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 When Did the Stone Age Begin?

The Stone Age was a prehistoric period when humans used stone and other
natural materials to make weapons and tools.

It was a time when early humans were living on Earth, millions of years after
the dinosaurs had become extinct (died out).

The Stone Age lasted for millions of years so life at the start of the Stone Age
looked completely different to life at the end of the Stone Age.

prehistoric – From a time in the past beforeX

there were written records.
 When Did the Stone Age Begin?

Most archaeologists talk about the Stone Age beginning from around 2.5
million years ago because this is when evidence suggests that early humans
started to use simple stone tools (hammerstones).

These early species of humans lived in the south and

east of Africa.

archaeologist – A person who studies the X

past by excavating historical places
and studying objects and remains.
 When Did the Stone Age Begin?

Homo sapiens, our species of human, are thought to have evolved in Africa
around 300,000 years ago.

Early Homo sapiens lived only in Africa.

Although there had been migration by different species of human before this, it
is believed that Homo sapiens did not migrate from Africa and successfully set
up living elsewhere until around 60,000 years ago.

migration – When people move to X

live in a different place.
 When Did the Stone Age Begin in Britain?

Archaeologists are not all in agreement about when the Stone Age started in
Britain.

Evidence has been found of species of humans living in Britain and using stone
tools as long ago as 800,000 BC so this is when many experts talk about the
Stone Age beginning in Britain.

People visited Britain a number of times over the years but didn’t stay as it was
often too cold.
 When Did the Stone Age Begin in Britain?

Around 14,000 years ago, at

the end of the last ice age, DO
Homo sapiens came back to GG
Britain and stayed. ER
LA
ND
When the ice melted
and the sea levels
rose, Britain became
an island.
 Different Parts of the Stone Age

When people talk about the Stone Age, they often talk about it in
three parts.

These parts are called:

The Old Stone The Middle The New Stone

Age or the Stone Age or the Age or the
Palaeolithic Age Mesolithic Age Neolithic Age

The vast majority of the Stone Age years were in the Old Stone Age.
 Different Parts of the Stone Age

This timeline gives an indication of how long each period in the Stone Age in
Britain lasted as a proportion of time within the Stone Age.

Old Stone Age New Stone Age

c. 800,000 BC c. 2400 BC
Middle Stone Age

The Middle and the New Stone Ages in Britain look like a short time
in comparison to the Old Stone Age. However, the Middle and New
Stone Ages lasted for around 8100 years combined.

8100 years is still a very long time. Since the end of the Stone Age until now is
under 4500 years!
 Different Parts of the Stone Age

Timeline showing the Stone Age in Britain

Old Stone Age New Stone Age

Palaeolithic Age Neolithic Age

c. 800,000 BC c. 2400 BC
Middle Stone Age
Mesolithic Age

Remember that in Britain, hundreds of thousands of years passed

between the start of the Old Stone Age and the New Stone Age. Across other
parts of the world, there was a difference of millions of years between the Old
and New Stone Age. Life was very different between people in the Palaeolithic
Age and the Neolithic Age.
 Hunter-Gatherers
Maybe you came up with some of these ideas:

During the Old and Middle Stone Ages, humans lived as hunter-gatherers.
• find food to eat

A hunter-gatherer is a person who moves from place to place, surviving by

• hunting
find water
for to drink and gathering food from wild plants.
animals

• Over
keepthe
warm and of
course drythe Old and Middle Stone Ages, the way these human beings
lived as hunter-gatherers developed and changed.

• have somewhere to sleep

Essentially their focus was on surviving. What things did they need to make
sure they survived?
• have clothes to wear
 Hunter-Gatherers and Food
Hunter-gatherers
Hunter-gatherers hunted wild(Palaeolithic)
in the Old animals, suchStone
as deer,
Agehorses, wild pigs
and Middle (Mesolithic)
and bison.
Stone Age got their food by hunting, fishing and collecting berries, fruits and
seeds. Once hunter-gatherers had hunted, fished and gathered the majority of the
By theavailable
food Middle Stone
to themAge,
in amany of area,
certain the larger animals,
they would suchon
move astowoolly mammoths,
a different area to
cave lions and
find more food.aurochs, had become extinct. Earlier in the Stone Age, people
would have hunted and eaten these dangerous beasts. However, this would have
been a rare thing to happen, as the smaller animals were hunted much more
regularly.

