Paleolithic Period

The Paleolithic Period is an ancient cultural stage of human technological development, characterized by the creation and use of rudimentary chipped stone tools. These included simple pebble tools (rock shaped by the pounding of another stone to produce tools with a serrated crest that served as a chopping blade), hand adzes (tools shaped from a block of stone to create a rounded butt and a single-bevel straight or curved cutting edge), stone scrapers, cleavers, and points. Such tools were also made of bone and wood. The Paleolithic Period was also characterized by the manufacture of small sculptures (e.g., carved stone statuettes of women, clay figurines of animals, and other bone and ivory carvings) and paintings, incised designs, and reliefs on cave walls.

The onset of the Paleolithic Period has traditionally coincided with the first evidence of tool construction and use by Homo some 2.58 million years ago, near the beginning of the Pleistocene Epoch (2.58 million to 11,700 years ago). In 2015, however, researchers excavating a dry riverbed near Kenya’s Lake Turkana discovered primitive stone tools embedded in rocks dating to 3.3 million years ago—the middle of the Pliocene Epoch (some 5.3 million to 2.58 million years ago). Those tools predate the oldest confirmed specimens of Homo by almost 1 million years, which raises the possibility that toolmaking originated with Australopithecus or its contemporaries and that the timing of the onset of this cultural stage should be reevaluated.

The Paleolithic Period ended when the Neolithic Period began. However, this transition point is much debated, as different parts of the world achieved the Neolithic stage at different times. It is generally thought to have occurred sometime about 10,000 BCE. During that time, humans learned to raise crops and keep domestic livestock and were thus no longer dependent on hunting, fishing, and gathering of wild plants. These cultures made more useful stone tools by grinding and polishing harder rocks rather than merely chipping softer ones down to the desired shape. The cultivation of cereal grains enabled people to settle in one location, build permanent dwellings, and develop villages, and the release from nomadism and a hunting-and-gathering economy gave them the time to pursue specialized crafts.

At least three species within the genus Homo achieved a Paleolithic level of development. There is a great deal of evidence that the species H. erectus (which likely originated in Africa and lasted from 1.9 million to about 200,000 years ago), H. neanderthalensis (that is, the Neanderthals, who inhabited Eurasia from at least 200,000 years ago to as late as 24,000 years ago), and H. sapiens (the species that originated in Africa more than 315,000 years ago and includes all living people) created and used stone tools. In addition, if the dating of the earliest known hand tools is correct, one or more species of Australopithecus (living in Africa from 4.4 million to 1.4 million years ago) or possibly a more archaic member of Homo could have created them.