6th millennium BC

The 6th millennium BC spanned the years 6000 BC to 5001 BC (c. 8 ka to c. 7 ka). It is impossible to precisely date events that happened around the time of this millennium and all dates mentioned here are estimates mostly based on geological and anthropological analysis. The only exceptions are the felling dates for some construction timbers from Neolithic wells in Central Europe.

This millennium is reckoned to mark the end of the global deglaciation, which had followed the Last Glacial Maximum and caused sea levels to rise by some 60 m (200 ft) over a period of about 5,000 years.

Neolithic culture and technology had spread from the Near East and into Eastern Europe by 6000 BC. Its development in the Far East grew apace and there is increasing evidence through the millennium of its presence in prehistoric Egypt and the Far East. In much of the world, however, including Northern and Western Europe, people still lived in scattered Palaeolithic/Mesolithic hunter-gatherer communities. The world population is believed to have increased sharply, possibly quadrupling, as a result of the Neolithic Revolution. It has been estimated that there were perhaps forty million people worldwide at the end of this millennium, growing to 100 million by the Middle Bronze Age c. 1600 BC.

It has been estimated that humans first settled in Malta c. 5900 BC, arriving across the Mediterranean from both Europe and North Africa.

Use of pottery found near Tbilisi is evidence that grapes were being used for winemaking about 5980 BC.

Evidence of cheese-making in Poland is dated c. 5500 BC.

Four identified cultures starting around 5300 BC were the Dnieper-Donets, the Narva (eastern Baltic), the Ertebølle (Denmark and northern Germany), and the Swifterbant (Low Countries). They were linked by a common pottery style that had spread westward from Asia and is sometimes called "ceramic Mesolithic", distinguishable by a point or knob base and flared rims.

According to Vasily Radlov, among the Paleo-Siberian inhabitants of Central Siberia and Southern Siberia were the Yeniseians, of whom the Kets are considered the last remainder. The Yeniseians were followed by the Uralic Samoyeds, who came from the northern Ural region. Proto-Uralic is the unattested reconstructed language ancestral to the modern Uralic language family. The hypothetical language is thought to have been originally spoken in a small area in about 7000–2000 BC, and expanded to give differentiated protolanguages. Some newer research has pushed the "Proto-Uralic homeland" east of the Ural Mountains into Western Siberia.