57 Fun Facts About The Stone Age

In which part of France are the Lascaux cave paintings, about 17,000 years old?

Lascaux, near Montignac in the Dordogne, was found by teenagers in September 1940; its Upper Paleolithic paintings of horses, aurochs and deer are about 17,000 years old.

What technological development marks the end of the Stone Age?

Gold and copper were hammered for ornaments earlier, but melting and smelting copper is the true dividing line.

The Stone Age is the first period of which archaeological scheme?

The three-age system divides prehistory into Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages, each named for the dominant material used for tools and weapons.

Which Danish museum curator devised the scheme dividing prehistory by tool material?

Christian Jürgensen Thomsen took charge of the Museum of Northern Antiquities in Copenhagen in 1816 and arranged its collection by the material of the finds, publishing the scheme in 1836.

What are the three divisions of the Stone Age, in order?

Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic mean old, middle and new stone, from the Greek lithos; the Paleolithic alone covers the vast bulk of the period, down to about 12,000 years ago.

Where were the oldest known stone tools, dated to 3.3 million years, excavated?

Lomekwi 3, on the west side of Lake Turkana in Kenya, yielded tools dated to 3.3 million years, about 700,000 years older than the earliest Oldowan tools.

The oldest indirect evidence of tool use, 3.4-million-year-old cut-marked bones, comes from which country?

The bones, from Dikika in Ethiopia's Lower Awash Valley, bear cut marks reported in 2010 and are attributed to Australopithecus afarensis, though the marks are disputed.

Which Tanzanian site gives its name to the earliest widespread stone-tool industry?

Olduvai Gorge in northern Tanzania gave its name to the Oldowan industry, dated from about 2.6 million years ago; its tools were made by knocking flakes off river pebbles with a hammerstone.

What is the characteristic tool of the Acheulean industry associated with Homo erectus?

The pear-shaped hand axe, flaked on both faces, defines the Acheulean, named for the French type site of Saint-Acheul near Amiens.

Which German site yielded 300,000-year-old wooden spears, the oldest known complete hunting weapons?

The Schöningen spears, found in an open-cast lignite mine in Lower Saxony from 1994, are about 300,000 years old and were probably made by Homo heidelbergensis.

Which stone-tool industry is associated with the Neanderthals?

The Mousterian, named for the Le Moustier rock shelter, is the Middle Paleolithic industry of the Neanderthals, known for Levallois flake tools and side scrapers.

Who coined the term 'Paleolithic', published in 1865?

John Lubbock introduced both 'Paleolithic' and 'Neolithic' in his 1865 book Pre-Historic Times; the word comes from Greek palaios, old, and lithos, stone.

Neanderthals were first recognised from 1856 bones found in a valley near which German city?

The Neander Valley near Düsseldorf gave the species its name after quarry workers found a skullcap and limb bones there in 1856.

Which Upper Paleolithic culture's makers, modern human or Neanderthal, are long disputed?

The Châtelperronian of France and northern Spain, about 45,000 to 40,000 years old, is usually attributed to late Neanderthals, though some argue modern humans made it.

In which country were the Mungo Man remains, about 42,000 years old, discovered?

Mungo Man was found in 1974 at Lake Mungo in New South Wales, Australia; the remains are about 42,000 years old and among the oldest known in the country.

Via which route did people first reach the Americas, exposed by lower sea levels?

People crossed the Bering land bridge, Beringia, which joined Siberia and Alaska when ice-age sea levels were over 100 metres lower; the crossing came more than 14,000 years ago.

What tiny tools, used in composite implements, characterise the Mesolithic?

Microliths, small flint blades set into wooden or bone hafts as arrow barbs and harpoon points, are the hallmark of Mesolithic toolkits after the last ice age.

Which animal was the first to be domesticated, probably as a hunting companion?

The dog was domesticated from wolves by at least 14,000 years ago, well before any livestock; the Bonn-Oberkassel burial in Germany holds one of the oldest known dogs.

Jebel Sahaba, a cemetery with some of the earliest evidence of warfare, is in which country?

Jebel Sahaba, or Site 117, lies in northern Sudan near Wadi Halfa; its burials, about 13,000 years old, hold dozens of skeletons with embedded stone projectile points.

The Neolithic is characterised above all by the adoption of what?

