate there is now no known single region of Africa where Homo sapiens originated.

335,000-
236,000 BP: Homo nadeli remains discovered in 2015 (New Scientist). Concurrent with H. sapiens , this relatively small-brained Hominin may have disposed of their dead in deep cave recesses. 

330,000 BP: Antarctic temperature/CO2 low as measured by Vostok ice core (next: 250,000 BP).
 
300,000 BP: Flint tools found in a cave in Israel suggest  human use of controlled fire started even earlier than previously thought (New Scientist, October 2020). 

300,000 BP: Highest CO2 level until present, as measured by ice cores.

300,000 BP: Interglacial deposits found at Purfleet, Essex reveal bones of Macacque monkeys and Hyaena droppings as well as freshwater mussel shells & fish bones.

295,000 BP: Geomagnetic excursion (Noel and Tarling).

250,000 -
200,000 BP: 'True' Neanderthals appear.

240,000 BP: Antarctic temperature high, as measured by Vostok ice core (prev, 325,000 BP).

210,000 BP: Human skull found in Greece dated to (BBC, 11/7/19).

200,000 BP: Gullies in youngish Martian crater indicate flow of water since this time (i, 26/4/2014).

200,000 BP: Our human family tree can be traced back to 'Mitochondrial Eve', in Africa, though this is merely the oldest surviving haplotype still in existence. See also 140,000 BP.

194,000 -
177,000 BP: Toothed jawbone found in Israel suggests modern humans left Africa earlier than previously (130,000 years BP) thought -BBC News 25/1/2018.
 
180,000 BP: Britain joined to France by land bridge, as at 20,000 BP.

160,000 BP: Oldest Homo sapiens skulls found in Eastern Ethiopia (BBC website news, 11/6/03).

150,000 BP: Studies of human genetic variation reveal everyone living today descended from one woman who lived in Africa - coalescence of mitochondrial DNA (Olson, Mapping Human History p.27). All other lines eventually became extinct. Neanderthals in Jersey at this time, land-linked to France (Stringer, pp. 104-106), but apparently not in England.

150,000 BP: Second catastrophic flood destroys land bridge between Britain and France for good (see also 450,000 BP.

150,000 -
140,000 BP:  Antarctic temperature/CO2 low, as measured by Vostok ice core (next: 20,000 BP).

150,000 -
 60,000 BP: No trace of humans (Neanderthals) in Britain during this period, despite pleasant climate. (Stringer, pp 103-106).

140,000 BP: Y Chromosomal Adam. We can trace back the male human DNA back this far, though not as far as Mitochondrial Eve - see 200,000 BP.

134,000 -
113,000 BP: Raised beach in Barbados dated to. Suggests cold period, with lowered sea levels.

130,000 BP:  Antarctic temperature/CO2 high, as measured by Vostok ice core (prev. see 240,000 BP). It was 4.5 degrees C warmer than today. Note that the older ice core highs do not agree very well with indicators of low sea level.

130,000 -
115,000 BP: Eemian Interglacial, warm period, with temperatures were on average 2 degrees higher than at present . This was the previous interglacial to our present one, the Holocene. Temperatures peaked around 125,000 BP.

130,000 -
70,000 BP: Humid period in which western Egyptian Desert was savannah, supporting wild buffalo, giraffes antelopes and humans in the basin known as the Nabta Playa.

127,000 BP: Termination of first recent Ice Age (Feuerbacher). Oceans slower to warm than land.

125,000 BP: Up to at least this time, North Yorkshire apparently resembled savanna grassland - bones of rhinos, bears and hyenas excavated from Victoria Cave, along with later Romano-British artefacts (BBC, 10/10/2015). Peak of Eemian interglacial (see 130,000 BP).

125,000 -
90,000 BP: Greening of the Sahara. Lower sea levels may have allowed humans to migrate out of Africa successfully for the first time via the strait across the Persian Gulf to Aden (BBC 2 10/5/09). Genetics traces all present day races to this group.

120,000 BP: Climate in UK warmer than today - by about one degree Celsius. Hippos in Britain (excavated from foundations of buildings on Trafalgar Square - Stringer, p.110).  Camp Century core shows Ice Age begins in Greenland. Then see 75,000 BP. First ceremonial burials.

111,000 BP: 'Blake' geomagnetic excursion (Noel and Tarling).

110,000 BP: The start of the most recent glacial period within the Pleistocene division of the Quaternary.  Over less than 400 yrs there was a 'sudden' shift to a colder climate globally. Desertification as moisture taken out of water cycle and frozen in growing ice caps/glaciers. Forests to grass, etc. (Singer and Avory p.xiv).

 100,000 BP: Research published in Nature 17/2/2015 suggests Neanderthals and humans were interbreeding in some parts of the world. Neanderthal DNA from female remains found in a cave in the Altai Mountains, Siberia show portions of human DNA within her genome.

100,000 BP: Last major emigration out of Africa, according to Templeton (previous, 700,000 BP).

100,000 -
60,000 BP: Believed ‘modern’ humans settled in Asia (from Africa), eventually displacing Homo erectus.

93,600 BP: Speculative earth crust displacement (Flem-Aths, after Hapgood) Next see 52,600 BP, below.

92,700 BP: Axial maximum in the obliquity of the Earth's orbit (Milankovitch cycles), implying increased seasonality and culmination of a warming trend at northern latitudes? N.b. other cycles (see above) may come into place to amplify or ameliorate axial effects. Glacial melting, higher sea levels to follow?

90,000 BP: Warmth-loving species such as Hippos, Hyaenas and Lions gradually  replaced in the British Isles by Mammoths, Wolves, Bison etc.Tropical species gone altogether by 15,000 BP.

90,000 BP: Sahara greens up again (see also 40m BP and 3m BP)

82,000 BP: Sea level fell again exposing raised beach on Barbados once more? (Earth’s Story).

80,000 BP: N. Pole leaves Yukon 63N 135W (Hapgood), 5,000 years later arriving over the Greenland Sea near Svalbard. When the Pole was at the Yukon, the South Pole would be between the tip of South Africa and Queen Maud Land, Antarctica - though closer to the latter. See next 75,000 BP.

80,000 BP: Approx. date of contents of Banwell bone cave, N. Somerset: Arctic Fox, Wolverine, Arctic Hare but no evidence of humans. Remains of beetles in London and Oxford suggest it is warmer further east?

80,000 BP: In 2015 scientists discover 47 modern human teeth sealed off under a calcitic cave floor in Daoxiang, China. This indicates a human presence 20,000 years earlier than previously thought and raises more questions concerning multiple 'out of Africa' migrations (BBC website, 14/10/15). 

80,000 -
60,000 BP: Window of opportunity in which humans could reach down through SE Asia to Borneo "without getting wet" according to Oppenheim. Optimum: 65,000 BP, when the distance between Timor and Australia was a mere 153 km with lower sea levels (IHJ:Aus).

77,000 -
69,000 BP: Supervolcano eruption as indicated by sulphur content of Greenland ice cores and analysis of the oxygen isotopes found in foraminifera. Source tracked to Toba in Indonesia. Deforested land and left ash as far away as India. Some claimed it reduced the  human population on Earth to around 10,000 individuals. The eruption at least coincided with a return to an Ice Age, which Greenland ice cores indicate lasted for over 1,000 years. Hence the 'Toba catastrophe theory' which sits nicely with the human 'genetic bottleneck' theorists but was exposed to serious doubts with new research in 2013.

75,000 BP: N. Pole reaches the Greenland Sea 72N 10E from The Yukon (Hapgood). Using the Antipodes calculator (https://www.antipodesmap.com/), we would expect the South Pole to now be on the present Antarctic coast of Marie Byrd Land looking out to the South Pacific. Camp Century core on Greenland records major ice advance (Fuerbacher, p.3). See next 55,000 BP.

74,000 BP: Latest attempt at dating the Mount Toba eruption, said to be the most powerful in the last 2.5 million years. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-43377960

72,200 BP: Axial minimum in the Earth's obliquity, and the least seasonality if Milankovitch cycle is consistent:  in theory, this would lead to a peak in  cooling at northern latitudes. Glaciers advanced, lower sea levels? See also 8,700 BC.

70,000 BP: Movement of Homo Sapiens out of Africa.. This is now believed to be the first wave of African emigration (American Journal Of Human Genetics, week beginning 18th September 2011).

68,000 BP: Astronomers calculate a binary star system (red dwarf, brown dwarf) passed through the outer reaches of the Oort Cloud believed to encircle the Solar System. (Eril Mamajek, University of Rochester, New York, reported on BBC News site 18/2/2015.) 

65,000 -
40,000 BP: Human entry into Australia, predating that into Europe? With sea levels lower than today they would have been able to cross from Asia through Indonesia relatively easily. Possibly arrived in Australia around 50,000 BP. See also 38,000 - 25,000 BP. Used ochre as a pigment to 'paint' (IHJ). MacDougall places human entry into Australia at 65,000 BP and New Guinea 45,000 BP (p.204). Extinction, (through hunting ?) of a giant Kangaroo species could be related.  DNA analysis of an aboriginal human hair, donated in 1923, shows that Australia's indigenous population were first isolated around this time.

64,000 BP: La Pasiega, northern Spain: new dating techniques applied to cave paintings find they are the oldest in the world, pre-dating the known entry of humans in Europe. On this basis they can only be Neanderthal.

60,000 BP: Oldest sowing needles (bone tools with eyelets) indicate humans created their own clothes. Examples from South Africa, Sweden.

60,000 -
55,000 BP: Partial melting of glaciers (Singer and Avory, p.xiv).

 55,000 -
50,000 BP:  Charles Hapgood argued this was due to the crust slipping, the N. Pole 'left' the Greenland Sea, and moved to Hudson Bay 60N 73W. If we use the antipodes calculator, the South Pole would be in the Indian Ocean between the present position of Australia and Wilkes Land, Antarctica. Not a change in the Earth's axial tilt, according to Hapgood. England's warmest period? Next 'movement', see 17,000 BP.

52,600 BP: Speculative earth crust displacement (Flem-Aths, after Hapgood), bringing Canada to North Pole. Next see 9,600 BC, below.

51,700 BP: Axial maximum, implying increased seasonality and culmination of a warming trend at northern latitudes. Glacial melting, higher sea levels to follow? See also 29,200 BP.

50,000 BP: Usual limit of radiocarbon dating (Wikipedia), though other sites offer 70,000 to 40,000 years. See also 13,000 BP.

50,000 BP: Small (45 metres across) asteroid hit Arizona, blasting the near-mile wide Barringer crater.

50,000 BP: Brazil: Bones, hearths, charcoal suggest indigenous population before invasion of Americas from Siberia (Ancient Voices, BBC2, 1/9/99). Remains resemble Negroid Australian aborigines.

50,000 BP: Archaeological evidence shows Australia first settled.
 
49,000 -
44,000 BP: Archaeologists date blade from handled axe found in Western Australia (Australian Archaeology, May 2016).

45,000 BP: Oldest radiocarbon dates known for Adélie penguins: sites occupied by Adélie penguins prior to the last advance of the Ross Ice Sheet at the end of the Pleistocene documented, indicating that open water conditions must have existed in the Ross Sea at that time. In addition, radiocarbon data reveal penguin colonies today are no older than 1000-2000 years old so there must have been periods in-between when no pebbles were available for nesting - these penguins nest on ice-free coastal areas.(Emslie, Stephen D. 45,000 Year Old Record of Adelie Penguins And Climate Change In The Ross Sea, Antarctica, Geological Society Of America 2nd January 2007). 

45,000 BP: New evidence suggests Homo sapiens had reached Europe earlier than previously thought, and co-existed with Neanderthals for around 5,000 years (Nature, August 2014).

45,000 -
40,000 BP: Very cold period, according to Edinburgh Uni team’s study of corals (Times, 26/1/01), also Fuerbacher. Neanderthals hit hard - some scientists now believe the Campanian Ignimbrite eruptions were responsible, triggering a 'volcanic winter' wherein most of the Neanderthals' big game food supply and the plants they fed on perished. Homo sapiens still living in Africa avoided this cold. Possibly they had other survival advantages too.

44,000 -
41,000 BP: Teeth and a piece of jaw found in Italy, and Kent's Cavern, Torquay indicate early Homo sapiens presence in Europe (Nature, November 2011).

 41,400 BP: (Plus or minus 2,000 years) Brief complete pole reversal - Laschamp Event - with the change in polarity lasting about 440 years, allowing more radiation through the atmosphere than normal (Wikipedia). ? see also 12,103 BP.

41,000 -
39,000 BP: Most recent dating of Neanderthal bones and tools by Thomas Higham of the University of Oxford, finds Neanderthals died out in Europe during this very cold period. 5,000 years earlier, Homo sapiens thought to have reached the continent. The species may well have interbred, as later skeletons with Neanderthal-type features have been found. See also 22,000 BP - could pockets have survived much longer?

41,500 BP:  Geomagnetic excursion?

40,800 BP: The oldest dated European cave art: red dots in El Castillo cave, Spain. Uncertainty over whether this could be of Homo sapiens or Homo neanderthalensis (BBC News site, 15th June 2012).

40,000 BP: 'Mungo Man', a Cro-Magnon fossil found in 1974 at Lake Mungo, New South Wales, Australia, dated to around this time though some had suggested up to 60,000 BP. 'Mungo Lady' is the earliest know cremation.

40,000 BP: Linguist estimates Andaman islands became isolated in Indian Ocean (C4 In Search of Eden, 14/5/01). These tribes carry Asian as well as African marker in DNA.

40,000 BP: Oldest human (Cro-Magnon) skull in Europe found in Cave Of Bones, Rumania. Bosphorus did not exist; humans migrated into Europe via the Danube? Many Europeans' DNA traceable to this time. Now see also 44,0000 BP.... busy period this, with humans reaching Siberia (stone tools and reindeer bone needles) from south west, following prey?

40,000 BP: Approximate age of very well preserved female Mammoth found in 2013 on Maly Lyakhovsky Island, Siberia. Corpse yielded blood (and thus the potential for cloning). Would have grazed on grass and buttercups (scientists gave the animal the name 'Buttercup') so obviously the ground was tundra, and not covered by an ice sheet.

40,000 BP: The most recent minimum in the ellipticity of the Earth's orbit. The full cycle is about 400,000 years and the last maximum around 10,000 years ago.

40,000 -
35,000 BP: First hunter-gatherers moved into Palaeolithic southern Europe from the Middle East. (Sykes, B. Daily Mail 11/11/00). Earliest footprints in the Americas? 

