The entire Western Hemisphere was uninhabited by any humans — the ancestors of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas would not arrive in the Western Hemisphere for another 60,000 or more years.

Australia was similarly uninhabited — the first modern humans would reach Australia approximately 50,000 to 65,000 years ago.

The islands of the Pacific beyond the near-shore areas were uninhabited.

In Africa, anatomically modern humans — people who were biologically indistinguishable from us — had been present for at least 200,000 to 300,000 years.

They had developed the kinds of behaviors associated with behavioral modernity: fine tool production, the use of pigments and personal ornaments, long-distance trade in prestige goods, possibly complex language and symbolic thought.

Whether behavioral modernity emerged as a package at a specific time or developed gradually across a range of populations is still debated, but by 90,000 years ago, some populations in Africa were living in ways that would be recognizable to a modern anthropologist studying the material culture of hunter-gatherer communities.