Agriculture defines the Neolithic: farming and herding replaced foraging, bringing pottery, polished stone tools and permanent villages in what is called the Neolithic Revolution.

The first Neolithic farming cultures arose in which region?

The Fertile Crescent, from the Levant to Mesopotamia, saw the first farming of wheat, barley and pulses before 9000 BC; maize in Mesoamerica and rice in China were independent centres.

Skara Brae, one of Europe's best-preserved Neolithic villages, is in which island group?

Skara Brae sits on the Bay of Skaill on Mainland, the largest island of Orkney; its stone houses keep built-in beds, dressers and drains, and it was occupied from about 3180 BC.

Göbekli Tepe, with some of the world's oldest megaliths, is in which modern country?

Göbekli Tepe stands near Şanlıurfa in southeastern Turkey; its circular enclosures of carved T-shaped pillars were built from around 9500 BC, in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic.

What does the name Göbekli Tepe mean?

Göbekli Tepe means Potbelly Hill, from the rounded shape of the mound; its Kurdish name, Girê Mirazan, means Wish Hill.

Ötzi the Iceman, found in the Alps in 1991, carried an axe made of which metal, alongside a flint knife?

Ötzi's axe had a blade of almost pure copper set in a yew haft, a prized tool of the Copper Age around 3300 BC; his flint dagger shows stone remained in use.

What evidence suggests Ötzi was killed by another person?

He also had 61 tattoos and a quiver of 14 arrows.

How many tattoos did Ötzi have?

A 2015 multispectral survey counted 61 tattoos on Ötzi, mostly groups of lines on the lower back, legs and wrist, possibly marking treatment for joint pain.

The Venus of Willendorf, carved about 30,000 years ago, was found in 1908 in which country?

The Venus of Willendorf was found in 1908 near Willendorf in Lower Austria's Wachau valley; the 11.1 cm figurine is oolitic limestone tinted with red ochre.

Stone Age hunters in Ukraine, Moravia and Poland built huts out of what unusual material?

Mammoth bones: at Mezhyrich in Ukraine's Dnieper valley, hunters about 15,000 years ago stacked skulls, jaws and tusks into dome-shaped huts roofed with hides.

Which species is believed to have made the first man-made structure, in the Rift Valley around 2 million years ago?

Homo habilis is credited with a circle of stones at a site in northern Tanzania, about 1.8 million years old, thought to have held branches as a windbreak; the claim is debated.

A timber-roofed, clay-walled structure from about 23,000 BC was found at Dolní Věstonice in which country?

Dolní Věstonice lies in South Moravia in the Czech Republic; the Gravettian site is also famous for the Venus of Dolní Věstonice, a ceramic figurine about 29,000 years old.

Which large animals died out in a mass extinction 15,000 to 9,000 years ago?

Megafauna such as the woolly mammoth, woolly rhinoceros and giant deer vanished at the end of the last ice age; hunting and a warming climate have both been blamed.

Neanderthal-era layers at which Israeli site show large-seeded legumes were eaten long before farming?

Charred seeds from the Neanderthal-era layers of Kebara Cave on Mount Carmel, about 60,000 years old, show wild peas, vetches and other large-seeded legumes were gathered and eaten.

Engraved images cut into natural rock, a dominant form of pre-writing symbol, are called what?

Petroglyphs are images pecked or carved into rock, from Greek petra, stone, and glyphein, to carve; examples range from Sydney's sandstone engravings to Alta in Norway's Finnmark.

What is the transitional period called when people smelted a first metal but had not yet made bronze?

Chalcolithic and Eneolithic both mean 'copper-stone'.

The first evidence of human metallurgy comes from Vinča culture sites in which modern country?

Serbia: at Belovode and Pločnik, metal was being smelted around 5000 BC, and the Rudna Glava mine near Majdanpek is among Europe's oldest known mines.

In which region did the Stone Age pass directly into the Iron Age with no Bronze Age in between?

Sub-Saharan Africa went from stone tools straight to iron, smelted in West Africa by about 500 BC; with no Bronze Age to mark, South African archaeologists proposed their own Early, Middle and Later Stone Age scheme in 1929.

Bronze was originally an alloy of which two elements, before tin became standard?

Copper and arsenic made the first bronze: arsenic-rich copper ores smelted from the 4th millennium BC gave a harder metal before tin bronze spread after about 3000 BC.

Craftspeople who make tools by striking flakes off a stone core are called what?