 40,000 -
35,000 BP: Dating of footprints in volcanic ash in Mexico suggest peoples arrived by sea (BBC website 5/7/05). Previously thought to be 12,500 BP via Siberian land bridge.

 40,000 -
35,000 BP: Sulawesi, Indonesia: oldest cave paintings in the world so far discovered. Handprints, animals. Dated by Uranium decay - if correct these are virtually as old as Homo sapiens itself. Daily Telegraph, 9th October 2014. More paintings of this period found in El Castillo, Spain.

40,000 - 
35,000 BP: Oldest known animal-shaped sculpture yet found, in Germany: the 'Lion-man' (Lowenmensch) figurine carved from mammoth ivory.

 39,300 BP: Campanian Ignimbrite (Campi Flegrei (Phlegraean Fields) near Naples in Italy eruption - reduced temperatures in what was already a cold period by a couple of degrees or more - Middle to Upper European Palaeolithic Transition.  Caused late Pleistocene biocultural changes and is indicated in Greenland ice core samples. Possibly related to the demise of the Neanderthals.

38,000 -
25,000 BP: Split in the second major wave of migrations from Africa, with the ancestors of the Han Chinese going East mostly through central Asia, the European antecedents North via the Caucasus and Turkey (American Journal Of Human Genetics, week beginning 18th September 2011).

37,000-
23,000 BP: Isle of Lewis, Scotland found to be unglaciated (Nature 309, 1984, 701-3).

35,600 BP: Based on the latest uranium-thorium dating, the oldest image so far discovered in the Altamira cave, Spain, with further art being added for 20,000 years. Later, a rockfall sealed the entrance and the contents were not rediscovered until 1879, once a nearby tree had fallen and disturbed the rocks.

35,000 BP:  Around this time the path from Asia to the Americas may have been open allowing humans to settle the New World in advance of the Clovis migration; genetic 'evidence' compatible (Mapping Human History p.205.) 

33,000 BP: Paleolithic 'mine' found in Egypt (Schoch, p.56). No stalagmite growth around this time, indicating a cold period (whereas there was growth circa 35,000+ BP).

33,000 BP: Geomagnetic excursion? One theory hypothesises some form of cosmic bombardment with ensuing radioactive fallout across North America. See also 12,500 and 41,000 BP. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/239889005_Terrestrial_evidence_of_a_nuclear_catastrophe_in_Paleoindian_times

33,000 BP: Discovery of stone tools buried in sediment in a cave in Zacatecas, Mexico suggests humans of one kind or another (including Denisovans and Neanderthals) reached Central America before the last glacial maximum (New Scientist, 25/7/2020).

32,000 -
30,000 BP: Europe's oldest known cave paintings at Chauvet, France (Focus 6/96 p.83, also Wikipedia).

31,200 BP:  Axial minimum in the Earth's obliquity, and the least seasonality if Milankovitch cycle is consistent:  in theory, this would lead to a peak in  cooling at northern latitudes. Glaciers advanced, lower sea levels? See also 8,700 BC. Next Milankovitch maximum going back through time: 51,700 BP.

30,000 BP: Sabre tooth tigers still in Britain (Time Team, C4, 'Britain's Drowned World', 24 Apr 2007).

30,000 BP: Humans reached edge of Arctic Ocean. Peak of Ice Age 5,000 years later forced humans south to Mongolia. (IHJ:Asia.) Coldest point of Ice Age? (Singer and Avery). Extensive deserts and semi-deserts (aridification usually accompanies increased polar glaciation); sea level about 400 feet lower than today.

30,000 BP: 'Mungo' geomagnetic excursion (Noel and Tarling).

30,000 -
10,000 BP: Upper Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age); followed by Mesolithic.

29,500 -
15,000 BP: Glacial marine ice cores, Ross Sea. 

29,000 BP: A male skeleton, the oldest ceremonial burial found in Europe, found by William Buckland in 1823 in a cave at Paviland on the Gower peninsula. Accompanied by a Mammoth skull. Weather was then 'Siberian' with an average winter temperature of -20 degrees Celsius and summer +10 degrees. Cave was not coastal then - sea level much lower. The bones covered in red ochre suggesting deposits from clothes, or painted after the flesh was stripped off.

26,000 BP: Oldest known Homo Sapiens sapiens human footprints discovered. in Grotte Chauvet cave, France. Palaeolithic boy, about 9 yrs. (Times, 11/6/99 p.13.)

 26,000-
19,000 BP: Coldest spell in within the last glacial period (Wikipedia).

25,000-
20,000 BP: Second wave of people moved into southern Europe from Middle East. (IHJ:Eur).

24,500 BP: Last Glacial Maximum (Wikipedia); sea level 120 metres (390 feet) lower than today.

24,000 BP: Disruption to the Gulf Stream, exacerbating effects of Ice Age (Iceworld, Channel 4, September 2002). N.B. Stream can boost European temperatures by 15 degrees Celsius. U.K. is 'uninhabitable', under half a mile thickness of ice.

22,000 BP: This has been traditionally regarded as when man entered New World from Siberia (TAWH p.46), but see also 50,000 and 35,000 BP. At this time, characteristic tool cultures are the last suggestion of Neanderthal presence - at Gibraltar (Wikipedia).

20,000 BP: Antarctic temperature/CO2 low, as measured by Vostok ice core (prev. 140,000 BP). This was the lowest temperature - 10 degrees Celsius lower than today - recorded in the last 800,000 years according to Jean Jouzel in Science July 5th 2007 (the warmest was 130,000 years ago during the last interglacial - 4.5 degrees C warmer than today). 

20,000 BP: Britain may have been joined to France, indicating lower sea levels around this time. Ice sheet over the UK at its thickest: 1 km deep above Scotland (Landscape Mysteries: Britain before the Ice). There may have been a gap between the Scottish and Scandinavian ice sheets permitting settlement of the flat plain of Doggerland (now under the North Sea).

20,000 BP: White’s guestimate for birthdate of Adam (How Old is the Earth? p.29).

20,000 BP: Human footprints around Lake Mungo, S.E. Australia dated by luminescence in sand grains (IHJ:Aus). See also 40,000 BP.

20,000 BP: Current living reef structure is believed to have started developing on the older platform, according to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. See also 60,000 BP and 13,000 BP.

 20,000 BP: Carbon 14 dating used back as far as this.

20,000 -
10,000 BP: Antarctic ice cores show upward trend in temperatures - contradicts Hapgood.

20,000-
18,000 BP: Irish Sea Glacier reached the Isles of Scilly. This was around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). This lobe is currently thought to have been squeezed southwards by the Irish and Welsh Ice Caps. This would have blocked the River Avon flowing westwards. Some geologists think the Preseli bluestones are glacial erratics taken by ice to the Stonehenge area.

 20,000-
6,000 BP: Sea levels rise steadily around the world (Wikipedia). 'Continental shelves' flooded.

19,000 BP: Pre-Clovis peoples in America? Artifacts from the earliest occupation layer at Meadowcraft Rock Shelter in Western Pennysylvania dated back to this time by radiocarbon dating (Mapping Human History, p. 199). This is controversial among archaeologists, but if correct would represent the oldest continually inhabited site in the U.S.

18,000 BP:  Did giant comet break up around 20,000 years ago, creating the Taurid stream of meteors (Asher, Steel, Napier and Clube)?

18,000 BP: Skeleton of 3’ high Homo floresiensis, discovered October 2004. Did this branch of humanity survive another 6,000 years to co-exist with Homo sapiens? (S. Times 31/10/04).

18,000 BP: Salutrian civilisation in France/Spain. Technology bears similarities to Clovis 5,000 years later. Has led to theory that these Europeans crossed Atlantic to Americas via skin boats and ice floes. Pre-Columbian. DNA evidence seems to support this mixing.

18,000 BP: Polar bear skull found in Scottish cave dated to.

17,300 BP: Lascaux cave paintings, France depict animals (bulls, horses etc) which would not have been found in the region during during peak glaciation - Frank Edge's summer sky map of 15,000 BC theory claims some of the paintings represent Taurus and other constellations depicted to fix the summer solstice (Schoch, p.65).

17,000 BP: East Antarctic Ice Sheet retreats. North Pole leaves Hudson Bay, to arrive at its present position 12,000 BP (Hapgood). N.B. in Hapgood’s “revised version” the movement is not immediate (http://www.poleshift.org/). His theory is criticised by Schoch. Scientists accept that 'True Polar Wander' has occurred on other planets and moons and may have occurred on Earth in abrupt shifts of more than 50 degrees 790 - 810 million years BP.

 17,000 BP: Posnansky's estimate. of the date of the Kalasasaya (stepped mound) at Tiahuanaco/Tiwanaku, Bolivia based on obliquity of the ecliptic using archaeoastronomical techniques (Hancock pp.76- ). This has been rubbished by mainstream archaeologists who place the development of the site as a religious and cosmological centre to 300 BC - 300 AD.

 17,000 BP: Possible era of the migration of Negroid peoples into S. America? Hancock cites Irwin, C. Fair Gods and Stone Faces, 1964.

 17,000 BP: Cave stalagmites in Sauerland, Germany trace periods of warming and cooling of the Earth back to this period (Niggemann et al., A Paleoclimate Record of the Last 17,600 years in Stalagmites from the B7 Cave, Sauerland, Quaternary Science Reviews 22 (2003) pp 555-67.

17,000 BP: Also at this time there may have been a major volcanic eruption in Indonesia causing the demise of Homo floresiensis.

17,000 -
14,000 BP: First inundation of Black Sea with Mediterranean saline overspill? (BBC Focus magazine, November 2010.), See also 5,500 BC.

 16,500 BP: Earliest suggested date for the origin of the Jomon culture in Japan. A more conservative estimate is 14,000 BP. The culture is notable for its  pottery, the designs of which are more sophisticated than any other known at the time. Graham Hancock belives the submarine Yonaguni 'monument' was constructed by these people, when sea levels were 400' lower.

16,000 BP: Global warming (Olson, p.99).

16,000 -
11,500 BP: Most mammoths, woolly rhinos, giant deer - megafauna - and smaller mammals become extinct, depriving Cro-Magnons of thier quarry (Fagan).

16,000 -
4,200 BP: The drowning of the Sunda shelf, according to geographers. Average depth, 20-50 metres. Persian gulf, North Sea depths similar in range. 

15,500 BP: At Buttermilk Creek, Texas, archaeologists have found up to 19,000 stone tools. The site "has yielded more pre-Clovis tools than all other such sites combined" (Scientific American, November 2011). It is thought that these peoples entered the Americas by crossing a dry Beringia (continental shelf shared by Siberia/Alaska), "leaving their East Asian homeland sometime between 25,000 and 15,000 years ago".

15,000 BP: Pre-Clovis peoples in America? Occupational layer more than 15,000 years old near Richmond, Virginia (Mapping Human History, p.199).

15,000 BP: Monsoonal conditions reach Middle East. Accelerated global warming.

15,000 -
13,000 BP: Glacial Lake Missoula floods over Washington and Oregon states in the U.S. cyclical, with ice dam repeatedly re-forming after each flood down the Columbia River. 

14,700 BP: Bolling Warming: rapid rise in sea temperatures, enlargement of monsoonal area in SE Asia.

14,700 -
13,500 BP: Meltwater pulse 1A as continental ice sheets retreated at the end of the last Ice Age. Sea level may have risen at a rate of 40-60mm/year.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltwater_pulse_1A#Sea_level_and_timing 

14,600 BP: Early Americans in Chile, using hide-covered tents (Scientific American, November 2011)

14,550 BP: Stone tools and bones from a butchered Mastodon persuade anthropologists that humans had occupied Florida well before the Clovis peoples (Science Advances journal via BBC, May 2016.)

14,550 -
13,950 BP: Traces of human occupation at Meadowcroft Rockshelter, Pennsylvania.

14,500 -
11,500 BP: Bones of 'Red Deer Cave People' of Southern China analysed by Sino-Australian team. Speculation/disagreement over whether they may be a different species of human to Homo sapiens, the Neanderthals, etc. (BBC News website, 15/3/2012).

14,000 BP: Generally accepted as the approximate end of the Pleistocene, with ice caps retreating in both northern and southern hemispheres. Earth temperatures rose to approx. those of today. Sea levels rise, forests spread (Singer and Avory).  North Atlantic ‘conveyor’ resumes (Feuerbacher, p.9). First of the floods caused by catastrophic melting of the ice caps Oppenheim, p.24). Extinction of two thirds of large mammal species in North America (Palaeolithic hunters or rapid climate change)? Start of the Holocene, or Ice Age interstadial epoch.

14,000 BP: Bones discovered in Shropshire in 1986 provide evidence that Woolly Mammoths had returned to Britain after the severest period of the Ice Age - migrated from the south? Most likely cause of their eventual demise thought to be reforestation of their preferred grassland habitat. (BBC News, 18/6/09.)

14,000 BP: Evidence of humans in Chile.

14,000 -
13,500 BP: Approximate range of Older/Lower Dryas, or relatively cold period in N. Hemisphere.

14,000 -
4,000 BP: 'African Humid Period' (Wikipedia)

13,500 BP: Vega the northern 'Pole Star'? (Canopus in south.)

13,500 -
12,000 BP: Allerod interglacial/stadial, warm.

13,000 BP: "Global catalclysm...rapid rise in sea levels" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5PXRKEdtvs 

13,000 BP: Tree ring 'long counts' (overlapping life spans) almost certainly prove that they at least have been around for over 13,000 years. See also 50,000 BP.

13,000 BP: Draining of Lake Agassiz, from the Manitoba/Minnesota region from glacial meltwater, via the McKenzie River into the Pacific (causing global cooling?) See also 6,200 BC.

13,000 BP: Clovis (spear) technology in Mexico marks leap forward. Oxygen isotope records from Greenland suggest climate warm up to this point, but soon to starting getting colder again - within 700 years an ice cap had built up in Scotland (Earth Story p.166, Whyte p.2).

13,000 BP: Human remains on California's Channel Islands: Arlington Springs Man. Evidence challenges orthodox theory of migration into the Americas which requires peoples to cross the Bering Strait into central Canada and then southwards. Instead the area may have been peopled by humans migrating along the Beringian coast in boats (Nature, 2/5/2012).

13,000 BP: Coral begins to grow on the islands (newly submerged hills) of the eastern Australian continental shelf. Rising sea level has sufficiently distanced this reef from suspended sediments originating from the mainland drainage of Australia. It is believed sedimentation would have inhibited coral growth when the gap was narrower. See also 6,000-4,000 BC and 20,000 BP.

