We are Hominids, or Hominidae, also known as great apes.

Our taxonomic family of primates includes four extant genera: the chimpanzees (Pan) with two species; gorillas (Gorilla) with two species; humans (Homo) with one species; and orangutans (Pongo) with two species.

Homininae, a subfamily of Hominidae that includes members of hominini—humans, as well as gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and some extinct relatives—comprises all hominids that arose after the split from orangutans (Ponginae).

A number of known extinct genera are grouped with humans in the Homininae subfamily, others with orangutans in the Ponginae subfamily.

The most recent common ancestor of the Hominidae lived roughly fourteen million years ago, when the ancestors of the orangutans speciated from the ancestors of the other three genera.

The subtribe Hominina is the "human" branch, including the genus Homo, which has its beginnings in this eon, which spans a quarter of a million years.

The fossil record suggests that individuals of the species Gigantopithecus blacki are the largest apes that ever lived, standing up to three meters (nine point eight feet feet) and weighing up to five hundred and forty kilograms (one thousand one hundred and ninety pounds).

Gigantopithecus, having come into existence perhaps nine million years ago, exists to as recently one hundred thousand years ago in what is now Nepal, China, India, and Vietnam.

This places Gigantopithecus in the same time frame and geographical location as several hominin species.

In addition to the Homo genus to which we belong, other members of the family include Orrorin, Ardipithecus, Kenyanthropus, and the australopithecines Australopithecus and Paranthropus.

The name of the genus Orrorin means "original man" in Tugen, and the name of the only classified species, O. tugenensis, derives from Tugen Hills in Kenya, where the first fossil was found in 2000, followed by another score or so more in the ensuing years.

Apparently a climber of trees, Orrorin lives in dry evergreen forest environment estimated at six point one million to five point seven million years ago (Mya).

If Orrorin proves to be a direct human ancestor, then australopithecines such as Australopithecus afarensis ("Lucy") may be considered a side branch of the hominid family tree: Orrorin is both earlier, by almost three million years, and more similar to modern humans than is A. afarensis.

The relationship of the Ardipithecus genus to human ancestors, and whether it is a hominin, or not, is unknown.

The literature describes two species: A. kadabba, dated to approximately five point sixmillion years ago (late Miocene), and A. ramidus, which lived about four point four million years ago during the early Pliocene.

Like most hominids, but unlike all previously recognized hominins, it had a grasping hallux or big toe adapted for locomotion in the trees.

It is not confirmed how much other features of its skeleton reflect adaptation to bipedalism on the ground as well.

Like later hominins, Ardipithecus had reduced canine teeth.

The brain of Ardipithecus ramidus, measuring between three hundred and three hundred and fifty square centimeters, is slightly smaller than a modern bonobo or female common chimpanzee brain, but much smaller than the brain of australopithecines like Lucy (around four hundred to five hundred and fifty square kilometers) and roughly twenty percent the size of the modern Homo sapiens brain.

Kenyanthropus platyop, a three point five million to three point two million year-old (Pliocene) hominin fossil discovered in Lake Turkana, Kenya, is believed to have lived in a “mosaic” environment of grassland and some forested areas.

In contrast, their close relative, A. afarensis, found in sites such as Laetoli, Tanzania, and Hadar, Ethiopia, are believed to have spent a lot of time among trees.

Maeve Leakey proposed in 2001 that the fossil represents an entirely new hominine genus, while others classify it as a separate species of Australopithecus, Australopithecus platyops, and yet others interpret it as an individual of Australopithecus afarensis.

A lion headed figure, first called the lion man (German: Löwenmensch, literally "lion person"), then the lion lady (German: Löwenfrau), is an ivory sculpture that is the oldest known zoomorphic (animal-shaped) sculpture in the world and one of the oldest known sculptures in general.

The sculpture has also been interpreted as anthropomorphic, giving human characteristics to an animal, although it may have represented a deity.

The figurine was determined to be about thirty-two thousand years old by carbon dating material from the same layer in which the sculpture was found.

