Early Chronology
Note: The basic structure is based on the chronology Mary R. Murrin made for the New Jersey Historical Commission during the Columbus Quincentennial, with additions and emendations derived from various sources on the web. The information about impacts/tsunamis was based on Ed Grodine's reports.
Events of particular importance to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines are indicated this way.
160,000
Homo sapiens idaltu. ("Idaltu" is Afar for "elder") Fossils found in Ethiopia. The picture below is an artist's reconstruction from a skull found as many small fragments that took three years to reconstruct. Aside from being slightly larger (bigger brain) with stronger brow ridges, it could be a modern individual. The finders gave it a subspecies classification, but that is conjectural. Because it coincides with the date determined from mitochondrial and Y-chromosome DNA this "Ethiopian Adam" is, like "Mitochondrial Eve" very likely the ancestor of us all. This skull, along with others found, had posthumous toolmarks.
45,000-13,000
Immigration to America from Siberia. The illustration below shows the current sense of early american archaeology. There is still no consensus about the Siberian land bridge. One of the most important recent discoveries is an archaeological site in Chile -- Monte Verde -- which is at least 12,500 years old; another part of the site might be 33,000 years old. Monte Verde means that people may have arrived in the Americas much earlier than 12,500 years ago.
(Note: If early migrants into the Americas came before that, they probably were not "big game hunters" [See "Clovis" below] but foraged less dramatically. Probable dates are based on guesses about the accessibility of land and ocean routes. Subsequent land migrations would have occurred whenever the land bridge was available, and coastal migrations in small craft were probably also possible.
30,000-10,000
Venuses and cave paintings in Europe. An early indication that Homo Sapiens Sapiens was capable of "fine art". However, there has been little effort to date African petroglyphs and it was assumed that Siberian-American migration took place more recently, so the earliest artistic efforts should be considered an open question.
Recent excavations in Brazil have found cave wall paintings, showing that art was not limited to Europe.
15,000-8500
Upper Paleolithic (anthropology)
12,000-8,000
Last Ice Age followed by the Holocene.(Geology)
11,000-10,500
Clovis points in North America used in mammoth hunting. The Clovis points are masterpieces of stoneworking with rocks and soft tools, using all the known techniques of flaking.
(Note: The more accurate date for the first appearance of Clovis probably falls in the range of 11,000-10,900, and that the period during which Clovis points were produced may be limited to about two hundred years.)
9500-5000
Paleoindian Period:The earliest recorded prehistoric site for the Caribbean cultural area is the El Jobo site in Venezuela, which has been dated as roughly contemporaneous with the Clovis period in North America. Although the Lesser and Greater Antilles were home to various types of extinct Pleistocene megafauna, such as the giant ground sloth (Megaelocsus), no actual cultural artifacts have been identified for this time period (ca. 10,000 - 6,000 B.C.) for the Caribbean Islands. No pre-5000 B.C. sites were noted in the 1963 theme study for either the Greater or Lesser Antilles islands
7000
The dog has been domesticated in North and Middle America. The dog, along with the llama in the Andes, will be the major beast of burden other than man until the European introduction of the horse.
7000-5000
Squash, pumpkins, gourds, beans, and peppers first cultivated in Mesoamerica.
6000-3000
Middle Archaic period in North America
5000-3500
Maize first cultivated in Mesoamerica.
5000-3000
Oldest complex society (discovered in Peru in 1980s) built stepped pyramids and huge U-shaped temples up to ten stories high, and made multicolored friezes. Fishing was replaced over time by irrigated agriculture as primary food source. Crops: sweet potatoes, beans manioc. Sites in coastal and inland Peru.
5000-0
The cultures of the Mesoindian period of the Caribbean area were believed to begin ca. 5000 B.C. and ended for most of the Lesser and Greater Antilles about two thousand years ago.
The first noted Mesoindian occupation in the Antilles was the Banwari culture, a small animal-hunting and shellfish-gathering phase from Trinidad (ca. 5000 B.C.), which appeared to have possibly moved up the Lesser Antilles. The Banwari phase was noted for coastal shell midden sites, which yielded fresh water and salt water shells of Neritina virginea and the conch and, predominately, crab remains, bones of deer, peccary, small mammals, and fish. The stone tools consisted of ground stone pestles, manos, grooved axes, celts, and chipped projectile points and tools. The points were also made of bone, as were needles and fishing spears .