13,000 -
12,000 BP: Increased precipitation in the western Sahara and Egyptian deserts; human migration across region.

13,000 -
10,000 BP: Ireland becomes separated from the rest of Britain by rising sea levels.

12,950 -
10,800 BP: Some argue this was the period during which Atlantis disappeared, the Gizeh pyramids were alligned, the Sphinx was eroded by water and North American mammal megafauna like the mastodon, horse and camel became extinct. They believe precession, bringing Leo to the spring equinox, dates this calendar to this time: http://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/169calendar.php
(the Calendar of Dendera(h).)

12,900 
11,700 BP: Clovis peoples and the giant animals of their time vanish. New evidence suggests...."a comet, possibly 1.9 miles wide, smashed into the Earth's atmosphere" setting much of North America ablaze...evidence from "a thin layer of strange debris featuring microscopic diamond dust and...iridium...peppered across North Africa and parts of Europe. Fireballs ...crashed into much of the vast icesheet covering the northern half of North America..."(Times, 29/5/07).Colossal amounts of meltwater from Lake Agassiz surged into the North Atlantic, affecting the North Atlantic Conveyor (MacDougall, pp 109-110).  This, in the middle of an overall warming trend.

13,000 BP: Estimated last 'Heinrich Event', Heinrich 1, associated with the projection of millions of gallons of freshwater into the North Atlantic from Hudson Bay area. Diagnosed by the discovery of layers of tiny white stones in the Atlantic sea mounts, signifying a cyclical discharge of debris carried out by icebergs. Heinrich events probably led to the closing down of the northern reaches of the Gulf Stream, leading to a renewed cycle of cooling in the north.

13,000-
12,900 BP: Laacher See - volcanic eruption in Germany also around this time (Oppenheimer, p.217).

13,000-
11,500 BP: arid conditions in Europe concentrating human settlement around permanent water sources such as rivers, lakes & springs -Fagan.

12,980 BP: Evidence from Greenland and Antarctic ice cores indicate massive global catastrophe (impact?) similar to that of 11,600 BP (9,600 BC, which see below). So says Bright Insight and others: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMjbtb4xLGQ 

12,900 BP: Theory expounded by Randall Carlson takes the rapid melting of the North American ice sheet with catastrophic flooding, the carbonised layer separating the Upper Palaeolithic from the Neolithic (he seems to ignore the Mesolithic) and rich depositiion of metals such as iridium and osmium as evidence of a major extra-terrestrial impact.

12,900 -
10,700 BP: Precessional Age of Leo in astrological terms.

12,800 BP: Graham Hancock, in Magicians of the Gods echoes Carlson that fragments of a "very large" comet struck the Earth, resulting in the destruction of an advanced civilisation, megafauna and for some, kick-starting the Younger Dryas. Francis Thackeray (7/10/2019) believes the cause was a large meteorite striking Northern Greenland. Finds a platinum spike to corroborate. 

12,500 BP: Hancock, Bauval assert this is the Egyptian 'First Time', also the date of the last geomagnetic reversal (p.484). Cite Nature and New Scientist 6/1/1972, p.7. Panleonists assert that the monuments at Gizeh and possibly Angkor Wat encode a significant event. For a rebuttal, see http://www.eridu.co.uk/Author/egypt/lost.html

12,500 BP: Geomagnetic excursion?

12,500 BP: Monte Verde, Chile site discovered in the 1990's suggests South America peopled before Clovis' ancestors entered from Asia (Schoch, p.60). 

12,350 BP: Morner and Lanser postulate (1974) a magnetic pole excursion. Based on a core taken from the Gothenburg Botanical Gardens in Sweden (hence 'Gothenburg Flip'). However other scientists have failed to validate this finding.

12,300 BP: Tree ring dating reveals most powerful solar storm known so far hit Earth, 150x the Carrington Event. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbcUEyQ1fEo 

12,300 BP: Arabs dated The Flood to this time (Hancock Keepers of Genesis, p.242.) However, before 10,000 BC, global sea levels are said to have been  90' to 100' lower than the present day.

12,178 BP: According to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpNI2FtCgtc the Earth could have been disturbed on its axis to shift the equator to the present one. He starts by extending the Nazca lines to circumscribe the Earth where they converge on Angkor Wat as lines of ancient latitude or longitude lines. Taking one as an 'old Equator', at a right angle, a new line to the North and South Poles is formed, reaching the North somewhere in SE Alaska or maybe NW Canada. Rather similar to one of Hapgood's old Poles (but that was 80,000 BP) and fitting in with climate change and a number of sudden extinctions.

12,103 -
12,077 BP:  A wandering geomagnetic Pole (plus or minus 150 years), measured from varved sediments in Blekinge, Sweden. (Noel, M. and Tarling, D.H.: the Laschamp Geomagnetic Event. Nature vol.253 pp.705-6, 1975). Not agreed by some other scientists.

 12,000 BP: Many mammals including Glyptodon and Megatherium become extinct.

12,000 -
11,000 BP: An International team of Scientists, headed by Professor James Kennett Of Santa Barbara University conclude from layers of melt glass in the U.S, Venezuela and Syria that Earth was hit by a swarm of meteorites over 12,000 years ago, causing the annihilation of the Clovis peoples and decimation of mega-fauna including Mammoths (published in Proceedings Of The National Academy of Sciences 12th June 2012? - Daily Mail). Small Mammoths survived on Wrangel Island until around 1700 BC.

 12,000 -
10,000 BP: Around this time the global human population estimated to be around a million (Whyte,
p.50). 

12,000 BP: Britain's last mammoths so far discovered at Condover (in Shropshire), their having returned with a retreat of the glaciers. https://toriherridge.com/2016/10/01/walking-through-time-britains-last-mammoths-the-reading-list/

12,000 BP = 10,000 BC. This chronology uses 'BP' prior to this date - HGS.

10,000 BC:  A Second pulse of post glacial flooding (Hancock, Flooded..., op.cit) as temperature rises. CO2 in the atmosphere reaches its lowest level (Feuerbacher, p.4). A seven degree temperature rise in 15 years (Time Team, C4, 'Britain's Drowned World', 24 Apr 2007).

10,000 BC: N. Pole arrives at present position, having left Hudson Bay around 17,000 BP, according to Hapgood.

10,000 BC: Faced with disagreement between the Vostock paleo-temperature records and the "500,000 year temperature record" of Devil's Hole Cavern in Nevada with Milankovitch Theory, 'researchers' propose a 10-12 degree axial tilt instead of the present 23.5 degree tilt, though whether this adjustment was sudden or gradual is not explained. They (2010) cite passages from the Dialogues of Plato and the sub-Biblical Book of Enoch/Noah as suggestive.
 
10,000 BC: Siberian-Alaskan land bridge: for much of the Twentieth Century, geographers assumed this was how Mongoloids were able to migrating into Americas, pursuing prey.

10,000 BC: Mesolithic stone circle erected at Gobekli Tepe in modern Turkey - oldest purpose built temple so far found.

10,000 BC: Europeans changed from hunter-gatherers to pastoralists (due to shortage of meat?) and less exposure to the Sun led to whitening of their skin? (IHJ:Eur.)
 
10,000 
  9,500 BC: This period is known as the Younger/Upper Dryas. See also The Human Past, p.178. Temperatures drop by about 15 degrees Celsius in Britain and Greenland over 10 years. Droughts in the north, affecting Mammoths? (Whyte). See also 12,000 BP and 6,200 BC (8,200 years ago)...Carl Munck claims this is  when Atlantis was destroyed (around 10,800 BC - 9,600 BC).

10,000 -
 8,000 BC: 'Great melt' of ice caps; Mediterranean reaches current depth. Isostatic recovery rapid up till around 6000 BC, then it slows (Whyte).

10,000 -
 4,000 BC: Fine (alluvial) ice cores, Ross Sea. Egypt much wetter, with savannah instead of desert - =Nabtian Pluvial.

10,000 -
 4,000 BC: Floodplain of the Avon forms near College Green (BAGAS vol. 124, 2006).

10,000 -
 4,000 BC: Mesolithic 'hunter-gatherers' in Britain.

 9,700 BC: End of the Pleistocene, beginning of the Holocene epoch (Wikipedia).

9,600 BC: "Global cataclysm...rapid rise in sea levels"  (see also 13,000 BP/11,000 BC) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5PXRKEdtvs

9,600 BC: Traditional date for destruction of Atlantis (Solon). Second of the great floods caused by catastrophic melting of the ice caps (Oppenheim, p.24). Tollmann's estimated date of Great Flood, ending most recent Ice Age: cites prevalence of tektites, sudden increase on Carbon 14 in fossilised trees. Caused by impact explosion? (Schoch, p.199; original source not given in his bibliography.)

9,600 BC: Speculative date of Earth crust displacement (Flem-Aths, after Hapgood), based on sudden mass extinctions. They say North Pole moves to present location - contradicts Hapgood's 12,000 BP.

9,600 BC: Sudden warming of climate shown by Greenland ice cores which record a 14 degree jump in 15 years (Schoch, p.172). Thus the Younger Dryas gave way to the Pre-Boreal, and finally the Boreal (8,500-6,000 BC).

9,500 BC: Speculative 'Phaeton' catastrophe (Allan and Delair). Also time of the disintegration of a destructive comet according to Clube and Napier; see also CDE, p.10 see also Schoch, p.205. 
 
9,500 BC: In 1931 a trawler inadvertently retrieved a wooden harpoon from the bottom of the North Sea. This became known as  the Colinda spear point, after the name of the vessel, and was dated thus by radiocarbon. Embedded in peat, this strongly suggested there area was once dry land with freshwater. (Doggerland article on Wikipedia.)

9,500 -
8,500 BC: Pre-Boreal warming in Europe.  Tundra landscape gives way to first birch and juniper, then hazel and pine. Britain still connected to continental Europe.

9,500 -
7,000 BC: Early Holocene climactic optimum confirmed by Antarctic ice cores.

9,500 -
2,500 BC: Period during which three global catastrophic floods occurred as major ice caps disintegrated and melted. Peaks at 9,500, 5,500 and 2,500 BC.

9,500 BC-
date:  Considered an interglacial period. Planet warms to present temperatures in about 100 years. Ice sheets melted, sea levels rose, forests expanded at expense of grass and deserts shrank (Singer and Avery).

9,500 -
9,100 BC: Meltwater pulse 1B. See also 14,700 BP. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltwater_pulse_1B

9,300 BC: Cueva de las Manos(Cave of Hands) in Patagonia where outlines of hands created by blowing mineral pigments through a pipe: blowpipes carbon-dated in order to arrive at this date. Depictions of animals complete the artwork.

9,200 
8,000 BC: 'Amazon cave findings shed new light on American prehistory' (Times, 19/4/96): evidence of the peopling of the Amazon basin independent of Clovis.

9,000 BC: Origins of Neolithic agriculture in the 'Fertile Crescent' of the Middle East/south west Asia.

9,000 BC: Rising sea levels create permanent English Channel (preceded by a 'super river' which drained the southern North Sea to varying degrees after approx 450,000 years BP) - Independent, 30th November 2009.

9,000 BC: Female Negroid skull discovered 1999 in Serra Da Capivara, NE Brazil. Cave paintings suggesting possible scenes of violence with Mongoloid peoples? Oldest (non-Mongoloid) skull in Tierra Del Fuego (Ancient Voices, BBC2, 1/9/99). 

 9,000 BC: ‘Japanese’ Jomon pottery - the oldest in the world (Oppenheim).

 9,000 BC: Oldest bow so far discovered, in a Denmark peat bog.

 9,000 -
1 BC: Period during which Antarctica may have been mapped as an unglaciated archipelago by Buache, the C18th French geographer, according to Hapgood, Hancock. For a refutation of this theory see http://xoomer.alice.it/dicuoghi/Piri_Reis/PiriReis_eng.htm

8,820 BC: Amesbury, "the oldest continually occupied settlement in Britain", occupied from.

8,700 BC: The full Milankovitch cycle is approximately 41,000 years the most recent maximum should have been reached around 10,700 BP (8,700 BC). Maximum tilt implies maximum seasonality, all else being equal (see Cycles, at the beginning of this post). But it also implies polar regions receiving more solar radiation, leading to warming at those latitudes. Next minimum going back through time would be about 29,200 BP.

The angle of tilt of the Earth is projected to reach its next minimum around 11,800 AD -

http://space.wikia.com/wiki/Axial_tilt

8,700 BC: Fisher caldera in the Aleutian Islands the remains of one of the most massive volcanic eruptions in human history (Oppenheimer).

8,600 BC: Vedde Ash, 6-7 cubic metres of tephra found around northern Europe and attributed to Icelandic volcano Katla in one of its biggest eruptions.

8,600 -
8,126 BC: Beginning of Zodiacal Age of Cancer.

8,500 BC: Approximate age of the Earth according to modern day creationists, based on the alleged imbalance of Carbon 14 in the atmosphere (White, p.88). Approximate date of Noah's Flood according to other creationists who base their surmise on the archaeology mentioned in Genesis compared with the dating of the Bronze Age, etc. N.b. the half life of Carbon 14 is 5730 years; however it can be traced in Carboniferous geology.
http://www.theology.edu/journal/questions/quest003.htm

8,500 BC: Bering Strait floods around this time.

8,500 -
6,000 BC: Boreal period of Holocene. Ireland cut off from rest of British Isles at beginning of this period; by the end, the whole of Britain cut off from Europe. Climate comparable with the present, but drier.

8,500 -
5,000 BC: Range within which Noachim Flood may have occurred according to various theological estimates.

8,496 BC: (4th June) Ancient Americans began new time cycle immediately after a cataclysm (Much, Otto in Kolosimo, P. Timeless Earth, p.136).

8,460 BC: Starr Carr, oldest Mesolithic habitation structure in Britain.

8,419 BC: Baltic becomes brackish and level with the Atlantic following seismic event. http://www.intechopen.com/download/get/type/pdfs/id/13091

8,350 -
7,350 BC: First archaeologically known city, Jericho, founded.

 8,300 -
8,100 BC: 'Cold snap' in relation to today's temperatures (Langdon, p.55).

8,300 -
8000 BC: Tundra retreats from British Isles (Dunbavin, p.86).

8,200 -
7,600 BC: Meltwater pulse 1C.

