Editing Stone Age (section)

==Stone Age in archaeology==

===Beginning of the Stone Age===
[[File:Arrowhead.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Obsidian]] [[projectile point]]]]

The oldest indirect evidence found of stone tool use is fossilised animal bones with tool marks; these are 3.4&nbsp;million years old and were found in the Lower Awash Valley in Ethiopia.<ref name="nhm.ac.uk"/> Archaeological discoveries in Kenya in 2015, identifying what may be the oldest evidence of hominin use of tools known to date, have indicated that ''[[Kenyanthropus]] platyops'' (a 3.2 to 3.5-million-year-old [[Pliocene]] hominin fossil discovered in Lake Turkana, Kenya, in 1999) may have been the earliest tool-users known.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32804177|title=Oldest tools pre-date first humans|first=Rebecca|last=Morelle|author-link=Rebecca Morelle|date=20 May 2015|work=BBC News}}</ref>

The oldest stone tools were excavated from the site of [[Lomekwi]] 3 in West [[Turkana County|Turkana]], northwestern Kenya, and date to 3.3&nbsp;million years old.<ref name="Harmand 2015">{{cite journal|last1=Harmand|first1=Sonia|title=3.3-million-year-old stone tools from Lomekwi 3, West Turkana, Kenya|journal=Nature|date=21 May 2015|volume=521|issue=7552|pages=310–315|doi=10.1038/nature14464|display-authors=etal|pmid=25993961|bibcode=2015Natur.521..310H|s2cid=1207285}}</ref> Prior to the discovery of these "Lomekwian" tools, the oldest known stone tools had been found at several sites at [[Gona, Ethiopia]], on sediments of the paleo-[[Awash River]], which serve to date them. All the tools come from the Busidama Formation, which lies above a [[disconformity]], or missing layer, which would have been from 2.9 to 2.7&nbsp;[[mya (unit)|mya]]. The oldest sites discovered to contain tools are dated to 2.6–2.55&nbsp;mya.<ref>{{harvnb|Rogers|Semaw|2009|pp=162–163}}</ref> One of the most striking circumstances about these sites is that they are from the Late [[Pliocene]], where prior to their discovery tools were thought to have evolved only in the [[Pleistocene]]. Excavators at the locality point out that:<ref>{{harvnb|Rogers|Semaw|2009|p=155}}</ref>

{{blockquote|...&nbsp;the earliest stone tool makers were skilled [[flintknappers]]&nbsp;... The possible reasons behind this seeming abrupt transition from the absence of stone tools to the presence thereof include&nbsp;... gaps in the geological record.}}

The species that made the Pliocene tools remains unknown. Fragments of ''[[Australopithecus garhi]]'', ''[[Australopithecus aethiopicus]]'',<ref>As to whether ''aethiopicus'' is the genus ''[[Australopithecus]]'' or the genus ''[[Paranthropus]]'', broken out to include the more robust forms, anthropological opinion is divided and both usages occur in the professional sources.</ref> and ''Homo'', possibly ''[[Homo habilis]]'', have been found in sites near the age of the Gona tools.<ref>{{harvnb|Rogers|Semaw|2009|p=164}}</ref>

In July 2018, scientists reported the discovery in [[China]] of the known oldest stone tools outside Africa, estimated at 2.12&nbsp;million years old.<ref name="NYT-20180711cz">{{cite news |last=Zimmer |first=Carl |author-link=Carl Zimmer |title=Archaeologists in China Discover the Oldest Stone Tools Outside Africa |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/11/science/hominins-tools-china.html |date=11 July 2018 |work=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=13 July 2018 }}</ref>

===End of the Stone Age===
Innovation in the technique of [[smelting]] [[ore]] is regarded as the end of the Stone Age and the beginning of the [[Bronze Age]]. The first highly significant metal manufactured was [[bronze]], an alloy of copper and [[tin]] or [[arsenic]], each of which was smelted separately. The transition from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age was a period during which modern people could smelt copper, but did not yet manufacture bronze, a time known as the [[Copper Age]] (or more technically the [[Chalcolithic]] or Eneolithic, both meaning 'copper–stone'). The Chalcolithic by convention is the initial period of the Bronze Age. The Bronze Age was followed by the [[Iron Age]].

