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57 free The Stone Age trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Stone Age trivia quiz spans 99% of human history, from the first sharp-edged rocks knapped 3.3 million years ago in Kenya to the copper axe carried by Ötzi the Iceman. The easy questions are the ones any school pupil should get: the three ages of prehistory, the three divisions of the Stone Age, what ended it, and what the Neolithic people started doing that changed everything. From there it gets deeper: the site of Lomekwi 3, the Olduvai Gorge industry, the pear-shaped hand axe, the Neanderthals' Mousterian tools, the Danish museum curator who invented the three-age system, the huts built of mammoth bones, the oldest known battle in Egypt, the dog joining the hunt, the mysterious pillars of Göbekli Tepe, the Orkney village with stone beds and an indoor toilet, and the 61 tattoos on the mummy from the Alps. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on the Stone Age, its tool industries and its key sites before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our cave paintings, ancient history and archaeology quizzes next.
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Q 01In which part of France are the Lascaux cave paintings, about 17,000 years old?
The Dordogne
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.
Q 02What technological development marks the end of the Stone Age?
The smelting of copper
Gold and copper were hammered for ornaments earlier, but melting and smelting copper is the true dividing line.
Q 03The Stone Age is the first period of which archaeological scheme?
The three-age system
The three-age system divides prehistory into Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages, each named for the dominant material used for tools and weapons.
Q 04Which Danish museum curator devised the scheme dividing prehistory by tool material?
Christian Jürgensen Thomsen
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.
Q 05What are the three divisions of the Stone Age, in order?
Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic
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.
Q 06Where were the oldest known stone tools, dated to 3.3 million years, excavated?
Lomekwi 3, West Turkana, Kenya
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.
Q 07The oldest indirect evidence of tool use, 3.4-million-year-old cut-marked bones, comes from which country?
Ethiopia
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.
Q 08Which Tanzanian site gives its name to the earliest widespread stone-tool industry?
Olduvai Gorge
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.
Q 09What is the characteristic tool of the Acheulean industry associated with Homo erectus?
The pear-shaped hand axe
The pear-shaped hand axe, flaked on both faces, defines the Acheulean, named for the French type site of Saint-Acheul near Amiens.
Q 10Which German site yielded 300,000-year-old wooden spears, the oldest known complete hunting weapons?
Schöningen
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.
Q 11Which stone-tool industry is associated with the Neanderthals?
Mousterian
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.
Q 12Who coined the term 'Paleolithic', published in 1865?
John Lubbock
John Lubbock introduced both 'Paleolithic' and 'Neolithic' in his 1865 book Pre-Historic Times; the word comes from Greek palaios, old, and lithos, stone.
Q 13Neanderthals were first recognised from 1856 bones found in a valley near which German city?
Düsseldorf
The Neander Valley near Düsseldorf gave the species its name after quarry workers found a skullcap and limb bones there in 1856.
Q 21The first Neolithic farming cultures arose in which region?
The Fertile Crescent
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.
Q 22Skara Brae, one of Europe's best-preserved Neolithic villages, is in which island group?
Orkney
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.
Q 23Göbekli Tepe, with some of the world's oldest megaliths, is in which modern country?
Turkey
Q 14Which Upper Paleolithic culture's makers, modern human or Neanderthal, are long disputed?
Châtelperronian
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.
Q 15In which country were the Mungo Man remains, about 42,000 years old, discovered?
Australia
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.
Q 16Via which route did people first reach the Americas, exposed by lower sea levels?
The Bering land bridge
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.
Q 17What tiny tools, used in composite implements, characterise the Mesolithic?
Microliths
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.
Q 18Which animal was the first to be domesticated, probably as a hunting companion?
The dog
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.
Q 19Jebel Sahaba, a cemetery with some of the earliest evidence of warfare, is in which country?
Sudan
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.
Q 20The Neolithic is characterised above all by the adoption of what?
Agriculture
Agriculture defines the Neolithic: farming and herding replaced foraging, bringing pottery, polished stone tools and permanent villages in what is called the Neolithic Revolution.
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.
Q 24What does the name Göbekli Tepe mean?
Potbelly Hill
Göbekli Tepe means Potbelly Hill, from the rounded shape of the mound; its Kurdish name, Girê Mirazan, means Wish Hill.
Q 25Ötzi the Iceman, found in the Alps in 1991, carried an axe made of which metal, alongside a flint knife?
Copper
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.
Q 26What evidence suggests Ötzi was killed by another person?
An arrowhead in his left shoulder
He also had 61 tattoos and a quiver of 14 arrows.
Q 27How many tattoos did Ötzi have?
61
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.
Q 28The Venus of Willendorf, carved about 30,000 years ago, was found in 1908 in which country?
Austria
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.
Q 29Stone Age hunters in Ukraine, Moravia and Poland built huts out of what unusual material?
Mammoth bones
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.
Q 30Which species is believed to have made the first man-made structure, in the Rift Valley around 2 million years ago?
Homo habilis
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.