This timeline of prehistory covers the time from the appearance of Homo sapiens approximately 315,000 years ago in Africa to the invention of writing, over 5,000 years ago, with the earliest records going back to 3,200 BC.

The prehistory of Australia is the period between the first human habitation of the Australian continent and the colonisation of Australia in 1788, which marks the start of consistent written documentation of Australia.

Most information about Taiwan before the arrival of the Dutch East India Company in 1624 comes from archaeological finds throughout the island.

Hungarian prehistory spans the period of history of the Hungarian people, or Magyars, which started with the separation of the Hungarian language from other Finno-Ugric or Ugric languages around , and ended with the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin around .

The prehistory of Anatolia stretches from the Paleolithic era through to the appearance of classical civilisation in the middle of the 1st millennium BC.

The prehistory of the Philippines covers the events prior to the written history of what is now the Philippines.

The Scandinavian Peninsula became ice-free around the end of the last ice age.

The prehistory of the Levant includes the various cultural changes that occurred, as revealed by archaeological evidence, prior to recorded traditions in the area of the Levant.