The 5th millennium BCE

Africa

1. 🇳🇪NER

   Niger · Peoples & Migration · c. 5th millennium BCE

   The Tenerean herders

   After a dry interval, the more lightly built Tenerean people reoccupied Gobero, herding cattle as the lake shallowed; their graves include the famous burial of a woman with two children, hands interlinked.

   The Green Sahara and the peoples of the Ténéré

   Sources: Stone Age Graveyard Reveals Lifestyles of a 'Green Sahara' (University of Chicago News) · Lakeside Cemeteries in the Sahara: 5000 Years of Holocene Population and Environmental Change (Sereno et al., PLoS ONE (PMC)) · Gobero (Wikipedia)

North America

1. 🇹🇹TTO

   Trinidad and Tobago · Peoples & Migration · c. 5000 BCE

   The first settlers reach the islands

   Archaic Ortoiroid peoples migrated from the South American mainland into Trinidad, the earliest of several waves of indigenous settlement that populated the twin islands over millennia.

   The first peoples

   Sources: T&T History Timeline (National Trust of Trinidad and Tobago) · Trinidad and Tobago: History (Encyclopaedia Britannica)

Oceania

1. 🇵🇬PNG

   Papua New Guinea · Economy & Trade · c. 7,000–10,000 years ago

   Independent invention of agriculture at Kuk

   In the highland swamp of Kuk, communities drained wetlands to cultivate taro and bananas, one of only a few places on Earth where farming arose independently — recognised by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

   Deep past: settlement and the world's first farmers

   Sources: Kuk Early Agricultural Site — World Heritage List (UNESCO World Heritage Centre) · Kuk Early Agricultural Site (Encyclopædia Britannica)