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Humans evolve who can be classified as Homo sapiens - among them Neanderthal Man

A possible second migration from Africa begins, involving at some time the ancestors of modern man, Homo sapiens sapiens

Neanderthal man is by now well established in Europe and Asia, probably having evolved after his ancestors left Africa

The Middle Palaeolithic era covers the period when Neanderthals and modern humans coexist in Europe and Asia

Fossilized bones found in the caves of Skhul and Qafzeh, in modern Israel, are of anatomically modern humans

In the Blombos cave in South Africa stones are engraved with patterns of lines, either decorative or practical (as a form of tally)

Neanderthals carve a flute from the leg bone of a young bear, in the region that is now Slovenia

Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers use mammoth tusks and bones to support hide-covered tents at Dolni Vestonice (in the Czech Republic)

The Neanderthals vanish quite suddenly from the fossil record, leaving modern humans as the only surviving members of our species

Somebody in southern Africa cuts grooves in a baboon fibula (the Lebombo bone), suggesting the possibility that prehistoric humans may have had tally-keeping skills

The earliest known Venus figurine, with emphasized sexual features, is carved near the Hohle Fels cave in Germany from the tusk of a woolly mammoth

Rhinoceroses, lions and mammoth feature on the walls of the Chauvet cave, in southern France

With the sea level falling, a land bridge (known as Beringia) forms between Siberia and Alaska, enabling humans to enter the continent of America

With the onset of the most recent Ice Age (the Holocene), layers of ice up to two miles thick blanket northern regions, causing a massive reduction in sea level

Painted and engraved images, on the rock face in a cave near Twyfelfontein in Namibia, date from this period

In the Cosquer cave near Marseilles, with its entrance now far below sea level, a hand print is made

In the earlist known example of ceramics, humans at Dolni Vestonice model figures in burnt clay

A Stone Age sculptor shapes a timeless image of female fecundity in the famous Willendorf Venus

A Brassempouy, in France, a Venus figurine is carved which is the oldest known example to have facial features

Someone carves a figure of a flying bird, in mammoth ivory, in the Malta settlement in Siberia

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