5,500 BCE: Oldest known field systems, including stone walls (Ireland) 6,000 BCE: First evidence of agriculture on the Iberian Peninsula (Spain, Portugal) domestication of chickens (India Southeast Asia) domestication of llamas (Peru) 7,000 BCE: Agriculture is well-established in Mesopotamia (Iraq) first evidence of agriculture in the Indus Valley (Pakistan, India) domestication of cattle in North Africa, India and Mesopotamia 8,000 BCE: Farming is fully established along the Nile River by this time (Egypt) rice and millet are domesticated in China domestication of goats (Iran) domestication of pigs (Near East China Germany) domestication of maize and squash (Mexico) 9,000 BCE: Domestication of sheep in several locations in central and southwest Asia 9,100 BCE: Oldest known agricultural settlement, at Klimonas (Cyprus) 9,500 BCE: By this time, eight key crops (emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chickpeas and flax) have been domesticated in the Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Cyprus, Turkey) 11,000 BCE: Planned cultivation and trait selection of rye (Syria) evidence of domestication of lentils, vetch, pistachios and almonds (Greece) 20,000 BCE: Earliest evidence of humans exerting some control over wild grain (Israel) The Agricultural Revolution: Humans Domesticate Plants and Animals: c. Despite these caveats, I think it is safe to say that all the events listed here are important to understanding human history.ġ. There is also a bit of “comparing apples to oranges” because some of the important events happened in an instant and others occurred over many years or decades. For example, I find the list biased toward Western (in particular American) civilization and overly focused on war, religion and dead white men. As with many such lists, the results are unlikely to win universal approval. For those who don’t have time to wade through the entire Timeline of Human History, I have created a list of the 100 most important events in human history by collecting and combining several lists of 10, 25, 50 or 100 “most important events” or “events that changed the world” from the Internet and combining them into one meta-list, which is presented below in chronological order.