Paleolithic

The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic Age, Era, or Period, or Old Stone Age, is a prehistoric era distinguished by the development of the first stone tools, and covers roughly 99% of human history. It extends from the introduction of stone tools by hominids such as Homo habilis 2.5 or 2.6 million years ago, to the introduction of agriculture and the end of the Pleistocene around 10 000 BC. The Paleolithic era ended with the Mesolithic, in Western Europe, and with the Epipaleolithic in areas not affected by the Ice Age (such as Africa).

During the Paleolithic, humans grouped together in small societies such as bands, and subsisted by gathering plants and hunting or scavenging wild animals. The Paleolithic is characterized by the use of knapped stone tools, although at the time humans also used wood and bone tools. Other organic commodities were adapted for use as tools, including leather and vegetable fibers; however, due to their nature, these have not been preserved to any great degree. Surviving artifacts of the Paleolithic era are known as Paleoliths. Humankind gradually evolved from early members of the genus Homo such as Homo habilis — who used simple stone tools — into fully behaviorally and anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) during the Paleolithic era. During the end of the Paleolithic, specifically the Middle and or Upper Paleolithic, humans began to produce the earliest works of art and engage in religious and spiritual behavior such as burial and ritual. The climate during the Paleolithic consisted of a set of glacial and interglacial periods in which the climate periodically fluctuated between warm and cool temperatures.

The term Paleolithic was coined by archaeologist John Lubbock in 1865. It derives from Greek: παλαιός, palaios, "old"; and λίθος, lithos, "stone", literally meaning "old age of the stone" or "Old Stone Age."

Chronology

The three-age system divides human technological prehistory into three periods: the Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. The modern periodization of the Stone Age stretches from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic in the following scheme (crossing an epoch boundary on the geologic time scale):

• Pleistocene epoch (highly glaciated climate)
  • Paleolithic age
• Holocene epoch (modern climate)
  • Mesolithic or Epipaleolithic age, Neolithic age, Copper Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age
• Historical period (written record begins)

Traditionally, the Paleolithic is divided into three (somewhat overlapping) periods: the Lower Paleolithic, Middle Paleolithic, and the Upper Paleolithic. The three ages mark technological and cultural advances in different human communities.

• Paleolithic
  • Lower Paleolithic (c. 2.6 or 2.5 Ma–100 ka)
    • Olduwan culture
    • Acheulean culture
    • Clactonian culture
  • Middle Paleolithic (c. 300 000–30 000 years ago)
    • Mousterian culture
    • Aterian culture
  • Upper Paleolithic (c. 45 000 or 40 000–10 000 years ago).
    • Châtelperronian culture
    • Aurignacian culture
    • Gravettian culture
    • Solutrean culture
    • Magdalenian culture

Human evolution

This cranium, of Homo heidelbergensis, a Lower Paleolithic predecessor to Homo neanderthalensis and possibly Homo sapiens, dates to sometime between 500 000 to 400 000 BP.

Human evolution is the part of biological evolution concerning the emergence of humans as a distinct species.