Twice during the Mesoindian period (2700 - 2000 B.C. and 1500 - 600 B.C.), sea levels lowered, destroying the shellfish environments of the islands and causing a depopulation of coastal areas. Sites for these two periods, if they exist, may now be underwater.
Artifacts of the Mesoindian period are classified as: Ortoiroid, known principally from the South American mainland; and the Casimiroid series.
Generally, in comparison with areas surrounding the Antilles, the Cuban material was stylistically more closely related to material from eastern Venezuela ; whereas, the Hispaniola and Puerto Rican material seemed to be associated with material from Central America . Therefore, it is believed that origins for settling the Northern Caribbean were multiple, as opposed to a single source of origin for the Mesoindian cultures of the lower Antilles.
4500
Neolithic Revolution in Europe.
Recent research has shown that the mesolithic-neolithic transition on northern europe was accompanied by a rapid shift from a diet of sea food and game to a grain based diet. As people shift their dietary base from fish and wild meat to grain and domesticated meat animals they don't get as much Vitamin D in their diet. Those children with genetic melanin deficiency are more able to get Vitamin D from the weak sunlight even if it makes them more sensitive to skin cancer (melanoma).This inherited melanin-deficiency is the reason people resident within 600 mi of the North and Baltic Seas were called "white" as compared to people with normal levels of melanin.
4000
Casimiroid and Ortoiroid Culture. While the Casimiroid was a lithic culture that migrated from west to east through the Antilles, a contemporary lithic culture, the Ortoiroid, was the result of migration of another lithic culture from northern South America, north up the Lesser Antilles
3300
Sumerian Cities
3199
Egyptian civilization
2500
Harappan civilization
2250
Copper working
2100
The impact craters in Rio Cuarto in Argentina are presumed to be the result of a major meteoric event that came across South America and left a legacy of myths about great fires. It may well have burned off and depopulated the Antilles in the initial atmospheric impact. This would explain the gaps in occupation that provided the opportunity for successive immigrations.
2000
Stonehenge
2000
Second migration of hunter/gatherer people to the Lesser Antilles, probably because the Rio Cuarto event had depopulated them.
2000 BCE-1000 CE
Agriculture and pottery spread widely in North America.
1800
Shang Dynasty
1600
Bronze working in near east
1500-200
The Krum Bay subseries (the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico)artifact assemblage is characterized by fairly fine-grained basalt flake tools, hammerstones, shell picks, partially ground stone celts, and beads and pendants of stone, bone, and shell. Krum Bay sites tend to be open habitation sites located near the shore. Subsistence remains indicated shellfish gathering, fishing, and hunting of birds and turtles were the major sources of food.
1200
Olmec Civilization (i.e. city-based agricultural culture) takes hold in southern Mexico based on Maize agriculture and fishing. Olmecs produced the first art to appear in Mesoamerica--huge basalt monuments, jade figurines, cave paintings. They played the Mesoamerican ball game common to subsequent cultures. Part acting out of myth, part athletic contest, this game often ended with the losers being sacrificed. Olmecs are the first complex society in Mesoamerica.
1150
Asteroid impact causing megatsunami in the Caribbean, probably eliminating shore-based societies.
1000-200
The Coroso subseries was identified as a lithic or preceramic culture located on all the coasts of Puerto Rico, in caves and at shell middens.
1000-500
A third group of people, who we now refer to as Arawaks (or Taino) settle in Greater Antilles from Venezuela via Trinidad. They are primarily fishers and farmers (maize, beans, sweet potatoes, squash, manioc). They are especially identified with cassava from manioc. But see "Saladoid" below.
900BCE-200 CE
Nok culture emerges in West Africa, between Lake Chad and the Niger Valley. This culture is the ancestor of important Yoruba city-states, such as Benin, Ife, and Oyo between the Volta and Niger rivers.
