What happened in the 5th millennium BC

World28

• Vinca culture (5700–4200 BC) continues cultural traits of the prior millennium. It had the earliest form of proto-writing, suggesting a requirement for astrological, scientific, astronomical, or economical (trade) archives. This provides the earliest known example of copper smelting in the Old World, imperial-like social stratification with communal spaces, and large scale trade networks where its distinctive figurines reach as far as Western Europe. The culture ends with abandonment and conflicts circa 4200 BC.
• El Omari culture and Amratian culture forms circa 4000 BC. Cultural distinctions between the two are first observed, however Aramatian influence begins to expand throughout Upper and Middle Egypt, with trade routes of cedar from Byblos to gold and obsidian imported from Nubia representing complex social stratification.
• Long distanced Eastern trade from Danubian and Caucasus civilizations to Indo-European steppe cultures with social stratification and royal chiefs of their own. Considerable Danubian influence on Central European polities and cultures must also be considered.
• From about 4500 BC until c. 2500, a single dialect called Proto-Indo-European (PIE) existed as the forerunner of all modern Indo-European languages, but it left no written texts and its structure is unknown.
• The distribution of Venus figurines from the previous agricultural revolution cements itself as mainstream art in Europe, continuing onward from the 6th millennium BC.
• Dimini culture first arises circa 4800 BC alongside the Late Neolithic period of Greece where increasing population densities are most notable. Over 400 years, Dimini imperially expands, later absorbing Sesklo culture completely before the final invasion and destruction of Sesklo c. 4400 BC. The Final Neolithic period arrives with the Chalcolithic period and increased cultural connection alongside trade routes to Anatolia.
• Uralic languages and cultures continue to expand and migrate. The Lyalovo culture (c. 5000–3650 BC) has been equated with the Proto-Uralic urheimat alongside cultural relationship with the Comb Ceramic culture.
• The Warren Field calendar originating from the Mesolithic continues to be experimented upon and further alongside mathematics, which is developed across all of Europe by various polities continuously through the 5th millennium.
• Ubaid 3: Tell al-Ubaid style ceramics. Traditionally, this ceramic period was dated c. 5300. 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.
• The term Ceramic Mesolithic is used of late Mesolithic cultures of Central Asia, during the 6th to 5th millennium BC (in Russian archaeology, these cultures are described as Neolithic even though farming is absent). These nomadic societies who had animal husbandry had pottery via cultural diffusion and trade of the previous millennia from Lake Baikal in Siberia and from Europe.
• Scattered nomadic groups maintained herds of sheep, goats, horses, and camels, and conducted annual migrations to find new pastures (a practice known as transhumance). The people lived in yurts (or gers) – tents made of hides and wood that could be disassembled and transported. Each group had several yurts, each accommodating about five people.
• The powerful chiefdoms of the Proto-Papuan polities continue to practice and advance their agricultural system. In the form of ancient irrigation systems in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, are being studied by archaeologists. The New Guinea Highlands with immense population density were an early and independent center of agriculture, with evidence of irrigation going back at least 10,000 years. Sugarcane continued to be farmed on mass scale since 6000 BC. Melanesian peoples and tribes continue to inhabit and thrive in Melenasia.
• The very earliest wave of Austronesian migrants, originating ultimately from Taiwan, arrived in Melanesia, circa 4000 BC. They settled mostly along the north coast of New Guinea and on the islands to its north and east. When they arrived, they came into contact with the much more ancient indigenous Papuan-speaking peoples. These earliest colonisations by Austronesian peoples will pale in comparison to the later more rapid and expansive waves in the great Austronesian expansion (also called the "Out of Taiwan" model).
• It is estimated that the beginning of the Pastoral Neolithic was in the later phase of the Green Sahara, in the 6th or 5th millennium BC. It was prior to the end of the African humid period (c. 3500) and the desiccation of the Green Sahara. During this time, sub-Saharan Africa remained in the Palaeolithic. As the grasslands of the Sahara began drying after c. 4000, herders moved into the Nile Valley and by the middle of the 3rd millennium BC into eastern Africa.
• Early 5th millennium BC, cattle herding, animal husbandry and polities within the Sahara continue to thrive, most notably the Tenerian culture with Eurasian genotype. Eurasian migrations continue onwards in some places from the rapid migrations of the previous millennia into the Sahara, representing a time of great social and economic opportunity.

