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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 / Birth of Inventor and mathematician Benjamin Banneker.

Birth of Inventor and mathematician Benjamin Banneker.; ?> Birth of Inventor and mathematician Benjamin Banneker.

1731 (Nov 9)

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Benjamin Banneker was born in Ellicott, Maryland, the grandson of a white woman. He secured a modest education from a school for free Blacks near Joppa, Maryland, but received assistance in his study of science from George Ellicott, a Maryland Quaker, planter, and philanthropist. As a youth, Banneker made a wooden clock which is said to have remained accurate throughout his lifetime. Between 1791 and 1802, Banneker published a yearly almanac, which was widely read, and was also the first Black man to publish astronomical materials in the United States. His other publications included a treatise on bees. Banneker is also credited with computing the cycle of the seventeen-year locust. In 1791, Banneker was appointed upon the recommendation of Thomas Jefferson to serve as a member of a commission to survey plans for Washington, D.C. That August, he wrote a famous letter to Jefferson appealing for a more liberal attitude toward Black Americans, using his own work as evidence of Black American intellectual equality. Banneker said in part, "I apprehend you will embrace every opportunity to eradicate that train of absurd and false ideas and opinions which so generally prevail with respect to Blacks; and that your sentiments are concurrent with mine which are: that one universal Father hath given being to us all; that He not only made us all of one flesh, but that He had also without partiality afforded us all with these same faculties and that, however diversified in situation or color, we are all the same family and stand in the same relation to Him." Jefferson accepted, then later rejected, the notion of Black American mental equality and even entertained doubts about Banneker's intellectual capabilities.

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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