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| c. 3.5 billion years ago |
| | | Fossilized bacteria have been found in rock 3.5 billion years old in Africa | |
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| c. 15 million years ago |
| | | A primate of this period, at ease both in the trees and on the ground, is probably the common ancestor of gorillas, chimpanzees and humans | |
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| c. 6 million years ago |
| | | Various species of ape develop the habit of walking upright on two feet | |
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| c. 4.5 million years ago |
| | | Certain primates, in eastern and southern Africa, are by now sufficiently like humans to be classed as hominids | |
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| c. 4.4 million years ago |
| | | Ardi, the earliest known individual of partially human type (or hominid), is of the species Ardipithecus, in the Awash valley region of Ethiopia | |
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| c. 3.6 million years old |
| | | Two or three hominid individuals, probably Australopithecus Afarensis, walk upright through volcanic ash at Laetoli, 30 miles south of Olduvai Gorge, and their footprints are preserved within subsequent ash deposits | |
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| c. 3.2 million years ago |
| | | A female of the species Australopithecus Afarensis (nicknamed Lucy when her skeleton is found), lives in the Afar Depression in Ethiopia within 50 miles of where her predecessor Ardi was unearthed | |
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| c. 2.6 million to 14,000 years ago |
| | | The Palaeolithic era or Old Stone age begins, characterized by hominid and human use of unpolished chipped stone tools | |
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| c. 2.6 to 1.2 million years ago |
| | | The earliest Palaeolithic era, known as the Lower Palaeolithic, covers the period before the emergence of homo sapiens in the form of Neanderthal man | |
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| c. 2.6 to 1.2 million years ago |
| | | Australopithecus Boisei lives in East Africa, and is possibly the first hominid species to use stone tools | |
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