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North America5

• Old Copper culture thrives in Oronto northeastern Wisconsin.
• Emergence of the Shield Archaic tradition circa 4500 BC.
• Around 5000 BC, Holocene glacial runoff affects the Southwest and notably the Colorado Plateau with stronger storm patterns result in significant rates of soil erosion. Precursors to the migrations of the Ancestral Puebloans lived through this climatic shift in tribes and chiefdoms in the Archaic–Early Basketmaker period, with cultural and trade connections to the early Cochise cultures. Despite nomadic lifestyles in hunting seasons continuing early on from the 6th millennium BC these cultures also had settlements with store houses. The Cochise culture begins circa 5000 BC alongside the San Dieguito cultures.
• During this millennium astronomical and theological work continues to develop. Such examples synonymous with the yearly cycle and gift of maize production is the origins of the Green Corn Ceremony.
• 4130 BCToggling harpoons are invented somewhere in eastern Siberia, spreading south via trade into Japan and east into North America, where they are ancestral to the sophisticated designs of the Inuit and later European whalers.

Europe8

• The Cucuteni–Trypillia culture (aka Tripolye culture) began around 4800 BC. It was centred on modern Moldova and lasted in three defined phases until c. 3000.
• Mediterranean trade networks are long forged, with complex economical activities by polities, stretching from the Adriatic to Portugal and parts of North Africa see economy and Neolithic. in Europe c. 5000–4000 BC. The people of the Proto-Indo-European Sredny Stog culture were the result of a genetic admixture between the Eastern hunter-gatherers and Caucasus hunter-gatherers.]]
• Megalithic constructions continue all over Western Europe, with increasing social stratification and social complexity. See the timeline. One most notable site is the Locmariaquer megaliths, the highest being 20.60 metres (67.6 ft) tall and over 330 tons and served as a site of pilgrimage and inspiration. The complex construction of such megaliths all over Europe are representative of the power of the social elite, religious clergy, direct communication over vast distances of land, and large labour forces.
• A second wave of the Danubian culture, which used painted pottery with Asiatic influences, superseded the first phase starting around 4500 BC. This was followed by a third wave, which used stroke-ornamented ware. These elements of imports and artistic licensing represent complex cultural developments. Alongside this, the infamous Varna culture thrives, beginning circa 4600 BC to 4200 BC reflecting Kingship.
• Neolithic Britain circa 4100 experiences rapid mass migration and settlement into the Isles. Deforestation on a momentous scale in Neolithic Britain. (4300 BC to 3250 BC), associated with the Windmill Hill culture, increased population density, outcompeting the West Hunter Gatherer populations.
• Trade via seafaring and ports between Western Hunter Gatherers in Ireland and cultures in Neolithic Western Europe (circa 4000 BC) (Ferriter's Cove).
• Neolithic farming guilds and polities maintain a relatively fixed frontier in Northern Central Europe (modern-day Germany), allowing Scandinavian Hunter Gatherer polities to later develop into the Pitted Ware Culture (circa 3500 BC).
• Alongside megalithic monuments or tomb with high social and astronomical importance to polities of the era, stone circles are erected as far as France, see the Carnac stones.

USSR / Russia1

• The original homeland of the Indo Europeans' ancestors in the Palaeolithic, the Northern and Eastern Siberian cultures did not have any agricultural introduction or even pastoralism in Siberia during the central European Neolithic. Its cultures is characterized by characteristic stone production techniques and the presence of pottery of eastern origin via trade despite West Eurasian genetics. However, the neolithic cultures of North Asia are distinguished from the preceding Mesolithic cultures and are far more visible as a result of the introduction of pottery from Southwards. The Afanasevan population was a mix of people descended from a mother culture of Indo Europeans in central Russia, and from people who migrated back c. 3700–3300 BCE across the Eurasian Steppe from the pre-Yamnaya Repin culture of the Don-Volga region. Such migrations including early Uralic Eastern migrations into North Asia from Eurasia, which started and occurred during the mid 5th millennium.

