8th millennium BC

The Greenlandian followed the Younger Dryas and essentially featured a climate shift from near-glacial to interglacial, causing glaciers to retreat and sea levels to rise.

[7] The fact remains that its disappearance in the Middle Phase at Shillourokambos, in the second half of this millennium, is not an isolated incident but one of a number of expressions of a deep cultural change.

[8] Within the Near East, Neolithic culture and technology had become established throughout much of the Fertile Crescent by 8000 BC and was gradually spreading westward, though it is not believed to have reached Europe till about the end of this millennium.

[citation needed] By c. 7500 BC (see map above right), important sites in or near the Fertile Crescent included Jericho, 'Ain Ghazal, Huleh, Tell Aswad, Tell Abu Hureyra, Tell Qaramel, Tell Mureibit, Jerf el Ahmar, Göbekli Tepe, Nevalı Çori, Hacilar, Çatalhöyük, Hallan Çemi Tepesi, Çayönü Tepesi, Shanidar, Jarmo, Zrebar, Ganj Dareh and Ali Kosh.

[12][13] The first chronological pottery system had been devised by Sir Arthur Evans for his Bronze Age findings at Knossos and Kenyon used this as a benchmark for the Near East Neolithic.

There were numerous New World crops, as they are now termed, and domestication began with the potato and the cucurbita (squash) about this time.

[14][15] Other crops began to be harvested over the next 7,500 years including chili peppers, maize, peanut, avocado, beans, cotton, sunflower, cocoa and tomato.

This was long thought to be the earliest human activity on the island, until the discovery of the Alice and Gwendoline Cave pushed the date back to 10,000 BC.