<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Termites are social cockroaches distributed throughout warm temperate and tropical ecosystems. The ancestor of modern termites (crown-Isoptera) occurred during the earliest Cretaceous, approximately 140 million years ago, suggesting that both vicariance through continental drift and overseas dispersal may have shaped the distribution of early diverging termite lineages. We reconstruct the historical biogeography of three early diverging termite families – Stolotermitidae, Hodotermitidae, and Archotermopsidae – using the nuclear rRNA genes and mitochondrial genomes of 27 samples. Our analyses confirmed the monophyly of Stolotermitidae + Hodotermitidae + Archotermopsidae (clade Teletisoptera), with Stolotermitidae diverging from a monophyletic Hodotermitidae + Archotermopsidae approximately 100.3 Ma (94.3–110.4 Ma, 95% HPD), and with Archotermopsidae paraphyletic to a monophyletic Hodotermitidae. The Oriental <jats:italic>Archotermopsis</jats:italic> and the Nearctic <jats:italic>Zootermopsis</jats:italic> diverged 50.8 Ma (40.7–61.4 Ma, 95% HPD) before land connections between the Palearctic region and North America ceased to exist. The African <jats:italic>Hodotermes</jats:italic> + <jats:italic>Microhodotermes</jats:italic> diverged from <jats:italic>Anacanthotermes</jats:italic>, a genus found in Africa and Asia, 32.1 Ma (24.8–39.9 Ma, 95% HPD), and the most recent common ancestor of <jats:italic>Anacanthotermes</jats:italic> lived 10.7 Ma (7.3–14.3 Ma, 95% HPD), suggesting that <jats:italic>Anacanthotermes</jats:italic> dispersed to Asia using the land bridge connecting Africa and Eurasia ∼18–20 Ma. In contrast, the common ancestors of modern <jats:italic>Porotermes</jats:italic> and <jats:italic>Stolotermes</jats:italic> lived 20.2 Ma (15.7–25.1 Ma, 95% HPD) and 26.6 Ma (18.3–35.6 Ma, 95% HPD), respectively, indicating that the presence of these genera in South America, Africa, and Australia involved over-water dispersals. Our results suggest that early diverging termite lineages acquired their current distribution through a combination of over-water dispersals and dispersal via land bridges. We clarify the classification by resolving the paraphyly of Archotermopsidae, restricting the family to <jats:italic>Archotermopsis</jats:italic> and <jats:italic>Zootermopsis</jats:italic>, and elevating Hodotermopsinae (<jats:italic>Hodotermopsis</jats:italic>) as Hodotermopsidae (<jats:italic>status novum</jats:italic>).</jats:p>