c. 4000 BCE · Indigenousapproximate

Stone workers at Barrera-Mordan push Antillean settlement back

A Dominican site documents flaked-stone technology in the Greater Antilles around 4000 BCE.

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c. 4000 BCE · Indigenousapproximate

The Caribbean was settled early, and the tool kits prove it

Flaked and ground stone from the Dominican Republic upend the idea of the islands as a late frontier.

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c. 4000 to 1000 BCE · Indigenousspan

Blades reach a Haitian coast that made none of them

Half the flaked tools at Savanne Carree are blades, and the workshop waste is missing.

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c. 4000 to 2000 BCE · Indigenousspan

Pestles, stone balls and axes widen the Archaic age diet

Ground stone and shell mark a broader food strategy than flaked blades alone can show.

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c. 4000 to 1000 BCE · Indigenousspan

The first islanders moved on a calendar of their own making

Veloz Maggiolo and Pantel describe an annual round between shell stations on the coast and inland camps.

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c. 4000 BCE · Africanapproximate

Without the kiln there is no smelter

Metallurgy had to wait for potters, and Africa's potters were among the first in the world.

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4000 to 3800 BCE · Africanspan

One word for father-in-law dates patriarchy to 4000 BCE

The term derives from an older word for father's brother, and that shift names a marriage rule.

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4000 to 3300 BCE · Africanspan

Wheat reaches the Ethiopian highlands overland from Egypt

Word histories rule out the short crossing of the Red Sea and point up the Red Sea Hills instead.

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4000 to 3000 BCE · Africanspan

The first wheeled vehicles in Mesopotamia were pulled by donkeys

A Sumerian seal shows donkey teams long before any horse arrived south of the Caucasus.

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4000 to 3000 BCE · Africanspan

The donkey may have taught Eurasia to ride the horse and the camel

Before word of it reached the steppes, horses were kept there for meat.

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4000 to 3000 BCE · Africanspan

Egypt was founded in a corridor that begins in Sudan

The graves at El Badari sit at the north end of a fifteen hundred kilometre cultural world.

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4000 to 3000 BCE · Africanspan

The bones of Egypt's founders match Nubia and the Horn

Cranial and dental measurements from the fourth millennium cemeteries show no Levantine ancestry.

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4000 to 1000 BCE · Africanspan

A second copper industry was invented in the mountains of Niger

Egypt took its copper from Sinai. Two thousand kilometres west, Aïr worked the problem out alone.

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c. 3630 BCE · Indigenousyear only

Somebody was living at Vignier III

The oldest dated habitation site on the island. Fifty one centuries before the flag.

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3630 BCE · Indigenousyear only

A shell heap at Vignier III shows people eating from the sea in 3630 BCE

Casimiroid settlers set up near the Haitian coast and left the remains of their meals behind.

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3600 to 1500 BCE · Africanspan

Peru and Nubia built their first monuments in the same centuries

Norte Chico raised stone warehouses and ritual centres while Qustul and Upper Egypt were forming states.

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3500 to 3200 BCE · Africanspan

The first kingdom on this stretch of the Nile was a Nubian one

Qustul sat between the first and second cataracts and held ground north of Aswan.

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3500 to 3200 BCE · Africanspan

Bruce Williams reports Nubian victories over Egypt and is disbelieved

Later work found the Qustul state even more powerful than he had originally proposed.

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3500 to 3200 BCE · Africanspan

Qustul ruled two hundred kilometres out from the river on both sides

Cemetery layouts record a king holding sacred and temporal power and the classes beneath him.

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3500 to 3200 BCE · Africanspan

The White Crown and the Horus falcon appear first on a Nubian burner

A carved object from Qustul shows three sacred boats and a ruler in full pharaonic regalia.

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c. 3400 BCE · Africanapproximate

The grasslands die around 3400 BCE and the survivors build Egypt

Desiccation pushed eastern Saharan pastoralists onto a narrow floodplain and crowded them there.

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3300 to 3100 BCE · Africanspan

Qustul dries out while Upper Egypt fills up

Arable land along the river decided which polity could put the larger army in the field.

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Before 3100 BCE · Africanapproximate

Every Egyptian district kept a god from before there was an Egypt

The nome deities are fossils of a system in which each community answered to a god of its own.

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c. 3100 BCE · Africanapproximate

The first dynasty destroys the kingdom it borrowed its crown from

Hor-Aha marched south and finished off whatever was left of the Qustul state.

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c. 3100 BCE · Africanapproximate

Three hundred and eighteen people are buried beside King Djer

Retainer burial ran from Nubia to the Wagadu empire, and the First Dynasty practised it too.

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