850-200
Chavin de Huantar, on the eastern slopes of Andes, had stone architecture having interior galleries with stone block ceilings, ramps, stairs, and air vents. Temple decorations and stone sculptures featured figures with combinations of feline, serpent, avian, and human features. These motifs are also found on painted textiles, pottery, bone objects and sheet gold.
700-400 CE
Adena and Hopewell peoples were Eastern Woodlands mound building groups. The Adena were located in the Ohio River Valley, the Hopewell in the Ohio and Illinois River Valleys) These groups built large earthen burial and effigy mounds.Adena were primarily hunter-gathers; the Hopewell depended more on agriculture and built extensive villages.
600-450 CE
Paracus and Nazca cultures, south coast of Peru. Noted in particular for embroidered textiles and pottery. As Paracus gave way to Nazca culture, ceramics became the most important medium for expression. Paracus culture had featured both monochrome and polychrome pottery, but Nazca potters produced ceramics with six or seven colors, probably the most brilliantly colored pottery in the New World.
600
Iron work in near east
500
Zapotec culture arises in southeast Mexico. Noted for stone carvings, hieroglyphs and a calendar.
400
Olmec civilization wanes.
400- 500 CE
A new migration of people, whose culture exhibited traits of ceramics, agriculture, and sedentism, occurred from mainland South America northward up the Lesser Antilles . This culture, termed the Saladoid culture, appears to have established itself initially in the southernmost Lesser Antilles as early as 500 B.C.
The relatively rapid movement of the Saladoid culture into the Lesser Antilles and the eastern half of the Greater Antilles appears to have displaced the earlier lithic period cultures as far as Cuba, where up until contact with Europeans in the sixteenth century, a pre-ceramic culture, called the Ciboney, continued to exist. The Saladoid ceramic styles showed significant influences from the Barrancoid styles of ceramics based in the lower Orinoco River Valley of Venezuela.
Shared ceramic techniques between these two areas include vessel forms, such as zoomorphic effigy vessels, trays, and platters (some depicting animals native only to South America), jars and bowls with D-shaped strap handles, censers, and bell-shaped vessels. Saladoid potters decorated their vessels with polychrome designs in white-on-red, white-on-red with orange slip, black paint, and negative-painted designs. A smaller number of ceramics were decorated with designs incised into the body of the vessels.
Diagnostic lithic artifacts of the Saladoid culture in both Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are pendants shaped like raptorial birds endemic to South America made from exotic materials, such as jasper-chalcedony, amethyst, crystal quartz, fossilized wood, greenstones, carnelian, lapis lazuli, turquoise, garnet, epidote, and possibly obsidian. The distribution of these artifacts throughout the Greater and Lesser Antilles and northern South America is indicative of a Pan-Caribbean trade network of raw and manu-factured goods. By about A.D. 600, however, these artifacts all but disappear.
Settlement patterns of the Saladoid culture tended to be on the flat coastal plains and alluvial valleys probably to utilize the maritime food resources and fertile soils for growing food crops, such as manioc, cassava, or yucca, and, to a lesser extent, maize. In the later part of the Saladoid period, there appears to have been an expansion into the mountainous interiors of the islands. Typical village patterns in Puerto Rico and adjacent islands consisted of a semi-circular series of mounded middens, frequently serving as the village cemetery, facing a central plaza. Excavations of these cemeteries show individuals were treated equally in terms of grave goods, an indication of an egalitarian society.
300
Celts sack Rome
100BCE-1500CE
Hohokam culture, southern Arizona, Gila and Salt River Valleys. Pottery and pit houses were features of Hohokam culture. Advanced farming techniques, such as elaborate irrigation systems, made larger settlements possible. The Hohokam were also known for elaborate textiles, human figurines of clay, pottery, and earthen platform mounds and ball courts which show Mesoamerican influence.
100BCE-1300CE
Anasazi culture in Southwest lived first in semipermanent domed structures, then in pit houses, then by about 750CE they began to build multitiered, multiroomed apartment dwellings. The Anasazi were known for being master basket makers and for intricately painted pottery, cotton and feather clothing, turquoise jewelry and mosaic work. They abandoned their sites around 1300CE for unknown reasons.
33
Julius Ceasar conquers Gaui (Celts)
6BCE
Jesus of Nazareth born