section_path: Homo sapiens/Holocene migrations
section_name: Holocene migrations
paragraph_text: Holocene migrations
  
  The Holocene is taken to begin 12,000 years ago, after the end of the Last Glacial Maximum. During the Holocene climatic optimum, beginning about 9,000 years ago, human populations which had been geographically confined to refugia began to migrate. By this time, most parts of the globe had been settled by H. sapiens; however, large areas that had been covered by glaciers were now re-populated.
  
  This period sees the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic stage throughout the temperate zone. The Neolithic subsequently gives way to the Bronze Age in Old World cultures and the gradual emergence of the historical record in the Near East and China beginning around 4,000 years ago.
  
  Large-scale migrations of the Mesolithic to Neolithic era are thought to have given rise to the pre-modern distribution of the world's major language families such as the Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, Afro-Asiatic, Uralic, Sino-Tibetan or Indo-European phyla. The speculative Nostratic theory postulates the derivation of the major language families of Eurasia (excluding Sino-Tibetan) from a single proto-language spoken at the beginning of the Holocene period.