8,000 BC:  'Pre-pottery Neolithic' in the Middle East: rapid global warming (Encarta). Since then, unusual climatic stability (Earth’s Story). Emergence of agriculture (Olson, p.92).2006: Earth’s atmosphere warmest since 8,000 BC? Mediterranean rises, eventually by around 200 feet. Cold spell ended abruptly as indicated by O-18 levels  in ice cores (Feuerbacher).

8,000 BC: “Siberian” man reaches southern Chile.

8,000 BC: Underwater stone circle off Japan (Hancock, Flooded....op. cit.). This is disputed by the geologist Schoch.

8,000 BC: First signs of Mesolithic activity at Stonehenge site (Operation Stonehenge: What Lies Beneath), BBC2, 10/9/2014. Wooden pole holes, Auroch bones, Purpling stones, other signs of human habitation...

8,000 BC: Kents Cavern: scallop shells used with dry moss and animal fats to provide 'candles'?

8,000 BC:  In China and the Levant humans are thought to have first developed grain crops, beginning the Neolithic revolution in farming. The Neolithic starts somewhat later in northern Europe - around 5000 BC.

8,000 -
4,800 BC: Britain exposed to "monsoon" (hot and moist) type climate (Langdon, p.54). Contains the so-called 'Atlantic Period', as determined by the pollen counts of trees thriving in this period. However, cold snaps between 7,400-7,200 and 6,600-6,500 BC, etc. (+see below).

8,000 -
4,000 BC: Human 'lakeside' burials in what is now the Sahara indicate a perfectly habitable, green environment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICSaQcgVdXU At this time there was a corridor of freshwater lakes from from Chad to Tunisia.

8,000 -
3,000 BC: Strong 'seasonal' (=monsoon?) rains in Sahara, as evidenced by alternate layers of sand and clay in rocky outcrops in the Egyptian Desert. One 'lake' bigger than the UK. Note that even hotter Saharan temperatures than at present are required to create the extremes of air temperature to precipitate (literally!) a monsoon.

7,911 -
7090 BC: Several great volcanic eruptions (Feuerbacher).

7,800 BC: Warren Field, Aberdeenshire pit alignment dated to and in use for about 4,000 years thereafter, according to excavation (Current Archaeology 283, October 2013 pp 12-19). Speculation it could have been a lunar calendar, far earlier than was previously thought possible.

 7,600 -
5,900 BC: About 1,000 sq. miles of dry land overwhelmed in North Sea, leaving only Dogger Bank above sea level (Independent On Sunday, p.8, 15/10/00).

7,500 BC: According to Edith Kristan-Tollmann and Alexander Tollmann of the University of Vienna, seven large fragments of a comet ploughed into the oceans causing severe earthquakes, fires and flooding. They cite stories from many different cultures and scattered tektites (gravel-sized glassy pellets created by meteoritic impacts) as evidence.

7,500 BC: Finds recovered from Gulf of Cambay site in Gujarat dated to, at least (BBC News website, 19/1/02). Two ‘lost cites' allegedly revealed, about 120’ underwater. Graham Hancock believes this is evidence of a pre-Harappan civilisation that existed from the end of the Ice Age and from which the Vedas derive.

7,500 BC: First evidence of stone tools, pottery, domestication of animals and crop growing in China (Diamond, p.329).

 7,500 -
5,700 BC: Catal Huyuk/Catalhoyuk, Anatolia (Turkey), largest and best preserved Neolithic settlement. Sun-dried brick standardised houses, entered via roof ladder. UNESCO World Heritage site.

7,500 -
3,500 BC: Neolithic sub-pluvial, or Holocene Wet Phase, whereby the most recent greening of the Sahara took place. Thereafter re-desertification took place, continuing until the present day but it is believed this is cyclically related to the 41,000 years in which the tilt of the Earth switches from 22 degrees to 24.5 degrees.
  7,400 -
7,200 BC: 'Cold snap' in relation to today's temperatures, according to Langdon.

7,200 -
6,500 BC: Dating of underwater village remains found off the coast of Israel at Atlit Yam, believed to have succumbed to rising sea levels. Stone built houses, wells, megaliths, cemetery. Hunters, fishers, farmers (BBC Focus, November 2012 p.40). 

7,167 - 
5,167 BC: Estimated date of Flood according to Whitcomb and Morris, i.e. 3,000 - 5,000 yrs after the birth of Abraham. Somerset peat below sea level (Peat Moors Centre). 

7,167 BC: DNA dates Cheddar Man, a British hunter-gatherer to.

7,000 BC: Homo sapiens begin creating their own fires, by rubbing sticks or striking flints to ignite dried grass (National Geographic). 

 7,000 BC: It was around this time, according to Prof. Colin Renfrew's late 1980s Anatolian hypothesis, that Indo-European languages originated in Anatolia (modern day Turkey). Reached Europe  in 6,000 BC (Gibbins).This has been supported by New Zealand researchers (Nature, August 2012) using phylogenetic methods from evolutionary biology. The findings contradict the rival Steppes/Kurgen theory which holds that proto-Indo-European developed in and spread from north of the Caspian Sea in the Russian Steppes around 5,000 years B.P. Indo-European includes the Germanic languages which also led to English.

7,000 BC: Origins of Neolithic agriculture in the Yangtse and Yellow River basins, China.

7,000 BC: By 7,000 BC the northern part of the North Sea had become inundated by rising sea levels and Doggerland probably an island but Orkney would be still connected to the Scottish mainland for maybe another thousand years; from Humberside to East Sussex, England was still very much part of a continuous European land mass and Northern Ireland may still have been connected to Scotland at Islay/Jura/Mull of Kintyre.

7,000 BC:  Stonehenge area inhabited, according to Darvill and Wainwright (see 2,300 BC). They base this on the charred remains of a seed found at the bottom of a post hole.

7,000 -
6,900 BC:  'Kennewick Man' radio carbon dated to. Found near the Columbia River, Washington, USA in 1996. Controversy over physical features. Thought not to be Native American, but an earlier population descended from the Japanese Ainu. (Smithsonian, 2014).

7,000 -
5,000 BC: As the Scandinavian ice cap melts, Neolithic Europe is repopulated by peoples from Siberia and Asia Minor (Sykes, B. Daily Mail, 11/11/00). See also entries for 40,000 and 25,000 BP. 

 7,000 -
5,000 BC:  Schoch's estimate for the construction period of the Sphinx (p.50, Voices Of The Rocks) based primarily on water-induced erosion.

 7,000 -
5,000 BC: Ross Sea secondary Antarctic climatic optimum as measured by ice cores(see also 6,000 BP and 11,500 BP). 

 7,000 -
4,000 BC: Radio carbon dating indicates most peat bogs in Britain and other western European countries were formed due to flooding following the end of the last Ice Age (Langdon, p.57). However the Wikipedia article states it is currently believed that peat around the world has been forming for 360 million years, but that most developed after the retreat of Ice Age glaciers some 12,000 years ago - i.e. 10,000 BC.

7,000 -
3,000 BC: Holocene 'Climatic Optimum'; Earth warmer and wetter than at present. What are now the Saharan and Arabian Deserts supported hunting, herding and some agriculture: the Neolithic Subpluvial.

 6,608 BC: Pole shift ? (Munck.)

 6,600 BC: Ice 'rebound' triggers major quake and tsunami in Sodermanland, Sweden. Others between 11,600 BP and 900 BP. http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/13091/InTech-Traces_of_tsunami_events_in_off_and_on_shore_environments_case_studies_in_the_maldives_scotland_and_sweden.pdf.

6,600 BC: The great Pjorsa lava flow smothered part of Iceland. This is believed to have been the largest single eruption in the Holocene.

 6,600 -
6,500 BC: Very cold snap in Britain ?

6,500 BC: Beginnings of Neolithic agriculture in Europe: remains of food producing societies in the Aegean carbon dated to 6,500 BC at Knossos. (Agriculture introduced from the Fertile Crescent of south west Asia.)

6,500 BC: Core sample suggests The Solent first inundated by the sea - remains of a flooded oak forest. More and more land disappears in the following centuries as isostatic re-adjustment takes place following the last Ice Age. Flint tools found from just after this period. (Landscape Mysteries: Secrets of the Flood, BBC2 10/03). Boreal climate period in Europe. 

 6,500 BC: Present outline of Severn Estuary, UK does not yet exist. At this time the river emptied into a bay near Lundy. Human and animal footprints preserved at Goldcliff (Newport) - Stringer, p.158.

 6,500 BC: Sumatra finally separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Malacca.

6,500 BC: Earliest known building in S. America - step pyramid - subsequently buried in lava (Kolosimo). 

6,500 -
4,500 BC: Migration of pre-Saharan peoples west, south west and into the Middle East as the land dried out almost completely.

6,500 -
4,500 BC:  Falling sea levels; falling water table in North Africa.

6,480 BC: Final collapse of the Laurentide Ice Sheet sending huge volume of meltwater into the Atlantic and south into the Gulf of Mexico. This could have affected the Gulf Stream/North Atlantic Conveyor.  See also 12,800 BP.
ofessor Gershon Galil of the department of biblical studies at the University of Haifa has deciphered an inscription dating from the 10th century BCE (the period of King David's reign), and has shown that this is a Hebrew inscription. The discovery makes this the earliest known Hebrew writing. The significance of this breakthrough relates to the fact that at least some of the biblical scriptures were composed hundreds of years before the dates presented today in research.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2010-01-ancient-hebrew-biblical-inscription-deciphered.html#jCp
Professor Gershon Galil of the department of biblical studies at the University of Haifa has deciphered an inscription dating from the 10th century BCE (the period of King David's reign), and has shown that this is a Hebrew inscription. The discovery makes this the earliest known Hebrew writing. The significance of this breakthrough relates to the fact that at least some of the biblical scriptures were composed hundreds of years before the dates presented today in research.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2010-01-ancient-hebrew-biblical-inscription-deciphered.html#jCp

6,450 -
6,006 BC: Beginning of Zodiacal Age of Gemini depending on Mann or Burlingame interpretations of Zodiacal Astrology. Next: Taurus.

 6,440 BC: Kurile Lake caldera, formed by a second major volcanic eruption at the southern tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia.

 6,250 -
4,700 BC: Vespasian's Camp near Stonehenge - Mesolithic domestic site.

6,200 BC: Catal Huyuk fresco depiction of volcanic eruption - oldest known image of active volcano. 

 6,200 BC: Or, the '8.2 kiloyear event'. Sudden drop in northern hemisphere temperatures - 'Mini Ice Age' - lasting over 150 years placing it between the Younger Dryas and Little Ice Age in severity.

6,200 BC: Lake Agassiz almost completely drains with releasing meltwater from what remained of Hudson Bay ice. Rise in global sea levels - waters of the North Sea rising by 46mm per annum (Fagan).

 6,200 BC: Changed chemical composition of an 11,000 year old stalagmite in White Scar Cavern, Yorkshire indicates a 150 year or so drop in temperature by 1 to 2 degrees.

6,200 BC: Stonehenge activity pauses around this time, until the Neolithic peoples reach Great Britain in 4000 BP.

 6,200 -
6,100 BC: Tsunami originating from the coast of Norway destroys what remains of Mesolithic Doggerland, cutting Britain off from Europe (BBC Focus November 2012, p.37). As explored later on The Stone Age Tsunami (Channel 4, 30/5/2013) this was caused by the earthquake-triggered Storegga Slide. Evidence includes a thin sandy layer containing the microscopic remains of smashed diatoms found between clays along points of the Scottish (e.g. at Montrose) and Northumberland coasts. This water would have receded, unlike the flooding caused by the final release of Lake Agassiz around 6,200 BC, but Doggerland is believed to have been finally abandoned around 6,000 BC. Reiterated in BBC Horizon programme of19/8/15, 'The First Britons'.

 6,100 -
5,900 BC: Cold snap prior to the generally mild Atlantic Period.

6,040 -
5,510 BC: World's oldest dugout canoe, found in The Netherlands at Pesse, carbon-dated.
 
6,010 -
5,910 BC: Bouldnor Cliff, Isle of Wight: wheat grains discovered in Solent archaeology, preserved in anaerobic conditions. Suggest trade in cereals between Europe and the south of England. Wood supports dating. Research done by University of Warwick, two land bridges postulated, linking Kent to Belgium and Norfolk to the Netherlands. 

6,000 BC: The isostatic uplift of Northern Europe slows down

6,000 BC: Sea level rise, Gulf of Persia.

 6,000 BC: Last of the sea floods which drowned parts of SE Asia, creating the Indonesian islands; mass emigration from area (Oppenheim, Eden in the East). 

6,000 BC: Peoples leave Anatolia and spread west, some arriving in Britain via Iberia and France.

6,000 BC: By this time farmers were living around the brackish Euxine Lake (originally created by trapped meltwater from the Eurasian Ice Sheet), later to become the Black Sea). 

6,000 BC: Rise in preserved alder pollen, increase in peat bogs. Elm prominent in Ireland; oak, ash, wych elm, lime, hazel forests (Proctor, M. Vegetation of Britain and Ireland).

6,000 BC: From now on, peat deposits indicate much of Somerset below sea level. Renewed rise in sea levels also leads to inundation of Severn valley in Britain. Followed by 6,000 years of relative stability (Walker, Frank The Bristol Region, p.62).

6,000 BC: Bay of Firth, Orkney: Archaeologists take soil sample from underwater mound (putative base of stone circle) which shows it became covered by the sea around this time.

 6000 BC: African cave paintings dated to 8000 BP show 'athletic' humans, a variety of Savannah mammals and maybe even human swimmers at Gilf Kebir, Egypt (Orbit, BBC 2, March 2012).

6,000 BC: Garden of Eden; Adamites (Rohl, Legend, pp 403-).

 6,000 BC: Plough thought to have been invented in Mesopotamia, animal power having been adopted by man.

6,000 BC: Tree ring dating, which supports Carbon 14 estimates, effective back to this time.

6,000 -
4,000 BC: Oldest living coral on the Great Barrier Reef, a natural feature that can be seen from space. See also 11,000 BC/13,000 BP. 

6,000 -
3,000 BC: Atlantic period of Holocene; Elm, Oak, Lime; Summer and winter 1-2 deg. warmer than present, rainfall 10-15% higher (Dunbavin, p.87). Comparatively moist in Egypt/Saharan areas, corresponding to Neolithic occupancy. (P.I.S.O.W.C.)

6,000 -
3,000 BC: East Antarctic climatic optimum as measured by ice cores.

6,000 -
2,500 BC: Saharan wet phase. Pastoral rock paintings at Tassili, Hoggar etc. (TAWH p.45).

