6th millennium BC

This millennium is reckoned to mark the end of the global deglaciation which had followed the Last Glacial Maximum and caused sea levels to rise by some 60 m (200 ft) over a period of about 5,000 years.

[4] Four identified cultures starting around 5300 BC were the Dnieper-Donets, the Narva (eastern Baltic), the Ertebølle (Denmark and northern Germany), and the Swifterbant (Low Countries).

They were linked by a common pottery style that had spread westward from Asia and is sometimes called "ceramic Mesolithic", distinguishable by a point or knob base and flared rims.

The hypothetical language is thought to have been originally spoken in a small area in about 7000–2000 BC, and expanded to give differentiated protolanguages.

The shores of all Siberian lakes, which filled the depressions during the Lacustrine period, abound in remains dating from the Neolithic age.

[citation needed] Countless kurgans (tumuli), furnaces, and other archaeological artifacts bear witness to a dense population.

This is potentially linked to the environmental changes at the time (see Mount Mazama), which remained preserved in the oral history of the North American cultures to this day.

Indo-European cultures, descended from Ancient North Eurasians long ago, continue to expand Westwards from Central Russia.

From around 5200 BC, the patriarchal Dnieper-Donets culture leaves the Mesolithic hunter-gatherer lifestyle and begins keeping cattle, sheep and goats.

[17] Indigenous Australians in what is now southwestern Victoria were farming and smoking eels as a food source and trade good using stone weirs, canals, and woven traps around 6000 BC.

[23] Approximately 8,000 years ago (c. 6000 BC), a massive volcanic landslide off Mount Etna, Sicily, caused a megatsunami that devastated the eastern Mediterranean coastline on the continents of Asia, Africa and Europe.

[24] In South America, a large eruption occurred at Cueros de Purulla c. 5870 BC, forming a buoyant cloud and depositing the Cerro Paranilla Ash in the Calchaquí Valleys.

[25] A cataclysmic volcanic eruption occurred c. 5700 BC in Oregon when 12,000-foot (3,700 m) high Mount Mazama created Crater Lake as the resulting caldera filled with water.