The transition out of the Stone Age occurred between 6000 and 2500&nbsp;[[Common Era|BC]] for much of humanity living in [[North Africa]] and [[Eurasia]].{{citation needed|date=June 2022}}

The first evidence of human [[metallurgy]] dates to between the [[6th millennium BC|6th]] and [[5th millennium BC|5th millennia]]&nbsp;BC in the archaeological sites of the [[Vinča culture]], including [[Majdanpek]], [[Jarmovac]], [[Pločnik (archaeological site)|Pločnik]], [[Rudna Glava]] in modern-day Serbia.<ref>{{cite journal | journal = [[Journal of World Prehistory]] | year = 2021 | issue = 2 | title = Early Balkan Metallurgy: Origins, Evolution and Society, 6200–3700 BC | first1 = Miljana | last1 = Radivojević | first2 = Benjamin W. | last2 = Roberts | volume = 34 | pages = 195–278 | doi = 10.1007/s10963-021-09155-7 | s2cid = 237005605 | doi-access = free }}</ref>

[[Ötzi the Iceman]], a [[mummy]] from about 3300 BC, carried with him a copper axe and a flint knife.

In some regions, such as [[Sub-Saharan Africa]], the Stone Age was followed directly by the Iron Age.<ref>{{cite book|author1=S.J.S. Cookey|editor1-last=Swartz|editor1-first=B.K.|editor2-last=Dumett|editor2-first=Raymond E.|title=West African Culture Dynamics: Archaeological and Historical Perspectives|date=1980|publisher=Mouton de Gruyter|isbn=978-90-279-7920-9|page=329|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8_Z5N0gmNlsC&q=africa+Stone+Age+was+followed+directly+by+the+iron+age&pg=PA329|access-date=3 June 2016|chapter=An Ethnohistorical Reconstruction of Traditional Igbo Society}}</ref> The Middle East and [[Southeast Asia]]n regions progressed past Stone Age technology around 6000&nbsp;BC.{{citation needed|date=January 2016}} Europe, and the rest of Asia became post-Stone Age societies by about 4000&nbsp;BC.{{citation needed|date=January 2016}} The [[Cultural periods of Peru|proto-Inca]] cultures of South America continued at a Stone Age level until around 2000&nbsp;BC, when gold, copper, and silver made their entrance. The peoples of the Americas notably did not develop a widespread behavior of smelting bronze or iron after the Stone Age period, although the technology existed.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Easby|first1=Dudley T.|title=Pre-Hispanic Metallurgy and Metalworking in the New World|journal=Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society|date=April 1965|volume=109|issue=2|pages=89–98}}</ref> Stone tool manufacture continued even after the Stone Age ended in a given area. In Europe and North America, [[millstone]]s were in use until well into the 20th century, and still are in many parts of the world.

===Concept of the Stone Age===
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, [[Human settlement|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.

[[Lithic analysis]] is a major and specialised form of archaeological investigation. It involves the measurement of [[stone tool]]s to determine their typology, function and technologies involved. It includes the scientific study of the [[lithic reduction]] of the raw materials and methods used to make the prehistoric artifacts that are discovered. Much of this study takes place in the laboratory in the presence of various specialists. In [[experimental archaeology]], researchers attempt to create replica tools, to understand how they were made. [[Flintknapper]]s are craftsmen who use sharp tools to reduce [[flint]]stone to [[Flint (tool)|flint tool]].

[[File:National park stone tools.jpg|thumb|A variety of [[stone tool]]s]]

In addition to lithic analysis, field prehistorians use a wide range of techniques derived from multiple fields. The work of archaeologists in determining the paleocontext and relative sequence of the layers is supplemented by the efforts of geologic specialists in identifying layers of rock developed or deposited over geologic time; of paleontological specialists in identifying bones and animals; of palynologists in discovering and identifying pollen, spores and plant species; of physicists and chemists in laboratories determining ages of materials by [[carbon-14]], [[K–Ar dating|potassium-argon]] and other methods. The study of the Stone Age has never been limited to stone tools and archaeology, even though they are important forms of evidence. The chief focus of study has always been on the society and the living people who belonged to it.

