Paleolithic Period

Paleolithic means “Old Stone Age.” It is the earliest and longest broad phase of the Stone Age, named for the archaeological evidence of stone tools, especially tools shaped by chipping. The period is a classification of technologies and lifeways, not a single culture shared by all people everywhere. Its conventional beginning is often associated with stone-tool industries dating to about 2.6 million years ago in Africa. Stone artifacts from Lomekwi in Kenya have been dated to about 3.3 million years ago; because these predate the oldest known fossils of the genus Homo, their discovery has reopened debate over how to define the start of the period.

Archaeologists commonly discuss Lower, Middle and Upper Paleolithic phases, but their boundaries and tool traditions do not line up neatly across regions. Similar innovations appeared at different times, and older and newer technologies sometimes overlapped. “Early,” “Middle” and “Later Stone Age” are also used in some regional archaeological traditions. For these reasons, period dates are approximate frameworks rather than a universal timetable.

Stone tools provide much of the durable evidence for Paleolithic life. Early toolkits included hammerstones, stone cores and sharp flakes. Later traditions included handaxes, points and scrapers, while people also made useful objects from materials such as bone and wood. In the African Early Stone Age, Oldowan tools were followed by Acheulean handaxes and other large cutting tools; later technologies became more varied in different places. These names describe archaeological tool traditions, not necessarily distinct peoples or a simple ladder of progress.

Archaeologists also study fossils, animal bones, hearths, traces of occupation and the geological setting of sites. The record is incomplete: stone survives more readily than wood, plant fibre, skin or other perishable materials, and natural processes can disturb or bury sites. Tool assemblages therefore reveal important evidence about making, food processing and adaptation, but they do not provide a complete picture of daily life.

The Paleolithic spans the existence of several hominin species, not only modern humans. Different populations lived in environments ranging from grasslands to forests and cold regions, and their abilities and technologies changed over a very long period. Many communities obtained food by hunting, fishing and gathering wild plants and animals; mobility and social arrangements varied with local resources and conditions. The archaeological evidence does not support treating all Paleolithic people as one unchanging way of life.

The later Paleolithic also includes evidence for increasingly diverse toolmaking, ornaments, engravings, musical instruments and art in some regions. Cave paintings and small sculptures are among the best-known examples, but preserved evidence is unevenly distributed. The meanings of particular images and objects are often uncertain, so their presence cannot by itself establish a single shared belief system.

The Paleolithic is commonly contrasted with the Neolithic, when cultivation, animal domestication and more settled communities developed in some regions. These changes began at different times in different parts of the world and were not a single worldwide replacement of foraging by farming. The shift also did not mean that stone tools disappeared: people continued to make and use them, with grinding and polishing becoming more prominent in many Neolithic contexts. The boundary is therefore a useful archaeological convention, but it simplifies a varied and gradual set of regional changes.