5,800 BC: Atlantic circulation resumes about 400 years after the '8.2 K' event. Warming in Europe - moist 'Atlantic' period succeeds the Boreal.

5,700 BC: Carnac: "Oldest inhabited site in Europe" (CDU).

5,600 BC: Ryan & Pitman; Pitman estimate this approximate date of the sudden changeover from fresh to salt water in the Black Sea from deep-sea cores, pollen samples, mollusc shells and probes of ancient shoreline. Sea of Marmara linked with the former Euxine Lake for the first time; ecological disaster: becomes same level as Mediterranean.

 5,600 BC: Wild Horses of the genus Equus (and mammoths and camels) disappear from the North American fossil record, based on DNA evidence. Domestication, slaughter by Clovis peoples (butchery marks), or climate change? Nevertheless, migration of their ancestors across the land bridge to Siberia ensured their survival in the wild in the Old World.

5,560 -
5,335 BC: Dating of silt in pit 9580 in Stonehenge car park in which a piece of Bluestone was discovered. Langdon contends this proves the monument is older than traditionally thought, the post hole being where there was a mooring post for the boats/ships which brought the stone from the Preseli Hills in Pembrokeshire.

 5,500 BC: Black Sea cores indicate marine deposits superseded freshwater after over 15,000 yrs (BBC Horizon ‘Noah’s Flood’, 16/12/96).  Transition from freshwater to saltwater molluscs - almost certainly due to rising sea levels bursting though a natural dam across the Bosphorus around 5,600 BC (CDE, p.15). Ryan and Pitman also contend this inundation was the real seed of the memory of the Noachian Flood. Their argument is partly based on an archaeological discontinuity in a tell excavation in Turkey.

 5,500 BC: "The rise in sea level continued until it attained its maximum about 3,000 BC at which stage a shoreline was formed. Subsequently the land-rise, which was slower to make itself felt, elevated this shoreline or beach to a height of about 7.6 metres above present sea level in part of North East Ireland. This raised beach...as far south as Sligo Bay in the NW and Wexford Harbour in the SE...temperatures...about 2 degrees Celsius higher than of present..." (New History of Ireland, vol.1, pp.56-60). 

 5,500 BC: Rapid flooding of Arabian Gulf (Oppenheim). Final melting of ice-age ice? Big retreat of West Antarctic ice sheet? (Gibbins, D. Atlantis; historical notes, p.453). 

 5,500 BC: Migration of Cain’s descendants to Susiana (Rohl, Legend, p.408). Susiana corresponds to Elam in present day south west Iran. See also 17,000- 14,000 BP.

5,400 BC: Radio carbon dating of new Stonehenge finds (April 2013). Site possibly occupied as early as 7,500 BC. Archaeology led by David Jacques.

5,400 BC: The oldest settlement of Sumaria, Eridu, thought to have been founded near the mouth of the Euphrates around this time. Became very populous by 2,900 BC and Rohl contends it was the site of the original 'Tower of Babel', a Ziggurat.

5,260 BC: Dispilio Tablet, excavated in Greece in 1993/4, radiocarbon-dated to. Bears inscribed markings - form of Neolithic writing? Further tablets found at Tartaria in Romania dated to 5,300 BC (Wikipedia). However, most linguists believe the earliest proven form of writing is cuneiform, from Mesopotamia around 3,600 BC.

5,000 BC: Neolithic begins in northern Europe. Farming of cereals.

5,000 BC: Ice wedges under the permafrost in the Lena River delta area of Siberia indicate winter warming over the last 7,000 years.

5,000 BC: Possible geological record of a tsunami hitting the area of Sullom Voe, Shetland (Radio Times, 2/6/07). 

5,000 BC: Orkney covered in sheltered woodland in contrast to today's barren environment?

5,000 BC: Elm decline, hazel and grasses increase - clearances by Neolithic 'slash n' burn farmers?

5,000 BC: The Sahara is perfectly habitable, as evidenced by human remains,  settlement indicators, carbon-date Ostrich egg beads, shells,and swimmers shown in cave paintings dating from around 7,000 BP. Due to cycle of the Earth's wobble, according to 2009 documentary (see also 40m BP and 90,000 BP).

5,000 -
4,500 BC: Farming catches on in Britain, gradually replacing Mesolithic hunter-gathering.
 
5,000 -
4,500 BC: Cart ruts on Malta, where there is the largest concentration in the world, have been dated to - some run underwater and are cut by Punic tomb shafts. They were made in relatively soft limestone. Some archaeologists believe they were made more recently, in Phoenician times.

5,000
3,000 BC: Average global temperatures reached their maximum and were 1-2 degrees warmer than today. This period is known as the Climatic Optimum and prompted many of the great ancient civilisations to flourish in the 'Fertile Crescent' of the Middle East, the Indus Valley and later, in China.

5,000 -
1,000 BC: A genetic mutation allows Europeans to develop lactose tolerance.

5,000 -
  750 BC: Sumerian civilisation between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia (Iraq). By 3600 BC they had invented the wheel and many other things.

 4,900 BC: Early Neolithic tomb found in 2010, at Buthiers-Boulancourt, about 40 miles (65km) south of Paris, revealed a man of about 50 who had been trepanned and undergone surgery to have an arm cleanly removed (Times, 25/1/2010).

4,900 -
4,700 BC: Radiocarbon/pottery shard dating of the Goseck Circle in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, claimed to be one of the oldest solar observatories in the world; a wooden rather than a stone structure.

 4,800 BC: Nabta stone circle in Egypt, with 'perfect' e-w alignment  (Schoch).

4,800 -
3,000 BC: Approximate date range for the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture across parts of present-day Ukraine-Moldova-Romania. The culture embraced animal husbandry, horsemanship, fishing and agriculture. Homes were built using wattle and daub and pottery was made. It is believed to have been matriarchal. 

4,700 -
4,200 BC: Sea level around Great Britain stabilises (Stringer, p.158).

4,700 -
4,200 BC: In November 2012 it is announced that archaeologists working in Bulgaria have discovered Europe's oldest prehistoric town a thousand years older than the earliest Greek sites. It is near the Black Sea resort of Varna, may have contained around 350 inhabitants, and possibly owed its wealth to salt extraction.

4,500 BC: Oldest stones of Carnac (first major construction phase), France currently dated to.

4,500 -
3,000 BC: Ancient civilisation of Sumer, in Mesopotamia (now southern Iraq).

4,300 BC: Final sinking of Atlantis, according to Langdon.

4,300 -
4,006 BC: Beginning of the Zodiacal Age of  Taurus, depending on Mann or Burlingame interpretations.

4,236 BC: Earliest known year 'date', with the founding of the Egyptian calendar.

 4,200 BC: Catal Huyuk mural shows earliest known representation of an erupting volcano (in Turkey?)

 4,004 BC: Estimated date of Creation by the C17th Archbishop of Armagh, James Ussher, drawing on the genealogies and king lists of the Old Testament. 

4,000 BC: Arrival of peoples of Anatolian origin in Britain. Arriving via Iberia and then France they rapidly replace the British hunter-gatherers. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47938188 16/4/19.

4,000 BC: Burial chamber beneath Stanton Drew stone circle, Somerset dated approx. to this time - 1,000 years older than the stones themselves?  http://www.bathnes.gov.uk/news/latestnews/2010/January/Pages/Stanton%20Drew%20now%201000%20years%20older.aspx

4,000 BC: Hypogeum estimated to have been developed as a burial complex on Malta. Lasted until circa 2,500 BC.

4,000 BC: Evidence from the teeth of humans buried in kists on Shetland proves they were farmers (BBC Horizon: 'The First Britons' 19/8/2015). However there was a period when they temporarily ate marine food: a sand layer inland suggesting drier, perhaps cooler weather prevailed tempering farming activity.

4,000 BC: "First farmers" on Orkney build stone structures including the Tomb of Lairo (Orkney: Britain's Ancient Capital? BBC2, January 2017.)

4,000 BC: People of Eridu established trading centre on Bahrain (Rohl, Legend, p.410). 

 4,000 BC:  “6,000 year old ‘train’” to New Guinea and Bismarck’s (Oppenheim, p.170). Sub-pluvial period of wetter, more Mediterranean-like climate in the Middle East.

 4,000 -
3,500 BC: Domestication of the horse in the Volga-Ural region.

4,000 -
3,250 BC: Irish Elm decline.

4,000 -
3,000 BC: Somerset peat drying out. Rising curve of sea levels begins to flatten out, to present-day. The remaining ice sheets of the world may now be in equilibrium with the climate (RMS 1966 conference p.12, see bib.)

 4,000 -
2,500 BC: Neolithic in Britain. Civilisations flourish in regions that are now desert, including Egypt and the Sahara. Around this time the global human population estimated to be around seven million, sustained by advances in agriculture (Whyte, p.5).

4,000 BC -
present: Glacial marine ice cores in Ross Sea, opposite New Zealand. (Hapgood, p.235), suggesting lower temperatures. Temperatures peaked and remained stable for 2,000 years (Feuerbacher, p.4).  Europe north of the Alps became increasingly cold and wet. 

3,942 -
1,793 BC: Thuban, alpha Draconis in Draco, is the Pole Star. Succeeded by kappa Draconis. 

3,900 BC: Start of a rapid aridification in the Sahara region and cooling elsewhere.
 
3,807 -
3,806 BC: Dendrochronological dating of Somerset Levels' Sweet Track. British Archaeology March/April 2021.
 
3,761 BC: Date for creation of the world, according to the Jewish calendar.

 3,750 BC: Neolithic agriculture reaches Ireland, based on chronology of plant remains (Journal of Archaeological Science, vol.51 November 2014, pp.181-205).

3,640 -
3,360 BC: Western Isles of Scotland - four crannog (small fortified islands in lochs with connecting causeway) sites dated to ("Scotland's crannogs are older than Stonehenge", BBC website, 13/6/19).

3,600 BC: Pictographs, first form of writing, appeared: Babylonian Cuneiform (Mesopotamia).

3,600 BC: Nubian city/temple (Into Africa with Henry Louis Gates, BBC2 17/7/99 and ff).

3,600 -
3,200 BC: Late Neolithic sea level rises around Britain (BAGAS v.124, 2006).

3,600 -
3,200 BC: West Kennet enclosures dated to using latest accelerator mass spectrometry carbon dating methods; this is about 700 years before the West Kennet settlement data (British Archaeology, July/August 2017).

3,520 BC: Modern Biblical chronology places Noah around this time - 2500 BC disputed by Aardsma (see 2450 BC).

3,512 BC: Radio carbon dated charcoal at Ness of Brodgar on Orkney suggests the islands were occupied by Neolithic peoples capable of constructing the settlements at Skara Brae - Britain's Ancient Capital: Secrets of Orkney BBC2 2/1/2017.

3,500 BC: Woolley dates this as the flood layer of the base at the ruins of Ur - Noachian Flood? In the New World at this time there is a temporary (lasting a couple of hundred years) surge in sea level. However other Mesopotamian digs reveal silt layer at other dates over a thousand year range.

3,500 BC: The Sahara rapidly (within a few generations) becomes dry, barren and sandy once again. In the 1950's French engineers drilling for oil discover vast reserves of warm water up to three miles under the desert - the remains of large freshwater lakes which covered the landscape. See also 90,000 BP, 7,000 BP, etc.

3,500 BC: Evidence of vast Neolithic farming complex in Ceide, southern Ireland; cereal seeds found in layers beneath peat. Predates early archeological evidence in Kent, casting some doubt on the traditional westward dispersion of the culture.

3,500 BC: Evidence of the use of round wheels for pottery and transport in Mesopotamia.

3,500 BC: In Britain the first hunter-gatherers have become the first farmers. Long barrows begin to appear; henges, cursuses, including Stonehenge Cursus. Sea levels around Britain reach approximately their present level (BBC Focus magazine, November 2012 p.37).

3,500 BC: Binary asteroid glanced the Moon,creating craterlets Messier and Messier A. Orbit did not resettle until about 1500 BC? (See below). Recorded in rock art, Newgrange? Violent changes in Earth weather resulted (Times, 12/8/02.)

3,500 BC: South Chinese expand to and settle on Taiwan. Beginning of their Austronesian (language family) speaking colonisation of the western Pacific excluding Australia and most of New Guinea. N.b. this language family not to be confused with Austro-Asiatic, also Chinese in origin, which spread south into Indo-China (Diamond, p.341). Contradicts Oppenheim, op.cit.

3,500 -
3000 BC: Gradual cooling in Europe. Low tree ring growth events, attributed to wobbles in the axis of rotation by Dunbavin in Under Ancient Skies: Ancient Astronomy and Terrestrial Catastrophism (2005). Next similar: 2345 - 2000 BC. N.B. such wobbles, if they occurred, would present themselves in erratic movements of the Moon, and may explain the megalith builders fascination with its heavenly position.

 3,500 -
3000 BC: Close encounters between asteroid Olijato and Earth (Schoch, p.205).

 3,400 -
2,500 BC: Approximate dates for 'Bluestonehenge' near Stonehenge, Wiltshire based on ditch and subsoil stone settings discovered in 2008/9 and results published in British Archaeology, Jan/Feb 2010.

3,359 -
3,105 BC: Dating of Europe's oldest natural mummy, Otzi, found preserved in the Otztal Alps in 1991 (Wiki). Examination showed he had signs of childhood malnutrition (Fagan).

3,300 BC: Mayan glyphs in Temple XIX at Palenque, Mexico may record massive flooding of coastal communities, which some have attributed to tsunamis caused by the remains of a comet or meteorite crashing into the ocean.

3,300 BC: Oldest (cuneiform) writing so far found - a record of Mesopotamian beer rations.

3,300 BC: Second major construction phase at Carnac, with an error range of several hundred years (Burl). In their book The Megalithic Empire, Vered and Harper suggest this was a production line of stones for export rather than an astronomical allignment.
 
3,300 BC: Calculated age of remains of stone circle on Waun Mawn quarry site in Pembrokeshire from which Prof. Mike Parker Pearson and his team found the yield of bluestones which were transported to become the very first stone circle at Stonehenge. BBC News and BBC2 programme Stonehenge: the Lost Circle Revealed, 12/2/2021.

3,300 -
1,200 BC: Bronze Age in the Near East (followed by Iron Age and preceded by Stone Age). Corresponds to 1,300 - 700 BC in British Isles and other parts of Western Europe.

3,200 -
3,030 BC: Era of Menes/1st Dynasty in Egypt as estimated by modern scholars.

3,200 BC: Newgrange prehistoric monument in Ireland constructed.