It is associated with the archaeological Aurignacian culture.

Its pieces were found in 1939 in a cave named Stadel-Höhle im Hohlenstein (Stadel cave in Hohlenstein Mountain) in the Lonetal (Lone valley) Swabian Alb, Germany.

Due to the beginning of the Second World War, it was forgotten and only rediscovered thirty years later.

The first reconstruction revealed a humanoid figurine without head.

During 1997 through 1998, additional pieces of the sculpture were discovered and the head was reassembled and restored.

The sculpture, 29.6 centimeters (11.7 inches) in height, 5.6 centimeters wide, and 5.9 centimeters thick, was carved out of mammoth ivory using a flint stone knife.

There are seven parallel, transverse, carved gouges on the left arm.

After this artifact was identified, a similar, but smaller, lion-headed sculpture was found, along with other animal figures and several flutes, in another cave in the same region of Germany.

This leads to the possibility that the lion-figure played an important role in the mythology of humans of the early Upper Paleolithic.

The sculpture can be seen in the Ulmer Museum in Ulm, Germany.

The Transition into the Holocene: Climate Change, Human Migration, and Environmental Transformations

During this epoch, the Northern Hemisphere experienced significant warming, accelerating the deglaciation processand causing rising sea levels as ice sheets continued to melt. This climatic shift marked the transition into the Holocene epoch, a period of relative climate stability following the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM).

Glacial Retreat and Human Recolonization

• Land ice receded from Denmark and southern Sweden, opening up new habitable territories.
• Human populations, previously confined to refuge areas, began repopulating Eurasia as ice sheets withdrew.
• For the first time, humans crossed Beringia into North America, initiating the peopling of the Americas.

The Atlantis Narrative and Speculative Cataclysmic Events

According to Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias (circa 360 BCE), the legendary island of Atlantis—described as lying “in front of the Pillars of Hercules” (modern Straits of Gibraltar)—was said to have sunk around 10,000 years earlier along with its advanced civilization.

Some researchers speculate that a cataclysmic event of global significance may have occurred around 9577 BCE, potentially involving:

• Crustal shifts and a possible axial tilt of the Earth
• Mass extinctions of animal species
• The formation of new mountain ranges
• Significant alterations in landmasses
• Massive volcanic eruptions and earthquakes

While no definitive evidence supports a single catastrophic event, glacial retreat after the 11th millennium BCEreshaped landscapes and ecosystems worldwide.

Climate Shifts and Desertification

As the climate stabilized, new regional climate patterns emerged:

• Permanent Mediterranean climates developed in regions such as:

  • The Mediterranean Basin
  • California
  • Southwestern Australia
  • Chile
  • Southwestern Africa

• Desertification gradually encroached upon subtropical regions, fundamentally transforming ecosystems and influencing early human settlements.

This period marked a turning point in human history, as warmer, stable climates allowed for agricultural developments, leading to the eventual rise of Neolithic societies and early civilizations.

Northern North America was covered during the last Ice Age by a glacier that alternately advanced and deteriorated with variations in the climate.

Lake Agassiz came to cover much of Manitoba, western Ontario, northern Minnesota, eastern North Dakota, and Saskatchewan around 13,000 years BP, when the continental ice sheet formed during the period now known as the Wisconsin glaciation, and covering much of central North America between thirty thousand and ten thousand years ago, created at its disintegrating front an immense proglacial lake, formed from its meltwaters.

At its greatest extent, it may have covered as much as four hundred and forty thousand square kilometers, larger than any currently existing lake in the world (including the Caspian Sea).

The lake drained at various times south through the Traverse Gap into Glacial River Warren (parent to the Minnesota River, a tributary of the Mississippi River), east through Lake Kelvin (modern Lake Nipigon) to what is now Lake Superior, or west via the Mackenzie River through the Northwest Territories.

Geologists believe that a major outbreak of Lake Agassiz about 13,000 BP drained north through the Mackenzie River into the Arctic Ocean.

