Repeated glacial and interglacial cycles caused large sea-level swings. Homo sapiens emerged and spread across the globe, reaching the present day.
Explore the Quaternary Earth in 3D →A 2025 study reported evidence of deliberate fire-making at Barnham, England, about 400,000 years ago: heated ground, cracked flint tools and imported pyrite. Fire use is older; a 2026 Wonderwerk Cave study places burning associated with humans in deposits dated 1.07–1.79 million years ago. Those older traces do not establish how the fire was ignited.
Fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, dated to about 315,000 years ago, combine a relatively modern face with a more elongated braincase. They show that early Homo sapiens traits did not appear all at once. Genetic research also supports long interaction among African ancestral populations, while the exact geography of our origins remains unresolved.
About 74,000 years ago, Toba in Sumatra produced an enormous eruption. Archaeological records in India and Africa show human occupation across the eruption, including flexible foraging in Ethiopia. The regional climate effects remain under study; a worldwide human population collapse caused by Toba is not established.
Around 20,000 years ago, lower sea levels exposed broad continental shelves in Sundaland and the Yellow Sea. Rising seas later flooded these lands again. Compare the reconstructed coastlines of both regions with the present-day reference.
Parts of the Sahara held lakes and grasslands around 6,000 years ago. Precession changed northern summer sunlight, influencing the West African monsoon, with feedbacks such as vegetation amplifying the response. Later drying varied by region. Lake sediments in the Tibesti record wetter conditions; moist air from the Mediterranean also mattered for mountain rainfall. The globe uses present-reference terrain. The environmental illustration is conceptual, not a precise vegetation or lake reconstruction.