Ancient history is a time period from the beginning of writing and recorded human history through late antiquity. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, beginning with the development of Sumerian cuneiform script and continuing until the expansion of Islam in late antiquity.

Trace millions of years of human history, from early ancestors who lived more than six million years ago to modern Homo sapiens.

Already around c. 315,000 years ago, a species with some modern human features but also some archaic ones – possibly making them a precursor to Sapiens, or a related side-branch – lived out at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, Northern Africa, too.

200,000 B.C. Homo sapiens, the first modern humans, appear in Africa. 62,000 B.C. Bow and arrows with stone points (arrowheads) are used. 30,000 B.C. Cro-Magnon man is flourishing, moving from the Near East into Europe, lives by hunting and gathering. Cro-Magnon’s painted caves with drawings of the animals they killed.

When modern humans arrived in the islands of southeast Asia, they may have encountered a range of ancient human species. Rather than a violent turnover of populations, there was a merging of communities. Genetic and fossil records do not reveal a single point where modern humans originated, researchers have found.

The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, beginning with the development of Sumerian cuneiform script and continuing until the expansion of Islam in late antiquity. Ancient history covers all continents inhabited by humans in the period 3000 BC – AD 500. [ 1]