A return of the ice for some time offered a reprieve, but after retreating north of the Canadian border about 9,900 years ago, Lake Agassiz refilled.

The last major shift in drainage occurred about 8,400 years BP.

The melting of remaining Hudson Bay ice caused Lake Agassiz to drain nearly completely.

Lake Agassiz' major drainage reorganization events were of such magnitudes that they had significant impact on climate, sea level and possibly early human civilization.

Major freshwater release into the Arctic Ocean is considered to disrupt oceanic circulation and cause temporary cooling.

The draining at 13,000 BP may be the cause of the Younger Dryas stadial.

The draining at 8400 may be the cause of the 8.2-kiloyear event.

A recent study by Turney and Brown links the 8400 drainage to the expansion of agriculture from east to west across Europe; he suggests that this may also account for various flood myths of prehistoric cultures, including the Biblical flood.

Lake Winnipeg, Lake Winnipegosis, Lake Manitoba, and Lake of the Woods, among others, are relics of the ancient lake.

The outlines and volumes of these modern lakes are still slowly changing due to differential isostatic rebound.

Uruk, situated east of the present bed of the Euphrates river, on the ancient dry former channel of the Euphrates River, some thirty kilometers east of modern As-Samawah, Al-Muthann, Iraq, is eponymous of the Uruk period, which is the protohistoric Chalcolithic to Early Bronze Age period in the history of Mesopotamia spanning from around 4000 BCE to about 3100 BCE.

It is succeeded by the Jemdet Nasr period of Sumer proper.

In myth, Uruk was founded by Enmerkar, who brought the official kingship with him, according to the Sumerian king list.

He also, in the epic Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, constructs the Eanna (Sumerian: E2-ana, 'House-of-Heavens') temple for the goddess Inanna in the Eanna District of Uruk.

Uruk plays a leading role in the early urbanization of Sumer in the mid-fourth millennium BCE.

Starting from the Early Uruk period, Uruk exercises hegemony over nearby settlements.

At this time (about 3800 BCE), there are two centers of twenty hectares, Uruk in the south and Nippur in the north, surrounded by much smaller ten-hectare settlements.

Lower Egypt, known as Ta-Mehu, which means "land of papyrus," is divided into twenty nomes, the first of which is at el-Lisht.

Because Lower Egypt is mostly undeveloped scrubland, undeveloped for human life and filled with all types of plant life such as grasses and herbs, the organization of the nomes will continue to undergo several changes.

In mythology, the earth deity Geb, original ruler of Egypt, invested Horus with the rule over Lower Egypt.

The Low Red Crown Deshret represents Lower Egypt with its patron deity; its symbols are the papyrus and the bee.

Seth is the lord of Deshret, the Red Land that comprises the deserts and foreign lands on either side of Kemet, the fertile Nile river basin.

It is considered a region of chaos, without law and full of dangers.

Deshret, from ancient Egyptian, is also the formal name for the Red Crown of Lower Egypt.

The end has a curly wire on it, representing the proboscis of a honeybee.

Deshret or DSRT also represents the insect known as the honeybee.

The Red Crown in Egyptian language hieroglyphs eventually will be used as the vertical letter “n.” The original language "n" hieroglyph from the Predynastic Period and the Old Kingdom was the horizontal letter n, (N-water ripple (n hieroglyph)).

No Red Crown has survived, and it is unknown how it was constructed and what materials were used.

Copper, reeds, cloth, and leather have been suggested, but this is purely speculative.

Land transport vehicles in Sumer include sledges and the earliest known wheeled carts, which appear around 3150, representing the first use of the wheel for transportation.

A clay tablet from the period 3200—3100 (found by twentieth century archaeologists in the courtyard of the Eanna Temple in Uruk) contains a pictograph of a wheeled cart.

Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim, and Zoar are the cities of the plain mentioned in the Bible as being destroyed by divine intervention.

They may possibly be found in the ruins of five large settlements in the fertile plain southwest of the Dead Sea.