Flintknappers shape flint by striking it with a hammerstone or antler to detach flakes; experimental archaeologists knap replicas to learn how Stone Age tools were made.

Who hosted the first Pan-African Congress on Prehistory in Nairobi in 1947?

Louis Leakey organised the first Pan-African Congress on Prehistory in Nairobi in 1947; it endorsed the Early, Middle and Later Stone Age scheme used by African archaeologists.

Which great geographic feature is regarded as the cradle of the genus Homo?

The East African Rift, stretching from the Afar region south to Mozambique, holds many of the earliest Homo fossil sites; its lakes and volcanic sediments preserved bones and allowed precise dating.

Which professional body discourages describing any living people as 'Stone Age'?

The Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth advises against calling any living group 'Stone Age', since it paints them as relics of an earlier stage of development.

Around when was Stonehenge's sarsen stone circle erected?

The sarsen circle and trilithons at Stonehenge went up around 2500 BC, in the late Neolithic; the smaller bluestones were brought from the Preseli hills of Wales.

Which 'proto-Neolithic' culture of the Levant evolved the use of wild cereals into early farming?

The Natufian culture, about 13,000 to 9,500 BC, lived in year-round villages harvesting wild cereals with flint sickles; the Younger Dryas cold snap is thought to have pushed its people toward farming.

Which Levantine town of about 9000 BC had a stone wall and a massive tower?

Jericho, by the Jordan River, had a stone wall and an 8.5-metre tower by about 8000 BC, in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, and may have housed 2,000 to 3,000 people.

Who coined the term 'Neolithic Revolution'?

Vere Gordon Childe coined 'Neolithic Revolution' for the shift from foraging to farming, which he ranked beside the Industrial Revolution; he later directed London's Institute of Archaeology.

At Çatalhöyük 9,000 years ago, how did residents enter their houses?

At Çatalhöyük, houses were packed wall to wall with no streets, so people walked across the roofs and climbed down ladders through doorways in the roof; walls were plastered and painted.

At which Balochistan site was the earliest evidence of drilling teeth with flint bow drills found?

Mehrgarh, near the Bolan Pass in Balochistan, yielded eleven drilled molars from about 7000 to 5500 BC; the site also records early farming of wheat and barley and herding of cattle.

What is the world's oldest known engineered roadway, dated to 3838 BC?

The Post Track, a timber walkway across the Somerset Levels in England, was laid in 3838 BC, about thirty years before the better-known Sweet Track built along the same line.

Which Neolithic flint mine in Norfolk has hundreds of shafts dug with antler picks?

Grime's Graves, near Thetford in Norfolk, has more than 400 shafts sunk around 2600 BC to reach high-quality flint, dug with picks of red-deer antler.

Which culture may have produced the earliest system of writing-like signs in Neolithic Europe?

The Vinča culture of the Danube basin, around 5500 to 4500 BC, scratched signs on pottery and figurines; researcher Shan Winn read them as pictograms and ideograms rather than true writing.

The megalithic temples of Ġgantija, dating to around 3600 BC, stand on which Mediterranean island?

Ġgantija, 'giants' tower' in Maltese, stands on Gozo, Malta's second island; its two temples of about 3600 BC are among the world's oldest free-standing stone structures.

Who found Ötzi on 19 September 1991?

Two German tourists from Nuremberg, Helmut and Erika Simon, spotted the body melting out of the Tisenjoch glacier and assumed it was a recently dead mountaineer.

How far inside Italian territory was Ötzi's body found after the 1991 border survey?

A survey in October 1991 put the find spot 92.56 metres, about 93 metres, inside Italy; the 1919 border followed a watershed the glacier had hidden, so Ötzi went to South Tyrol's museum in Bolzano.

What meat did Ötzi eat less than two hours before his death?

Ötzi's stomach held ibex meat, analysed in 2018 together with einkorn wheat and traces of the toxic fern bracken, eaten shortly before his death.

How many arrows were in Ötzi's quiver?

The quiver held fourteen arrows, only two of them finished with flint tips and fletching; Ötzi also carried an unfinished yew longbow 1.82 metres long.

Which animal's fur made Ötzi's cap?

DNA analysis in 2016 showed the cap was brown bear fur; his shoes had bearskin soles and deer-hide uppers, his leggings were goat, and his quiver roe-deer hide.