84-572: Chronological history The Nordic Stone Age refers to the Stone Age of Scandinavia . During the Weichselian glaciation (115,000 – 11,700 years ago), almost all of Scandinavia was buried beneath a thick permanent ice cover, thus, the Stone Age came rather late to this region. As the climate slowly warmed up by the end of the ice age, nomadic hunters from central Europe sporadically visited
168-760: A conference in anthropology held by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, at Burg Wartenstein Castle, which it then owned in Austria, attended by the same scholars that attended the Pan African Congress, including Louis Leakey and Mary Leakey , who was delivering a pilot presentation of her typological analysis of Early Stone Age tools, to be included in her 1971 contribution to Olduvai Gorge , "Excavations in Beds I and II, 1960–1963." However, although
252-420: A hammerstone to obtain large and small pieces with one or more sharp edges. The original stone is called a core; the resultant pieces, flakes. Typically, but not necessarily, small pieces are detached from a larger piece, in which case the larger piece may be called the core and the smaller pieces the flakes . The prevalent usage, however, is to call all the results flakes, which can be confusing. A split in half
336-688: A massive volcanic landslide off Mount Etna , Sicily , caused a megatsunami that devastated the eastern Mediterranean coastline on the continents of Asia, Africa and Europe. In South America, a large eruption occurred at Cueros de Purulla c. 5870 BC, forming a buoyant cloud and depositing the Cerro Paranilla Ash in the Calchaquí Valleys . A cataclysmic volcanic eruption occurred c. 5700 BC in Oregon when 12,000-foot (3,700 m) high Mount Mazama created Crater Lake as
420-782: A new Lower Paleolithic tool, the hand axe, appeared. The earliest European hand axes are assigned to the Abbevillian industry , which developed in northern France in the valley of the Somme River ; a later, more refined hand-axe tradition is seen in the Acheulian industry , evidence of which has been found in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Some of the earliest known hand axes were found at Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania) in association with remains of H. erectus . Alongside
504-479: A novel number system and the domestic pig from Indo-Europeans in the south. Similarly, the Indo-Europeans themselves had acquired such words and cultural items from peoples and cultures to their south or west, including possibly their words for "ox", *gʷou- (compare English cow ) and "grain", *bʰars- (compare English barley ). In contrast, basic vocabulary – words such as "me", "hand", "water", and "be" –
588-606: A separate Copper Age or Bronze Age. Moreover, the technologies included in those 'stages', as Goodwin called them, were not exactly the same. Since then, the original relative terms have become identified with the technologies of the Paleolithic and Mesolithic, so that they are no longer relative. Moreover, there has been a tendency to drop the comparative degree in favor of the positive: resulting in two sets of Early, Middle and Late Stone Ages of quite different content and chronologies. By voluntary agreement, archaeologists respect
672-729: A time known as the Copper Age (or more technically the Chalcolithic or Eneolithic, both meaning 'copper–stone'). The Chalcolithic by convention is the initial period of the Bronze Age. The Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age . The transition out of the Stone Age occurred between 6000 and 2500 BC for much of humanity living in North Africa and Eurasia . The first evidence of human metallurgy dates to between
756-472: A unique group of Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherers . From as early as c. 4400 BC there are rare imports of copper axes into Scandinavian Late Mesolithic communities. During the 5th millennium BCE , the Ertebølle people learned pottery from neighbouring tribes in the south, who had begun to cultivate the land and keep animals. Soon, they too started to cultivate the land and, ca. 4000 BCE, they became part of
840-565: A wide range of techniques derived from multiple fields. The work of archaeologists in determining the paleocontext and relative sequence of the layers is supplemented by the efforts of geologic specialists in identifying layers of rock developed or deposited over geologic time; of paleontological specialists in identifying bones and animals; of palynologists in discovering and identifying pollen, spores and plant species; of physicists and chemists in laboratories determining ages of materials by carbon-14 , potassium-argon and other methods. The study of
924-535: Is associated with the remains of Neanderthal man . The earliest documented stone tools have been found in eastern Africa, manufacturers unknown, at the 3.3 million-year-old site of Lomekwi 3 in Kenya. Better known are the later tools belonging to an industry known as Oldowan , after the type site of Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. The tools were formed by knocking pieces off a river pebble, or stones like it, with
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#17327657812731008-705: 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
