THE NEOLITHIC REVOLUTION

15.000- 4.600 BC.

THE HOLOCENE PERIOD

Duration: from 15,000 BC to the present day. The animals evolve towards the present forms, first songbirds. Humanity takes a new evolutionary step: from the last glaciation emerges the Cro-Magnon Man (modern Homo Sapiens). In the Holocene the climate presents a series of great oscillations. The last Glacial period ends between 15,000 and 13,000 BC. The temperature becomes more pleasant, the ice slowly retreats, as a consequence the melting causes the rise of the sea level, the continents acquire the current contours, this period has been called Holocene Climate Optimum, an increase in global temperatures that reached 4° near the North Pole, (According to a study, winter warming was 3 to 9 °C while in the stellum ranged between 2 º and 6 °C in northern Central Siberia). Research indicates that Arctic sea ice was substantially less during that period compared to the present. The current desert regions of Central Asia were extensively forested due to increased rainfall, and the warm belts of temperate forests in China and Japan extended northward. The sediments of West Africa also recorded the "African Humid Period", an interval between 16 and 6 millennia ago, when Africa was much more humid due to a strengthening of the African monsoons due to changes in summer radiation as a result of long-term variations in the Earth's orbit around the sun, Lake Chad is reborn fed by rainwater received from the massif of Tibesti, reaching a volume and extension similar to the modern Caspian Sea. In the same way, two African inter-plouvial periods have been identified, called Malakian and Nakurian, presenting a reduction in rainfall, which affected plant and animal life. After that period the world temperatures begin a slow decline in a process that lasted until about two thousand years ago, when again begins the rise in global temperatures, a process that continues today.

15.000- The ice continues to retreat, the climate is temperate, the sea level continues to rise as a result of the melting of ice, the sea current in the Gulf is restored and the Beringia Bridge is definitively interrupted. Maritime waters invade a large freshwater lake in northern Europe, forming the Baltic Sea. In Europe, forests of new species are formed, such as black pine, birch, holm oak and willow. Canorous birds and modern corves appear. France: paintings of bison in Le Tuc d'Audoubert, in Ariège. Egypt: Homo sapiens by Waddi Kubbaniya. In the region of Kom Ombo: SEBILIAN CULTURE, with stone objects and the first chisels, derived from the Levalloisian's technique. In Eastern and Southern Africa, the Magosiense culture, with an original stone industry. In Europe, the woolly mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros and the wild horse entered the process of extinction. America: in Meadowcroft Rockshelter, Pennsylvania, vestiges of human presence, stone tools and consumption of animals such as deer, reindeer, bird eggs, mussels and also corn, fruits, nuts and seeds. Many species of mammals are becoming extinct in North America, including camelids, tapir and yak. In the north, in Blue Fish Cave: new stone industry, with microliths, grooved leaves of possible Siberian origin. In Wilson Butte Cave in Idaho, there are bones associated with stone tools.

14.800- Africa: Homo Sapiens sets up stable camps on the coasts and water areas of the Maghreb, and in Egypt produces rock art at the Qurta site in Kom Ombo, south of Aswan. America: in Monteverde, Chile, the oldest signs of human presence, with stone tools, camping with up to twelve rectangular houses made with wooden poles, covered with mastodon skins, and the ground also covered with skins; all had a space for a bonfire, and we know they used medicinal herbs (boldo).They were base camps of nomadic groups in whose interior there was a kind of central square of 3 x 5 mts. They were hunters and gatherers who made vegetable ropes, which they used in the construction of the huts and to elaborate artifacts, using complex knots. They also made projectile points, sticks to make holes, mortars and bone tools, used boleadoras and spears for hunting.

14.700- Europe: Climate change is causing the extinction of the mégalocéros, the cave bear, the cave hyena and the Saiga antelope; the wild horse only survives in some regions of Asia. MAGDALENIAN CULTURE of Homo sapiens is widespread in France, Switzerland, Spain and Germany; in the Iberian Peninsula, the most famous example of Magdalenian is in the caves of Altamira. This culture can be considered as the first western European civilization, because due to a demographic increase, they surpass the limits of their original focus and extends practically by the entire European continent. The search for good quality stone raw materials displaces human groups, sometimes tens of kilometres away. Utensils of a special flint called Urbasa type from the Navarrese mountain range of the same name have been found along the Cantabrian coast and southwest of France, 400 kilometres away. The members of this culture buried their dead, but very few graves have been discovered, commonly they are simple shallow graves. Extensive open-air camps have been found in tents or huts. This tendency to grouping was demonstrated in several sites, which are authentic necropolis. In Western Europe, the Magdalenian hunter specialized in horse hunting, while in Eastern Europe the mammoth was the preferred species, although a full exploitation of various animal species is generally noted.