Timeline of prehistory

"Epipaleolithic" or "Mesolithic" are terms for a transitional period between the Last Glacial Maximum and the Neolithic Revolution in Old World (Eurasian) cultures.

The terms "Neolithic" and "Bronze Age" are culture-specific and are mostly limited to cultures of select parts of the Old World, namely Europe, Western and South Asia.

[89][90] In sub-Saharan Africa, iron metallurgy was developed prior to any knowledge of bronze and possibly before iron's adoption in Eurasia[91] and despite Postclassic Mesoamerica developing and using bronze,[92][93][94] it did not have a significant bearing on its continued cultural evolution in the same way as western Eurasia.

Researchers deduced in a scientific review that "no specific point in time can currently be identified at which modern human ancestry was confined to a limited birthplace" and that current knowledge about long, continuous and complex – e.g. often non-singular, parallel, nonsimultaneous and/or gradual – emergences of characteristics is consistent with a range of evolutionary histories.

[154][155] A timeline dating first occurrences and earliest evidence may therefore be an often inadequate approach for describing humanity's (pre-)history.