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315,000 Years Ago
The earliest known humans emerge and live on the African continent.
All human beings today belong to the Homo sapiens species, and it is widely accepted amongst researchers, historians, and scientists, that all of human history began on the continent of Africa. The exact location in Africa is a topic of constant debate as remains have been found in various locations throughout the continent, such as Ethiopia, Kenya, and Morocco, though researchers suggest it was most likely in the Horn of Africa. The oldest known remains of our species to date has been found in Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and dated about 315,000 years ago.
250,000 Years Ago
Modern humans begin to disperse and migrate out of Africa.
Early modern humans expanded to Western Eurasia and Central, Western and Southern Africa from the time of their emergence. Evidence of migration out of Africa, via a partial skull, was discovered in the Apidima Cave in southern Greece and is dated more than 210,000 years old. There were several waves of migrations, many via northern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula about 130,000 YA (Years Ago), though most of these early waves appear to have mostly died out or retreated by 80,000 YA.
c. 200,000 - 130,000 Years Ago
Mitochondrial Eve, the most recent woman from whom all living humans descend, lives in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Mitochondrial Eve (the name alludes to the biblical Eve) is the matrilineal most recent common ancestor of all living humans. In other words, she is defined as the most recent woman from whom all living humans descend in an unbroken line purely through their mothers and through the mothers of those mothers, back until all lines converge on one woman. In 1987, geneticists compared the mitochondrial DNA (genetic information passed from mothers to their offspring) of people from different populations around the world and find that they all link in an unbroken line to Mitochondrial Eve. This does not mean that she was the first woman, nor the only living female of her time, nor the first member of a "new species." It only means that she is the most recent female ancestor to which all living humans are linked. She was believed to have lived in either East Africa or Botswana.
c. 10,000 BC - 6,000 BC
Due to a tilt in the Earth’s axis, the Sahara transforms from a humid region rich with grasslands and water, to an arid desert, prompting Saharan Africans to migrate to the Nile Valley.
The earliest Egyptians were indigenous Africans who were drawn to the Sahara when it was a humid region rich in grasslands and with plentiful water. There was a widespread Saharan Neolithic culture. However, during this same period (c. 10,000 - c. 6,000 BC), the Earth's axis tilted, causing the Saharan climate to slowly transform from humid to arid, prompting Saharan Africans to migrate to the Nile Valley to take advantage of its fertile floodplains.
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Home / Full timeline / Saxophonist John Coltrane dies of liver cancer.

Saxophonist John Coltrane dies of liver cancer.; ?> Saxophonist John Coltrane dies of liver cancer.

1967 (Jul 17)

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John Coltrane died of liver cancer just months after cutting the album, Expression. Coltrane's music, which defied categorization and was a subject of controversy in its day, was instrumental in the development of modern jazz. The famed saxophonist was born on September 23, 1926, in North Carolina. By the late 1940s, he had joined Dizzy Gillespie's orchestra, which he played with for four years, already beginning to experiment with technical innovation and composition. In the 1950s, modern jazz became a tremendously virile idiom, and playing with the likes of Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk, Coltrane learned to deepen control of his instrument through tricks of phrasing and harmony. Exhausting every possibility for his horn in the course of a song, Coltrane's technique of exploring all the avenues relied on rapid runs in which individual notes were virtually indistinguishable, a stylistic element that became known as "sheets of sound." In 1960, with McCoy Tyner on piano, Elvin Jones on drums, and Jimmy Garrison on bass, Coltrane formed his own quartet. His most celebrated theme-and-variations piece, My Favorite Things, was produced during this period that was marked by experimentation with triple meter, pentatonic scales, and modal foundations. Coltrane's ever-increasingly complex ametric and improvisational experimentation made him one of the most famous living jazz legends by the mid-1960s, and he enjoyed celebrity that extended to Europe and Japan.

References:

  •  • Hornsby, Alton. Chronology of African-American History: Significant Events and People from 1619 to the Present. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995.
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