7434 or 7207 - Gemini became the constellation that rose in the east just before the sun (rose heliacally) on March 21

Graves: "original" zodiac: Fish at winter solstice, ram, bull, twins at spring equinox, crab, lion, virgin at summer solstice, scales, scorpion, bowman at fall equinox, goat, waterman (page 380-381)

7260 - 5620 rice, pottery, adzes Sakai Cave, Malay Peninsula - first large-scale rice-growing? (Oppenheimer)

7200 - Cayonu: 250 miles WNW of Shanidar cave, 37 miles N of Diyarbakir (E central Turkey): copper: two pins, one bent fish-hook and a reamer or awl. Later other copper items, including oval-shaped beads. Trade spread to other sites in Kurdistan.

7250 - 5000 - 'Ain Ghazal, North-Eastern Jordan, on the outskirts of Amman. Neolithic site. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/'Ain_Ghazal
Einkom wheat, emmer wheat and two-row barley were domesticated during the 8th and 7th millennia in settlements
between southeast Europe and Afghanistan. (Gimbutas)

before 7000 - Sheep were domesticated in the hilly flanks of the Zagros Mountains (Iran, Iraq) and in the Taurus Mountains (Turkey) where they had previously been hunted in the wild. (Gimbutas)

7000 - agriculture: Pakistan, first farming villages Asia Minor, first pots in Near East.

Afghanistan: Excavations of prehistoric sites by Louis Dupree, the University of Pennsylvania, the Smithsonian Institution, and others suggest that the region around Kandahar is one of the oldest human settlements known so far. Dupree writes:
...Early peasant farming villages came into existence in Afghanistan ca. 5000 B.C., or 7000 years ago. Deh Morasi Ghundai, the first prehistoric site to be excavated in Afghanistan, lies 27 km (17 mi.) southwest of Kandahar (Dupree, 1951). Another Bronze Age village mound site with multiroomed mud-brick buildings dating from the same period sits nearby at Said Qala (J. Shaffer, 1970). Second millennium B.C. Bronze Age pottery, copper and bronze horse trappings and stone seals were found in the lowermost levels in the nearby cave called Shamshir Ghar (Dupree, 1950). In the Seistan, southwest of these Kandahar sites, two teams of American archaeologists discovered sites relating to the 2nd millennium B.C. (G. Dales, University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, 1969, 1971; W, Trousdale, Smithsonian Institution, 1971 – 76). Stylistically the finds from Deh Morasi and Said Qala tie in with those of pre-Indus Valley sites and with those of comparable age on the Iranian Plateau and in Central Asia, indicating cultural contacts during this very early age...[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kandahar

By 7000 - root crops such as taro grown in New Guinea Highlands, using ditches to drain swamps for crop-growing. (Op)
7000 - first evidence of agriculture in New Guinea (Met Museum)
7,000 - A mixed fermented wine of rice, honey and fruit was being drunk in Northern China.
http://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/chronology.html

By 7000 - crop cultivation started in North, Central and South America. (Oppenheimer: Eden in the East, Intro to Part 1)

By 7000 - Barley cultivation was developed in the Indus Valley. (Oppenheimer: Eden in the East, Intro to Part 1)
Early Neolithic people on the western side of India started agriculture as early as the seventh millennium BC, planting six-row barley, and herding cattle, sheep and goats. This could have been the precursor to the early Indus Valley civilisations. Farming started a little later in the central and eastern areas of India, as a separate development, with rice the staple rather than wheat and barley. The earliest remains of this development come from central India in the Vindhya Hills, possibly as long ago as the fifth to sixth millennia BC. Megalithic remains abound in this particular region, as they do further east in Burma. Pots with cord markings and paddle impressions provide a ceramic link with Southeast Asia. The latter, which date from the early Neolithic periods, suggest a prolonged contact between India and the maritime sand-bar cultures of Southeast Asia. Moreover, the sites of early rice cultivation in India have the same general distribution as the present-day Austro-Asiaric-speaking Mundaic tribes in the north- central and northeastern areas. (Oppenheimer; Eden in the East, page 84)

West India/Pakistan:
7000 - 5500 India Neolithic: The aceramic Neolithic (Mehrgarh I,Baluchistan, Pakistan). One of the earliest Neolithic sites in India is Lahuradewa, at Middle Ganges region, C14 dated around 7th millennium BC.[5]. Recently another site near the confluence of Ganges and Yamuna rivers called Jhusi yielded a C14 dating of 7100 BC for its Neolithic levels.[6]

Mehrgarh, one of the most important Neolithic (7000 to c. 2500 BC) sites, lies on what is now the "Kachi plain" of today's Balochistan, Pakistan. One of the earliest sites with evidence of farming (wheat and barley) and herding (cattle, sheep and goats) in South Asia. Early residents lived in mud brick houses, stored their grain in granaries, fashioned tools with local copper ore, and lined their large basket containers with bitumen. They cultivated six-row barley, einkorn and emmer wheat, jujubes and dates, and herded sheep, goats and cattle. Located near the Bolan Pass, to the west of the Indus River valley. Was a small farming village dated between 7000–5500 BCE. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh [THIS IS ON COAST.]