Asia11

• Some Dravidian cultures formed from an admixture event between primarily Neolithic or Pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherers in India, and farmers, from the Iranian Plateau, sharing deep ancestry with "Neolithic Iranian farmers" and other West Eurasians, and indigenous South Asian hunter-gatherers (also known as "Ancestral Ancient South Asians" AASI), distantly related to the Andamanese and other East Eurasians.
• The Jeitun culture (or Djeitun) had housed settlements and had culturally united Southern Turkmenistan to Afghanistan, existing for over 2000 years already at the turn of the millennium until 4600 BC. Increasing aridity in the late Neolithic i.e., Chagylly Depe, internationally farmers increasingly grew the kinds of crops that are typically associated with irrigation in an arid environment, such as hexaploid bread wheat, which became predominant during the Chalcolithic period.
• Increasing rapid migrations from Iran, with various waves bringing advanced metallurgy and other innovations, but it is thought that the newcomers soon blended with the Jeitun farmers. A large portion of these peoples settled in Anau, Turkmenistan founded circa 4500BC. The Anau culture, beginning just before 4000 BC contemporary with the Namazga culture, was a bridgeway between East and West, with considerable Chinese and Iranian influence in the use of its stamp seals in the great trade routes. Lapis Lazuli was imported from mining Kingdoms in Afghanistan to workshops.
• Mehrgarh culture in modern Pakistan was the largest urban and trade centre between East, South and West Asia. It pioneered metallurgy for millennia, tanning, bead production, use of the potter's wheel, wax making, mathematics, geometry, medicine and in advancement of economic specialisations. Glazed faience beads were produced and terracotta figurines became more detailed alongside direct trade from polities as far as present-day Badakshan for lapis lazuli. Mehrgarh Periods II and III are also contemporaneous with an expansion of the settled populations of the borderlands at the western edge of South Asia, including the establishment of settlements like Rana Ghundai, Sheri Khan Tarakai, Sarai Kala, Jalilpur, and Ghaligai. The trade hub already been difficult to control due to its scale would then receive high levels of immigration from West Eurasia around 4000 BC to 3800 BC.
• Ancestors to the Afanasevo culture (c. 3500–2500 BCE) inhabit the regions of modern Xinjiang. They are culturally and genetically affiliated with the Indo-European-associated cultures of the Eurasian Steppe despite predating great eastern expansions from the steppe of the 3rd millennium BC.
• Tibetan cultures and settlements have been found mainly "in river valleys in the south and east of the country". Archaeological sites consist of those in Nyingchi County, Medog County, and Qamdo County. Archaeologists have found pottery and stone tools, including stone axes, chisels, knives, spindle-whorls, discs, and arrowheads, alongside engagement in ancestor worship and priest classes.
• By 4000 BCE, the Tibeto-Burmese cultures had reached Nepal either directly across the Himalayas from Tibet or via Myanmar and north-east India or both. This is representative of conflicts with the Sino-Tibetan language expansions.
• Megaliths in South Asia are dated before 3000 BC, with recent findings dated back to 5000 BC in southern India. Cultures within central India had metallurgy, trade, payment of dues (possibly taxes or contributions to religious ceremonies) and social stratification explored within the linguistics of the era.
• Mesolitihic hunter-gatherers continue to dominate most parts of Indonesia. Notable cultures are the Toalean culture. Trade and intercourse between the separated lands of Australia and Indonesia continued across the newly formed Torres Strait, whose 150 km-wide channel remained readily navigable with the chain of Torres Strait Islands and reefs affording intermediary stopping points.
• Ancestors of the Polynesians arrived in the Bismarck Archipelago of Papua New Guinea at least 6,000 to 8,000 years ago, representing an early phase of colonisation. Examination of mitochondrial DNA lineages shows that they have been evolving in ISEA for longer than previously believed. These Polynesian polities did not adopt nor intermarry on a large with the Australo-Melanesians like the Austronesians in Island Melanesia had done so. Regardless, both show admixture, along with other Austronesian populations outside of Taiwan, indicating varying degrees of intermarriage between the incoming Neolithic Austronesian settlers and the preexisting Paleolithic Australo-Melanesian populations of Island Southeast Asia and Melanesia as early as the late 5th millennium BC. Immense population densities, and urbanised cultures in Taiwan and China made these early explorers and group explore what was beyond the frontier, Eastwards of coastal China herself.
• Shell ornaments and copper items at Indian Knoll in Kentucky evidence an extensive trade system over several millennia across North America.

