10th millennium BC: Encyclopedia - 10th millennium BC

10th millennium BC

(Pleistocene, Paleolithic – 10th millennium BC – 9th millennium BC – other millennia)

10th millennium BC - Events

• Circa 10,000 BC– Europe: Azilian (Painted Pebble Culture) people occupy Spain, France, Switzerland, Belgium, and Scotland.
• Circa 10,000 BC– Europe: Sami people occupy Scandinavia and intermarry with peoples already living in Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Russia.
• Circa 10,000 BC– Europe: Magdalenian culture flourishes and creates cave paintings in France
• Sometime before 9000 BC– First stone structures at Jericho, built during the pre-agricultural Natufian culture period
• Circa 10,000 BC– Norway: First traces of population in Randaberg
• Circa 10,000 BC– Egypt: Early sickle blades & grinding disappear and are replaced by hunting, fishing and gathering peoples who use stone tools
• Circa 10,000 BC– Asia: Cave sites near the Caspian Sea are used for human habitation.
• Circa 10,000 BC– Japan: The Jomon people use pottery, fish, hunt and gather acorns, nuts and edible seeds. There are 10,000 known sites. Pottery would not appear in the Near East until 6500 BC.
• Circa 10,000 BC– Mesopotamia: Three or more linguistic groups, including Sumerian and Semitic peoples share a common political and cultural way of life.
• Circa 10,000 BC– Mesopotamia: People begin to collect wild wheat and barley probably to make malt then beer
• Circa 10,000 BC– Korea: First pottery appears, probably associated with the beginning of single location agrarian life.
• Circa 10,000 BC– North America: Alabama and Paleo Indians hunter-gatherer societies live seminomadically in the countryside.
• Circa 10,000 BC– North America: Blackwater Draw forms in eastern New Mexico, evidencing human activity
• Circa 10,000 BC– North America: Folsom people flourish throughout the Southwestern United States.
• Circa 10,000 BC– North America: Settlement at the Nanu site in the Haida Gwaii of modern day British Columbia begins, starting the longest continual occupation in territory now belonging to Canada.
• Circa 10,000 BC– The dog is domesticated.
• 9560 BC – Taking Plato literally (assuming that his figure of 9,000 years before 560 BC was accurate and exact), the city-state of Atlantis sank into the ocean.
• Circa 9,000 BC– Near East: First stone structures are built at Jericho.

10th millennium BC - Environmental changes

• Circa 10,000 BC– North America: Dire Wolf, Smilodon, Giant beaver, Ground sloth, Mammoth, and American lion all become extinct.
• Circa 10,000 BC– Bering Sea: Land bridge from Siberia to North America sinks.
• Circa 10,000 BC– North America: Long Island becomes an island when waters break through on the western end to the interior lake
• Circa 10,000 BC– Homo floresiensis, the human's last known surviving close relative, becomes extinct.
• Circa 10,000 BC– World: Sea levels rise abruptly and massive inland flooding occurs due to glacier melt.
• Circa 9700 BC – Lake Agassiz forms.
• Circa 9600 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.
• Circa 9500 BC – Ancylus Lake, part of the modern-day Baltic Sea, forms.

Categories: Millennia | 10th millennium BC

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "10th millennium BC", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10%2C000_BC, used and available under the GNU Free Documentation License.