10th millennium BC
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The 10th millennium BC spanned the years 10000 through 9001 BC. It marks the beginning of the Mesolithic and Epipaleolithic periods, which is the first part of the Holocene epoch. Agriculture, based on the cultivation of primitive forms of millet and rice, occurred in Southwest Asia.[1][page needed] Although agriculture was being developed in the Fertile Crescent, it would not be widely practiced for another 2,000 years.[citation needed]
World population at this time was more or less stable, at Mesolithic level reached during the Last Glacial Maximum, estimated at roughly five million,[2] most of whom were hunter-gatherer communities scattered over all continents except Antarctica and Zealandia. The Würm glaciation ended, and the beginning interglacial, which endures to this day, allowed the re-settlement of northern regions.
Contents
Events[edit]
Göbekli Tepe, Şanlıurfa, 2011
| The Stone Age |
|---|
| ↑ before Homo (Pliocene) |
| ↓ Chalcolithic |
- c. 10,000 BC: First cave drawings of the Mesolithic period are made, with war scenes and religious scenes.
- c. 10,000 BC: Bottle Gourd is domesticated and used as a carrying vessel.
- c. 10,000 BC: The end of the most recent glaciation.
- c. 9700 BC: Younger Dryas cold period and the Pleistocene epoch ends, start of the Holocene epoch.
- c. 9500 BC: There is evidence of harvesting, though not necessarily cultivation, of wild grasses in Asia Minor about this time.
- c. 9500 BC: First building phase of the temple complex at Göbekli Tepe.
- c. 9300 BC: Figs were apparently cultivated in the Jordan River valley.[3]
- c. 9100 BC: Oldest known megaliths are created at the Göbekli Tepe temple complexes, some up to 20 tons
- c. 9000 BC: Neolithic culture began in Ancient Near East.
- c. 9000 BC: Near East: First stone structures at Jericho are built.
Old World[edit]
- Asia: Cave sites near the Caspian Sea are inhabited by humans.
- Africa: Wall paintings found in Ethiopia and Eritrea depict human activity; some of the older paintings are thought to date back to around 10,000 BC.[4]
- Europe: Azilian (Painted Pebble Culture) people occupy northern Spain and Southern France.
- Europe: Magdalenian culture flourishes and creates cave paintings in France.
- Europe: Solutrean culture begins horse hunting.
- Egypt: Early sickle blades and grain grinding stones appear [5]
- Jordan: Wadi Faynan (WF16): large, oval-shaped building. Early farmers lived here between 9,600 and 8,200 BC, cultivating wild plants such as wild barley, pistachio, and fig trees, and hunting or herding wild goats, cattle, and gazelle.[6]
- Kurdistan region in Iran: Zagros mountains near Kermanshah: very early agriculture (wheat, barley).[7]
- Syria: Jerf el-Ahmar, occupied between 9200 and 8700 BC.
- Japan: The Jōmon people use pottery, fish, hunt and gather acorns, nuts and edible seeds. There are 10,000 known sites.
- Mesopotamia: People begin to collect wild wheat and barley probably to make malt then beer.
- Norway: First traces of population in Randaberg.
- Persia: The goat is domesticated.
- Sahara: Bubalus Period.
Americas[edit]
North America[edit]
- Paleo-Indian hunter-gatherer societies live nomadically in the countryside
- Blackwater Draw forms in eastern New Mexico, evincing human activity
- Folsom people flourish throughout the Southwestern United States
- Settlement at the Tanu site in the Queen Charlotte Islands of modern-day British Columbia begins, starting the longest continual occupation in territory now belonging to Canada[citation needed]
- Petroglyphs at Winnemucca Lake in what is today northwest Nevada were carved by this time, possibly as early as 12.8 kya to as late as 8,500 BC[8]
Australasia[edit]
Australia[edit]
- Indigenous Australian peoples hunter-gather societies live nomadically in the countryside
- Arnhem land-bridge floods over and Northern Australia is separated from Papua New Guinea
- Aboriginal diet and land shift after great flooding, many Aboriginal people shift from land hunting such as the staple kangaroo and begin to fish on the new accessible coasts. Fish and turtles enter into indigenous art
- The multi-purpose boomerang disappears from use in Arnhem Land and northern indigenous communities
Environmental changes[edit]
c. 10,000 BC:
- North America: Dire wolf, Smilodon, giant beaver, ground sloth, giant Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi), woolly mammoth, mastodons, giant short-faced bear, American cheetah, scimitar cats (Homotherium), American camels, American horses, and American lions all become extinct
- Wooly mammoths still survive in small isolated populations on islands, notably Wrangel Island and St. Paul Island. Ground sloths still survive for about another 5,000 years in the Caribbean.