Northeast India, the Ganges River valley: Lahuradewa provides evidence for occupation on a lake edge back to the seventh millennium BC. Already in this period, or certainly by sometime in the end of the fifth millennium, ceramics had begun to be produced, and rice was part of the diet. (eastern part of Uttar Predesh, north of the Ganges valley and in the lower Son river basin (e.g. Lahuradewa, Senuwar) - Agricultural Origins and Frontiers in South Asia: A Working Synthesis - Dorian Q. Fuller (2006)

One of the earliest Neolithic sites in India is Lahuradewa, at Middle Ganges region, C14 dated around 7th millennium BCE. Recently another site near the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers called Jhusi yielded a C14 dating of 7100 BCE for its Neolithic levels. A new 2009 report by archaeologist Rakesh Tewari on Lahuradewa shows new C14 datings that range between 8000 BCE and 9000 BCE associated with rice, making Lahuradewa the earliest Neolithic site in entire South Asia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic

7000 - 4000 warm and wet "Moist Phase' / much human activity at Nabta Playa, Egypt (Wendorf excavations) [= RETURN]
7,000 - High and wild stage of the Nile peaks through the reduction of rainfall at the two key river sources. http://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/chronology.html

7000 - Cayonu, Turkey: Old World's earliest known piece of cloth, wrapped around an antler, linen? woven from local flax? - http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13918831.300-strands-from-the-dawn-of-time-.html
7000 - first evidence of the Neolithic on the island of Crete (ceramics) - http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/History/Minoans.html
7000 - Abu Hureyra: large cockleshell with traces of powdered malachite (not native), used in predynastic Egypt as eye shadow.
(N Syria)

(7000–5700) Jiahu - Yellow River basin of Henan Province, central China -
            houses, kilns, pottery, turquoise carvings, tools made from stone and bone, bone flutes (Met Museum)

7500-5700 / 7000 - Çatalhöyük / Çatal Höyük: first evidence of activity - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Çatalhöyük
7,000 - Oldest dated remains on the 13-hectacre Catalhoyuk (Catal hoyuk/Çatal Hüyük) site in Southern Turkey, containing hundreds of buildings packed tightly together with common walls, and with entrances through the roofs. British archaeologist James Mellaart, then at the British Institute of Archaeology in Ankara, estimated that it was home for 10,000 people. Christian O'Brien identified fruit fly chromosomes drawn on the walls of one of the key buildings. . . . similar Stone Age towns or cities, such as Mureybet in Syria, started to turn up all over the eastern Mediterranean. . . . http://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/chronology.html
Obsidian tools were probably both used and traded for items such as Mediterranean sea shells and flint from Syria.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Çatal_Hüyük
The finest Anatolian obsidian was mined at the base of Hasan Dag. Catal Huyuk, located near rivers in a flat, game-filled plain, was an ideal trading site for the obsidian. http://www.telesterion.com/catal2.htm
Çatalhöyük / Çatal Höyük (~6000 BC) features native copper artifacts and smelted lead beads, but no smelted copper. http://www.copper.co.za/education/history.htm

7000 Metsamor Armenia (Anatolia) - ancient city complex with a large metallurgical and astronomical centre (- 17th c. CE). http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/turkeymetsamor.htm

7040 - Hacilar - southwestern Turkey (25 km southwest of Burdur). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacilar

7000 - 6500 In the Final PPNB period (in which pottery was in use in some areas) the coastal parts of the northern Levant, previously showing no evidence of Neolithic occupation (and probably occupied by forest foragers) now show impressive amounts of Cappadocian obsidian in Neolithic contexts. This probably indicates a new trade route to the Levant via Cilicia and the coast. This supplemented the earlier central-Euphrates route, and reduced the role of the Levantine super-sites such as Ain Ghazal, which had previously enjoyed a near-monopoly. Obsidian now reached a greater diversity of sites by a variety of routes. http://www.archatlas.dept.shef.ac.uk/ObsidianRoutes/ObsidianRoutes.php

Cattle and pigs were domesticated between 7500 and 6500 B.C. in Anatolia. (Gimbutas)

The earliest traces of human activity in the Cyclades date to the 7th millennium BC and come from Melos, which seems to have been visited by people from mainland Greece in search of high-quality obsidian. This hard volcanic rock was extensively used throughout the Aegean in the Neolithic period but also in the Bronze Age for the manufacture of cutting tools and weapons. http://www.cycladic.gr/frontoffice/portal.asp?cpage=NODE&cnode=36

Neolithic Jarmo, settled around 7000 BC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Ancient_Mesopotamia
6750 - Jarmo village, on a tributary of the Lesser Zab river in foothills of Iraqi Kurdistan: copper items, as well as a single bead made of smelted lead, oldest metallurgy in Old World. (Kurdistan mountains teem with ore deposits.)
6750-5750 Jarmo figures with heads with almond-shaped eyes.