3,200 BC: "5,200 year old calendar" (Freeman). Is Alberta's 'Old Big Arrangement' cairn even older than Stonehenge?

3,200 -
3,000 BC: End of gallery graves/long barrows (collective burial) in Britain (Dunbavin, p.241). Thereafter, stone circles and alignments. Unexplained ‘cup and ring' marks on rocks. 

3,200 -
3,000 BC: Wetter conditions in British Isles. Area around the Avon near College Green, Bristol becomes a salt marsh, with global sea levels having risen again.

3,200 -
2,900 BC: Piora Oscillation (Zoller, 1960), abrupt wet and cold period in the transition from the Atlantic to Sub-Boreal climate periods. Retreat of spruce forests and advance of European glaciers. Aridification in the eastern Mediterranean and North Africa. Cyclical feature or result of volcano or impact event?

3,200 -
2,900 BC: The world's oldest un-deciphered writing - Proto-Elamite, from present day SW Iran - dated to this period, and is the subject of study by Oxford University academics (BBC website news, 22/10/2012).

3,199 BC: Narrow ring event in Irish oak tree ring chronology. 

 3,150 BC: Acidity peak, Camp Century (Greenland) ice core and flood peaks in various parts of the world.

3,123 BC: (June 29th): scientists examining 700 BC clay tablet with cuneiform writing deduce it is a copy of a record made by a Sumerian astronomer of an asteroid hitting the Earth (in the Austrian Alps at Kofells). This event may also be remembered in several ancient myths including the Sodom and Gomorrah and Phaeton stories. Times, 31/3/2008 p.13.

3,114 BC: 'Year Zero', or starting date of the Mayan calendar (Dunbavin). August 12th 3114 BC to be precise; believed to have followed a cataclysm. Mayans believed their original homelands (east across the Atlantic?) were destroyed before this calendar, which expired in December 2012.

3,100 BC: "Was the earth’s' rotation disturbed by a comet impact ?" (Dunbavin, Paul. The Atlantis Researches). Others, incl. David Furlong, writing in Kindred Spirit Quarterly issue 41, p.35 have linked these last three events with the translocation of Atlantean culture. Evidence of dramatic rising/falling sea levels and drying of Sahara contemporaneous.

3,100 BC: Great Flood? (Rohl, Legend, pp.411 ff).

3,100 BC: Emergence of Egyptian hieroglyphs. First Pharoah of the Old Kingdom, Menes.

3,100 -
2,686 BC: Early Dynastic period in Egypt (Edwards, Pyramids of Egypt p.19). Menes unites Upper and Lower Egypt, leading to a sudden flowering of civilisation.

 3,100 -
1,500 BC: Stonehenge developed, initially in the form of a bank and ditch. Stones not added until about 2,400 BC (Wikipedia).

 3,095 BC: Narrow ring event in Irish oak tree-ring chronology (Schoch, p.248).

3,080 -
2,890 BC:  dating of bone from cremation burial at Stonehenge (British Archeology, Nov-Dec 2018).

 3,005 BC: Some creationists suggest this is when an asteroid impacted Yucatan peninsula bringing to an end the Age of the Dinosaurs. This date is calculated from their theory of an 'accelerated decay' of Carbon 14.

3,000 BC: Approximate end of Holocene Climatic Optimum. Arctic ice had become 50% thinner than at present according to research by Danish team (Science, 4/8/11). During the Optimum, the average temperature in northern hemisphere about 4 degrees Celsius warmer than present though southern hemisphere slightly cooler than now.

 3,000 BC: Clube and Napier posit cometary impact as the cause of flooding, the retreat of tree lines and the encroachment of glaciers.

3,000 BC: New excavations suggest stones brought to Stonehenge earlier than previously thought - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/7660860.stm

3,000 BC: Orcadians start building more sophisticated structures on a more massive scale, for reasons unknown (Orkney: Britain's Ancient Capital? BBC2, January 2017.) Art in the form of geometric designs and 'stone balls'. Radio carbon dating of 'lesser wall' on Orkney's Ness of Brodgar; contemporary with Skara Brae etc. History of Ancient Britain: Orkney's Stone Age Temple BBC2 1/1/2012. Further date suggests site systematically abandoned about 2,300 BC, possibly through change in belief systems/transition to Bronze Age. http://www.orkneyjar.com/archaeology/nessofbrodgar/excavation-background-2/

3,000 BC: Indo-Europeans tend to start supplanting Western Mediterranean’s in England? The Steppes/Kurgen linguistic theory still holds that Indo-European languages developed north of the Caspian Sea around this time. See also 7,000 BC for rival theory.

3,000 BC: Austronesian speakers reach the Philippines (Diamond, p.341).

 3,000 BC: Oldest living tree, a Bristlecone Pine - thought to be at least 5,000 years old.

3,000 BC: Earliest formal calendars date from around this time.

3,000 -
2,800 BC: Estimated age of the Burckle Crater in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar. the Holocene Impact Working Group propose it may have been created by a comet, or meteorite impact.

3,000 -
2,400 BC: Late Neolithic in Britain.

 3,000 -
2,000 BC: Cooling trend (http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7x.html).

3,000 -
1,000 BC: Greenland ice sheets smaller than they are now - indeed the smallest it has been in the last 10,000 years (University of Buffalo, 22/11/13). http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/22/study-greenland-ice-sheet-was-smaller-3000-5000-years-ago-than-today/

3,000 -
   500 BC: Somerset peat suggests rainfall increasing. Sub-Boreal period; similar to today, possibly drier; deforestation by humans; slight glacial advances (Dunbavin). Follows ‘Piora oscillation’ (Furlong).

2,900 BC: Invasion of Egypt by ‘Followers of Horus’/’Dilmunites’, leading to the first of the Pharaohs (Rohl, Legend, p.416.) Most likely date for Biblical/Sumerian Deluge? - CWH.

2,807 BC: Bruce Masse, an environmental archaeologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico believes from analysing flood myths from around the world and reference to an eclipse that a comet or other body crashed into the Indian Ocean off the coast of Madagascar causing a tsunami and flooding. The resultant crater is known as Burckle.

2,800 BC: (European Neolithic) - analysis of small islands in lochs on the Isle of Lewis by Reading University's Department of Archaeology in 2016 reveals they are artificial - Crannogs - and once supported tiny settlements. (http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/archaeology/?p=580)

2,800 -
2,500 BC: Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, Mesopotamia, lived between these dates (Oppenheim, p.398). Epic of Gilgamesh, the flood legend, relates to it.

2,781 BC: For Rohl’s purposes of 'New Chronology', Pharaonic history begins with Menes/1st Dynasty/new Sothic cycle (Legend, p.24).

2,750 BC: Evidence of localised flooding during Early Dynastic period in Sumer (CDE, p.9). Possibly referred to a thousand years later by a cuneiform tablet  (see this Chronology, below).

2,700 -
1,450 BC: Flowering of Bronze Age Minoan civilisation which arose on Crete. Ended by some kind of catastrophe; tsunami theory (Timewatch, BBC2, 20/4/07) suggested by shells, pottery debris. Main tsunami estimated to have hit island 1,600 BC.

2,697 BC: Starting date in the Taoist calendar.

2,649 -
2,150 BC: 'Old Kingdom' in Egypt (dynasties 2-6), conventional chronology. 

2,627 BC: Radio carbon dating of Caral Pyramids, Peruvian desert(Wikipedia). Covered by BBC Horizon, 31/1/02. No visible fortifications; theory that the city developed through trade with the fishermen of the coast, about 20 miles away, once it was irrigated. Dated using reeds (no pottery). Temple, amphitheatre. Evidence of drug use, e.g. cocaine.

2,613 -
2,494 BC: Approximate dates covering the 4th Dynasty in Egypt, the most impressive period of pyramid building and guestimated background to 'Egypt in England' hypothesis posed by Rendel Harris and others.

2,600 BC: Cooling 'event' with relatively wet conditions in many parts of the world (Singer and Avery).

2,600 BC: Channel 4's Egypt's Great Pyramid: the New Evidence examined the discovery of a dismantled cargo boat believed to have been used for bringing the facing stone from the quarry to the site. A lost town, suggestion of a canal connecting with The Nile, a jetty and the oldest papyrus fragment detailing some of the construction arrangements found nearby.

2,600 BC: Approximate age of Silbury Hill (WDP, 28/6/96).

2,600 BC: Approximate late Bronze Age date for the fall of Troy based on archaeological evidence. See also 1194 BC. Recorded by Homer about 8 BC.

2,600 BC: Bluestones first used at Stonehenge (Wikipedia). These are the ones believed to have originated in the Preseli hills in Pembrokeshire and may have reached Salisbury Plain by glacial action or human agency.

2,600 -
2,400 BC: Sarsen stones first used at Stonehenge.

2,551 -
2,528 BC: Approximate date of construction of the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza (orthodox dating).

2,500 BC: End of Saharan 'wet phase' (see 4,000 BC, above).

2,500 BC: Traditional Biblical chronology fixes the time of Noah about here.

2,500 BC: Malta's Hypogeum is estimated to have fallen out of use (archaeologists estimate over 6,000 people buried on the site). See also 4,000 BC.

2,500 BC: Approximate age of Great Pyramid, based on alignment to polar stars (National Geographic, Sept 2001).

2,500 BC: Approximate age of Marden Henge dwelling (floor surface discovered in 2010). This henge, almost invisible except through aerial photography, is mid-way between Avebury and Stonehenge and bigger than both.

2,500 BC: R1b invaders (purveyors of red hair) expand westwards across Europe from the Balkans. Develop the Unetice culture.

2,500 BC: Estimated age of Grime's Graves (Neolithic flint mines) in Norfolk. Over 400 pits.

 2,500 -
2,460 BC: Durrington Walls neolithic village, Wiltshire, believed to have been abandoned (Stonehenge Riverside Project/Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project).
 
2,500 -
2,000 BC:Most individuals in study of British Bronze Age DNA "had little or no detectable British Neolithic ancestry, except a few who carried up to 40%. the average was 6%. After 2,000 BC the average doubled to 12% and most burials shared around 10% of this ancestry." (British Archaeology, July-Aug 2021, p.39).  
 
2,480 -
2,450 BC: Henge replaces Durrington Walls village.   

2,450 BC: Huge DNA study (data extracted from 400 ancient remains across Europe) shows 90% of the existing population of Britain was replaced by peoples with steppe-related ancestry from eastern Europe. (These distinct from the 'Iberians'.) The extent of the change shocked scientists. Beaker pottery so far traced to Spain around 4,700 years ago thought to have spread to Central Europe then in all directions including Britain but it is now tought this was a cultural diffusion rather than migration-led. Sources: BBC News site 21/2/2018 and British Archaeology May-June 2018.

2,450 BC: Dr Aardsma's fixing of the date of the Exodus, based on a revision of the traditional Biblical chronology. http://www.biblicalchronologist.org/about/bio.php

2,450 BC: Jericho destroyed? (Aardsma, see above).

2,400 -
   700 BC:  Bronze Age in Britain. Individual 'Chieftain' burials begin; round barrows more common. Stone avenues, standing stones: "Golden Age of the Megalith Builders" (Butler). Slight drying out of Avon salt marsh, or fall in sea level? (Cox, et al).

2,358 -
2,119 BC: Tower of Babel episode? (White, based on Biblical chronology.)

2,354 BC: Environmental downturn (Mike Baillie). See also 1628 BC, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Baillie

2,350 BC: Date of the Noachian Flood, based on Ussher - Whitcomb and Morris, (p.391). Other conservative Creationists place it more generally between 2,500 and 2,300 BC....or even 8,500 BC (op cit).

2,350 -
870 BC: Approximate time range of the Sub-Boreal; hyper-arid period in Egypt and some other areas of North Africa (P.I.S.O.W.C.).

 2,345 BC: Earth's axial tilt changed, according to some Creationists, maybe to 28 degrees or more, but a slow precession has brought it to the 23.4 degrees of today, thus moderating the climate away from seasonal extremes.

2,345 -
2,000 BC: Narrow ring events in Irish oak tree-ring chronology (Schoch, p.248), also Dunbavin, Under Ancient Skies... Previous one 3099/5 BC; next: 1628 BC on 500 - 1,000 yr cycle.

2,340 -
2,284 BC: Current best estimate of the dates for Sargon of Akkad. 

2,334 BC: Sargon unites Mesopotamia.  

2,300 BC: Beaker people start to arrive in Britain. First appearance of round barrows.

 2,300 BC: Orkney's Stone Age temple at Brodgar seems to have been abandoned (see 3000 BC and climate events below).

2,300 BC: Erection of the 'bluestones' at Stonehenge, according to Darvill and Wainwright from their 2008 dig. They say this coincides with the date of the high status burial of the 'Amesbury Archer'. N.b. Some such as Dr Olwen Williams-Thorpe question the notion of these stones being brought by man from Preseli, favouring the eastward expansion of Welsh glaciers at the peak of the most recent Ice Age.

2,300 -
1,800 BC: Period of the Ice Age, according to some Creationists. At the end of this period the sea level would obviously rise. Carl Munck, the archaeocryptographer, placed Noah's Flood and a major Chinese Flood at 4,300 years ago, or approximately 2,320 BC. Go back another 4,300 years to 6,640 BC and he claims this is when a polar shift took place. And a further 4,300 years takes us to 10,900 BC when he thought Atlantis was destroyed.

2,200 BC: The '4.2 kiloyear aridification event' (Wikipedia), which caused world-wide climatic catastrophes and civilisation upheaval including the gradual collapse of the Old Kingdom in Egypt and the fall of the Akkadian Empire. Change to drier conditions, lowering of  lake levels, and reduced river discharge. But, flood disasters in China, northern India, Greece, Australia and USA (CDE, p.16). Dead Sea level suddenly drops by around 100m (Frumkin et al, Holocene 1.3, 1991). Coincided with a cooling in the North Atlantic known as the Bond Event. Droughts lasting up to 278 years across SW Asia.

2,200 BC: Remains of comet destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah ? (Times, 30/3/97.)

2,200 BC: The Ness of Brodgar community seems to have been disbanded, with all major structures dismantled. Wetter, stormier? Communal tombs sealed up, "elaborate stone villages like Skara Brae" in time replaced by individual homesteads, stone circles re-imagined. Bronze Age begins. Orcadians looked north and east for trade rather than south to the Scottish mainland? (Orkney: Britain's Ancient Capital? BBC2, January 2017.)

2,167 BC: Estimated date of Abram’s birth (Whitcomb and Morris, p.478.)

