5th millennium BC
The rapid world population growth of the previous millennium, caused by the Neolithic Revolution, is believed to have slowed and become fairly stable.
The appearance of these ceramics received different dates depending on the particular sites, which have a wide geographical distribution portraying widespread trade systems and social stratification.
Obsidian trade is most notable with extraction and transportation to industrial style worskhops over a 170 km distance, see Hamoukar.Southern expansions continue Southwards to Oman.
Large scale stone masonry for public use, and organised seal estampage of international importance are associated characteristics of the era.
Such polities include Mersin notably having a standing army circa 4300 BC, and Hamoukar which was a major production centre in the important Obsidian trade and thus power.
An intensive copper trade, connecting Europe with the East, is represented in Anatolia by sites at Hacilar, Beycesultan, Canhasan, Mersin Yumuktepe, Elazig Tepecik, Malatya Degirmentepe, Norşuntepe, and Istanbul Fikirtepe.
With concentrated settlements and elites economically focused on copper metallurgy and trade, notably importing from Southern Jordan's vast and powerful urban polities and Bedouin-like cultures.
Ubaid pottery of periods 2 and 3 has been documented at site H3 in Kuwait and in Dosariyah in eastern Saudi Arabia which bordered the Persian Gulf, a major trade hub.
Such cultures include: Modern Dravidian (Geographically in India) peoples (not to be confused with the language) whose history predates the onset of the Bronze Age in the Indian subcontinent (around 3300 BC) inhabited the area before the arrival of other ethnic groups like the Tibeto-Burmans and Indo-Aryans from across the border.
Such influence has been explored, such examples are the Elamo-Dravidian languages, a family that would have pioneered Susa, Central Mesopotamia, trade and politics within the Ubaid era.
Indian Y-lineages are close to southern European populations and the time of divergence between the two predated Steppe migration:[citation needed]These results suggest that the European-related ancestry in Indian populations might be much older and more complex than anticipated, and might originate from the first wave of agriculturists millennia before the 5th Millennium BC.Chinese civilisation advanced in this millennium with the beginnings of three noted cultures from around 5000 BC.
This occurred after several thousands of years of sea level rising, due to glaciers melting after the Younger Dryas event.
This knowledge was passed down in oral history among the Aboriginal tribes of Australia as they recalled the drastic sea level rises that ended up swallowing their once lower coastlines.
Elaborate fish and eel traps involving channels up to three kilometres long were in use in western Victoria from about 6,500 years ago.
Semi-permanent collections of wooden huts on mounds also appeared in western Victoria, associated with a more systematic exploitation of new food sources in the wetlands.
Many of the early stone point technologies are specifically found in the Kimberley Region of the northern portion of West Australia.
Examples like Cerro de las Conchas, which dates between 5500 and 3500BC appearing to have been a sea resource collection and processing site.
[67] Another traditional date is 19 July 4241 BC, marking the supposed beginning of the Egyptian calendar, as calculated retrospectively by Eduard Meyer.
[70] Yet another calendar starting date in the 5th millennium is Monday, 1 January 4713 BC, the beginning of the current Julian Period, first described by Joseph Justus Scaliger in the sixteenth century.