1092-542: Is called bipolar flaking. Consequently, the method is often called "core-and-flake". More recently, the tradition has been called "small flake" since the flakes were small compared to subsequent Acheulean tools . The essence of the Oldowan is the making and often immediate use of small flakes. Another naming scheme is "Pebble Core Technology (PBC)": Pebble cores are ... artifacts that have been shaped by varying amounts of hard-hammer percussion. Various refinements in
1176-692: Is evidence that grapes were being used for winemaking c. 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
1260-465: 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
1344-477: Is in the nature of this boundary. If there is no distinct boundary, then the population of A suddenly stopped using the customs characteristic of A and suddenly started using those of B, an unlikely scenario in the process of evolution . More realistically, a distinct border period, the A/B transition, existed, in which the customs of A were gradually dropped and those of B acquired. If transitions do not exist, then there
1428-527: Is much less readily borrowed between languages. If Indo-European and Uralic are genetically related, there should be agreements regarding basic vocabulary, with more agreements if they are closely related, fewer if they are less closely related. - Indo-European cultures in Central Asia flourish, these cultures are the: Middle Volga culture (followed by the Samara culture at the turn of the millennium),
1512-621: Is no proof of any continuity between A and B. The Stone Age of Europe is characteristically in deficit of known transitions. The 19th and early 20th-century innovators of the modern three-age system recognized the problem of the initial transition, the "gap" between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic. Louis Leakey provided something of an answer by proving that man evolved in Africa. The Stone Age must have begun there to be carried repeatedly to Europe by migrant populations. The different phases of
1596-571: Is now considered to be a facies of Acheulean , while Sangoan is a facies of Lupemban . Magosian is "an artificial mix of two different periods". Once seriously questioned, the intermediates did not wait for the next Pan African Congress two years hence, but were officially rejected in 1965 (again on an advisory basis) by Burg Wartenstein Conference #29, Systematic Investigation of the African Later Tertiary and Quaternary ,
1680-586: Is possible to speak of a general 'Stone Age' period for the whole of humanity, some groups never developed metal- smelting technology, and so remained in the so-called 'Stone Age' until they encountered technologically developed cultures. The term was innovated to describe the archaeological cultures of Europe. It may not always be the best in relation to regions such as some parts of the Indies and Oceania, where farmers or hunter-gatherers used stone for tools until European colonisation began. Archaeologists of
1764-660: 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 of these peoples. The Yeniseians were followed by the Uralic Samoyeds , who came from the northern Ural region. Proto-Uralic
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#17327657812731848-588: 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 Proto-Languages . Some newer research has pushed the " Proto-Uralic homeland " east of the Ural Mountains into Western Siberia . - Polities harbouring the Uralic peoples thrive. The shores of all Siberian lakes, which filled
1932-648: The 6th and 5th millennia BC in the archaeological sites of the Vinča culture , including Majdanpek , Jarmovac , Pločnik , Rudna Glava in modern-day Serbia. Ötzi the Iceman , a mummy from about 3300 BC, carried with him a copper axe and a flint knife. In some regions, such as Sub-Saharan Africa , the Stone Age was followed directly by the Iron Age. The Middle East and Southeast Asian regions progressed past Stone Age technology around 6000 BC. Europe, and
2016-649: The Altai Mountains several times over a span of thousands of years, earliest dated to 5500 BC. This is potentially linked to the environmental changes at the time (see Mount Mazama ), which remained preserved in oral history of the North American cultures to this day. - Na-Dené -speaking peoples finally entered North America starting around 8000 BCE , reaching the Pacific Northwest by 5000 BCE , and from there migrating along
2100-479: The Amnya complex , occurred with political warfare. They are the oldest fortresses in the world. Finding such ancient fortifications challenges previous understanding of early human societies. It suggests that agriculture wasn’t the only driver for people to start building permanent settlements. - Large scale backwards migrations occur with Native American populations migrating back into Asia , settling in areas such as
2184-638: The Bell Beaker culture migrated into Jutland, bringing with them new skills in mining and sailing. They mined flint in northern Jutland for the mass production of flint daggers that were subsequently distributed to most of Scandinavia. As such the period from c. 2400-1800 BC is also known as the Dagger Period. Copper metallurgy was practised on a small scale from c. 2400 BC, and the shape of flint daggers imitated copper and bronze prototypes. After c. 2000 BC large 'chiefly' houses similar to those found in