2,150 -
2,006 BC: Beginning of the Zodiacal Age of Aries (to 6 BC, 1 AD or AD 498, depending on Mann, Burlingame or Heindel-Rosicrucian schemes). Previously Taurus; superceded by Pisces.

2,100 BC: Erection of the 'bluestones' at Stonehenge, according to Darvill and Wainwright (see 2,300 BC and 7,000 BC).

2,050 -
1,710 BC: Currently accepted 'Middle Kingdom' in Egypt, during which Osiris became the most important deity. 

2,049 BC: Seahenge (Norfolk, UK) trees felled, according to dendrochronological/radiocarbon dating. Early Bronze Age in Britain.

2,046 BC: Mentuhotep re-unites Upper and Lower Egypt.  

2,030 -
1,640 BC: 'Middle Kingdom' of Egypt, dynasties 11-13 (conventional chronology). 

2,000 BC: Estimated age of the Aorounga crater in Chad ("4,000 years old" -Verschuur).

2,000 BC: Austronesian speakers (from China/Taiwan) reach Sumatra (Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel p.341).

 2,000 BC: Sea levels rise to about 3 metres above present height (RMS conference, p.12).

2,000 -
1,800 BC: Tarim peoples in Western China, originally thought to be of pure European stock (Chinese texts mention people with red hair and blue-green eyes) occupied this basin; latest research shows they were a genetic mix of Europeans, Siberians, Mongols and Indians (Channel 4 Mummies series, 2008).

2,000 -
1,500 BC: Brief warming trend.

2,000 -
600 BC: Bronze Age copper mining activity on the Great Orme, North Wales. Re-opened by the Romans 100s of years later. Copper + tin = bronze. Now thought to be the largest prehistoric mine so far discovered in the world.

1,940 -
1,720: Ferriby boat number 2 carbon dated to this time (see also 1,880 BC).

1,900 -
1,800 BC: Estimated date of the Akkadain flood myth featuring the hero Atrahasis. The most complete surviving recension of the story is the Old Babylonian copy dated to around 1,650 BC. 

1,900 -
1,600 BC: Old Babylonian empire.

1,900 -
1,350 BC: Traditionally, the period estimated for the Biblical Joseph. See also 1662 BC.

1,880-
1,680 BC: Ferriby boat number 1 is radio-carbon dated to this period. 'Egypt in England' fans would use similarity to Egyptian vessels to support their case for England being a colony at this time. See also 1,940 BC.

1,800 -
   430 BC: Hebrew Bible estimated to have been written between. The oldest book, in 'Paleo-Hebrew', is Job.

1,792 BP: Code of Hammurabi, the most extensive set of criminal and civil laws surviving from Mesopotamia.

1,750 BC: A cuneiform tablet, discovered in the Middle East in 1948, mentions an oncoming Flood and gives instructions for the Babylonian Atra-Hasis to build an ark of ropes, ribs and bitumen. The Ark was to be circular and about half the size of a football pitch. The animals went in "two by two". Refers to events of about 1,000 years before. (The Real Noah's Ark, Channel 4, 14/9/2014.)
 
1,750 -
1550 BC: Nebra Sky Disc found near Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt thought to have been in use. It is a Bronze Age object from Unetice Culture, from Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Associated axes and sword blades date it typologically to 1,600 BC.The copper came from Mitterberg but the tin and gold from deposits were laid in the River Carnon in Cornwall. (British Archaeology, July-August 2021, pp. 44-46.
 
1,700 BC: Probable end of Indus Valley (Harappan) civilisation.

 1,700 BC: First known alphabet, Eastern Mediterranean.

1,700 -
1,600 BC: Final extinction of Mammoths of Wrangel Island (Wikipedia).

1,700 -
1,500 BC: i.e. 3,700-3,500 before present, period for which there is uncertainty over atmospheric carbon 14 production, affecting dating.

1,700 -
1,600 BC: Low tree ring event (Dunbavin, Under Ancient Skies...): axial wobble?

1,700 -
1,600 BC: Pavlopetri, 'City Beneath The Waves' (BBC4, 1/8/2012), about 5,000 years old and thought to have flourished but now 3-4 metres under water off the south coast of the Greek Peloponnese.  The town is believed to have been submerged by successive earthquakes around 1,000 BC.

1,700 -
   500 BC: The circumpolar stars Kochab (Beta Ursae Minoris) and Pherkad serve as Pole Stars, though they were never as close or as bright as Polaris.

1,682 BC: Arrival of Israelites in Egypt (Rohl, Legend).

1,663 -
1,420 BC:  The Thera (Santorini) eruption in the Mediterranean could have happened at any time between these years. The earliest is based on the best current radiocarbon calculations and the latest a surmise based on the most recent date when the palaces of the Minoan '1B' civilisation were destroyed. In between, there are suggestive records of when Bristlecone Pines were frost damaged, Irish bog oaks retarded and Greenland ice core layers contained anomalies (Oppenheimer, Eruptions That Shook The World).

1,662 BC: Biblical Joseph born (Rohl, p.330).

1,663 -
1,600 BC: Radiocarbon dating of the eruption of Thera and its effects on Mediterranean Minoan civilisation.

1,650 BC: Old Babylonian copy of the Flood myth, written in Akkadian.

1,628 BC: Radiocarbon data from Irish Bog Oaks, and Bristlecone pines show poor growth - result of Thera volcanic eruption? Confirmed by Schoch, p.248. Previous low: 2345 BC; next: 1159 BC. Rain of sulphuric acid detected in layers of Greenland ice (Gibbins). Environmental downturn - Mike Baillie.

1,628 BC: Sunday Times of 17/3/96 article suggests volcanic ash caused the Biblical seven year famine. N.B. Exodus 13:21 refers to a "pillar of cloud/fire" -volcanic dust?

1,626 BC: Supposed date for the eruption of Thera, destroying Santorini 'Atlantis'  according to Dunbavin, (p.159), and BBC’s Ancient Apocalypse 2/8/01). A.A. states this was the second largest eruption of all time, after the 1815 one of Tambora in Indonesia. BBC2 Timewatch programme of 20/4/07 propounds tsunami theory for the ultimate destruction of Minoan power, as Crete is bombarded with waves after the eruption. Shells, pottery found 1 km inland dated to match the time of the blast. Minoan civilisation partially recovers, until probable invasion by the Myceneans in about 1420 BC.

1,623 BC: Greenland ice core anomaly: volcanic event?

1,600 BC: Bronze Age Sanxingdui civilisation emerges in China? (Wikipedia.)

1,560 BC: Alternative date of the Deucalion Flood, caused by a cometary (Phaeton) impact according to Beaumont (1932) - CDE. See also 1,528 BC.

1,535 BC: Estimated date of the birth of Moses (Rohl, David. Test of Time, conclusion 17/9/95 Ch.4).

1,528 BC: Estimated date of the Deucalion Flood (Calvesius/Helvicus and chronology of St Jerome).

1,500 BC: Santorini /Minoan eruption: Galanopolous and Bacon (1969) argued the date Plato gives as 9000 years before himself should be read as 900 years should Solon, who his informant referenced, have made an erroneous translation from the old Egyptian number system. Plato lived 300 BC, Solon about 300 years before that so 600 plus 900 years = 1500 BC. But see also 1,628 BC.

1,500 BC:  Moon settles into current orbit after an asteroid incident? (See 3,500 BC.)

1,500 -
1,000 BC: 3,500 year old ‘train’of people leaving SE Asia finally arrives in Eastern Polynesia (Oppenheim). See also 6000 BC for the origin of this migration.

 1,500 -
    600 BC: Bronze Age decline in Britain?  No evidence of further ceremonial centres, existing ones apparently abandoned after 1,200 BC, fewer and smaller round barrows. Urn cemeteries continue for a while but with poorer grave goods, bones pulverised (Hutton, Pagan Religions of the British Isles p.132).

1,500 -
   400 BC: Olmec civilisation in Mexico:  renowned for their 'Negroid' head sculptures (Hancock, Van Sertima), but mainstream archaeologists point to the epicanthric folds of the eyes which suggest an eastern origin.

1,500 BC -
   300 AD: Renewed growth in continental glaciers with sea level drop of between 2-3 metres below present day levels (www.physical geography.net).

 1,490 -
1,470 BC: Possible period in which the Minoan 1B palaces were destroyed.

1,495 BC: Estimated date of the Biblical Exodus (Velikovsky).

1,460 BC: Estimated date of the Deucalion flood based on the chronology of St Jerome (Wikipedia). See also 1528 BC.

1,450 BC: Venus passes close to Earth, according to Velikovsky.

1,450 BC: Creationist estimate for the writing of Genesis.

1,447 BC: Estimated date of Exodus, 13th Dynasty (Rohl, Test of Time, p.330).

1,420 BC: Mycenean invasion of Crete?

1,400 -
   600 BC: Approximate dating of late Bronze Age Uffington White Horse, using Optical Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) dating - measuring when the minerals in the lower layers of the chalk trenches forming the figure were last exposed to sunlight (Biltcliffe & Hoare). It is the only chalk hill figure in Britain proven to be prehistoric.

1,390 BC: Volcanic blast related to Thera? (Feuerbacher).

1,350 BC: Tara skeleton dated to. Faience beads of almost identical manufacture and design to those of 18th Dynasty Egypt, according to http://www.occult-mysteries.org/egypt-in-england.html 

1,320 BC: Traditional, estimated date of the Exodus (BRE and C). See also 2450, 1460 and 1447 BC.

1,300 BC: Grimspound, a Bronze Age settlement develops on Dartmoor. The concentration of Bronze Age (2,500-800 BC) sites in this part of Devon indicates an equable climate followed by a deterioration in the climate.

1,300 BC: Onwards from this date, European farmers divide landscape into close-knit field systems. Large scale herding. Cool summers (Fagan).

1,280 BC: Santorin professor's estimated date for the Exodus (Sunday Times 17/3/96).

1,250 BC: Herodotus place the fall of Troy at this date.

1,250 BC: Academic historians’ estimate of date of the Exodus (not long after monotheist Akhenaten, who died around 1336 -1334 BC).

1,200 BC: A turning point in European and Near Eastern history. In Central Europe the Halstatt culture, which is traditionally associated with the classical Celtic civilisation, supplants the Urnfield culture. Near Eastern civilisations from Mycenean Greece to Egypt are destroyed by the 'Sea Peoples', probably technologically advanced Indo-European warrior peoples from Steppes/Balkans, as the Bronze Age nears its end. (http://www.eupedia.com/europe/Haplogroup_R1b_Y-DNA.shtml#S21-U106). Droughts: 'The Bronze Age Collapse'.

1,200 BC: Jewish people first appear as group of tribes in the historical record (Olson, p.106).

1,200 BC: Villages, first thought to have developed during the Stone Age, replacing isolated settlements in Britain.

1,200 -
1,000 BC: Bronze Age Sanxingdui civilisation flourishes in Sichuan  region of China. 

1,200 -
1,000 BC: First of the hill forts in Britain and Ireland (Hutton).
 
1,200 -
   586 BC: Hebrew said to have flourished as a spoken language in this period.
 
1,200 -
   500 BC: Iron Age in Near East (later in Northern Europe).

1,194 -
1,184 BC: Trojan War based on Eritosthenes' estimate. Herodotus places it at 1250 BC. Harper, around 650 BC.

1,159 BC: Egyptologists place the Hekla 3 eruption at 1159 BC to explain famines under Rameses III in the context of a wider Bronze Age upheaval.

1,159 -
1,141 BC: Virtually no summer growth rings of British trees (BBC2 Coast, August 2005)- possible famine? Environmental downturn - Mike Baillie. Confirmed by Schoch, p.248 (Irish oak tree ring chronology; prev. 1628 BC; next: AD 540).

 1,159 BC:
"Star of Anath" fell on Libya, according to Merenptah, Egyptian text. Was it a comet? Caused the flight of refugees into Egypt? Hekla eruption in Iceland, too (Fagan); conspicuous ash layer in GISP-2 Greenland ice core.

1,150 BC: Most recent climatic disturbance. Invasion of Egypt by "sea peoples", collapse of Hittite empire, 'dark age' in Greece for 300 years (Dunbavin, p.159).
 
1,100-
   800 BC: Bronze age wheel/hub, found at Must Farm in Cambridgeshire, dated to; earliest and largest so far found in the UK; found February 2016.

1,010 BC: First year of King David's reign (Rohl, p.328).

1,000 BC: Climatic deterioration in the British Isles, which became cooler and wetter. Narrowing tree rings in Ireland for 18 years. Bronze Age retreat from uplands. Acid deposition.

1,000 BC: Successive earthquakes submerge the oldest known submerged archaeological town site of Pavlopetri in Greece.

1,000 BC: Hekla 3 volcanic eruption, its most severe of the Holocene, vaguely tied to this date.

970 -
931 BC: Traditional dates for the reign of Solomon.

900 BC: Estimated date of Cascajal block of Olmec writing found in Mexico (Independent, 15th Sept 2006).

900 -
800 BC: Rhodes having a successful merchant fleet, the island state is thought to have issued the Lex Rhodia, a set of rules and equitable principles for ship owners. It is referred to in Roman texts and the core was probably adopted by Rome once it became a maritime power.The lex Rhodia provided a basis for the Rolls of Oleron (Rules of Oleron) promulgated by Eleanor of Aquitaine in the 12th Century.

900 -
700 BC: Old Testament book of Deuteronomy composed, according to most scholars.

850 BC: Sharp cold snap in Europe, coinciding with reduction in Solar activity comparable with Maunder Minimum AD 1645-1710 (Fagan)? 

814 BC: Phoenicians found Carthage. 

800 -
500 BC: Somerset peat relatively dry (Peat Moors Centre).

800 -
1 BC: Cold snap, in relation to today's temperatures, during 'Sub-Atlantic Period' (Langdon).

776 BC: First Olympic Games.

771 -
476 BC: Beginnings of the Great Wall of China (Wikipedia).

750 BC: Iron smelting brought to Britain, triggering the Iron Age.

750 - 
664 BC: “Egypt ruled by Kushite Pharaohs” (TAWH, p.45); 25th Dynasty.

750  -
150 BC: Warming trend.

712 BC: Kushite invasion of Egypt (Rohl, Legend, p19).

700 -
600 BC: Time of Tartessus/os or Tarshish and it's wealth supplying the other Mediterranean cultures. Located in Southern Spain near Cadiz, this harbour city has been linked with Atlantis. Herodotus placed it west of the Pillars of Hercules. The archaeological site at Cancho Roano, Spain, which also betrays Phoenician influence, could be a Tartessian sanctuary, dating from the 6th Century BC to 370 BC.

