Question

What is the sources of our knowledge of the stone age?

Answer 1

The Stone Age was a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used to make implements with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted roughly 3.4 million years[1] and ended between 8700 BCE and 2000 BCE with the advent of metalworking.[citation needed]

Stone Age artifacts include tools used by modern humans and by their predecessor species in the genus Homo, and possibly by the earlier partly contemporaneous genera Australopithecus and Paranthropus. Bone tools were used during this period as well but 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 of archaeology, which divides human technological prehistory into three periods:

The Stone AgeThe Bronze AgeThe Iron Age

Historical significance

Hominin timeline

view • discuss • edit

-10 —

–

-9 —

–

-8 —

–

-7 —

–

-6 —

–

-5 —

–

-4 —

–

-3 —

–

-2 —

–

-1 —

–

0 —

Hominini

Nakalipithecus

Ouranopithecus

Sahelanthropus

Orrorin

Ardipithecus

Australopithecus

Homo habilis

Homo erectus

H. heidelbergensis

Homo sapiens

Neanderthals

←

Earlier apes

←

LCA–Gorilla
separation

←

Possibly bipedal

←

LCA–Chimpanzee
separation

←

Earliest bipedal

←

Earliest stone tools

←

Earliest exit from Africa

←

Earliest fire use

←

Earliest in Europe

←

Earliest cooking

←

Earliest clothes

←

Modern speech

←

Modern humans


P
l
e
i
s
t
o
c
e
n
e


P
l
i
o
c
e
n
e


M
i
o
c
e
n
e


H

o

m

i

n

i

d

s

Axis scale: million years
Also see: Life timeline and Nature timeline



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 is contemporaneous with the evolution of the genus Homo, the only exception possibly being the early Stone Age, when species prior to Homo may have manufactured tools.[2]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. 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, which has been called "transcontinental 'savannahstan'" recently.[3]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 "tool equipped savanna dwe