Humans begin living in large villages, perhaps in modern-day Turkey
Archaeologists have long debated what caused the Neolithic Revolution, when prehistoric human beings gave up the nomadic life, founded villages and began to farm the land.
Early humans
Humans begin cultivating yams in West Africa
People started to cultivate yams, rather than digging up wild ones, as long as 10,000 years ago in both Africa and Asia, and some time later in the New World.
Humans of ancient Brazil independently invent pottery
The earliest pottery ever found in the Western Hemisphere, radiocarbon-dated 8,000 years old, has been excavated in the Amazon basin of Brazil, near Santarém, providing evidence to overturn the assumption that the tropical forest region was too poor in resources to have supported a complex prehistoric culture.
New Guineans begin practicing agriculture for first time
The oldest evidence for this is in the Kuk Swamp area, where planting, digging and staking of plants, and possibly drainage have been used to cultivate taro, banana, sago and yam.
The ancient people of South America independently invent clothing
Guitarrero Cave has evidence of human use around 8,000 B.C.E. In the 1960s, archeologists discovered artifacts in an extraordinary state of preservation at the site. Remarkably, textiles, wood and leather tools, and basketry have been preserved intact.
The Eldoradense culture emerges in modern-day Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina, near Iguazú Falls
The area surrounding Iguazu Falls was inhabited 10,000 years ago by the hunter-gatherers of the Eldoradense culture.
The first bricks are invented and used, perhaps in modern-day West Bank
The first bricks that we know about were being made in Jericho as long ago as 8000 B.C.E. The people there had discovered they could make simple bricks by leaving clay mud to dry in the sun.
The Al-Magar civilization emerges in modern-day Saudi Arabia
Al-Magar was a prehistoric culture of the Neolithic whose epicenter lied in modern-day southwestern Najd in Saudi Arabia. Al-Magar is possibly one of the first cultures in the world where widespread domestication of animals occurred.
Fully-developed village farming settlements emerge in modern-day Iran
Fully-developed village farming emerged at various Zagros sites such as Jarmo, Sarāb, upper Ali Kosh, and upper Gūrān.
Humans and cats begin living together, perhaps in Cyprus
We know that humans have lived with cats for at least 10,000 years –there’s a 9,500-year-old grave in Cyprus with a cat buried alongside its human, and ancient Egyptian art has a popular motif showing house cats eating fish under chairs.