2268-702: The Boreal reigned in the Scandinavian region. In the 7th millennium BCE , the climate in Scandinavia was warming as it transitioned from the former Boreal age to the Atlantic period . Reindeer and their hunters had already migrated and inhabited the lands of northern Scandinavia, and forests had established. A culture called the Maglemosian culture lived in the areas of Denmark and southern Sweden. To
2352-608: The Fauresmith and Sangoan technologies, and the Second Intermediate Period between Middle and Later, to encompass the Magosian technology and others. The chronologic basis for the definition was entirely relative. With the arrival of scientific means of finding an absolute chronology, the two intermediates turned out to be will-of-the-wisps . They were in fact Middle and Lower Paleolithic . Fauresmith
2436-751: 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
2520-594: The Nøstvet and Lihult cultures , descendants of the Fosna and Hensbacka cultures. By the end of the 6th millennium BCE , as the sea levels rose gradually, these northerly tribal cultures continued their way of life, while the Kongemose culture was replaced by the Ertebølle culture , adapting to the climatic changes affecting their low lying southern regions more severely. Genetic analysis of human remains has shown that
2604-787: The Pacific Coast and into the interior. Linguists, anthropologists, and archeologists believe their ancestors constituted a separate migration into North America, later than the first Paleo-Indians. They migrated into Alaska and northern Canada, south along the Pacific Coast, into the interior of Canada, and south to the Great Plains and the American Southwest. - Indo-European cultures descended from Ancient North Eurasians long ago, continue to expand Westwards from Central Russia . It provides linguistic evidence for
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2688-553: The Unetice culture appear in south Scandinavia, indicating the development of a more ranked social organization. 2000 BC also marks the introduction and use of bronze tools, followed by a more systematic adoption of bronze metalworking technology from 1750 BC. The Neolithic period was followed by the Nordic Bronze Age . Stone Age Paleolithic Epipalaeolithic Mesolithic Neolithic The Stone Age
2772-440: The genus Homo , and possibly by the earlier partly contemporaneous genera Australopithecus and Paranthropus . Bone tools have been discovered that were used during this period as well but these are rarely preserved in the archaeological record . The Stone Age is further subdivided by the types of stone tools in use. The Stone Age is the first period in the three-age system frequently used in archaeology to divide
2856-500: The geologic time scale : The succession of these phases varies enormously from one region (and culture ) to another. The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (from Greek: παλαιός, palaios , "old"; and λίθος, lithos , "stone" lit. "old stone", coined by archaeologist John Lubbock and published in 1865) is the earliest division of the Stone Age. It covers the greatest portion of humanity's time (roughly 99% of "human technological history", where "human" and "humanity" are interpreted to mean
2940-508: The megalithic Funnelbeaker culture . During the 4th millennium BCE , these Funnelbeaker tribes expanded into Sweden up to Uppland . The Nøstvet and Lihult tribes learned new technology from the advancing farmers, but not agriculture, and became the Pitted Ware cultures , towards the end of the 4th millennium BCE . These Pitted Ware tribes halted the advance of the farmers and pushed them south into south-western Sweden, but some say that
3024-708: The " Pre-Germanic Indo-European " dialect), the Corded Ware culture (known as the Battle-Axe culture in Scandinavia ). The genetic history of Europe connects the people carrying the language with the Yamnaya culture emanating from present-day Ukraine, using the Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a as an important genetic marker. This new people advanced up to Uppland and the Oslofjord , and they probably provided
3108-642: The 6th millennium. Global water levels had risen by about 60 metres due to deglaciation of ice masses since the end of the Last Ice Age. Accelerated rises in sea level rise, called meltwater pulses, occurred three times during the EHSLR. The last one, Meltwater Pulse 1C, which peaked c. 6000 BC, produced a rise of 6.5 metres in only 140 years. It is believed that the cause was a major ice sheet collapse in Antarctica. Approximately 8,000 years ago (c. 6000 BC),
3192-592: The Nile valley. Consequently, they proposed a new system for Africa, the Three-stage System. Clark regarded the Three-age System as valid for North Africa; in sub-Saharan Africa, the Three-stage System was best. In practice, the failure of African archaeologists either to keep this distinction in mind, or to explain which one they mean, contributes to the considerable equivocation already present in
