The extinct ancient human Homo erectus is a species of firsts. It was the first of our relatives to have human-like body proportions, with shorter arms and longer legs relative to its torso. It was also the first known hominin to migrate out of Africa, and possibly the first to cook food.

In about one billion years, the solar luminosity will be 10% higher than at present. This will cause the atmosphere to become a “moist greenhouse”, resulting in a runaway evaporation of the oceans. As a likely consequence, plate tectonics will come to an end, and with them the entire carbon cycle.

The recent African origin paradigm suggests that the anatomically modern humans outside of Africa descend from a population of Homo sapiens migrating from East Africa roughly 70–50,000 years ago and spreading along the southern coast of Asia and to Oceania by about 50,000 years ago.

In a study published today in Nature, researchers report that dramatic climate fluctuations created favorable environmental conditions that triggered periodic waves of human migration out of Africa every 20,000 years or so, beginning just over 100,000 years ago.

Chinese civilisation advanced in this millennium with the beginnings of three noted cultures from around 5000 BC. Also about 5000 BC, the Hemudu culture began in eastern China with cultivation of rice, and the Majiabang culture was established on the Yangtze estuary near modern Shanghai, lasting until c. 3300 BC.

It was from c. 8000 BC that agriculture developed throughout the Americas, especially in modern Mexico. There were numerous New World crops, as they are now termed, and domestication began with the potato and the cucurbita (squash) about this time.