Middle East21

• 4500 BCLevantine Chalcolithic, including the Ghassulian culture.
• The earliest-known permanent settlement in Egypt, situated at the southwestern edge of the Nile Delta (near Merimde Beni Salama), dates to approximately 4750 BCE—possibly composed of as many as 16,000 residents.Merimde culture flourishes in Lower Egypt (circa 5000–4200 BC).
• Ur experienced repeated flooding alongside the other city states, due to continuous floods of the Euphrates within this era. Ur would later rise to great prominence in the mid to late 3rd millennium BC.
• Chogha Mish grew into its maximum size of 17 hectares in the Late Susiana period, and was dominant onwards from the 6th millennium. However the early half of the 5th millennium, the Chogha Mish main monumental building was destroyed and along with it its power declined. This became known as the 'Burnt Building'. This destruction of Chogha Mish also coincided with the abandonment of some other sites on the eastern part of the Susiana plain. The settlements of the subsequent period shifted more to the west, especially with the founding and rise of the city of Susa.
• The south-western part of Iran after 4400 BC restarts urbanisation, with large scale settlements such as Susa (founded possibly as early as 4395 cal BC via Ubaid urbanisation and influence). The region around Susa in the southwest of modern Iran, is located right next to lower Mesopotamia, which exercised a powerful influence on Uruk and its neighbours from the 5th millennium. Susa I (4000 – 3700 BC) saw the beginning of monumental architecture on the site, with the construction of a 'High Terrace'. Susa alongside its allies is invaded and destroyed in c. 4200 BC. The city of Anshan is founded circa 4000 BC, and alongside Susa begins to separate itself culturally from the West, developing the lands with its newly integrated peoples into a Proto-Elamite cultural and economic revolution.
• First major Indo European migration (circa 4000 BC). Migrates southwards via the Danube eventually reaching Anatolia. Danubian migrations occur westerwards onwards from this upheaval. Danubian civilization and culture such as the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture will survive on until the late 4th millennium or very early 3rd millennium BC.
• Another major polity is Uruk (founded circa 5000 BC), experiences a rapid increase in dominance, establishing itself beyond merely a regional power circa 4500 BC with the Eanna quarter or district first constructed. Uruk in its climb for dominance would go on to construct the Anu Ziggurat circa 4000 BC. It is these centuries of careful development that gave Uruk its legendary dominance later in the 4th millennium during the Uruk Expansion.
• Ubaid expansion continues into the early 5th millennium, with demographic integration of Ubaid culture by Halafians alongside invasions by Ubaid polities. One example of violence is Tell Arpachiyah a key economical hub of pottery manufacture. Another is Tepe Gawra. Obsidian, cedar, advancement of the potters wheel circa 4500 BC, silver, cattle and copper trade routes for over a millennia are strengthened as a result of these expansions, between Anatolia, Iran, the Caucasus and South Iraq.
• One major polity of the Ubaid period is Tell Brak a very large polity with transregional power with city walls, and a Tell Brak expansion beyond the mound to form a lower town. By the late 5th millennium BC, Tell Brak reached the size of c. 55 hectares. The remains of a monumental building alongside other large scale projects erected with two meters thick walls and a basalt threshold reveals a social elite of extreme prowess.
• Tasian culture, Badarian culture thrive with trade routes connecting Egypt to Syria, the Sinai and Red Sea. Both share culturally distinctive "black-top ware". Badarian culture expands Southwards towards future Hierakonpolis.
• Hamangia culture lasts until 4550 BC. Its cultural links with Anatolia suggest that it was the result of settlement by people from Anatolia, unlike the neighbouring cultures, which appear descended from earlier Neolithic settlement. Such migrations represent strong communication systems between large stretches of land, political motives and a further indication of the Black Sea trade most notable of the period via seafaring and land.
• Ubaid 1, sometimes called Eridu corresponding to the city Eridu, (5400–4700 BC), a phase limited to the extreme south of Iraq, on what was then the shores of the Persian Gulf. This phase, showing clear connection to the Samarra culture to the north. These people pioneered the growing of grains in the extreme conditions of aridity.
• Ubaid 2 occurs circa 4800–4500 BC. At that time, Hadji Muhammed style ceramics was produced. This period also saw the development of extensive canal networks near major settlements. New highly developed irrigation systems, which seems to have developed first at Choga Mami (4700–4600 BC) and rapidly spread elsewhere.
• Ubaid 4: Late Ubaid style ceramics, circa 4700 – 4200 BC. Maritime trade via the Persian Gulf peaks, connecting to Southern Iranian ports and polities. Obsidian trade is most notable with extraction and transportation to industrial style workshops over a 170 km distance, see Hamoukar.Southern expansions continue Southwards to Oman.
• Eridu during the Ubaid period the site extended out to an area of about 12 hectares (about 30 acres). Twelve neolithic clay tokens, the precursor to Proto-cuneiform, were found in the Ubaid levels of the site.[7][8] The city was the major power at least in the first half of the 5th millennium. It would go on to decline in sovereignty within the 4th millennium. It is here where the first Kings of Sumer were said to have once dwelt.

