Timeline of Human Prehistory - Upper Paleolithic

Upper Paleolithic

• 200,000 - 50,000 years ago: paintings of Bhimbetka rock shelters in India. Some evidence points to artwork belonging to homo erectus.
• 40,000 years ago: oldest known cave paintings
• 40,000 years ago: Cro-Magnon colonization of Europe.
• 35,000 years ago: the oldest known tally stick (the Lebombo Bone)
• 35,000 years ago: oldest known figurative art (Venus of Hohle Fels), age of the Aurignacian culture
• c. 32,000 years ago: Aurignacian culture begins in Europe.
• 30,000 years ago: approximate age of Haplogroup X (mtDNA) and Haplogroup I (mtDNA). First domestic dogs, A herd of reindeer is slaughtered and butchered by humans in the Vezere Valley in what is today France.
• 29,000 years ago: extinction of Homo neanderthalensis.
• c. 28,500 years ago: New Guinea is populated by colonists from Asia or Australia.
• c. 28,000 to 20,000 years ago: Gravettian period in Europe. Harpoons, needles, and saws invented.
• c. 26,000 years ago: People around the world use fibers to make baby carriers, clothes, bags, baskets, and nets.
• 26,000 to 20,000 years ago: Last Glacial Maximum; approximate age of Haplogroup H (mtDNA)
• 25,000 years ago: first colonization of North America
• 25,000 years ago: a hamlet consisting of huts built of rocks and of mammoth bones is founded in what is now Dolni Vestonice in Moravia in the Czech Republic. This is the oldest human permanent settlement that has yet been found by archaeologists.