Mount Mazama erupts around 5,677 (± 150) BCE, reducing the stratovolcano's approximate twelve thousand-foot (thirty-seven hundred meters) height by around a mile (sixteen hundred meters).

Material ejected from the collapse and associated eruption destroys hundreds of square kilometers of the surrounding countryside in the Oregon part of the Cascade Volcanic Arc and the Cascade Range.

One pyroclastic flow travels forty miles (sixty-four kilometers) from Mazama down Rogue River Valley while another moves north in-between Mount Bailey and Mount Thielsen, moving over Diamond Lake (it finally comes to rest in North Umpqua River valley).

Winds carry tephra (ash and pumice) from Mazama northeast, where it covers over five hundred thousand square miles (one million three hundred thousand square kilometers) including nearly all of Oregon, Washington, northern California, Idaho, western Montana, and parts of Utah, Nevada, Wyoming, Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan.

The eruption had a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) of 7, and it remains the largest single Holocene eruption, but the Global Volcanism Program lists it as VEI: 6. There's conflicting information in the sources, with VEI 7 appearing in more recent USGS sources.

The Klamath Native Americans of the area believed that Llao, their god of the underworld, inhabited the mountain.

After the mountain destroyed itself, the Klamaths recounted the events as a great battle between Llao and his rival Skell, their sky god.

The volcano's collapsed caldera will eventually fill with water from snowmelt and rain to create Crater Lake; the entire mountain is located within today’s Crater Lake National Park.

The Dadiwan culture, a Neolithic culture found primarily in Gansu and western Shaanxi, China, takes its name from the earliest layer, around 5800, found at the type-site at Dadiwan.

The remains of millet and pigs were found in sites associated with the culture.

The culture shares several similarities with the Cishan and Peiligang cultures.

The Middle East (5805–5662 BCE): Çatalhöyük’s Peak and Artistic Flourishing

Çatalhöyük: A Prominent Urban Center

Between 5805 and 5662 BCE, the settlement of Çatalhöyük in Anatolia reached its zenith as the largest city of its era, signifying a significant milestone in urban development and community size during the Neolithic period.

Artistic and Ritualistic Practices

Around 5750 BCE, inhabitants of Çatalhöyük created small fertility figurines modeled from terra cotta. These artifacts underscore the continued cultural and religious importance of fertility symbolism within the community, reflecting the central role these figurines likely played in ritualistic and daily practices.

Urban Complexity and Cultural Expression

The prominence of Çatalhöyük during this period highlights its role as a center for cultural, economic, and social interactions. Artistic activities, such as the production of figurines, signify an ongoing tradition of sophisticated craftsmanship and cultural expression, indicating both a vibrant artistic culture and a socially cohesive community.

Economic Continuity and Trade

The city's position in regional trade networks continued, with obsidian tools and crafted goods being prominent items of exchange. The continuity and expansion of these economic practices reinforced Çatalhöyük's role as an influential urban center within broader Neolithic trade networks.

This era encapsulates the peak of Çatalhöyük’s urban prominence and its artistic achievements, reflecting the city's central importance in the cultural and economic landscapes of the Neolithic Middle East.

Çatalhöyük in Anatolia is the largest city of its day; its people model small fertility figures in terra cotta around 5750.

The Middle East (5661–5518 BCE): Agricultural Intensification and Expanding Settlements

Agricultural Innovation and Productivity

Between 5661 and 5518 BCE, agricultural practices across the Middle East further intensified. Communities such as Çatalhöyük continued refining their farming methods, employing improved cultivation techniques and introducing new crops. This era saw increased productivity in cereals, legumes, and fruit orchards, ensuring sustained growth and food security.

Expanding Settlements and Community Organization

Settlements continued to expand, reflecting growing populations and greater organizational sophistication. New settlements emerged and existing urban centers, like Çatalhöyük, experienced continued growth, prompting further developments in community organization, infrastructure, and architectural complexity.

Technological Advancements and Tool Production

Technological innovation continued to advance, with more refined stone and obsidian tools being produced. These enhancements facilitated agricultural work, hunting, and crafting activities, supporting economic stability and promoting increased efficiency in daily tasks and trade.