3276-649: The Proto-Germanic language that was the ancestor of the modern Scandinavian languages . These new tribes used the battle axe as a status symbol and were cattle herders, and with them most of southern Scandinavia entered the Neolithic period. The Single Grave culture was another variant of the Corded Ware culture which spread across southern Scandinavia and the North European Plain between 2,800–2,200 BC. After c. 2400 groups associated with
3360-521: The Stone Age ended in a given area. In Europe and North America, millstones were in use until well into the 20th century, and still are in many parts of the world. The terms "Stone Age", "Bronze Age", and "Iron Age" are not intended to suggest that advancements and time periods in prehistory are only measured by the type of tool material, rather than, for example, social organization , food sources exploited, adaptation to climate, adoption of agriculture, cooking, settlement , and religion. Like pottery ,
3444-407: The Stone Age has never been limited to stone tools and archaeology, even though they are important forms of evidence. The chief focus of study has always been on the society and the living people who belonged to it. Useful as it has been, the concept of the Stone Age has its limitations. The date range of this period is ambiguous, disputed, and variable, depending upon the region in question. While it
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3528-649: The Stone Age thus could appear there without transitions. The burden on African archaeologists became all the greater, because now they must find the missing transitions in Africa. The problem is difficult and ongoing. After its adoption by the First Pan African Congress in 1947, the Three-Stage Chronology was amended by the Third Congress in 1955 to include a First Intermediate Period between Early and Middle, to encompass
3612-466: The Stone Age. In Sub-Saharan Africa, however, iron-working technologies were either invented independently or came across the Sahara from the north (see iron metallurgy in Africa ). The Neolithic was characterized primarily by herding societies rather than large agricultural societies, and although there was copper metallurgy in Africa as well as bronze smelting, archaeologists do not currently recognize
3696-603: The Yangshao culture spread westward to the Majiayao culture , and then further to Xinjiang and Central Asia along a proto-Silk Road. Indigenous Australians in what is now southwestern Victoria were farming and smoking eels as a food source and trade good using stone weirs, canals, and woven traps around 6000 BC. The 6th Millennium features widespread dramatic climatic events: The early Holocene sea level rise (EHSLR), which began c.10,000 BC, tailed off during
3780-413: The barren tundra . On this land, there was little plant cover, except for occasional arctic white birch and rowan . Slowly a taiga forest appeared. Around 11,400 BCE, the Bromme culture emerged in Southern Scandinavia. This was a more rapidly warming era providing opportunity for other substantial hunting game animals than the ubiquitous reindeer. As former hunter-gather cultures, the Bromme culture
3864-404: The contemporary Dnieper–Donets culture . From around 5200 BC, the patriarchal Dnieper-Donets culture leaves the Mesolithic hunter-gatherer lifestyle and begins keeping cattle , sheep and goats . Other domestic animals kept included pigs , horses and dogs . Junglefowl were domesticated around c. 5500 BC in Southeast Asia. - The Zhaobaogou culture in China began c. 5400 BC. It
3948-415: The decisions of the Pan-African Congress on Prehistory , which meets every four years to resolve the archaeological business brought before it. Delegates are actually international; the organization takes its name from the topic. Louis Leakey hosted the first one in Nairobi in 1947. It adopted Goodwin and Lowe's 3-stage system at that time, the stages to be called Early, Middle and Later. The problem of
4032-485: The depressions during the Lacustrine period , abound in remains dating from the Neolithic age. Countless kurgans ( tumuli ), furnaces, and other archaeological artifacts bear witness to a dense population. Some of the earliest artifacts found in Central Asia derive from Siberia. Large scale constructions occur as early as 6000 BC. Prehistoric settlements in remote Siberia, Russia have revealed that 8,000 years ago construction of complex defensive structures, such as
4116-427: The discovery of these "Lomekwian" tools, the oldest known stone tools had been found at several sites at Gona, Ethiopia , on sediments of the paleo- Awash River , which serve to date them. All the tools come from the Busidama Formation, which lies above a disconformity , or missing layer, which would have been from 2.9 to 2.7 mya . The oldest sites discovered to contain tools are dated to 2.6–2.55 mya. One of
4200-417: The early Stone Age, when species prior to Homo may have manufactured tools. According to the age and location of the current evidence, the cradle of the genus is the East African Rift System, especially toward the north in Ethiopia , where it is bordered by grasslands . The closest relative among the other living primates , the genus Pan , represents a branch that continued on in the deep forest, where
