Development Plan for Early Civilization

In my efforts to be as realistic as possible, I cannot just start at the dawn of civilization, I have to describe Andromedian humanity before they even knew how to farm. While things relating to Babylon and ancient Sumer very much fit into my area of expertise, what I have to do before I get to that focuses on archaeology. There comes a point in studying human history when you go too far and suddenly find yourself in the realm of archaeology. Because not all peoples recorded history, all we have to go off of is groups of artifacts that can be vaguely associated with a prehistoric people. I am not an archaeologist, so I'm learning as I go along.
What this means for AH is that I have to painstakingly map out how humanity spread across Rel and subsequently developed into more complex societies, from Paleolithic all the way to the Iron Age. Once we get into the Bronze Age, things should go more smoothly, but for now, it's going to be a little rough, especially for you readers.
Archaeology, for the most part, is pretty easy to understand, but there is just a lot of terminology you have to get familiar with. The majority of what you will read about are archeological industries and or cultures. I always leave a link to the corresponding Wikipedia article, but essentially, these are just terms that archaeologists use to group together artifacts. This is how we organize humanity before civilization was a thing. Even bronze/iron age tribes were grouped with archaeological cultures instead of distinct nations or countries.
With that being said, details are going to be purposely sparse and articles purposely short. Even here on Earth we don't know terribly much about these things. Of course, AH is supposed to reflect reality, so I'm not going to go into detail that would otherwise be impossible to discern for future archaeologists. If we cannot determine the specific deities paleolithic peoples worshipped here on Earth, then I'm not going to determine it for Andromedian peoples either.
At the same time, while developing archeological cultures, I have to keep in mind that humans are not homogenous and are typically different from one another. This means I have to account for the rise of very early peoples, such as ethnolinguistic groups (take the Indo-Europeans for example). This will be very challenging, as I have to create the first framework of nations and cultures on Rel, along with languages and historical contributions.
Once we get passed the stone age and into the (much more interesting) Bronze Age, we will start to delve into early civilizations, for which I am happy to start developing. Thankfully, I already have a rough idea of what I want in my head for the Bronze Age on Rel. It's just this stone age stuff I have to get out of the way first.

What to Look out for:

Years will be presented in BA (Before Aerath), which is a carbon copy of BC here on Earth. Archaeologists like to use BP (Before Present), which is kind of like BC but it it counts backwards from the 1950s when modern radiocarbon dating technology was made. I do not have a date for when radiocarbon dating was made in AH, so I will just be using a replica of BC instead. The same rules apply, so be sure to remember that BC counts backwards, not forwards (110 BC - 105 BC, not 105 BC - 110 BC).
As of right now, I have made the decision to not write about the geography of Rel explicitly for a very long time. I only have an extremely rough idea of what Rel looks like, and trust me when I say that it is in no way realistic. Even though I have looked into creating a geologically realistic world, it involves a ton of work that I am not familiar with and threatens to change the history that I already have established. I'm trying my best to keep it from being a replica of Earth, but unfortunately I have already committed to (essentially) recreating the Mediterranean. This is the only geographic similarity between Earth and Rel for the moment. At the same time, however, the humans of Rel will still fit all of the groups here on Earth. There are three continents on Rel to be concerned about at the time: Saenath, Aeson, and Carlath. Aeson is Europe, that is what it is. Because the Mediterranean exists on Rel, there is the Mediterranean southern part of Aeson blocked off by a mountain range, and the flat and wooded north. The only thing missing are the British Isles and Scandinavia. Saenath is the quintessential Africa, although this is only true for the north. Northern Saenath is similar to North Africa and the Middle East, both geographically and culturally. Carlath is like Asia, but the south is truly more like India than China or Japan. A Mongolian/Turkic kind of nomadic peoples will be found in South Saenath, which is why only the north is considered Africa. As for including a Chinese or Japanese society in Rel, I have no idea. This is simply because there are no good locations in the world I could put them. Like I said, I only have the first version of Rel, so changes will be made.

Update 10/27:

The Upper Paleolithic is more or less complete. Thankfully, cavemen here on Earth didn't have extensive record keeping techniques, so I don't have to go so terribly in depth to make an accurate Paleolithic for Rel. Even then, early modern humans were not very populace, so there isn't going to be an excess amount of industries or cultures I have to make. On Earth, Neanderthals and other hominids were roaming around around this time, interacting with and most likely being killed off by us Homo Sapiens. I'm not going into detail about the biological evolution of humans on Rel, so I'm keeping anything to do with Neanderthals out of the fiction.
So, what comes after the Paleolithic? Unfortunately, not the Bronze Age. The Mesolithic comes next, and it really isn't all too exciting from what I can gather. Some of you may know the of the Neolithic which comes after, but until then, we have to develop the Mesolithic. The good thing is that I set an event to occur in the Mesolithic: The Great Early Age Shift. This was something I thought up a while back and it was not supposed to be this old. The Early Age refers to when I tried making my own archeological periods for Rel until I realized that I was not an archeologist for a reason. I kept the name though because it sounds cool. Essentially, it is a massive geological shift in Rel that acts almost like the end of the Ice Age here on Earth, but much more extreme. I plan to eliminate land masses, create land masses, and most importantly, kill a lot of humans in the process. This event is to be so cataclysmic that it delays the first Neolithic revolution quite significantly on Rel compared to Earth.
I have also created a new version of the map of Rel. I added in much more complexity to make it seem realistic as well as a huge new continent that I hope to make function like East Asia. I still need to refine it (as the scale does not please me), but overall I like it.

Update 2/19/21

I am back (sort of)! I stopped development for a while because school ended up taking over, but now I am ironically back at school and ready to go. The difference is that I'm taking courses that will help me better understand what I'm actually writing about (i.e archaeology and anthropology). I'm hoping that I'll be able to write these articles without such reliance on Wikipedia thanks to my now official education in the material.
So, what is on the to-do list? I left off with a brand new map for Rel, which I will redesign soon. I like where it's going, but I need more defined continents than just this large continuous super-continent. I also left off on the Mesolithic period, which I said will involve the Great Early Age Shift. Take that with a grain of salt, because I still have to look into how realistically this could impact humanity. Here on Earth we had the recession of the Ice Age, which is much different from what I want which is a calamitous change in geology and demographics. We will see where my research takes me. Overall, the Mesolithic should not take too long at all, as the developments between the Paleolithic and Mesolithic are rather mild compared to what happens in the Neolithic. When I reach the Neolithic I would like to have the geography of Rel set in stone, as I need to depict when certain cultures had their Neolithic Revolutions (because all of humanity didn't just wake up one day and say "let's plant seeds" at the same time). Hopefully by the end of this development cycle we will be able to steam ahead into the Chalcolithic (Copper Age) and early Bronze Age.

Update 3/27

The page for the Great Early Age Shift is in full swing. I've given it a second name, the Mesolithic Cataclysm. This article will probably be the largest article yet on here. I have to talk about geology, geography, archaeology, biology, and anthropology all in one article. The only thing I'm missing is quantum physics. After that is done I plan on expanding upon other material cultures around the world, such as laying the groundwork for other civilizations other than Aeson and North Saenath. I will continue into the Neolithic once every Mesolithic material culture has been developed sufficiently. I might also start finalizing pieces of geography and writing articles about them.

Update 4/2

The Great Early Age Shift has been published to the wiki. I decided that I didn't want to delve into the science of it just yet, and would rather finish the material cultures instead. I'm hoping I can start work on them next week.