Paleolithic Timeline

By evensteven000
  • 3300 BCE

    First Signs of Culture

    First Signs of Culture
    The first instance of human culture recorded was shown in Africa about 3.3 million years ago in Lomekwi 3, West Turkana, Kenya by using evidence of stone tools being used in the area. Cores, hammers, anvil stones, and flakes were key items found in the area with the suspected hominid being Australopithecus afarensis and Australopithecus africanus.
  • 2600 BCE

    Lower Paleolithic Period Migrations (Age of Ice)

    Lower Paleolithic Period Migrations (Age of Ice)
    The Pleistocene epoch starts around 2.6 million years ago and leads to a change in climate around the world where cold and warmer period fluctuate. Sea levels lowered during this time and helped early hominins migrate using land along coastlines that are currently buried underwater today.
  • 2600 BCE

    Oldowan Industry

    Oldowan Industry
    Stone tools start popping up more frequently 2.6 million years ago where a new tradition for stone tools called Oldowan where they utilized cores, choppers, scrapers, utilized flakes, and hammerstone. Homo habilis is the hominin group that are most often credited for the Oldowan tool production but as of recently another candidate called Australopithecus sediba is speculated with their dates being close to the sprouting of Oldowan tools (1.95 to 1.78 mya)
  • 1800 BCE

    Lower Paleolithic Period Migrations (Homo Genus)

    Lower Paleolithic Period Migrations (Homo Genus)
    A brand new species of genus Homo becomes more prevalent in the fossil record of Africa, Homo erectus. This new species holds a much larger brain comparatively to its predecessors and are thought to be a primary migrant of the Pleistocene epoch where they brought along Oldowan tools with them into southwest Asia and Eurasia by 1.7 million years ago.
  • 1700 BCE

    Acheulean Industry

    Acheulean Industry
    Around 1.7 million years ago, a shift is made from Oldowan tools into a new stone tools industry named the Acheulean. This new industry is mostly present in Africa for hundreds of thousands of years before it appears in other parts of the world. These tools consisted of bifaces, handaxes, and cleavers and were multi-purpose and required much greater effort to create due the process of flintknapping and stylization.
  • 1000 BCE

    Controlled Use of Fire

    Controlled Use of Fire
    The earliest evidence for controlled use of fire dates to 1 million years ago at Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa where there is shown remains of burned bones and ashes of plant material with Acheulean tools nearby. This use of controlled fire was beneficial in many ways such as: light, protection from wild animals and predators, and most importantly cooking.