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Latin America5

• Cultures of Mesoamerica advance their cultivation of maize further with an introduction of maize (corn) into the inter-Andean valleys of Colombia in this millennia sometimes via highways. Meanwhile, Peruvian cultures continue to advance cultivation of beans and squash circa 4000 BC. Forest clearing is present especially on the Gulf Coast, with the cultures of Mesoamerica, with social stratification present, workshops, stone settlements, paved roads and an extensive obsidian trade, see Archaic period in Mesoamerica and Gheo-shih. Despite sedentary cultures present within Mexico, typically coastal, nomadic cultures also remain with seasonal occupation, but agriculture yearly and store pits for meats i.e., El Gigante, Honduras.
• Significant occupation of the Colombian Caribbean coast by polities encompassing sedentary populations has been documented to have occurred by c. 4000 BC.
• The advanced Mexican agriculturalist culture and polities expanded and developed their agricultural practices for millennia now, alongside their Southern intensive trading networks and preistlt rites of fertility brought maize, an ingredient vital for urban civilization was brought to South America. Muisca origins circa 5000 BC in Soacha Tequendama Falls, and through their interrelated expansion Northwards, intensive maize production and permanent settlements are formed distinguishing them from tribes and other polities. Potentially they carried with them major constituent groups of the proto-Chibchan language. This is where legendary hero Bochica is said to have once lived.
• Alongside the Muisca, the Tairona, located in present-day Colombia also began to shift towards long term permanent settlements with agriculture. This shift for these two groups, gives them population advantages over other groups.
• ancient sites was a major trading hub in Peru (Paredones and Huaca Prieta) In connection to the trading networks to Mexico, maize was farmed here, as early as 4700 BCE, representing networks of trade and agricultural selective breeding, spanning over millennia. Peoples living in complex sedentary structures, along the coast of northern Peru were already eating corn by that time.

Africa7

• One subclade, now known as R1b1a2 (R-V88), is found only at high frequencies amongst populations native to West Africa, such as the Fulani, and is believed to reflect a prehistoric back-migration from Eurasia to Africa of peoples related to the ancestors of the Proto-Indo-Europeans and Natufians in the Palaeolithic, with migrations continuing into the Neolithic (circa 5000 BC) to the Chalcolithic of the more ancient, native proto-Berber peoples sometimes intermixed and alongside the Capsian culture deeper into the Sahara. Cultural significant elements are complex theology, red ochre, importation of ovicaprids and dentistry.
• Central to West:Populations and tribes spreading the Niger–Congo languages migrate with long distance trade routes and large chiefdoms between Eastern West Africa and their homeland of Central Africa millennia before. This expansion of this set of the Niger-Congo languages may have been associated with the expansion of Sahel agriculture in the African Neolithic period, following the desiccation of the Sahara in c. 3500 BCE and segregation of the Eurasian descended Paleolithic and Neolithic peoples into West, East and North Africa, by the Sahara desert. This contemporary expansion of the Niger–Congo languages preceded the later, more famous, Bantu expansion.
• Maghreb transitions from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic stage finishing completely circa 5000 BC.
• In West Africa: the Pastoral Period spanned from the savanna region to the eastern Saharan region, and from Mauritania to the Red Sea, which extensive trade between the regions and polities. Agriculture is introduced and advanced within West Africa by Eurasian descended populations alongside sub saharan populations.
• West:Venus figurine importations into sub saharan Africa via Eurasian descended pastoralists with the emergence of complexly organized pastoral societies in West Africa between 4000 BCE and 1000 BCE, representative of a priest class with diffused religion from the Fertile Crescent. Though possibly developed as early as 5000 BCE, Nsibidi may have also developed in 2000 BCE, as evidenced by depictions of the West African script on Ikom monoliths at Ikom, in Nigeria.
• South: Red finger-painted rock art created between 4000 BC, and 200 AD, to the south of Kei River and Orange River by Khoisan hunter-gatherer-herders, in Malawi and Zambia by dark-skinned, occasionally bearded, bow-and-arrow-wielding Akafula hunter-gatherers who resided in Malawi until the 19th century CE, and in Transvaal by the Vhangona people. Khoisan cultures continue from prior millennia to dominate Southern Africa.
• Circa 4500 BC, Proto-Bantu chiefdoms near the Sanaga and Nyong rivers of Southern Cameroon expanded Eastwards from Proto-Southern Bantoid chiefdoms who in an earlier Bantu expansion had expanded into the south and east, engaging the Palaeolithic tribes of the Congo. Such social stratification and rapid political emergence via expansion gives us a depiction of the cultural complexity of these cultures.