Stone Age Modern Awash River, Ethiopia, descendant of the Palaeo- Awash, source of the sediments in which the oldest Stone Age tools have been found. The Stone Age. The period lasted roughly 3. BC and 2. 00. 0 BC with the advent of metalworking. Stone Age artifacts include tools used by humans and by their predecessor species in the genus Homo, as well as the earlier partly contemporaneous genera Australopithecus and Paranthropus. Flakes Tools, Mousterian Points, and Miscellaneous stone tools from the Stone Age - Paleolithic, Mousterian, and Neolithic Europe. Back to Don's Maps Tools from the stone age This case shows the full sweep of stone tools, from the very old to some of the youngest. Photo: Don Hitchcock 2014. Results for denticulate: (View exact match) denticulate CATEGORY: lithics DEFINITION: An artifact (flake or blade tool) with several small tooth-like (dentate or. The Stone Age is further subdivided by the types of stone tools in use. The Stone Age is the first of the three- age system of archaeology, which divides human technological prehistory into three periods: Historical significance. The Stone Age is nearly contemporaneous with the evolution of the genus Homo, the only exception possibly being at the very beginning, 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 the primates evolved. Pictures and description of a Solutrean biface Laurel Leaf point from the site of Le Ruth in southern France. A cast of this point is available for sale. 40,000 years ago - a page of ponderings on who we are, and when and how we became that way. This is a page exploring what various writers have thought significant. 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 3 mya a single biome established itself from South Africa through the rift, North Africa, and across Asia to modern China, which has been called . Starting in 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 . Discovered by an international team led by Shannon Mc. Pherron, they are the oldest evidence of stone tool use ever found anywhere in the world. The oldest known stone tools have been excavated from several sites at Gona, Ethiopia, on the sediments of the paleo- Awash River, which serve to date them. To understand the importance of Palaeolithic stone tools in relation to the Fossil Record, the Bradshaw Foundation spoke with Cassandra Turcotte of the Center for the. Flake tool, Stone Age hand tools, usually flint, shaped by flaking off small particles, or by breaking off a large flake which was then used as the tool. Human evolution is a rapidly-changing field, with the regular discovery of new fossil material leading scientists to constantly reconsider evolutionary relationships. All the tools come from the Busidama Formation, which lies above a disconformity, or missing layer, which would have been from 2. The oldest sites containing tools are dated to 2. One of the most striking circumstances about these sites is that they are from the Late Pliocene, where previous to their discovery tools were thought to have evolved only in the Pleistocene. Rogers and Semaw, excavators at the locality, point out that. The possible reasons behind this seeming abrupt transition from the absence of stone tools to the presence thereof include .. The species who 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 oldest tools. End of the Stone Age. Innovation of the technique of smelting ore ended the Stone Age and began the Bronze Age. The first most significant metal manufactured was bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, 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, a time known as the Copper Age, or more technically the Chalcolithic, . The Chalcolithic by convention is the initial period of the Bronze Age and is unquestionably part of the Age of Metals. The Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age. During this entire time stone remained in use in parallel with the metals for some objects, including those also used in the Neolithic, such as stone pottery. The transition out of the Stone Age occurred between 6. BCE and 2. 50. 0 BCE for much of humanity living in North Africa and Eurasia. The first evidence of human metallurgy dates to between the 5th and 6th millennium BCE in the archaeological sites of Majdanpek, Yarmovac and Plo. The Middle East and southeastern Asian regions progressed past Stone Age technology around 6. BCE. Europe, and the rest of Asia became post–Stone Age societies by about 4. BCE. The proto- Inca cultures of South America continued at a Stone Age level until around 2. BCE, when gold, copper and silver made their entrance, the rest following later. Australia remained in the Stone Age until the 1. Stone tool manufacture continued. In Europe and North America, millstones were in use until well into the 2. The concept of Stone Age. The term was never meant to suggest that advancement 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, 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 man 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 the stone tools to determine their typology, function and the technology involved. It includes scientific study of the lithic reduction of the raw materials, examining how the artifacts were made. 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. The work of the archaeologist in determining the paleocontext and relative sequence of the layers is supplemented by the efforts of the geologic specialist in identifying layers of rock over geologic time, of the paleontological specialist in identifying bones and animals, of the palynologist in discovering and identifying plant species, of the physicist and chemist in laboratories determining dates by the carbon- 1. Study of the Stone Age has never been mainly about stone tools and archaeology, which are only one form of evidence. The chief focus has always been on the society and the physical 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 according to the region in question. While it is possible to speak of a general 'stone age' period for the whole of humanity, some groups never developed metal- smelting technology, so remained in a '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. The archaeologists of the late 1. 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 can be used to illustrate the way of life and beliefs of the people exercising a specific 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. For some, this could be a positive description, implying, for example, that such groups live in greater harmony with nature .. For them, 'primitive' denotes irrational use of resources and absence of the intellectual and moral standards of 'civilised' human societies.. From the standpoint of anthropological knowledge, both these views are equally one- sided and simplistic. 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 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 1. Astley John Hilary Goodwin, a professional archaeologist, and Clarence van Riet Lowe, a civil engineer and amateur archaeologist, in an article titled . 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 the Stone Age. In Sub- Saharan Africa, however, it was ended by the intrusion of the Iron Age from the north. The Neolithic and the Bronze Age never occurred. 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 favour 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 the decisions of the Pan- African Congress of Prehistory, which meets every four years to resolve archaeological business brought before it. Delegates are actually international; the organization takes its name from the topic. It adopted Goodman and Lowe's 3- stage system at that time, the stages to be called Early, Middle and Later. The problem of the transitions. The problem of 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.
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