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The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (c. 3.3 million – c. 11,700 years ago) (/ ˌ p eɪ l i oʊ ˈ l ɪ θ ɪ k, ˌ p æ l i-/ PAY-lee-oh-LITH-ik, PAL-ee-), also called the Old Stone Age (from Ancient Greek παλαιός (palaiós) 'old' and λίθος (líthos) 'stone'), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone tools, and which represents almost ...
The Lower Paleolithic period lasted over 3 million years, during which there many human-like species evolved including toward the end of this period, Homo sapiens.The original divergence between humans and chimpanzees occurred 13 (), however interbreeding continued until as recently as 4 Ma, with the first species clearly belonging to the human (and not chimpanzee) lineage being ...
The Stone Age is a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used in the manufacture of implements with a sharp edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted roughly 2.5 million years, from the time of early hominids to Homo sapiens in the later Pleistocene era, and largely ended between 6000 and 2000 BCE with the advent of metalworking.
The Paleolithic cave art was first discovered in 1868 and depicts bison, deer, and other animals. Scientists have dated the paintings to be between 13,000 to 14,000 years old.
The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories coinciding with the appearance of behavioral modernity in early modern humans. It is followed by the ...
Middle Paleolithic period – in Europe and the Near East during which the Neanderthals lived (c. 300,000–28,000 years ago). Their technology is mainly the Mousterian . The earliest evidence ( Mungo Man ) of settlement in Australia dates to around 55,000 years ago when modern humans likely crossed from Asia by island-hopping.
The Levallois technique (IPA:) is a name given by archaeologists to a distinctive type of stone knapping developed around 250,000 to 400,000 [1] years ago during the Middle Palaeolithic period. It is part of the Mousterian stone tool industry, and was used by the Neanderthals in Europe and by modern humans in other regions such as the Levant .
Fire allowed major innovations in tool and weapon manufacture. Evidence dating to roughly 164,000 years ago indicates that early humans in South Africa during the Middle Stone Age used fire to alter the mechanical properties of tool materials applying heat treatment to a fine-grained rock called silcrete. [40]