HISTORY OF THE STONE-AGE
Recent discoveries have uncovered that our first ancestors, the Australopithecines, lived from about three to one and a half million years ago. Australopithecines were about four feet in height and were different from apes by the shape of the skull and the fact they walked upright. Crude stone implements have been found in eastern and southern Africa, but they can not be linked for certain to the Australopithecines. It is difficult to say when fire was first used by man but about half a million years ago during the paleolithic period they hardened wood from fire to make tools and weapons.
The Stone-age in Europe
Human fossils from the early years of the paleolithic era are very rare. Homo erectus probably involved into later types of which only one survives today, homo sapiens, or modern man. Stone tools improved in the middle of the paleolithic period and are linked to the Levalloisian culture in France.
Although classified within the same species pre-homo sapiens became extinct about 30,000 years ago. These pre-homo sapiens were known as Neandertals, they were stocky in build with heavy brow ridges and sloping foreheads, but their brain size was similiar to todays human brain. Neandertals are linked to the Mousterian culture of the middle paleolithic period first found in the Vézére river area in southwest France. They appear to have buried their dead with funeral rites and had very fine axes. The remainder of the paleolithic period is of homo sapien cultures such as the Aurignacian named after a site at Haute Garonne, France, Gravettian after a site on the Dordogne, France, Solutrean first found at Saone-et-Loire, France, and Magdalenian(cave dwellers) named after a site on the Vézére, France.
Later cultures such as the Azilian people at a site in Ariége, southwest France existed in the middle stone-age or mesolithic period. The mesolithic period lasted from about 10,000 to 7,000 B.C. in the near east, and up to 4,500 B.C. in Europe. In Turkey and Mesopotamia, tribes that were nomadic started to settle down and create villages, raise animals and grow crops, this was the beginning of the neolithic period or new stone-age. In the fertile plain between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers the first great city Sumeria eventually grew from the previous village life. In the near east the stone-age lasted up to 3500 B.C. and gave way to the bronze-age as a result of learning how to smelt metals. In more backward Europe the neolithic period lasted up to about 2000 B.C.
The neolithic was a time of large migrations of peoples, especially those moving east and west from southeast Russia. These people spoke the language from which many Eastern and the vast majority of all European languages are derived. Neolithic travellers left behind tools and weapons of stone and bone,clay vessels and toys. But most importantly they left from the Mediterranean to northern Europe, collosal stone arrangements. These stone circles and dolmens were erected for astronomical and religious purposes and used to tell the seasons for crop growing. These great stone formations are known as Megaliths and are the last great relics to be found from the stone-age.