4284-487: The farmers were not killed or chased away, but that they voluntarily joined the Pitted Ware culture and became part of them. At least one settlement appears to be mixed, the Alvastra pile-dwelling . Copper metallurgy was practiced by the Funnelbeaker culture from c. 3500 BC. The language these early Scandinavians spoke is unknown, but towards the end of the 3rd millennium BCE, they were overrun by new tribes who many scholars believe spoke Proto-Indo-European (or more exactly,
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#17327657812734368-400: The first to transition away from hunter-gatherer societies into the settled lifestyle of inhabiting towns and villages as agriculture became widespread . In the chronology of prehistory, the Neolithic era usually overlaps with the Chalcolithic ("Copper") era preceding the Bronze Age. The Stone Age is contemporaneous with the evolution of the genus Homo , with the possible exception of
4452-474: The genus Homo ), extending from 2.5 or 2.6 million years ago, with the first documented use of stone tools by hominins such as Homo habilis , to the end of the Pleistocene around 10,000 BC. The Paleolithic era ended with the Mesolithic , or in areas with an early neolithisation , the Epipaleolithic . At sites dating from the Lower Paleolithic Period (about 2,500,000 to 200,000 years ago), simple pebble tools have been found in association with
4536-576: The geographical location of these languages around that time, agreeing with archeological evidence that Indo-European speakers were present in the Pontic-Caspian steppes by around 4500 BCE (the Kurgan hypothesis ) and that Uralic speakers may have been established in the Pit-Comb Ware culture to their north in the fifth millennium BCE (Carpelan & Parpola 2001:79). Such words as those for "hundred", "pig", and "king" have something in common: they represent "cultural vocabulary" as opposed to "basic vocabulary". They are likely to have been acquired along with
4620-464: The grasslands of the rift, Homo erectus , the predecessor of modern humans, found an ecological niche as a tool-maker and developed a dependence on it, becoming a "tool-equipped savanna dweller". The oldest indirect evidence found of stone tool use is fossilised animal bones with tool marks; these are 3.4 million years old and were found in the Lower Awash Valley in Ethiopia. Archaeological discoveries in Kenya in 2015, identifying what may be
4704-405: The hand-axe tradition, there developed a distinct and very different stone-tool industry, based on flakes of stone: special tools were made from worked (carefully shaped) flakes of flint. In Europe, the Clactonian industry is one example of a flake tradition. The early flake industries probably contributed to the development of the Middle Paleolithic flake tools of the Mousterian industry , which
4788-487: The hunter-gatherers living in the south and north of Scandinavia formed two genetically distinct groups who arrived into Scandinavia in at least two separate waves of migration. In the south and south-east, Western Hunter-Gatherers arrived from modern-day Germany and moved northwards. In the north and west, Eastern Hunter-Gatherers , related to people from the Upper Volga region in modern-day Russia, settled and moved southwards. These people intermixed in Scandinavia and formed
4872-433: The intermediate periods were gone, the search for the transitions continued. In 1859 Jens Jacob Worsaae first proposed a division of the Stone Age into older and younger parts based on his work with Danish kitchen middens that began in 1851. In the subsequent decades this simple distinction developed into the archaeological periods of today. The major subdivisions of the Three-age Stone Age cross two epoch boundaries on
4956-453: The journal Annals of the South African Museum . By then, the dates of the Early Stone Age, or Paleolithic , and Late Stone Age, or Neolithic ( neo = new), were fairly solid and were regarded by Goodwin as absolute. He therefore proposed a relative chronology of periods with floating dates, to be called the Earlier and Later Stone Age. The Middle Stone Age would not change its name, but it would not mean Mesolithic . The duo thus reinvented
5040-638: The late 19th and early 20th centuries CE, who adapted the three-age system to their ideas, hoped to combine cultural anthropology and archaeology in such a way that a specific contemporaneous tribe could be used to illustrate the way of life and beliefs of the people exercising a particular Stone-Age technology. As a description of people living today, the term Stone Age is controversial. The Association of Social Anthropologists discourages this use, asserting: To describe any living group as 'primitive' or 'Stone Age' inevitably implies that they are living representatives of some earlier stage of human development that
5124-462: The literature. There are in effect two Stone Ages, one part of the Three-age and the other constituting the Three-stage. They refer to one and the same artifacts and the same technologies, but vary by locality and time. The three-stage system was proposed in 1929 by Astley John Hilary Goodwin, a professional archaeologist, and Clarence van Riet Lowe , a civil engineer and amateur archaeologist, in an article titled "Stone Age Cultures of South Africa" in