Did You Know…?

Meat was eaten raw before humans learnt to make fire for themselves.
 Hunter-Gatherers and Food
What do you think the hunter-gatherers would make use of from the
animals they hunted?

They would eat every part of the animal that they possibly
could but they would also use the skin for clothes or shelter.

They would use the bones and antlers to

make tools.

They could also use the fat to make oil and the sinews to make thread.

sinew – A piece of tissue/tendon X

that connects a muscle to a bone.
 Hunter-Gatherers and Food
What do you think that the Stone Age people used to hunt the animals and to
prepare the meat for eating?

Early stone tools included things like hammerstones and hand axes. They also
used wooden spears.

The tools they had developed more as time

passed. Earlier in the Stone Age, tools were big
and heavy. Later in the Stone Age, humans
learned how to shape the stones to make sharper,
more pointed tools like spears and harpoons.
They attached spearheads or axe heads to
wooden poles or handles.

By the Middle Stone Age, archaeologists have evidence that bows and arrows
were being used.
 Hunter-Gatherers and Food
Stone Age people couldn’t survive just on the food they caught from hunting.
They also collected food that grew naturally in the wild, such as:

berries

apples
nuts and seeds

honey

mushrooms

beans
 Food in the New Stone Age
The bigWhy werethat
change people able toduring
happened live inthe
oneStone
placeAge
by the New
is that Stonestopped
people Age? living
as hunter-gatherers (moving from place to place in search of food) and started to
live in just one place. This started to happen towards the end of the Middle Stone
They
Age didn’t need
and into thetoNew
move around in search of food because they learned how to
farm
Stonetheir
Age.own food.

A reconstructed New Stone Age home at Butser Ancient Farm.

“Stone Age enclosure at Butser Ancient Farm 2” by Leimenide licensed under CC BY 2.0
 Food in the New Stone Age
Neolithic farmers kept and fed animals, such as sheep, pigs, goats and cattle, in
enclosed areas. They also grew their own cereal, like wheat
and barley.

While the food they farmed made up a lot of their diet, people still continued to
hunt for wild animals, to fish and to gather foods, such as seeds, nuts and berries.

People in the Neolithic period often baked bread using the

wheat they had grown. They regularly made porridge too,
as well as gathered milk from the sheep, goats and cattle
on their farm to make into cheese.

Did You Know…?

Archaeologists have found evidence that hunter-gatherers from the Old Stone Age
also sometimes ate forms of bread and porridge.
 Hunter-Gatherers’ Homes

Because Hunter-gatherers in the Old and Middle Stone Ages moved from place
to place, their homes were temporary. They did not live in permanent homes.

temporary –XUsed to describe something that X

permanent – Used to describe something
One type of temporary home thatlasts Stone that
forAge
onlyhunter-gatherers
a limited time. lived in were
lasts for a long time, without a set ending date.
caves.

Archaeologists believe that hunter gatherers mostly lived

in tents but they sometimes lived in caves. However,
humans were only able to live in a cave
if one was available where they had settled.
 Hunter-Gatherers’ Homes
Experts around the world have helped to make reconstructions to help us see
whathuts
The the and
homes from
tents the Old and
constructed Middle
by the Stone Ages might
hunter-gatherers have looked
had frames like.
made with
animal bones or wooden poles and covered with thatched reeds, animal skins or
turf.
A reconstruction a Stone Age homereconstruction
of an made X
– A model from the past that has
from
Stone
Old animal
AgeAge
Stone bones
home tent. the animal skin. been made using the evidence that has been
at and
archaeological site at found.
Lepenski Vir in Serbia.

“Middle Stone Age home reconstruction” by nika2017_Shutterstock.com licensed under CC BY 2.0

 Homes in the New Stone Age
By the start of the New Stone Age, people were living in permanent homes.
Why were they able to do this?

