PREHISTORIC

• Stone Age- This period was marked by which stone was widely used to make tools and implements. Dated roughly 3.4 million years ago, and in about 8000 B.C.
• The era of Australopithecus and Paranthropus were contemporaneous with the evolution of the genus Homo.
• Discovery - recognition and observation of new objects
• Invention - mental process wherein man's various discoveries, observation and experience are put together to produce new ways (operation) and means (tools) of obtaining things (useful)
• The oldest formally recognized stone tool assemblage in the world is Oldowan.
• The Oldowan stone tool industry was first defined from examples excavated from bed I and bed II at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania.
• Paleoanthropologists refer to Homo habilis as the maker of these tools because they appear in the fossil record about the same time or a little later than the earliest Oldowan tools.
• The early Homo erectus also used archeulean and neolithic tools
• BIFACIAL TOOL- Both sides (bifaces) of the stone have two sharp

  edges
• Acheulean tool making tradition was first developed in East Africa.
• By 1.8 million years ago, the skills of some Homo erectus had increased to the point that they were making more sophisticated stone implements with sharper and straighter edges.
• Neolithic Tools- large axes were made from flint nodules by knapping a rough shape, a so-called "rough-out".
• Such products were traded across a wide area. The rough-outs were then polished to give the surface a fine finish to create the axe head. Polishing not only increased the final strength of the

  product but also meant that the head could penetrate wood more easily.
• Polished stone axes were important for the widespread clearance of woods and forest during the Neolithic period, when crop and livestock farming developed on a large scale.
• Mousterian Tools- the Acheulean in Europe was replaced by a lithic technology known as the Mousterian Industry, which was named after the site of Le Moustier in France, where examples were first

  uncovered in the 1860s.
• Mousterian adopted the Levallois technique to produce smaller

  and sharper knife-like tools as well as scrapers. Also known as the "prepared core technique,"
• The Mousterian Industry was developed and used primarily by the Neanderthals, a native European and Middle Eastern hominin species.
• Aurignacian Tools- The widespread use of long blades (rather than flakes) of the Upper Paleolithic Mode 4 industries appeared during the Upper Paleolithic between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago,
• The Aurignacian culture seems to have been the first to rely largely on blades.
• Microlithic Tools- which were used in composite tools, mainly fastened to a shaft. Examples include Magdalenian culture.
• The Bronze Age marked the first time humans started to work with metal.
• Ancient Sumerians in the Middle East may have been the first people to enter the Bronze Age.
• Bronze Age lasted from roughly 3300 to 1200 B.C.
• The Chalcolithic Period 5000 BCE- 3000 BCE (The Copper Age) a name derived from the Greek word "khalkós" (copper) and from "líthos" (stone)
• Copper Age, also known as the Eneolithic or Aeneolithic (from Latin aeneus "of copper") is an archaeological period that researchers now regard as part of the broader Neolithic.
• adding tin to copper one could create bronze, a metal alloy harder and stronger than either component.
• The Iron Age was a period in human history that started between 1200 B.C. and 600 B.C.
• During the Iron Age, people across much of Europe, Asia and parts of Africa began making tools and weapons from iron and steel.
• For some societies, including Ancient Greece, the start of the

  Iron Age was accompanied by a period of cultural decline. Humans may have smelted sporadically throughout the Bronze Age, though they likely saw iron as an inferior metal. Iron tools and weapons

  weren't as hard or durable as their bronze counterparts.