Third copper


Other? domestications
of barley in both the Mideasst and India




















Language: Austronesian
(Agglutinative)

??? [no cite]

India: Was earlier 7500 BCE city in Cambay Bay buried by flood water, and this is a RE-start?

Very first megaliths?








Language: related to AustroNesian, Mundaic?


Fourth copper




























Çatal Hüyük
Obsidian trading

Language: ?























Cyclades: obsidian continues




Fifth copper

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NEOLITHIC MOVES NORTH AND WEST INTO CENTRAL EUROPE:
5500 - rapid spread of the Lincarbandkeramik (LBK) 'ceramics (pots) with linear bands' style, apparently up the Danube from its homeland in Hungary. Reached Austria, and then Frankfurt in Germany, almost before it left Hungary, covering 800 km within 100 years. After reaching the Central and North European plains up the Dnestr and Danube Rivers, LBK then spread rapidly north down the Vistula, Oder and Elbe. It did not, however, move right up to the Baltic or Atlantic coasts (so avoiding the settled coastal Mesolithic communities), but instead swung west and southwest through the Netherlands and Belgium, arriving in northern France by 5000 BC and finally reaching Normandy and its coast by 4500 BC. An eastward movement of LBK went round the Carpathians to Poland and on to the Ukraine at the same time, but pots had already appeared among Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in Poland and western Russia and the lower Volga long before, around 7000 BC. (OB, 201)

5500 - La Hoguette pottery, found mainly in France, also seems to bridge the transition from the Late Mesolithic to the full Neolithic with ceramics, small-scale pastoralism and horticulture with cereal agriculture. The La Hoguette also fills in the geographical gap between the growing pincer movements of Cardial Ware in the south of France and LBK in the north. La Hoguette style was first found in Limburg, in the Netherlands, but is defined by bone-tempered pottery found at a site near La Hoguette in central Normandy. Although mainly found in the upper Rhone Valley, northern France, Switzerland and south-west Germany, in style La Hoguette resembles Cardial Ware farther south. Consistent with this south—north direction, a species of poppy, Papaver segiterum, originally from the south of France, was carried north as well. La Hoguette probably antedates LBK around the middle Rhine region where the styles overlap and even hybridize. (OB, 202-203)

5500 - Neolithic communities were well established in the middle Danube Valley and the Hungarian Plain . . .The forests of the loess were dense, and over very large areas supported insufficient biodiversity to attract hunter-gatherers. For horticulturists ready to ring-bark ancient trees and to bum undergrowth, allowing the ash to fertilize the soil, the old forest was a congenial zone to colonize. By 5000 BC huge tracts of Europe from the Vistula to the Seine had been settled. (OB, 210-211 - Cunliffe)

5500 - 4500 - Cereals make their appearance at Cardial Ware sites.

5500 - 4500 - Settlements on the Atlantic coasts of France and the Iberian Peninsula. Their distribution indicates that they probably took both of the same two routes that would be used by Phoenician and Greek tin traders much later on, through the Straits of Gibraltar and inland via Carcassonne across the Aude—Garonne corridor. (OB, 202)

By 5300 - Separate spread into NW mainland Europe up the Danube from the Black Sea, arriving in the Netherlands. . . .
hallmarked by the spread of . . . pottery, known as Linearbandkeramik. (OB, page 16)

Scandinavia: The Ertebølle culture (ca 5300 BC-3950 BC) is the name of a hunter-gatherer and fisher culture dating to the end of the Mesolithic period. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavian_prehistory

5900 Neolithic beginnings in Northern Europe, Scandinavia, E Baltic: Maglemose & Kunda [this was way earlier / and not Neolithic] (Gimbutas: Language of the Goddess, 335)

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Peiligang Site (5500 BC-4900 BC) Earliest China Neolithic. Xinzheng, Henan Province. Central plains, relationships with the Yangshao Culture of the central plains. Stone saddle-quern and stone roller for grinding grains. Red pottery pot. - http://www.chinaculture.org/cnstatic/doc/exhibition/20e.doc

5500 - 3800 - rice first grown as a domestic crop Asia - Pengtoushan

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SUMMARY: Resettlement of Europe, possibly up the Danube river, to to northern Europe.
Neolithic from the Mideast spread to SE Europe, then spread to central Europe.
Along the Mediterranean coast, a separate movement spread to western coastal Europe.
But not Britain, which was now separated from mainland by water. However, there were people in Britain.
Meanwhile, at Sumer, agriculture intensified to year-round, irrigated.
Black Sea floods > further neolithic expansion.