From Cave Paintings to the Internet A Chronological and Thematic Database on the History of Information and Media Prehistory Outline

The First Industrial Complex
(Circa 2,500,000 BCE – 500,000 BCE)

The Quaternary Period, Including the Ice Age, Begins
(Circa 2,500,000 BCE)

Acheulean or Mode 2 Industries
(Circa 1,650,000 BCE – 100,000 BCE)

The Earliest Preserved Footprints of Our Ancestors
(Circa 1,530,000 BCE – 1,510,000 BCE)

Early Humans Make Bone Tools
(Circa 1,500,000 BCE)

The Earliest Hearths
(Circa 1,500,000 BCE – 790,000 BCE)

Humans May Have Lived in Britain as Early as 950,000 Years Ago
(Circa 950,000 BCE – 780,000 BCE)

Hunting Large Animals With Spears
(Circa 500,000 BCE)

The Earliest Use of Pigments
(Circa 400,000 BCE – 350,000 BCE)

The Oldest Wooden Spears
(Circa 400,000 BCE)

Early Humans Use Heat-Treated Stone for Tools
(Circa 162,000 BCE – 70,000 BCE)

The Earliest Known Forms of Human Adornment
(Circa 132,000 BCE – 98,000 BCE)

Tools for Capturing Fast or Dangerous Prey
(Circa 104,000 BCE)

The Oldest Intentional Burial
(Circa 100,000 BCE)

Katanda Bone Harpoon Point
(88,000 BCE – 78,000 BCE)

Evidence of Early Trade Routes?
(Circa 80,000 BCE)

Early Attempt to Record Information or Early Art?
(Circa 75,000 BCE – 73,000 BCE)

The Earliest Examples of Figurative Art
(Circa 38,000 BCE – 33,000 BCE)

The Oldest Known Mathematical Artifact
(35,000 BCE)

The Earliest Musical Instruments
(Circa 33,000 BCE)

Making Materials from Flax Fibers
(Circa 32,000 BCE – 28,000 BCE)

Information Recorded in Cave Paintings
(Circa 30,000 BCE)

The Earliest Zoomorphic / Anthropomorphic Sculpture
(Circa 30,000 BCE)

The Oldest Known Ceramic Figurine
(29,000 BCE – 25,000 BCE)

Untitled
(Circa 28,000 BCE – 21,000 BCE)

The Ishango Bone
(25,000 BCE – 20,000 BCE)

The Earliest Representation of Spun Thread
(25,000 BCE)

The Venus of Willendorf
(Circa 24,000 BCE – 22,000 BCE)

One of the Earliest Known Realistic Representations of a Human Face
(Circa 23,000 BCE)

Cylcons
(Circa 18,000 BCE)

The Earliest Surviving Pottery
(Circa 16,000 BCE)

The Holocene Interglacial Period Begins
(Circa 10,000 BCE)

The Eight Founding Crops of Domesticated Agriculture
(Circa 9,500 BCE)

Neolithic Tokens Replace Paleolithic Tally Sticks
(Circa 8,000 BCE)

Horse Domestication Revolutionizes Transportation, Communication, and Warfare
(Circa 3,500 BCE)

The First Genuine Human Fossil Discovered by a Scientist
(1823)

Genesis of the "Three-Age" System in Archaeology
(1836)

Pioneering Treatise on the Antiquity of Man
(1846 – 1849)

The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man
(January 1863)

Man's Place in Nature
(February 1863)

Probably the Earliest Paper on Paleolithic Mobiliary Art
(1864)

Pre-Historic Times
(1865)

Human Origins Will be Found in Africa
(1871)

Scientists Sequence Woolly Mammoth Genome--the First of an Extinct Animal
(November 19, 2008)