At the end of the Middle Stone Age, people started to learn about farming.
Once they knew how to farm the land to grow crops and how to keep farm
animals, they did not need to move home to search for food. However, it is
important to note that they still hunted and gathered food alongside farming.

The introduction of farming meant that they started to live in homes in permanent
settlements.

settlement
Most people –Ain place where
the New people
Stone Age live XStone Age) lived in settlements
(Neolithic
together in amoving
rather than community.
around as hunter-gatherers.
 Homes in the New Stone Age

Evidence suggests that houses were usually rectangular and constructed from
timber in the Neolithic period.

However, people used whatever natural materials they had available to them
where they lived to build their homes.

Most New Stone Age homes had one room but there is evidence that some larger
homes had more.
 Homes in the New Stone Age
Often the walls were made with wattle and daub. This is a building method
where woven branches are covered with a mixture of mud
and manure.

The roofs of Neolithic homes were often thatched but sometimes they were also
covered in turf and animal skins. Evidence has also been found of roof tiles being
used.
 Skara Brae

In some areas, homes were built from stones rather than with timber frames and
wattle and daub walls.

Skara Brae is a Stone Age village built around 3000 BC and it is remarkably well
preserved. Much of the village can be seen today.

The walls of the homes that make up the settlement of Skara Brae were built with
stones against ‘midden’ – heaps of discarded rubbish that would have protected
the walls from the elements, as well as provided a layer of insulation.
 Skara Brae

The remains of eight houses stand on the site. The site has provided lots of
evidence for archaeologists about what life was like in the New Stone Age.
Archaeologists have studied how the homes were constructed at Skara Brae but
they have also examined artefacts found at the site.

The majority of the artefacts found were made from stone as there was no wood
(due to no trees) on Orkney.

Furniture in the homes at Skara Brae was made from stone.

 Stone Age Homes

There was a very big change in the way that people lived their lives when you
compare life in the Old and Middle Stone Ages (when people were hunter-
gatherers) to life in the New Stone Age, when people lived in settlements,
farming the land around their homes.
 Hunter-Gatherers’ Clothes
When do you think humans first started wearing clothes?

Archaeologists cannot be sure when

humans first wore clothes but the evidence
suggests that it could be over a hundred
thousand years ago.
The evidence comes from tools that have
been found that are believed to have been
used for making clothing.
 Hunter-Gatherers’ Clothes
Early species of humans first started to wear clothes to keep warm. Clothing was
essential to live in places with colder climates.

Early clothes would have consisted of natural materials, such as animal furs and
skins, which humans wrapped around themselves.

Animal furs (also known

as pelts) are shown here.
 Hunter-Gatherers’ Clothes
Animal skins were sewn to make clothes during the Old Stone
Age onwards.

A bone needle has been found in Siberia which is believed to be from around
50,000 years ago. This needle has a hole for thread to go through and is believed
to have been used by another species of human beings that is now extinct (died
out).
An awl would be used to
make holes in the skin
Hunter-gatherers would remove the skin from an animal they had hunted. They
and then
would it would
scrape be using a stone
it clean An animal
or boneskin Andry
scraper and then example
it out of a Stone
in the sun.
sewn together. being scraped. Age bone needle.

X
awl – A tool with a pointed end used for making
holes. Awls are often used to make holes in
leather.
 Clothing in the New Stone Age
During the Old and Middle Stone Age, clothes were mostly sewn with products
from animals, such as sinews.

By the New Stone Age, linen thread made from flax (a

type of plant) was used more for sewing.

People still wore clothing from animal skins in the New

Stone Age.

As the New Stone Age went on, more and more of the
clothing worn was woven from wool from the sheep the
Neolithic people had on their farms.

Eventually, New Stone Age people began to weave

fabric by using a loom.
 Stone Age Life
You have learnt a little of what life was like during the very long Stone Age
period and how life changed from the Old Stone Age through to the New Stone
Age.

What questions do you still want to know the answers to about life
in the Stone Age?