Events
- c. 4000 BC, Liangzhu culture in China.
- c. 4000 BC, More than 100 dwellings surrounding a community center, a cemetery and a kiln are built in Jiangzhai, near modern Xi'an, China.
- Start of Naqada culture in Egypt.
- Early Jōmon period begins on the islands of Japan.
- Domestication of horses.
- Plough in use.
- Neolithic settlers begin to locate their communities at sites most easily defended, near rivers, on plateaus, or in swamps. For additional protection, they also frequently surround them with wooden walls, earth embankments and ditches.
- Civilizations develop in the Mesopotamia/Fertile crescent region (around the location of modern day Iraq).
- The first Korean civilization is founded around this era. According to myth, the founder is the son of a god and a she-bear who turned into a human.
- Clay pots and vats discovered at a sprawling cave system in southern Armenia near the border with Iran shows signs of an organized effort to press and distill grapes during the Copper Age.
5500-3100 B.C. - Predynastic Egyptian cultures develop (5500-3100 B.C.), and begin using agriculture (c. 5000 B.C.). The earliest known civilization arises in Sumer (4500-4000 B.C.). The earliest recorded date in Egyptian calendar (4241 B.C.) and the first year of Jewish calendar (3760 B.C.) are documented. The Chinese practice simple farming methods in 3550 B.C. by moving to new fields after exhausting the old soil. The first phonetic writing appears (c. 3500 B.C.). The Pharaoh Menes unites upper and lower Egypt by 3400 B.C. Copper is used by Egyptians and Sumerians. The first wheel is developed in Mesopotamia (c. 3200 B.C.), as well as the plow and the nail (c. 3500 B.C.) and the yoke (c. 3000 B.C.). Western Europe is neolithic, without metals or written records. Sumerians develop a city-state civilization (c. 3000 B.C.).
