The Stone Age
The Stone Age was a time when people made tools of stone instead of the metal we use today. It began about 2.5 million years ago when ancient people started to use stones to make chopping tools.
About 5,000 years ago bronze started to replace stone as the material to make tools and other objects out of. However, the Stone Age ended at different times in various parts of the world.
Even after the end of this era many people still used axes and farming tools made of stone. Even today there are people in New Guinea, Africa and Australia who still live in the Stone Age.
The first stone objects were primitive chopping tools. Prehistoric people learned to chip pieces off stone in order to form them. Later on they made better and more complicated tools like axes and blades out of stone.
During the early Stone Age, also called the Palaeolithic, humans lived in caves, under large rocks and out in the open. Inhabitants of eastern Africa started to make structures out of stone and also made roofs out of wood. They gathered berries and plants and hunted wild animals with their primitive tools. Some people carved sculptures into rock or the bones of wild animals.
The climate during this time was dominated by ice ages and warmer periods in between.
The new Stone Age or Neolithic period began about 10,000 years ago. The last Ice Age came to an end and sea levels started to rise. Man needed to adapt to these new changes in weather. People who lived near the sea started to make tools for fishing. Others made more useful tools out of wood, shells, antlers and other materials. With them they were able to hunt and kill wild animals. They also learned how to grow crops. Later on Stone Age inhabitants started to settle in small villages. They learned to make pottery and weave cloth.
Neolithic farmers tamed dogs which they bred from wolves. During this period people started raising animals in order to get fur and meat. Sickles were made to harvest crops.
This way of life first developed in South-western Asia. Over the following thousands of years it spread northward to Europe and eastward to India and China.
By about 3,000 B.C. the Stone Age came to an end in Europe and Asia. Civilizations in Greece and China were starting to make tools from bronze, a mixture of copper and tin.
Related Topics
- Prehistoric Animals
- Neanderthals – Early Humans in Europe and Asia
- Neanderthals Became Extinct Because of Larger Eyes
- Oldest Human Fossil Found Outside Africa
Words
- adapt = to get used to
- ancient = old
- antler = the horns of a male deer
- axe – axes = a tool with a heavy metal blade, used to cut wood
- berry = a small soft fruit with small seeds
- blade = the cutting part of a tool
- breed – bred = to keep animals so that you can produce babies
- bronze = a hard metal that is made of copper and tin
- carve = cut into an object
- cave = a large natural hole in a mountain or hill
- chip = when small pieces break off something
- chop = to cut something into small pieces
- cloth = material use for making clothes
- complicated = difficult
- copper = soft reddish brown metal
- crops = a plant like wheat or rice that is grown by farmers and used as food
- develop =here: come to life
- dominate =to control
- era = period, time
- fur = the thick soft hair that some animals have
- gather =collect
- harvest = to bring in crops
- however =but
- inhabitant = a person who lives in a place
- instead of =ins something’s place
- man = people as a group
- mixture = combination of
- pottery = objects made out of bake clay
- prehistoric = a time in history when nothing was written down
- raise = to look after animals an feed them so you can sell them
- rise = to go up
- sculpture = here: designs, pictures
- sea level =the average height of the sea; it is used as a standard for measuring the height of mountains and other objects
- settle = to start living in a place for a longer time
- shell = the hard part of an animal that can be found near the ocean
- sickle = a tool that looks like a hook
- spread = to move from one place to another
- structure = something that has been built
- tame = to train a wild animal
- tin = soft silver white metal
- tool = something that you hold in your hand that does a job
- useful =helpful, practical
- various = different
- weave =to make cloth or a basket by crossing pieces of thread under and over each other by hand