What is stone age?
The Stone Age is a historical period that was characterized
by the use of stone. One human species like homohabilis began to use stone as tools around 2.5
million years ago. One species discovered fire prior to use of stone tools. The
homo habilis discovered stone and used as tools, after so many million years.
More than 2.6 million years after this., people lived with small groups,
hunting with stone tools like axes and spears and gathering roots berries and
others plants.
During this stone age, human was hunting and for the purpose of hunting
they learned how to use stone for their own benefits. The stone used like
killing animals, firing etc. Therefore this age is called stone age and now its become a history for the human civilization
Who first came to know use of Stone?
Humans
weren’t the first to make or use stone tools. Some 3.3 million years ago, an
ancient species that lived on the shores of Lake Turkana in Kenya earned that
distinction – a full 700,000 years before the earliest members of the Homogenus
emerged.
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, 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.
The history says that the word culture is created by human.
Initially human was one type of ape where they was like as hunter and the word
culture was not there during that age. The reason is that all were lived like
individual and there was no group or society. When fire was discovered, homohabilis
tried to live in small group for their more safety.
During stone era, ape more advanced
and the body construction was changed and the brain also was more advanced. In
this era they developed their grouping life style but still they were lived
like as refuse. Still they were hunter but the process of hunting was not only together
but also used advanced technic for their benefits.
The main types of evidence are
fossilized human remains and stone tools, which show a gradual increase in
their complexity. On the basis of the techniques employed and the quality of
the tools, there are several stone industries (sometimes referred to as
“lithic” industries). The earliest of these (2.5 million years ago) is called
Oldowan, which are very simple choppers and flakes.
Nearly about 1.7 million years
ago, find another type of lithic industry called Acheulean, producing
more complex and symmetrical shapes with sharp edges. There are several other
types of lithic industries until finally towards the end of the Paleolithic,
about 40,000 years ago.
The culture of the stone era found in
cave and the human of that era made some pictures in cave over stone. Many
archeologists found the said pictures in the cave in the said pictures found
how they protected themselves from animals, how was the life style what they
were eaten etc.
The word “revolution” find place in
lithic industries and the knowledge were upgraded due to development of human
brain where many different types coexisted and developed rapidly. Around this
same time, we also have the first recorded expressions of the artistic life:
personal ornaments, cave paintings, and mobility art.
Pebble tools are found the latest
first in southern Europe and then in northern. They begin in the open areas of
Italy and Spain, the earliest dated to 1.6 mil. years at Pirro Nord, Italy. The
mountains of Italy are rising at a rapid rate in the framework of geologic time.
They might have reached Italy and Spain along the coasts.
he Neolithic saw the transformation
of nomad human settlements into agrarian societies in need of permanent
shelter. From this period there is evidence of early pottery, as well as
sculpture, architecture, and the construction of megaliths. Early rock art also
first appeared in the Neolithic period.
Human artifacts in the Americas begin
showing up from around this time, too. Experts aren’t exactly sure who these
first Americans were or where they came from, though there’s some evidence
these Stone Age people may have followed a footbridge between Asia and North
America, which became submerged as glaciers melted at the end of the last Ice
Age.
Stone Age artifacts that have been
discovered include tools used by modern humans, by their predecessor species in
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 history of human Civilization in the Paleolithic
period were also the first to leave behind art. They used combinations of
minerals, ochres, burnt bone meal and charcoal mixed into water, blood, animal
fats and tree saps to etch humans, animals and signs. They also carved small
figurines from stones, clay, bones and antlers.
The Mesolithic or middle Stone Age
saw the development of finer, smaller stone tools such as arrow or spear heads.
The first evidence for homes in Britain comes from this period, and the
first canoes were made. This meant that men could fish as well as hunt.
The dog was also domesticated during this period, probably by the selection and
breeding of the least aggressive wolves.
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 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.
From 50,000 to 10,000 years ago in
Europe, the Upper Paleolithic ends with the end of the Pleistocene and onset of
the Holocene era (the end of the last ice age). Modern humans spread out
further across the Earth during the period known as the Upper Paleolithic.
Around 2 million years ago, Homohabilis is believed to have constructed the first man-made structure in East Africa, consisting of simple arrangements of stones to hold branches of trees in position. A similar stone circular arrangement believed to be around 380,000 years old was discovered at Terra Amata, near Nice, France. (Concerns about the dating have been raised, see Terra Amata). Several human habitats dating back to the Stone Age have been discovered around the globe, including:
The oldest known Stone Age art dates
back to a later Stone Age period known as the Upper Paleolithic, about 40,000
years ago. Art began to appear around this time in parts of Europe, the Near
East, Asia and Africa.
The final part of something
In the late 19th and early 20th
centuries archaeologists worked on the assumptions that a succession of
Hominans and cultures prevailed, that one replaced another. Today the presence
of multiple hominans living contemporaneously near each other for long periods
is accepted as proved true; moreover, by the time the previously assumed "earliest"
culture arrived in northern Europe, the rest of Africa and Eurasia had
progressed to the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic, so that across the earth all
three were for a time contemporaneous. In any given region there was a
progression from Oldowan to Acheulean, Lower to Upper, no doubt. At present the Stone age civilization and cultural life become history and just gather the knowledge from history books.