650 BC: Approximate revisionist date of the Trojan War, according to M J Harper. His theory would explain an embarrassing lack of archaeology to cover the historyical record 400 years prior to this.

640 - 
560 BC: Time of Solon, who received the Atlantis story from the Egyptians. The disaster was supposed to have been 9000 years before his time, i.e. 9600 BC (see above).

600 BC: Hill forts characterise the European landscape; increase in inter-tribal violence caused by denser populations and food shortages (Fagan). Droughts severe on the Steppes of Central Asia. Greeks trade with North-Western tribes via Massilia (Marseilles). Etruscan civilisation peaks.

600 - 
500 BC: Lane Fox estimates ‘priestly’ first version of the Biblical Creation written.

600 -
501 BC: Period in which the sources for Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers are said to have been written by the 'Yahwist' (non-Priestly source). Some place the compositions a century or two later. See also 571-486 BC. Lane Fox broadly agrees.

600 -
200 BC: Cold period preceding 'Roman warming' (Singer and Avory, p.xv).

 597 -
539 BC: Jews captured and exiled in Babylon. Freedom comes when Babylon falls to Cyrus The Great of Persia.

590 BC: Solon hears about Atlantis from Egyptian priests, who could refer to inscriptions on pillars in their temple.

 587 BC: Second deportation of the Jews to Babylon; Jerusalem destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar's men.

571 -
486 BC: 'Priestly' source of Old Testament writings, according to most current scholars. See also 600-501 BC.

 563 -
400 BC: Approximate time of the Buddha.

551 -
479 BC: Confucius.

550 BC: Mid-point of Mayan 'Golden Age' in terms of calendrical cycles.

539 BC: Persian conquest of Babylon, leading to the liberation of the Jews.

537 BC: Death of ('King') Arthur in Annales Cambriae.

500 BC: Celts start to arrive in Britain from Central Europe. Complexion of British society begins to change.

500 BC: Around this time the global population is estimated to be about one hundred million (Whyte, p.5).

500 BC -
present: Polaris serves as Pole Star for navigation, as all the other stars appear to rotate around it. It was preceded by the Kochab and Pherkad, also in Ursa Minor. Polaris will reach it's maximum declination (proximity to the zenith as observed by someone in the northern hemisphere) in Febraury 2102 AD and will then start to move away. Gamma Cephei will be the next effective Pole Star from around 3000 AD.

500 BC -
present: Sub-Atlantic climatic period of Holocene; it becomes slightly cooler and wetter in Western Europe (Dunbavin); Iron Age deterioration .

479 BC -
323 BC: 'Classical' period of Greek art and sculpture; sudden emergence of sophisticated, naturalistic representation of the human body.

469/70 -
399 BC: Socrates.

450 BC: Temperatures rise again, reaching a peak around 1000 AD. Trend then broadly downward (Feuerbacher, p.4).

450 BC: Most scholars believe this is roughly when the Old Testament books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers were written, based on prior sources. See also 900-700 BC for Deuteronomy. 

432 BC: Greeks (Meton) work out 18.6 year cycle of the Moon (northerly and southerly monthly extremes).

427 -
347 BC: Time of Plato.

384 -
322 BC: Aristotle.

359 -
347 BC: Atlantis story surfaces in Plato's Timaeus and Critias Dialogues, passed down from an ancestor who live 200 years before.

331 BC: Alexandria founded by Alexander The Great.

323 -
246 BC: Royal Library of Alexandria opened, under the Ptolemys.

300 BC -
300 AD: By this time the 'ecotone' - climate transition - between the 'continental' and Mediterranean zones had moved north (Fagan). This meant warmer, dryer summers with wet winters in France and other parts of Western Europe. Britain, Scandinavia retains 'Atlantic' climate.

300 BC:The Roman Empire expands, checked at times by 'barbarous' Celtic tribes. 

287 -
212 BC: Archimedes of Syracuse.

250 BC: Most of the Old Testament completed by this date (Fox).

221 BC: China unified politically under first Qin Emperor, Qin Shi Huang.

220 -
207 BC: Silk Road established, during the Han Dynasty (Wiki).

210 -
209 BC: Terracotta army figures buried for Emperor.

208 BC: Environmental downturn - Mike Baillie. See also 1159 BC, etc.

208 BC:  Mithras said to have ascended into Heaven, aged 64. 

200 BC -
600 AD: Global warming.  In 829 and 1010 AD ice formed on the Nile  and 800-1 AD the Black Sea froze. (900-1300 AD: medieval warming/Little Climate Optimum followed by Little Ice Age, 1300-1850 AD).

196 BC: Rosetta Stone inscribed on behalf of Ptolemy V of Egypt. (Rosetta Stone texts are Ancient Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphs and demotic Egyptian, providing the key to interpretation between the languages.)

175 BC: Mithraism, a development of Zoroastrianism, born.

150 BC -
900 AD: Cooling trend.

146 BC: Library of Carthage burned.

70 -
60 BC: Pergamon (Asia Minor) coins dated from the Antikythera wreck. This yielded pottery from the same period and the 'Antikythera mechanism' which has been claimed to be the oldest known analogue computer. Some scientists have tentatively attributed its design to Archimedes. Cicero (106-43 BC) described similar mechanisms being available earlier and may have their origins in Babylonian, rather than Greek design.

55 BC: First invasion of Britain by Julius Caesar. He notes the population was "exceedingly large, the ground thickly studded with homesteads" -evidence of dense settlement especially along the Severn and Thames river basins.

51 BC: Gaul conquered by Julius Caesar.

43 BC: Julius Caesar adds 80 days to the year.

27 BC -
476 AD: Roman Empire in Western Europe.

12 BC: Appearance of Halley’s Comet (Lane Fox).

  8 -
  4 BC: Most likely date range for the birth of Jesus because Herod the Great died in 4 BC, according to biblical scholars. On 17th April, 6 BC Jupiter was in Aries along with the Moon, Sun and Saturn all of which 'presaged' the birth of a great king. Jupiter shortly went into retrograde motion, then became stationery for a while, recalling the description of the Star of Bethlehem's behaviour in Matthew's gospel. There was also a triple conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in Pisces on 27th March, 7 BC. Suggested also by Babylonian cuneiform tablets dated to 7-6 BC.

5 BC: Nova (not Supernova) theory of the 'Star of Bethlehem':
http://www.observadores-cometas.com/cometas/Star/Visibility_Star.htm
argues that Chinese records of a 'simple bright nova' in late March in northern Capricorn or southern Aquila are consistent with the N.T. Matthew account and probably led to the interest of the (probable) Zoroastrian priests from Persia making their journey to Jerusalem and thence to Bethlehem.This was approximately three years after Caesar Augustus ordered a Census in 8 BC, also mentioned in the N.T.

Whether or not either of the above theories is consistent with the apparent movement of the star, comet-like, is up to the reader of this site!

1 BC: The year before 1 AD, there being no concept of 'zero' in the west when the dating system was devised in 525 AD.

TODAY: Earth's orbit similar to that of 400,000 years ago; we are 10,000 years into an interglacial but next cold spell not expected for another 15,000 years....National Geographic, 28/10/2010.


Abbreviations.

b-billion.
BAGAS- Bristol and Gloucester Archaeological Society Proceedings.
BP 'Before Present', or before 2000 AD.
BRE and Bible Reader’s Encyclopedia Concordance.
c.-approximately.
C-century.
Caltech- California Institute of Technology.
Cat-catastrophe.
CDE - Catastrophes, the Diluvial Evidence.
CDU-Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained.
CE - Common Era, the same as but now the preferred designation to AD.
CWH-Chronology of World History: the Ancient World. H.E.Mellersh.
DK-Dorling Kindersley (publishers).
EITE- Eden in the East. Oppenheim, Stephen.
IHJ- Incredible Human Journey series, Alice Roberts, BBC May 2009.
m-million.
Legend -Legend: the Genesis of Civilisation. Rohl, David. Century, 1998.
MYBP- Million Years Before Present.
NF Noah’s Flood. Ryan, William and Pitman, Walter.
OT- Old Testament.
PISOWC - Proceedings of the International Symposium on World Climate 8000-0 BC.
RI- Royal Institution lecture delivered January 1996, BBC2.
SIS-Society for Interdisciplinary Studies, founded 1974 post-Velikovsky.
TAWH-Times Atlas of World History, 1993 .
TCBC They Came Before Columbus. Van Sertima, Ivan.
trad- traditional.
UV Unauthorized Version. Fox, Robin Lane.
UVD- Ultimate Visual Dictionary.
WBE World Book Encyclopaedia, 1992.
WDP Western Daily Press.
WTSF When The Sky Fell. Rand and Rose Flem-Ath. BCA, 1995.
y or yrs- years.


Bibliography.

Allan, D.S. and Delair, J.B. When The Earth Nearly Died. Gateway Books, 1995.
Bauval, Robert, and Hancock, Keeper of Genesis: Quest for the Hidden Legacy of Mankind. Arrow, 1997.
Bell, Matin and Walker, Michael. Late Quaternary Environmental Change. 2nd edition, Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2005.
Bible Reader’s Encyclopedia and Concordance. Rev. by W. M. Clow, n.d.
Bryson, Bill. Short History of Nearly Everything. Doubleday, 2003.
Butler, Alan. How To Read Prehistoric Monuments. Watkins, 2011.
Chronology of World History: the Ancient World. H. E. Mellersh, Helicon reissue 1994.
Cox, Simon et al. Archaeology and History of the Former Bryan Brothers Garage Site, Deanery Road...Trans. Bristol and Gloucester Archaeological Soctiety, 124 (2006), pp. 55-71.
Croinin, Daibhi (ed). New History of Ireland, vol. 1. OUP, 2005.
Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs and Steel. Vintage, 1997.
Dunbavin, Paul. The Atlantis Researches. Third Millennium, 1995.
Edwards, I. E. S. Pyramids of Egypt, 3rd r.e. Penguin, 1991.
Fagan, Brian. The Long Summer. Granta Books, 2004.
Feuerbacher, Alan. More Evidence for the Ice Ages. Taken from the Web at www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/6040/flood16htm.
Flem-Ath, Rand and Rose. When the Sky Fell. Orion, 1996.
Fox, Robin Lane. The Unauthorised Version. Viking Penguin, 1991.
Freeman, Gordon R. Hidden Stonehenge. Watkins, 2012.
Galanopoulos, A. G. and Bacon, E. Atlantis, the Truth Behind the Legend. Nelson, 1969.
Gibbins, David. Atlantis. Headline, 2005 (only historical notes used following work of fiction).
Goudie, Andrew. Environmental Change: Contemporary Problems in Geography. Clarendon Press, 1992.
Gould, Stephen Jay. Wonderful Life. Hutchinson Radius, 1990.
Hancock, Graham. Underworld: Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age. Michael Joseph, 2002.
Hapgood, Charles. Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilisation in the Ice Age. Chilton Books, 1966.
Hapgood, Charles. Path of the Pole. 1968.
Harper, M. J. and Vered, H. The Megalithic Empire. Nathan Carmody, 2012.
Hurrell, Stephen. Dinosaurs and the Expanding Earth. One Off Publishing, 1994.
Hutton, Ronald. Pagan Religions of the British Isles. Blackwell, 1991.
Keys, David CDE Catastrophes: the Diluvial Evidence. Palmer,T., Nottingham Trent University, paper presented at SIS...conference....19/9/99.
Kolosimo, Peter. Timeless Earth. Sphere, 1974.
Lamb. H. H. Climate: Present, Past and Future. Vol. 2, Methuen, 1977.
Lamb, Simon, and Sington, David. Earth Story. BBC Books, 1998.
Lane, Nick. Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life. Oxford University Press, 2005.
Langdon, Robert John. Prehistoric Britain - The Stonehenge Enigma. ABC Publishing, 2010.
Macdougall, Doug. Frozen Earth: the Once and Future Story of Ice Ages. University of California Press, 2004.
McCarthy, Dennis. Here Be Dragons, Oxford University Press, 2009.
McGovern, Una (ed.) Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained. Chambers-Harrap, 2007.
Miller, Ben. It's Not Rocket Science. Sphere, 2012.
Noel, M. and Tarling, D. H. Laschamp Geomagnetic Event in Nature vol.253 1975 pp. 705-6.
Olson, Steve. Mapping Human History. Bloomsbury, 2002 .
Oppenheim, Stephen. Eden in the East. Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1998.
Oppenheimer, Clive. Eruptions That Shook The World. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Proceedings of the International Symposium on World Climate, see Royal Meteorological Society.
Proctor, M. Vegetation of Britain and Ireland. Collins (New Naturalist Library), 2013.
Rees, Martin. Just Six Numbers. Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1999.
Rohl, David. Legend - the Genesis of Civilisation. Century, 1998.
Royal Meteorological Society. Proceedings of the International Symposium held at Imperial College London 18 and 19 April 1966.
Ryan, William and Pitman, Walter. Noah's Flood. Touchstone, 2000.
Scarre, Chris (ed). The Human Past. Thames and Hudson, 2005.
Schoch, Robert M. Voices Of The Rocks. Thorsons, 1999.
Siegel, L. Five Worst Extinctions in Earth's history. www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planet earth/extinction.
Singer, S. Fred and Avery, Dennis T. Unstoppable Global Warming. Rowman and Littlefield, 2007 (for Dansgaard hypothesis).
Smith, A. The Weather: The Truth About The Health Of Our Planet. Hutchinson, 2000.
Stringer, Chris. Homo Britannicus: The Incredible Story Of Human Life In Britain. Penguin, 2006.
Taylor, Timothy. The Buried Soul: How Humans Invented Death. Fourth Estate, 2002.
Ultimate Visual Dictionary. Dorling Kindersley, 1994.
Van Sertima, Ivan. They Came Before Columbus. Random House, 1976.
Velikovsky, I. Worlds In Collision. Gollancz, 1950.
Verschuur, Gerrit L. Impact! The Threat of Comets and Asteroids. Oxford University Press, 1996.
Walker, Frank. The Bristol Region. Nelso, 1972.
Whitcomb, John C. and Morris, Henry M. The Genesis Flood. Baker Book House, 1961.
White, A. J. Monty. How Old Is The Earth? Evangelical Press, 1985.
Whyte, I. World Without End? Environmental Disaster and the Collapse of Empires. I.B. Tauris, 2008.
Wilkinson, John. Probing The New Solar System. CSIRO Publishing, 2008.



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