What was Stone Age Period ?

In general, these materials develop gradually from single, all-purpose tools to an assemblage of varied and highly specialized types of artifacts, each designed to serve in connection with a specific function

Indeed, it is a process of increasingly more complex technologies, each founded on a specific tradition, which characterizes the cultural development of Paleolithic times

In other words, the trend was from simple to complex, from a stage of non-specialization to stages of relatively high degrees of specialization, just as has been the case during historic times.

In the manufacture of stone implements, four fundamental traditions were developed by the Paleolithic ancestors: (1) pebble-tool traditions; (2) bifacial-tool, or hand-ax, traditions; (3) flake-tool traditions; and (4) blade-tool traditions

Only rarely are any of these found in "pure" form, and this fact has led to mistaken notions in many instances concerning the significance of various assemblages

Indeed, though a certain tradition might be superseded in a given region by a more advanced method of producing tools, the older technique persisted as long as it was needed for a given purpose

In general, however, there is an overall trend in the order as given above, starting with simple pebble tools that have a single edge sharpened for cutting or chopping.

But no true pebble-tool horizons had yet, by the late 20th century, been recognized in Europe. In southern and eastern Asia, on the other hand, pebble tools of primitive type continued in use throughout Paleolithic times.

French place-names have long been used to designate the various Paleolithic subdivisions, since many of the earliest discoveries were made in France.

This terminology has been widely applied in other countries, notwithstanding the very great regional differences that do in fact exist.

But the French sequence still serves as the foundation of Paleolithic studies in other parts of the Old World.

H.L.Ms./Ed.) There is reasonable agreement that the Paleolithic ended with the beginning of the recent (Holocene) geologic and climatic era about 8000 BC

It is also increasingly clear that a developmental bifurcation in man's culture history took place at about this time. In most of the world, especially in the temperate and tropical woodland environments or along the southern fringes of Arctic tundra, the older Upper Paleolithic traditions of life were simply readapted toward more or less increasingly intensified levels of food collection.

These cultural re-adaptations of older food procedures to the variety and succession of post-Pleistocene environments are generally referred to as occurring in the Mesolithic Period.

But also by 8000 BC (if not even somewhat earlier) in certain semi-arid environments of the world's middle latitudes, traces of a quite different course of development began to appear.

These traces indicate a movement toward incipient agriculture and (in one or two instances) animal domestication. In the case of southwestern Asia, this movement had already culminated in a level of effective village-farming communities by 7000 BC.

In Meso-America, a comparable development--somewhat different in its details and without animal domestication--was taking place almost as early

It may thus be maintained that in the environmentally favorable portions of southwestern Asia, Meso-America, the coastal slopes below the Andes, and perhaps in southeastern Asia (for which little evidence is available), little if any trace of the Mesolithic stage need be anticipated.

The general level of culture probably shifted directly from that of the Upper Paleolithic to that of incipient cultivation and domestication.

The picture presented by the culture history of the earlier portion of the Recent period is thus one of two generalized developmental patterns: (1) the cultural re-adaptations to post-Pleistocene environments on a more or less intensified level of food collection

and (2) the appearance and development of an effective level of food production. It is generally agreed that this latter appearance and development was achieved quite independently in various localities in both the Old and New Worlds

As the procedures and the plant or animal domesticates of this new food-producing level gained effectiveness and flexibility to adapt to new environments, the new level expanded at the expense of the older, more conservative one.

Finally, it is only within the matrix of a level of food production that any of the world's civilizations have been achieved.

Old Stone Age, the earliest period of human development and the longest phase of mankind’s history.

It is approximately coextensive with the Pleistocene geologic epoch, beginning about 2 million years ago and ending in various places between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago, when it was succeeded by the Mesolithic period.