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#17327657812735208-420: The majority of humankind has left behind. In the 1920s, South African archaeologists organizing the stone tool collections of that country observed that they did not fit the newly detailed Three-Age System. In the words of J. Desmond Clark : It was early realized that the threefold division of culture into Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages adopted in the nineteenth century for Europe had no validity in Africa outside
5292-403: The most striking circumstances about these sites is that they are from the Late Pliocene , where prior to their discovery tools were thought to have evolved only in the Pleistocene . Excavators at the locality point out that: ... the earliest stone tool makers were skilled flintknappers ... The possible reasons behind this seeming abrupt transition from the absence of stone tools to
5376-433: The north, in Norway and along the coast of western Sweden, the Fosna-Hensbacka culture was living mostly in changing seasonal camps along the shores and close to the now thriving forests. Utilizing fire, boats and stone tools, these Stone Age tribal cultures managed to survive in northern Europe. The northern hunter-gatherers followed the herds and the salmon runs , moving south during the winters, moving north again during
5460-410: The oldest evidence of hominin use of tools known to date, have indicated that Kenyanthropus platyops (a 3.2 to 3.5-million-year-old Pliocene hominin fossil discovered in Lake Turkana, Kenya, in 1999) may have been the earliest tool-users known. The oldest stone tools were excavated from the site of Lomekwi 3 in West Turkana , northwestern Kenya, and date to 3.3 million years old. Prior to
5544-468: The presence thereof include ... gaps in the geological record. The species that made the Pliocene tools remains unknown. Fragments of Australopithecus garhi , Australopithecus aethiopicus , and Homo , possibly Homo habilis , have been found in sites near the age of the Gona tools. In July 2018, scientists reported the discovery in China of the known oldest stone tools outside Africa, estimated at 2.12 million years old. Innovation in
5628-479: The primates evolved. The rift served as a conduit for movement into southern Africa and also north down the Nile into North Africa and through the continuation of the rift in the Levant to the vast grasslands of Asia. Starting from about 4 million years ago ( mya ) a single biome established itself from South Africa through the rift, North Africa, and across Asia to modern China. This has been called "transcontinental 'savannahstan ' " recently. Starting in
5712-429: The region. However, it was not until around 12,000 BCE that permanent, but nomadic, habitation in the region took root. As the ice receded, reindeer grazed the emerging tundra plains of Denmark and southernmost Sweden . This was the era of the Hamburg culture , tribes who hunted in vast territories that spanned over 100,000 km, and lived as nomads in teepees , following the reindeer seasonal migrations across
5796-482: The remains of what may have been the earliest human ancestors. A somewhat more sophisticated Lower Paleolithic tradition, known as the Chopper chopping tool industry, is widely distributed in the Eastern Hemisphere. This tradition is thought to have been the work of the hominin species named Homo erectus . Although no such fossil tools have yet been found, it is believed that H. erectus probably made tools of wood and bone as well as stone. About 700,000 years ago,
5880-431: The rest of Asia became post-Stone Age societies by about 4000 BC. The proto-Inca cultures of South America continued at a Stone Age level until around 2000 BC, when gold, copper, and silver made their entrance. The peoples of the Americas notably did not develop a widespread behavior of smelting bronze or iron after the Stone Age period, although the technology existed. Stone tool manufacture continued even after
5964-431: The resulting caldera filled with water. Another major eruption occurred c. 5550 BC on Mount Takahe , Antarctica , possibly creating an ozone hole in the region. The carbon-14 content in tree rings created c. 5480 BC indicates an abnormal level of solar activity . The epoch of the Byzantine calendar , used in the Byzantine Empire and many Christian Orthodox countries, is equivalent to 1 September 5509 BC on
6048-486: The scientific study of the lithic reduction of the raw materials and methods used to make the prehistoric artifacts that are discovered. Much of this study takes place in the laboratory in the presence of various specialists. In experimental archaeology , researchers attempt to create replica tools, to understand how they were made. Flintknappers are craftsmen who use sharp tools to reduce flintstone to flint tool . In addition to lithic analysis, field prehistorians use