Useful as it has been, the concept of the Stone Age has its limitations. The date range of this period is ambiguous, disputed, and variable, depending upon the region in question. While it is possible to speak of a general 'Stone Age' period for the whole of humanity, some groups never developed metal-[[smelting]] technology, and so remained in the so-called 'Stone Age' until they encountered technologically developed cultures. The term was innovated to describe the [[archaeological culture]]s of Europe. It may not always be the best in relation to regions such as some parts of the [[Indies]] and Oceania, where [[farmers]] or [[hunter-gatherer]]s used stone for tools until European [[colonisation]] began.

[[File:Kiuruveden reikäkirves - Stone axe of Kiuruvesi.jpg|thumb|upright=.7|Stone Age [[hand axe]] engraved with human face found from [[Kiuruvesi]], [[Finland]]<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.finna.fi/Record/musketti.M012:AKD32380:1#image|title=KM 11708 Kiuruveden kirves; Esinekuva|via=finna.fi|language=fi|access-date=2022-08-21}}</ref>]]

Archaeologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries CE, who adapted the [[three-age system]] to their ideas, hoped to combine cultural anthropology and archaeology in such a way that a specific contemporaneous tribe could be used to illustrate the way of life and beliefs of the people exercising a particular Stone-Age technology. As a description of people living today, the term ''Stone Age'' is controversial. The [[Association of Social Anthropologists]] discourages this use, asserting:<ref>{{cite news | title=ASA Statement on the use of 'primitive' as a descriptor of contemporary human groups | newspaper=ASA News | date=27 August 2007 | publisher=Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth | url=http://www.theasa.org/news.shtml#asa | access-date=31 October 2011 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111114155909/http://www.theasa.org/news.shtml#asa | archive-date=14 November 2011 | url-status=dead | df=dmy-all }}</ref><blockquote>To describe any living group as 'primitive' or 'Stone Age' inevitably implies that they are living representatives of some earlier stage of human development that the majority of humankind has left behind.</blockquote>

===Three-stage system===
In the 1920s, South African archaeologists organizing the stone tool collections of that country observed that they did not fit the newly detailed Three-Age System. In the words of [[J. Desmond Clark]]:<ref>{{harvnb|Clark|1970|p=22}}</ref>

<blockquote>It was early realized that the threefold division of culture into Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages adopted in the nineteenth century for Europe had no validity in Africa outside the Nile valley.</blockquote>

Consequently, they proposed a new system for Africa, the Three-stage System. Clark regarded the Three-age System as valid for North Africa; in sub-Saharan Africa, the Three-stage System was best.<ref>{{harvnb|Clark|1970|pp=18–19}}</ref> In practice, the failure of African archaeologists either to keep this distinction in mind, or to explain which one they mean, contributes to the considerable equivocation already present in the literature. There are in effect two Stone Ages, one part of the Three-age and the other constituting the Three-stage. They refer to one and the same artifacts and the same technologies, but vary by locality and time.

The three-stage system was proposed in 1929 by Astley John Hilary Goodwin, a professional archaeologist, and [[Clarence van Riet Lowe]], a civil engineer and amateur archaeologist, in an article titled "Stone Age Cultures of South Africa" in the journal ''Annals of the South African Museum''. By then, the dates of the Early Stone Age, or [[Paleolithic]], and Late Stone Age, or [[Neolithic]] (''neo'' = new), were fairly solid and were regarded by Goodwin as absolute. He therefore proposed a relative chronology of periods with floating dates, to be called the Earlier and Later Stone Age. The Middle Stone Age would not change its name, but it would not mean [[Mesolithic]].<ref>{{harvnb|Deacon|Deacon|1999|pp=5–6}}</ref>

The duo thus reinvented the Stone Age. In Sub-Saharan Africa, however, iron-working technologies were either invented independently or came across the Sahara from the north (see ''[[iron metallurgy in Africa]]''). The Neolithic was characterized primarily by herding societies rather than large agricultural societies, and although there was [[copper metallurgy in Africa]] as well as bronze smelting, archaeologists do not currently recognize a separate Copper Age or Bronze Age. Moreover, the technologies included in those 'stages', as Goodwin called them, were not exactly the same. Since then, the original relative terms have become identified with the technologies of the Paleolithic and Mesolithic, so that they are no longer relative. Moreover, there has been a tendency to drop the comparative degree in favor of the positive: resulting in two sets of Early, Middle and Late Stone Ages of quite different content and chronologies.

