when did the first anatomically modern humans first appear
Anatomically modern human Homo sapiens evolved from "archaic" or "robust" predecessors (Homo heidelbergensis, or a related offshoot from Homo erectus) around 315,000 years ago. The divergence of modern human populations dates to shortly after this time, the oldest division being that of the hunter-gatherer populations of Southern Africa, although there have been numerous events of admixture both among modern populations and between modern and archaic ones.
Prehistory Human prehistory is the period between the use of the first stone tools c. 3.3 million years ago and the invention of writing systems. The earliest writing systems appeared c. 5,300 years ago, but writing was not used in some human cultures until the 19th century or even later. The end of prehistory therefore came at very different dates in different places, and the term is less often used in discussing societies where prehistory ended relatively recently.