Humans invent the canoe
Constructed between 8200 and 7600 B.C.E., and found in the Netherlands, the Pesse canoe may be the oldest known canoe.
Early humans
Aboriginal Australians develop complex religious beliefs now referred to as “The Dreaming”
The Dreaming is a term devised by early anthropologists to refer to a religio-cultural worldview attributed to Australian Aboriginal beliefs. It is used to represent Aboriginal concepts of Everywhen during which the land was inhabited by ancestral figures, often of heroic proportions or with supernatural abilities.
Kebarian Culture thrives in the Levant
Kebarian culture was an archaeological culture in the eastern Mediterranean area (c. 18,000 to 12,500 BP). The Kebaran were a highly mobile nomadic population, composed of hunters and gatherers in the Levant and Sinai areas who used microlithic tools.
Humans invent pottery, perhaps in modern-day Jiangxi province in China
Xianrendong and Yuchanyan caves in northern China are the oldest of a growing number of sites which support the origins of pottery as having occurred not just in the Japanese island Jomon culture of 11,000-12,000 years ago, but earlier in the Russian Far East and South China some 18,000-20,000 years ago.
Early humans create paintings at Cave of Altamira in modern-day northern Spain
There are 18 caves in northern Spain which together represent the apogee of Upper Paleolithic cave art in Europe between 35,000 and 11,000 years ago.
Humans domesticate the wolf and create dogs
Early humans formed an unlikely partnership with another animal, the grey wolf
Humans invent wrestling, the first ever sport
Cave paintings have been found in the Lascaux caves in France that have been suggested to depict wrestling in the Upper Paleolithic around 15,300 years ago.
First permanent human settlement is built, perhaps in modern day Czech Republic
Approximately 25,000 years ago, during the Upper Paleolithic period of the Stone Age, a small settlement was founded on the site of what is now Dolní Věstonice.
Humans invent maps, perhaps in modern day Czech Republic
A map-like representation of a mountain, river, valleys and routes around Pavlov in the Czech Republic has been dated to 25,000 B.C.E.
Aboriginal Australians begin their rock painting tradition, among the oldest art in the world
The oldest firmly dated rock art painting in Australia, dated at roughly 26,000 B.C., is a charcoal drawing on a rock fragment in the Narwala Gabarnmang rock shelter in the Northern Territory.