Stone Age

I

Introduction

Stone Age, the earliest period of human culture, when tools were made of stone, bone, antler, or wood, and before metals were first used. The term “Stone Age” encompasses almost the whole of human existence, because it starts with the very earliest tools detectable in the archaeological record, but ends only a couple of centuries ago in some parts of the world, such as Australia or Polynesia, where metal was not used until the arrival of Europeans.

By the mid-19th century, antiquarians in Europe had established that humans had existed in remote antiquity alongside extinct animals; that the stones which formerly—in Classical and medieval times—had been seen as thunderbolts were actually early tools; and that flaked stone tools preceded polished stone tools in the archaeological record, even though nothing was known of the extent or duration of their periods of use. This “Stone Age”, which preceded the Bronze Age and Iron Age, was eventually subdivided by the British naturalist and politician Sir John Lubbock: in 1865 he coined the terms Palaeolithic (from the Greek palaeo, old, and lithos, stone) and Neolithic (from neo, new) for the periods of flaked stone and polished stone tools respectively.

II

The Palaeolithic Period

The Palaeolithic, which constitutes about 99 per cent of the world's archaeological record, was subsequently subdivided into three successive major phases: Lower, Middle, and Upper. The Lower Palaeolithic spans a huge period starting with the earliest recognizable stone tools, which have been found in sites in Ethiopia and date to about 2.5 million years ago. However, it is certain that early humans must have used implements long before that: any made of organic materials will have disintegrated, while those of stone will have remained unmodified, and thus unrecognizable as tools. It is the modification of naturally occurring pebbles that identifies them as artefacts. These simple pebble-tools, known as choppers and chopping tools, have had flakes purposefully removed with a hammer-stone to make a variety of crude implements with points or edges that could be used for chopping, cutting, or scraping. They are sometimes known as “Oldowan” tools, after the famous Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania where so many traces of early humans have been found, and are the world's longest-lasting technology, remaining in use for millions of years. The edge of flint or quartz can be extremely sharp; it may get dulled or broken with use, but it can then either be re-flaked, or discarded and easily replaced, since suitable stones are usually readily available.

The next development comprised bifacially worked core-tools. Selected blocks of stone had flakes removed from both sides to produce a desired shape; they culminated in sophisticated forms such as the symmetrical, pear-shaped handaxe (or biface) found in many parts of the Old World and which was probably a multi-purpose tool—it provided a long sharp cutting edge, a hammer-like butt, and a point or, in the case of cleavers, an axe-like edge. Handaxes arose during the time of Homo erectus, direct ancestors of Homo sapiens, whose fossilized remains have been found from southern Africa to south-eastern Asia and who span a period from about 1.8 million years to a few hundred thousand years ago (see Human Evolution). So handaxes must have been useful and efficient tools.

In some areas, the long-lasting culture of the handaxe makers is called Acheulian after Saint-Acheul, in northern France, one of a number of sites where such handaxes have been found. One notable invention made during this period, probably quite independently at different times and places, was the Levallois technique (named after another French site): a core of fine-grained flint was shaped in such a way that large, flat, sharp-edged flakes of preconceived size and form could be struck from it. This technique really came into its own during the Middle Palaeolithic, when stone flakes were fashioned into a variety of more specialized tools.

The Middle Palaeolithic is an ill-defined phase which begins at different times in different areas. In Europe, where it is also called the Mousterian (after the rock-shelter of Le Moustier, in south-western France), it spans the period from roughly 180,000 to 40,000 years ago, and equates broadly with the presence of Neanderthal people. Alongside the new flake-tools—points, scrapers, side-scrapers—small handaxes are still found. In Africa, the period is known as the Middle Stone Age and lasts from about 150,000 to 30,000 years ago; handaxes are lacking, but some assemblages of tools contain tiny tools known as microliths. Some Middle Stone Age assemblages in southern Africa are associated with anatomically modern humans.

The Upper Palaeolithic in Europe is the period of fully modern humans, associated with the production of a wide variety of delicate stone, bone, antler, and ivory tools, including spearthrowers, barbed harpoons, and eyed needles. The stone tools of the Upper Palaeolithic comprise a wide variety of often very specialized forms (awls, burins, end-scrapers, etc), mostly made from blades and bladelets (long, flat, narrow flakes with parallel sides that were accurately struck from a core with a hammer and a punch, rather than directly with a hammer). Some phases are associated with superb examples of stone toolmaking; thin, flat, bifacially worked leaf-shaped points were made during the Solutrean of south-west Europe, for instance.

The Palaeolithic period ends around 10,500 years ago with the retreat of the glacial ice in the northern hemisphere. In Africa it is known as the Later Stone Age, but lasts until the Iron Age (a few centuries bc or ad according to area) or even into historical times, thus incorporating what in other parts of the Old World is known as the Neolithic. In the New World, the earliest phase of human occupation—from at least 15,000 (and perhaps even 50,000) years ago up to about 5000 bc—is known as Paleoindian. It is characterized by a series of carefully made stone points such as Clovis and Folsom points in the north, and fishtail points in the south.