- Long Island becomes an island when waters break through on the western end to the interior lake
- Bering Sea: Bering land bridge from Siberia to North America covered in water
- Europe: Permanent ecological change. The savannah-dwelling reindeer, bison, and Paleolithic hunters withdraw to the sub-Arctic, leaving the rest to forest animals like deer, aurochs, and Mesolithic foragers (1967 McEvedy)
- World: Allerod oscillation brings transient improvement in climate; sea levels rise abruptly and massive inland flooding occurs due to glacier melt
c. 9700 BC: Lake Agassiz forms
c. 9700 BC: Younger Dryas cold period ends; Pleistocene ends and Holocene begins; Paleolithic ends and Mesolithic begins; Large amounts of previously glaciated land become habitable again
Chronological studies[edit]
- The Holocene calendar, devised by Cesare Emiliani in 1993, places its epoch at 10,000 BC (with the year 2018 being rendered as 12018 HE).
See also[edit]
Footnotes[edit]
- ^ Roberts (1994)
- ^ Jean-Noël Biraben, "Essai sur l'évolution du nombre des hommes", Population 34-1 (1979), 13-25, estimates 40 million at 5000 BC and 100 million at 1600 BC, for an average growth rate of 0.027% p.a. over the Chalcolithic to Middle Bronze Age. Data from History Database of the Global Environment. K. Klein Goldewijk, A. Beusen and P. Janssen, "HYDE 3.1: Long-term dynamic modeling of global population and built-up area in a spatially explicit way" in the Abstract (With a total global population increase from 2 to 6145 million people over that time span [10,000BC to 2,000AD]), Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (MNP), Bilthoven, The Netherlands.
- ^ Kislev et al. (2006a, b), Lev-Yadun et al. (2006)
- ^ Pankhurst, Richard (1998). The Ethiopians. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-631-18468-3.
- ^ Midant-Reynes, Béatrix. The Prehistory of Egypt: From the First Egyptians to the First Kings. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers
- ^ "First Buildings May Have Been Community Centers", Science, 2 May 2011.
- ^ "Farming Got Hip In Iran Some 12,000 Years Ago, Ancient Seeds Reveal", 5 July 2013
- ^ Ker Than (15 August 2013). "Oldest North American Rock Art May Be 14,800 Years Old". National Geographic. Retrieved 16 August 2013.
References[edit]
- Kislev, Mordechai E.; Hartmann, Anat & Bar-Yosef, Ofer (2006a): "Early Domesticated Fig in the Jordan Valley". Science 312(5778): 1372. doi:10.1126/science.1125910 PMID 16741119 (HTML abstract) Supporting Online Material
- Kislev, Mordechai E.; Hartmann, Anat & Bar-Yosef, Ofer (2006b): "Response to Comment on 'Early Domesticated Fig in the Jordan Valley'". Science 314(5806): 1683b. doi:10.1126/science.1133748 PDF fulltext
- Lev-Yadun, Simcha; Ne'eman, Gidi; Abbo, Shahal & Flaishman, Moshe A. (2006): "Comment on 'Early Domesticated Fig in the Jordan Valley'". Science 314(5806): 1683a. doi:10.1126/science.1132636 PDF fulltext
- Roberts, J. (1994): History of the World. Penguin.