10th millennium BC

Millennia:	11th millennium BC 10th millennium BC 9th millennium BC
Centuries:	100th century BC 99th century BC 98th century BC 97th century BC 96th century BC 95th century BC 94th century BC 93rd century BC 92nd century BC 91st century BC

The 10th millennium BC 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] Although agriculture was being developed in the Fertile Crescent, it would not be widely practiced for another 2,000 years.

The world population was between one and ten million people,^[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.

Events

Göbekli Tepe, Şanlıurfa, 2011

The Stone Age
↑ before Homo (Pliocene)
Paleolithic Lower Paleolithic Early Stone Age Homo Control of fire Stone tools Middle Paleolithic Middle Stone Age Homo neanderthalensis Homo sapiens Recent African origin of modern humans Upper Paleolithic Late Stone Age Behavioral modernity, Atlatl, Origin of the domestic dog Mesolithic Microliths, Bow, Canoe Natufian Khiamian Tahunian Heavy Neolithic Shepherd Neolithic Trihedral Neolithic Pre-Pottery Neolithic Neolithic Neolithic Revolution, Domestication Pottery Neolithic Pottery
↓ Chalcolithic

• c. 10,603 BC: Comet Hale-Bopp appears. It does not come back until the 8th millennium BC.
• 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: 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 radiocarbon date confirmed at Göbekli Tepe's temple complexes.
• c. 9000 BC: Neolithic culture began in Ancient Near East.
• c. 9000 BC: Near East: First stone structures at Jericho are built.

Old World

• Asia: Cave sites near the Caspian Sea are used for human habitation.
• Africa: Wall paintings found in Ethiopia and Eritrea depicting 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: Horse hunting begins at Solutré.
• Egypt: Early sickle blades and grinding disappear and are replaced by hunting, fishing and gathering peoples who use stone tools.
• 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.^[5]
• Kurdistan: Zagros mountains near Kermanshah: very early agriculture (wheat, barley).^[6]
• 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.
• The oldest prehistoric village in the Middle East dating back to 9800 BC, Sahneh, was located in west of Kermanshah, in Kermanshah province.
• Norway: First traces of population in Randaberg.
• Persia: The goat is domesticated.
• Sahara: Bubalus Period.

Americas

North America

• 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 Nanu site in the Queen Charlotte Islands of modern day British Columbia begins, starting the longest continual occupation in territory now belonging to Canada
• Petroglyphs at Winnemucca Lake in what is today northwest Nevada were carved by this time, possibly as early as 12.8 kya BCE to as late as 8,500 BCE^[7]

Australasia

Australia

• 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 use of the multi-purpose boomerang disappears from use in Arnhem Land and northern indigenous communities

Environmental changes

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
  • 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

In popular culture

• c. 10,000 BC: This is the time setting for the video game Far Cry Primal.
• c. 10,000 BC: This is the time setting for the film 10,000 BC.
• c. 10,000 BC: Is also the setting for the Opar novels by Philip José Farmer – Hadon of Ancient Opar and Flight to Opar. As well as—supposedly—the setting for the stories by author Robert E. Howard about the character he created named Conan the Barbarian—which portray it—as part of what is called The Hyborian Age—which in turn—is like a "Fantasy Version of Earth".
• 9564 BC: Destruction of Atlantis, according to theosophic tradition.
• c. 9500 BC – 9000 BC; In Bryan Sykes' The Seven Daughters of Eve, the 'clan mother' of Haplogroup J lives in Asia Minor or the Fertile Crescent.

Chronological studies

• The Holocene calendar, devised by Cesare Emiliani in 1993, places its epoch at 10,000 BC (with the year 2015 being rendered as 12015 HE).

Footnotes

1. Roberts (1994)
2. "Historical Estimates of World Population". US Census Bureau. Archived from the original on 2 January 2011. Retrieved 25 December 2010.
3. Kislev et al. (2006a, b), Lev-Yadun et al. (2006)
4. Pankhurst, Richard (1998). The Ethiopians. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-631-18468-3.
5. "First Buildings May Have Been Community Centers", Science, 2 May 2011.
6. "Farming Got Hip In Iran Some 12,000 Years Ago, Ancient Seeds Reveal", 5 July 2013
7. Ker Than (15 August 2013). "Oldest North American Rock Art May Be 14,800 Years Old". National Geographic. Retrieved 16 August 2013.

References

• 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. (1996): History of the World. Penguin.