20,000BC: Earlier than 20,000BC, Man in Siberia, then to America. In Tasmania, Australia, are the Tasmanian Negritos. By 20,000BC: Australia is certainly settled, with Tasmania and New Guinea joined by land bridges. Occupation coinciding with later part of past glaciation, lower sea level, cooler climate and less evaporation, less arid country. 20,000BC: Old Melanesia as a continent embraces Australia plus Tasmania and New Guinea, (Salhulland), and Indonesia as a non-archipelago, Sundaland. Most sites re human life about this time in Australia are in southern NSW and in the south west generally.
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23,000BC-16,000BC: Northern and Central Europe are frigid and uninhabitable. A glacial maximum forces people into two directions, one to southern France, one to the Central Russian Plain. Life was impossible between the Scandinavian glacier and the Alpine glacier. The ice reached its maximum about 16,000BC. Southwestern France carried mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, horse, bison, aurochs, deer and antelope, as did the river valleys of the Russian Plain. It seems significant that cave art appeared in this part of France, but not in Russia, since there were no caves. The people of Russia do seem to have had different designs for huts made of mammoth tusks, however. (Shreeve,Neandertal)
21,000-18,000BC: Last Glacial Maximum on Earth.
22,000BC: Appearance of "Venus figurines" across Europe, from the Central Russian plain to the Pyrenees - rather like a clay statue from Dolni Vestonice. 23,000 years ago: Evidence arises of human occupation at Cave Bay Cave on present-day Hunter Island off the north-west coast of Tasmania, at a time when Tasmania has just been joined as part of a continuous land bridge connecting it to Wilson's Promontory of today's Victorian coastline.