Cultural Development and Social Complexity

The period also witnessed significant cultural and social developments. Artifacts and archaeological remains indicate increasing social differentiation, specialized labor roles, and the complexity of communal and possibly ritual practices. Artistic and cultural expressions flourished, continuing the tradition of symbolic representation and communal cohesion.

This age underscores a period of sustained agricultural innovation, settlement expansion, technological progress, and cultural vibrancy, setting critical foundations for subsequent societal complexities in the Middle East.

The desertification of North Africa, which will ultimately lead to the creation of the Sahara desert, begins around 5600 BCE.

China’s Neolithic Zhaobaogou culture, found primarily in the Luan River valley in Inner Mongolia and northern Hebei, begins in about 5400, produces sand-tempered, incised pottery vessels with geometric and zoomorphic designs.

The culture also produces stone and clay human figurines.

Neolithic culture thrives along the Danube at such sites as Starcevo, located on the north bank of the Danube in Vojvodina, opposite Belgrade, Serbia.

It represents the earliest settled farming society in the area, although hunting and gathering still provided a significant portion of the inhabitants' diet.

The pottery is usually coarse but finer fluted and painted vessels later emerged.

A type of bone spatula, perhaps for scooping flour, is a distinctive artifact.

The Korös is a similar culture in Hungary named after the River Korös with a closely related culture that also used footed vessels but fewer painted ones.

Both have given their names to the wider culture of the region in that period.

Parallel and closely related cultures also include the Karanovo culture in Bulgaria, Cris in Romania and the pre-Sesklo in Greece.

The Vinca culture emerges around 5500 on the shores of lower Danube.

As in all prehistoric cultures, the majority of the people of the Vinca network are occupied with the provision of food.

The economy is based on a variety of subsistence techniques: arable agriculture, animal husbandry, and hunting and gathering all contributed to the diet of the growing Vin a population.

Vinca agriculture introduces common wheat, oat, and flax to temperate Europe, and makes greater use of barley than earlier cultures.

These innovations raise potential crop yields, and in the case of flax allow the manufacture of clothes in materials other than leather and wool.

There is also indirect evidence that Vinca agriculture made use of the cattle-driven plow, which would have had a major effect on the amount of human labor required for agriculture as well as the types of soils that could be exploited.

Many of the largest Vinca sites occupy regions dominated by soil types that would have required the use of the plow to farm.

Areas with less arable potential were exploited through transhumant pastoralism, where groups from the lowland villages moved their livestock to nearby upland areas on a seasonal basis.

Cattle was more important than caprids (i.e.

sheep and goats) in Vinca herds and, in comparison to the cultures of the period, livestock was increasingly kept for milk, leather and as draft animals, rather than solely for meat.

Seasonal movement to upland areas was also motivated by the exploitation of stone and mineral resources.

The especially rich permanent upland settlements established would have relied more heavily on pastoralism for subsistence.

The Vinca subsistence economy, increasingly focused on domesticated plants and animals, continued to make use of wild food resources.

The hunting of deer, boar and auroch, fishing of carp and catfish, shell-collecting, fowling and foraging of wild cereals, forest fruits and nuts made up a significant part of the diet at some Vinca sites.

These, however, were in the minority; settlements were invariably located with agricultural rather than wild food potential in mind, and wild resources were usually underexploited unless the area was low in arable productivity.

The Cucuteni-Trypillian culture, which has its beginnings around 5500 BCE, was initially named after the village of Cucuteni in Iasi County, Romania, where the first objects associated with it were discovered.

Members of this culture belonged to tribal social groups, scattered over an area of southeast Europe encompassing territories in present-day Romania, Moldova, and southwestern Ukraine.

The important physical features of the land were rolling plains, river valleys, the Black Sea, and the Carpathian Mountains, which were covered by a mixed forest in the west, which gave way to the open grasslands of the steppes in the east.

The climate during the time that this culture flourished has been named the Holocene climatic optimum, and featured cool, wet winters and warm, moist summers.

These conditions would have created a very favorable climate for agriculture in this region.