The 10th millennium BC marks the beginning of the Mesolithic and Epipaleolithic period, which is the first part of the Holocene epoch. Agriculture, based on the cultivation of primitive forms of millet and rice, occurred in Southwest Asia.^[1] Although agriculture was being developed in the Fertile Crescent, it would not be widely practised for another 2,000 years.

The world population is estimated as between one and ten million people,^[2] most of whom were hunter-gatherer communities scattered over all continents except Antarctica and Zealandia. The W rm glaciation ended, and the beginning interglacial, which endures to this day, allowed the re-settlement of northern regions. The most recent glacial ended c. 10,000 BC, and the world entered a period of global warming.

Events

G bekli Tepe, anl urfa, 2011

• c. 10,000 BC; First cave drawings of the Mesolithic period are made, with war scenes and religious scenes, beginnings of what became story telling, and metamorphosed into acting.
• c. 10,000 BC; Bottle Gourd is domesticated and used as a carrying vessel.
• c. 10,000 BC; end of the most recent glaciation.
• c. 9500 BC; There is evidence of harvesting, though not necessarily cultivation, of wild grasses in Asia Minor about this time.
• c. 9500 BC; First building phase of the temple complex at G bekli Tepe.
• c. 9500 BC; Younger Dryas cold period ends.
• c. 9300 BC; figs were apparently cultivated in the Jordan River valley.^[3]
• c. 9000 BC; Neolithic culture began in Ancient Near East.
• c. 9000 BC: Near East: First stone structures at Jericho are built.

Old World

• Asia: Cave sites near the Caspian Sea are used for human habitation.
• Africa: Wall paintings found in Ethiopia and Eritrea depicting human activity; some of the older paintings are thought to date back to around 10,000 BC^[4] .
• Europe: Azilian (Painted Pebble Culture) people occupy Spain, France, Switzerland, Belgium, and Scotland.
• Europe: Magdalenian culture flourishes and creates cave paintings in France.
• Europe: Horse hunting begins at Solutr .
• Egypt: Early sickle blades and grinding disappear and are replaced by hunting, fishing and gathering peoples who use stone tools.
• Japan: The J mon people use pottery, fish, hunt and gather acorns, nuts and edible seeds. There are 10,000 known sites.
• Mesopotamia: Three or more linguistic groups, including Sumerian and Semitic peoples share a common political and cultural way of life.
• Mesopotamia: People begin to collect wild wheat and barley probably to make malt then beer.
• Norway: First traces of population in Randaberg.
• Persia: The goat is domesticated.
• Sahara: Bubalus Period.

Americas

• North America: Paleo-Indian hunter-gatherer societies live nomadically in the countryside.
• North America: Blackwater Draw forms in eastern New Mexico, evincing human activity.
• North America: Folsom people flourish throughout the Southwestern United States.
• North America: Settlement at the Nanu site in the Queen Charlotte Islands of modern day British Columbia begins, starting the longest continual occupation in territory now belonging to Canada.

Environmental changes

c. 10,000 BC:

• North America: Dire Wolf, Smilodon, Giant Beaver, Ground Sloth, Giant Imperial Mammoth (Mammuthus imperator), Jeffersonian Mammoth (Mammuthus jeffersonii), Columbian Mammoth (Mammuthus columbi), Woolly Mammoth, Mastodons, Giant Short-Faced Bear, American Cheetah, Scimitar Cats (Homotherium), American Camels, American Horses, and American Lions all become extinct.
• Bering Sea: Bering land bridge from Siberia to North America covered in water.
• North America: Long Island becomes an island when waters break through on the western end to the interior lake.
• Europe: Permanent ecological change. The savannah-dwelling reindeer, bison, and Paleolithic hunters withdraw to the sub-Arctic, leaving the rest to forest animals like deer, aurochs, and Mesolithic foragers. (1967 McEvedy)
• World: Allerod oscillation brings transient improvement in climate. Sea levels rise abruptly and massive inland flooding occurs due to glacier melt.

c. 9700 BC: Lake Agassiz forms.

c. 9600 BC: Younger Dryas cold period ends. Pleistocene ends and Holocene begins. Paleolithic ends and Mesolithic begins. Large amounts of previously glaciated land become habitable again.

In popular culture

• c. 10,000 BC: This is the time setting for the film 10,000 BC.
• c. 10,000 BC: Is also the setting for the Opar novels by Philip Jos Farmer Hadon of Ancient Opar and Flight to Opar.
• 9564 BC: Destruction of Atlantis, according to theosophic tradition.
• C. 9500-9000 BC; In Bryan Sykes' The Seven Daughters of Eve, the 'clan mother' of Haplogroup J lives in Asia Minor or the Fertile Crescent.
• In the famous Halo series, the Halo rings were said to go off in this year, on December 14th

Chronological studies

• The Holocene calendar, devised by Cesare Emiliani in 1993, places its epoch at 10,000 BC (with the year 2010 being rendered as 12010 HE).

Footnotes

References

• (2006a): Early Domesticated Fig in the Jordan Valley. Science 312(5778): 1372. PMID 16741119 (HTML abstract) Supporting Online Material
• (2006b): Response to Comment on "Early Domesticated Fig in the Jordan Valley". Science 314(5806): 1683b. PDF fulltext
• (2006): Comment on "Early Domesticated Fig in the Jordan Valley". Science 314(5806): 1683a. PDF fulltext
• (1996): History of the World. Penguin.

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