Bab edh-Dhra (bāb al-dhrā'), the site of an Early Bronze Age city located near the Dead Sea, in Wadi Araba, has been forwarded as a candidate for the location of Biblical Sodom.

Bitumen and petroleum deposits have been found in the area, which contain sulfur and natural gas (as such deposits normally do), and one theory suggests that a pocket of natural gas led to the incineration of the city.

Recently, researchers have hypothesized that the back plume of a massive meteor that exploded in Austria in 3123 BCE may have caused a Middle East disaster that sparked the Sodom and Gomorrah legend.

The year 3114 BCE is the mythical starting point of the current Mesoamerican Long Count calendar cycle, according to the most widely accepted correlations between the Western calendar and the calendar systems of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.

The Long Count calendar, used and refined most notably by the Maya civilization but also attested in some other (earlier) Mesoamerican cultures, consisted of a series of interlocked cycles or periods of day-counts, which mapped out a linear sequence of days from a notional starting point.

The system originated sometime in the Mid- to Late Preclassic period of Mesoamerican chronology, during the latter half of the first millennium BCE.

The starting point of the most commonly used highest-order cycle—the b'ak'tun-cycle consisting of thirteen b'ak'tuns of 144,000 days each—was projected back to an earlier, mythical date.

This date is equivalent to August 11, 3114 BCE in the proleptic Gregorian calendar (or 6 September in the proleptic Julian calendar), using the correlation known as the "Goodman-Martinéz-Thompson (GMT) correlation".

The GMT-correlation is worked out with the Long Count starting date equivalent to the Julian Day Number (JDN) equal to 584283, and is accepted by most Mayanist scholars as providing the best fit with the ethnohistorical data.

Two succeeding dates, the twelfth and thirteenth of August (Gregorian) have also been supported, with the thirteenth (JDN = 584285, the "astronomical" or "Lounsbury" correlation) attracting significant support as according better with astronomical observational data.

Although it is still contended which of these three dates forms the actual starting base of the Long Count, almost all contemporary Mayanists definitively accept the correlation to one of this triad of dates.

All other earlier or later correlation proposals are now discounted.

The end of the thirteenth b'ak'tun is either on December 21 or 23 of 2012.

Narmer, thought to be the successor to the predynastic Serket, is considered by Most Egyptologists as the last king of the Protodynastic period as well as the so-called "Scorpion King(s)".

Some consider Narmer to be the founder of the First dynasty, and therefore the first pharaoh of all Egypt.

There is a growing consensus that Serket and Narmer are identical, but no identification with any early pharaoh can yet be definitively proven.

The hieroglyphic sign for a catfish (n'r) and that of a chisel (mr) represent Narmer's name phonetically.

Modern variants of his name include "Narmeru" or "Merunar,” but convention uses "Narmer.” Both sides of the large (around sixty-four centimeters/twenty-four inches tall), shield-shaped, ceremonial Narmer Palette, also known as the Great Hierakonpolis Palette or the Palette of Narmer, are decorated, carved in raised relief from a single piece of flat, soft green siltstone.

The famous palette, discovered in 1898 in Hierakonpolis, shows Narmer displaying the insignia of both Upper and Lower Egypt, giving rise to the theory that he unified the two kingdoms.

Menes is traditionally credited with this unification, and he is listed as being the first pharaoh in Manetho's list of kings, so this find has caused some controversy.

Some Egyptologists hold that Menes and Narmer are the same person; some hold that Menes is the same person as Hor-Aha and that he had inherited an already-unified Egypt from Narmer; others hold that Narmer began the process of unification but either did not succeed or succeeded only partially, leaving it to Menes to complete.

Arguments have been made that Narmer is Menes because of his appearance on several ostraca in conjunction with the gameboard hieroglyph, Mn, which appears to be a contemporary record to the otherwise mythical king.

There are, however, inconsistencies within every ostracon that mentions Menes, precluding any definitive proof to his identity.

Menes, an Egyptian pharaoh of the First dynasty, is to some authors the founder of this dynasty, to others he is the founder of the Second.