By voluntary agreement,{{citation needed|reason=what does this even mean? Which archeologists? What did they agree to? Why? This is very dubious sounding without a good source|date=December 2018}} archaeologists respect the decisions of the [[Pan-African Congress on Prehistory]], which meets every four years to resolve the archaeological business brought before it. Delegates are actually international; the organization takes its name from the topic.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Arnott|first=D. W.|date=June 1959|title=J. Desmond Clark and Sonia Cole (ed.): Third Pan-African Congress on Prehistory, Livingstone, 1955. xxxix, 440 pp., 7 col. plates. London: Chatto & Windus, 1957. 75s.|journal=Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies|language=en|volume=22|issue=2|pages=400|doi=10.1017/S0041977X00069135|s2cid=162906190|issn=1474-0699}}</ref> [[Louis Leakey]] hosted the first one in [[Nairobi]] in 1947. It adopted Goodwin and Lowe's 3-stage system at that time, the stages to be called Early, Middle and Later.

===Problem of the transitions===
The problem of the transitions in archaeology is a branch of the general philosophic continuity problem, which examines how discrete objects of any sort that are [[wikt:contiguity|contiguous]] in any way can be presumed to have a relationship of any sort. In archaeology, the relationship is one of [[causality]]. If Period B can be presumed to descend from Period A, there must be a boundary between A and B, the A–B boundary. The problem is in the nature of this boundary. If there is no distinct boundary, then the population of A suddenly stopped using the customs characteristic of A and suddenly started using those of B, an unlikely scenario in the process of [[evolution]]. More realistically, a distinct border period, the A/B transition, existed, in which the customs of A were gradually dropped and those of B acquired. If transitions do not exist, then there is no proof of any continuity between A and B.

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.

After its adoption by the First Pan African Congress in 1947, the Three-Stage Chronology was amended by the Third Congress in 1955 to include a First Intermediate Period between Early and Middle, to encompass the [[Fauresmith (industry)|Fauresmith]] and [[Sangoan]] technologies, and the Second Intermediate Period between Middle and Later, to encompass the [[Magosian]] technology and others. The chronologic basis for the definition was entirely relative. With the arrival of scientific means of finding an absolute chronology, the two intermediates turned out to be [[will-of-the-wisp]]s. They were in fact [[Middle Paleolithic|Middle]] and [[Lower Paleolithic]]. Fauresmith is now considered to be a [[facies]] of [[Acheulean]], while Sangoan is a facies of [[Lupemban]].<ref>{{cite encyclopedia | first=Glynn | last=Isaac | author-link=Glynn Isaac | title=The Earliest Archaeological Traces | editor-first=J. Desmond | series=Volume | editor-last=Clark | encyclopedia=The Cambridge History of Africa | volume=I: From the Earliest Times to C. 500 BC | page=246 | location=Cambridge | publisher=Cambridge University Press | year=1982 }}</ref> Magosian is "an artificial mix of two different periods".<ref>{{cite book | last=Willoughby | first=Pamela R. | year=2007 | title=The evolution of modern humans in Africa: a comprehensive guide | location=Lanham, Maryland | publisher=AltaMira Press | page=54}}</ref>

Once seriously questioned, the intermediates did not wait for the next Pan African Congress two years hence, but were officially rejected in 1965 (again on an advisory basis) by Burg Wartenstein Conference #29, ''Systematic Investigation of the African Later Tertiary and Quaternary'',<ref>{{harvnb|Barham|Mitchell|2008|p=477}}</ref> a conference in anthropology held by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, at Burg Wartenstein Castle, which it then owned in Austria, attended by the same scholars that attended the Pan African Congress, including Louis Leakey and [[Mary Leakey]], who was delivering a pilot presentation of her typological analysis of Early Stone Age tools, to be included in her 1971 contribution to ''Olduvai Gorge'', "Excavations in Beds I and II, 1960–1963."<ref>{{cite web | title=History: Systematic Investigation of the African Later Tertiary and Quaternary | url=http://wennergren.org/history/conferences-seminars-symposia/wenner-gren-symposia/cumulative-list-wenner-gren-symposia/we-23 | publisher=The Wenner-Gren Foundation | access-date=3 March 2011 | archive-date=28 July 2011 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110728172827/http://wennergren.org/history/conferences-seminars-symposia/wenner-gren-symposia/cumulative-list-wenner-gren-symposia/we-23 | url-status=dead }}</ref>

However, although the intermediate periods were gone, the search for the transitions continued.