| From the beginning of the universe the beginning of recorded history | |
| Dates (years) | Person or event |
| -14,000,000,000 | The Big Bang |
| -4,600,000,000 | The Earth formed |
| -4,000,000,000 | Beginnings of life |
| -1,000,000,000 | Multi-cellular organisms appear |
| -400,000,000 | First insects, sharks and coelacanths appear |
| -360,000,000 | Plants evolve seeds |
| -300,000,000 | The supercontinent Pangea appears |
| -180,0000.000 | Pangea begins to break up into Gondwanaland and Laurasia |
| -150,000,000 | Dinosaurs are common and prevalent |
| -65,000,000 | The Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event (sixth extinction event) wipes out about half of all animal species including all non-avian dinosaurs, |
| -55,000,000 | Proto-primates first appear in North America, Asia, and Europe |
| -40,000,000 | Primates divide into sub-orders Strepsirrhini (lemurs and lorises) and Haplorrhini (tarsiers, monkeys and apes) |
| -15,000,000 | Apes from Africa migrate to Eurasia to become gibbons (lesser apes) and orangutans. Human ancestors speciate from the ancestors of the gibbon. Orangutans, gorillas and chimpanzees are great apes. Humans are hominins. |
| -13,000,000 | Human ancestors speciate from the ancestors of the orangutan. A relative of orangutans. Pierolapithecus catalaunicus, Spain, possibly common ancestor of great apes and humans. |
| -5,000,000 | Human ancestors speciate from the ancestors of the chimpanzees. Chimpanzees and humans share 98% of DNA |
| -2,000,000 | Homo habilis (handy man) uses primitive stone tools (choppers) in Tanzania. |
| -1,800,000 | Homo erectus evolves in Africa and migrates to other continents |
| -500,000 | Homo erectus (Choukoutien, China) uses charcoal to control fire, though they may not know how to create or start it. |
| -195,000 | Omo1, Omo2 (Ethiopia) are the earliest known Homo sapiens. |
| -150,000 | Mitochondrial Eve lives in Africa. She is the last female ancestor common to all mitochondrial lineages in humans alive today. |
| -130,000 | Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthal man) evolves from Homo heidelbergensis and lives in Europe and the Middle East |
| -100,000 | The first anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) appear in Africa by this time or earlier; they derive from Homo heidelbergensis. Homo sapiens (humans) live in South Africa (Klasies River Mouth) and Israel (Qafzeh and Skhul), probably alongside Neanderthals |
| -70,000 | The most recent ice age, the Wisconsin glaciation, begins. |
| -60,000 | Y-chromosomal Adam lives in Africa. He is the last male human from whom all current human Y chromosomes are descended. |
| -40,000 | Cro-Magnon Humans paint and hunt mammoths in France. They have extraordinary cognitive powers equivalent to modern humans. |
| -30,000 | Modern humans enter North America from Siberia in numerous waves, some later waves across the Bering land bridge, but early waves probably by island-hopping across the Aleutians. Probable extinction of Homo neanderthalensis |
| -15,000 | The last Ice Age ends. Sea levels across the globe rise, flooding many coastal areas, and separating former mainland areas into islands. |
| -14,000 | Megafauna extinction starts (continuing to current day), where over 100 large mammal species disappear possibly caused by the expanding human population. |
| -11,000 | Human population reaches 5 million. Extinction of Homo floresiensis. |
| -10,400 | Plant domestication begins with cultivation of Neolithic founder crops in Near East. Jericho (modern Israel) settlement with about 19,000 people. |
| -3,000 | Humans start using iron tools. |