6132-446: The shape have been called choppers, discoids, polyhedrons, subspheroid, etc. To date no reasons for the variants have been ascertained: From a functional standpoint, pebble cores seem designed for no specific purpose. 6th millennium BCE ICS stages / ages (official) Blytt–Sernander stages/ages *Relative to year 2000 ( b2k ). The 6th millennium BC spanned the years 6000 BC to 5001 BC (c. 8 ka to c. 7 ka). It
6216-537: The southern regions were clad in lush temperate broadleaf and mixed forests . Large animals like aurochs , wisent , moose and red deer roamed freely in the forests and were game for tribes of what is now called the Kongemose culture . Like their predecessors, the Kongemose tribes also hunted marine animals such as seals and fished in the rich shallow waters. North of the Kongemose people, lived other hunter-gatherers in most of southern Norway and Sweden, now dubbed
6300-479: The summers. These early peoples followed cultural traditions similar to those practiced throughout other regions in the far north – areas including modern Finland , Russia, and across the Bering Strait into the northernmost strip of North America (comprising portions of today's Alaska and Canada). During the 6th millennium BCE , the climate of Scandinavia was generally warmer and more humid than today and
6384-516: The taiga with tundra and the local culture reverted to former traditions, focusing on reindeer hunting. This culture is now referred to as the Ahrensburg culture . Around 9,500 BCE, the local climate warmed yet again, as the pre-Boreal era emerged, which triggered the Ahrensburg to settle the emerging tundra of northern Scandinavia. For the next two thousand years, the climatic phase known as
6468-461: The technique of smelting ore is regarded as the end of the Stone Age and the beginning of the Bronze Age . The first highly significant metal manufactured was bronze , an alloy of copper and tin or arsenic , each of which was smelted separately. The transition from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age was a period during which modern people could smelt copper, but did not yet manufacture bronze,
6552-591: The timeline of human technological prehistory into functional periods, with the next two being the Bronze Age and the Iron Age , respectively. The Stone Age is also commonly divided into three distinct periods: the earliest and most primitive being the Paleolithic era; a transitional period with finer tools known as the Mesolithic era; and the final stage known as the Neolithic era. Neolithic peoples were
6636-450: The transitions in archaeology is a branch of the general philosophic continuity problem, which examines how discrete objects of any sort that are contiguous in any way can be presumed to have a relationship of any sort. In archaeology, the relationship is one of causality . If Period B can be presumed to descend from Period A, there must be a boundary between A and B, the A–B boundary. The problem
6720-472: The typology of the stone tools combined with the relative sequence of the types in various regions provide a chronological framework for the evolution of humanity and society. They serve as diagnostics of date, rather than characterizing the people or the society. Lithic analysis is a major and specialised form of archaeological investigation. It involves the measurement of stone tools to determine their typology, function and technologies involved. It includes
6804-458: Was a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used to make stone tools with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted for roughly 3.4 million years and ended between 4000 BC and 2000 BC, with the advent of metalworking . It therefore represents nearly 99.3% of human history. Though some simple metalworking of malleable metals, particularly the use of gold and copper for purposes of ornamentation,
6888-698: Was in the north-eastern part of the country, primarily in the Luan River valley in Inner Mongolia and northern Hebei . - The ' Yangshao culture (仰韶文化, pinyin: Yǎngsháo wénhuà) was a Neolithic culture that existed extensively along the middle reaches of the Yellow River in China from around the end of this millennium, from 5000 BC to 3000 BC. Excavations found that children were buried in painted pottery jars. Pottery style emerging from
6972-607: Was known in the Stone Age, it is the melting and smelting of copper that marks the end of the Stone Age. In Western Asia , this occurred by about 3000 BC, when bronze became widespread. The term Bronze Age is used to describe the period that followed the Stone Age, as well as to describe cultures that had developed techniques and technologies for working copper alloys (bronze: originally copper and arsenic, later copper and tin) into tools, supplanting stone in many uses. Stone Age artifacts that have been discovered include tools used by modern humans, by their predecessor species in
7056-503: Was still largely dependent on reindeer and lived a nomadic life, but their camps diversified significantly and they were the first people to settle Southern Scandinavia (and the Southern Baltic area) on a permanent, yet still nomadic, basis. Local climate changes around 10,500 BCE initiated both cultural changes and the first settling of the northern parts of Scandinavia . Initially, a thousand-year-long climate cool-down replaced
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