One important point is that the prominence of stone tools in the Palaeolithic record is probably highly misleading: they survive because of their material, and their abundance does not necessarily reflect their importance. Studies of how and why modern-day “primitive” people use stone tools, as well as microscopic analyses which compare wear-patterns and residues on prehistoric implements with those on modern copies that have been used for specific tasks and on different materials, all suggest that many stone tools were used to obtain and work organic materials, and that wood was probably of tremendous importance in Palaeolithic toolkits. A few wooden items have survived from the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic—such as a couple of spear-points and a receptacle in Europe, and a skilfully made thin plank from Japan.

III

Palaeolithic Peoples

Throughout the Palaeolithic, humans were hunters, fishers, and gatherers; in fact for the greater part of the Lower Palaeolithic, early humans (Australopithecus, Homo habilis, and Homo erectus) were probably scavengers rather than hunters. It was during the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic that hunting really came into its own, and became more efficient, with more specialized tools and communal drives. Hunters concentrated on herbivores such as the horse, bison, deer, goats, and antelopes, depending on the region, and on the climate, which fluctuated through the Ice Ages. Large game such as mammoth was hunted comparatively rarely, though predation by humans certainly played a role in the extinction of this and other species of megafauna in various parts of the world. On the plains of North America, hunters sometimes exploited bison in mass drives, stampeding them into gullies for slaughter.

Palaeolithic peoples appear to have been highly mobile, or nomadic, moving with the animals that they hunted or with the seasons. Throughout the Lower Palaeolithic, they must have lived mostly in flimsy camps, traces of which are found primarily in open-air sites and river terraces, though some caves, such as Zhoukoudian in China or Tautavel in France, were also occupied. In the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic cave-mouths and rock-shelters were far more intensively and extensively used, but people also continued to live in open-air settlements. In the Lower Palaeolithic, simple windbreaks or crude huts (as in the sand dunes at Terra Amata in Nice, southern France) were erected, but by the Upper Palaeolithic there is evidence for light tents, and—in central and eastern Europe—for sophisticated huts made of hundreds of mammoth bones.

Fire appears to have been mastered by 1.5 million years ago, and hearths are commonplace in living-sites of the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic. Fire was probably used originally for light, warmth, and protection from wild animals, but eventually also for cooking food. By the Upper Palaeolithic it was also being used for heating flint to make it more workable; for changing the colours of mineral pigments; and in some areas, such as Moravia and Japan, for firing clay figurines and vessels.

Middle Stone Age people were evidently already seafarers. Humans first reached Australia at least 55,000 years ago, and possibly far earlier. This meant crossing at least 100 km (60 mi) of open sea, since Australia was never joined to south-eastern Asia, even at times of low sea-level.

The first clear evidence of burial practices occur during the Middle Palaeolithic. At Atapuerca in northern Spain, however, there is evidence of a rudimentary funerary rite having taken place around 300,000 years ago; up to 35 pre-Neanderthal human skeletons were apparently deposited in a pit at this site. The lack of occupation material and tools (showing that these early humans did not live here), and the lack of animal bones or gnaw marks (indicating that they were not the victims of predators) suggests some kind of funerary rite. One Neanderthal burial—at Shānīdār Cave, Iraq—appears to have been accompanied by flowers. It is in the Upper Palaeolithic that burial becomes more elaborate (the world's oldest known cremation, at Lake Mungo, Australia, dates back to 26,000 years ago), with red ochre, grave goods, and in some cases hundreds of beads which were probably attached to clothing, as well as other forms of ornamentation, and tools.

Similarly, while some rudimentary examples of art are known from the Middle and even the Lower Palaeolithic—such as a female figurine from Berekhat Ram, Israel, several hundred millennia old—it is in the Upper Palaeolithic on every continent that figurative art appears, as rock or cave art or as portable engravings and carvings. Although it is the art of Europe that is best known (see Palaeolithic Art), there are examples of portable and/or rock art of similar age on every continent: for example, Australia has petroglyphs (rock engravings) that may be more than 40,000 years old, and a necklace of perforated shells from Mandu Mandu Creek that dates to 32,000 years ago; Namibia has produced coloured animal figures on rock slabs from Apollo 11 Cave that date to 27,500 years ago; India, China, and Japan have engravings on ostrich eggshell, antler, and pebbles respectively; and Brazil has rock paintings at Pedra Furada that date back at least 12,000 and perhaps 17,000 years or more.

IV

The Mesolithic Period

The period of transition between the end of the Ice Age and the rise of farming that occurred in the Neolithic period was something of a hiatus in the archaeological record in the 19th century. Eventually, the term “Mesolithic” (Middle Stone Age) was coined to cover this period in Europe, and by the 1880s some cultures which spanned the period had been identified, from about 8500 to 7000 bc in the Near East but lasting till the 4th millennium in Britain (when Neolithic technology arrived from the continent). Generally, the Mesolithic peoples were hunter-fisher-gatherers, like their predecessors, but they often focused on very different species (such as red deer and boar rather than reindeer) because of the change to a more to a more temperate climate at the end of the Ice Age. Their toolkits reflect these changing conditions, and are characterized by the presence of geometric microliths. These they used not only as barbs on arrows but also probably in composite tools, mounted with resin on to handles or shafts to be used as sickles and other plant-processing implements. There were also stone axes or adzes used in woodworking. It was the final Palaeolithic (or “Epipalaeolithic”) people of south-west Asia, such as the Natufians of Palestine who seem to have taken the first decisive steps towards producing food and adopting a sedentary lifestyle.