9th millennium BC
In chronological terms, it is the first full millennium of the current Holocene epoch that is generally reckoned to have begun by 9700 BC (11.7 thousand years ago).
In the Near East, especially in the Fertile Crescent, the transitory Epipalaeolithic age was gradually superseded by the Neolithic with evidence of agriculture across the Levant to the Zagros Mountains in modern-day Iran.
The starting point for the Greenlandian has been correlated with the end of the Younger Dryas and a climate shift from near-glacial to interglacial, causing glaciers to retreat and sea levels to rise.
[3] It is generally believed that there was a migration across the land bridge from eastern Siberia into North America during the Last Glacial Maximum.
[7] As the Neolithic began in the Fertile Crescent, most people around the world still lived in scattered hunter-gatherer communities which remained firmly in the Palaeolithic.
[10] As with Göbekli Tepe, the site at Tell Qaramel, in north-west Syria, was inhabited from 9000 BC following possible first occupation in the previous millennium.
As there was no potter's wheel, the clay was prepared in the shape of a rope and manually coiled upwards to create a vessel that was baked in an open fire.
[17] In North America, the Paleo-Indian Clovis culture is believed to have ended around 8800 BC having fathered numerous local variants.
[19] Another Paleo-Indian site in the region is the Las Cuevas Canyon near Los Toldos (Santa Cruz) where rock art has been found.
[20] In Central America, remains of three prehistoric human fossils have been discovered since 2006 in the cave system at Chan Hol in Quintana Roo, Mexico.
[23] The Natufian culture continued to prevail in the Levantine and upper Mesopotamian areas of the Fertile Crescent with their most significant site at Jericho (Tell es-Sultan) in the Jordan Valley.
[26] Writing in 1973, Jacob Bronowski argued that the combination of wheat and water at Jericho enabled man to begin civilisation.
[28] Ganj Dareh, in Iranian Kurdistan, has been cited as the earliest settlement to domesticate animals, specifically the goat, towards the end of the millennium.
[29][30] Agriculture may have begun in the Far East before 8300 BC, the estimated date for the earliest cultivation of common millet.
At the beginning of the 9th millennium, the Natufian culture co-existed with the PPNA which prevailed in the Levantine and upper Mesopotamian areas of the Fertile Crescent.
- Upper Palaeolithic cultures.
- Mesolithic cultures.
- Swiderian cultures .
- Pontic Tardenoisian cultures.
- Iberian Capsian cultures .
- Oranian cultures.
- Lower Capsian cultures .
- The Fertile Crescent .