The Entire History of the Stone Age in 10 Minutes

The Stone Age, a very important time for our species, and by far the longest period in our history. Though it may sound distant and obscure, the events of the Stone Age shape us at our core. Everything in our modern culture and society can directly be traced back to this humble time. Conceptualizing this vast period is no easy task, so today we will be covering over 3 million years in just 10 minutes. The Stone Age is of course named after stone, the wonderful material which our species has utilized to its fullest extent. It has been used by our ancestors in one way or another for millions of years. When we talk about stone tool use, we are talking about modified stone tools. Tools that are fractured to create a sharp edge. Regular old rocks are used by many animals, but our line and our close relatives are the only known to make and use modified stone tools. The oldest evidence of such tools date to around 3.3 million years ago from northern Kenya. Around 150 artifacts have been found. Chopping cores, sharp flakes, and anvils for smashing. Though they may not look all that impressive, this is exactly what we would expect to find from this period. Simple, sharp edge tools for processing animal remains, plant matter, and maybe even for making wooden implements such as spears. The thing is, these tools were not even made by our genus Homo. They may have been made by Australopithecus or even Caneanthropus. It is possible the maker of these tools were ancestral to our genus, though we just don't know. Stone tool use would still not become common for hundreds of thousands of years. The Oldowan tradition, another simple way of making tools, would develop perhaps independently around 2.9 million years ago. These tools were made by knocking a few flakes of stone off of cobble to form a sharp chopping edge. These tools would spread throughout eastern and southern Africa starting around 2.4 million years ago. They were really the first widespread stone technology, and the earliest member of our genus, Homo habilis, was one of the hominins using them. Homo habilis was short statured with some ape-like features, but it was fully bipedal, used tools, and appears to have been ancestral to other hominin species. It would thrive throughout east and southern Africa before a new hominin would evolve. Homo erectus was one of the most important hominins of all time. The earliest examples of this hominin appeared in east Africa around 2 million years ago. Very quickly, populations of this species would migrate all over Africa and even all the way into China. These hominins had similar limb proportions to our own which allowed them to run and hunt just like us. Their shoulders could throw effectively and their brains were much larger than any other humans that came before. They originally still used primitive Oldowan style tools before developing the Acheulean tool industry around 1.8 million years ago. They created refined symmetrical hand axes that were used for processing meat and plant material as well as shaping materials such as wood. This technology was so effective that it would spread around Africa all the way up to England and as east as northern China. Throughout this range, Homo erectus appears to have dominated its environment. Their sites frequently contained remains of animals such as giant elephants, rhinos, hippos, bovines, and boar. They also gathered fruits, vegetables, tubers, seeds, turtles, and even catfish. Some of these items were cooked on their fires which made them easier to digest. Homo erectus was one of the first hominin that we undoubtedly know used fire. And evidence dates back to over a million years ago. Overall, Homo erectus paved the way for all future hominin species and we wouldn't be here without them. With populations of erectus living around the world, hundreds of thousands of years of isolation would add up and new species would form around 700,000 years ago. Homo antecessor would appear in Europe that would be replaced soon after by the new kid on the block, Homo heidelbergensis. This hominin represents a array of populations living around the old world at this time. They had a brain similar in size to modern humans and more modern features overall. Generally, they made more complex tools than erectus including stone-tipped spears and more refined hand axes. Amazingly, we even have a number of wooden spears and implements from this time. They show careful craftsmanship and some were even shaped like modern javelins. These widespread populations collectively called heidelbergensis were quite different from the start and as the years went by would diverge further. By around 300,000 years ago, these differences would become enough to classify these populations as new species, one of them being our own. In Africa, the earliest remains of our species would appear a little over 300,000 years ago. Another strange species named Homo naledi also lived alongside us in South Africa at this time. In Europe and much western Asia, Neanderthals appeared around 300,000 years ago as well. In the East and Southeast Asia lived the Denisovans, late surviving Erectus, Homo floresiensis, Homo luzonensis and likely even more species. This was truly a diverse time for hominins on our planet. Neanderthals and Homo sapiens were created in a new technology called Mousterian which utilized deadly spear points and a complex array of other stone tools. Hominins in Asia were colonizing new islands and creating complex technology of their own. Moving to 100,000 years ago, we see the first appearance of art and symbolism. At Plombos cave, excellent stone points were being made alongside engraved rocks and red ochre drawings. In the Congo, complex bone points were being made and our earliest evidence of burial appeared in Kenya. Neanderthals in Europe were widely using red ochre, an iron rich pigment and some sites preserve the remains of necklaces and even symbolic manipulation of the dead. In a cave in France, Neanderthals carried hundreds of stalagmites to create a strange, seemingly symbolic structure. It is clear that around this time, Neanderthals appeared to have been on par with the complexity of our own relatives. Around this same time, our species began to migrate out of Africa. Homo sapiens have always lived in the Middle East to some extent, but during this time, we quickly expanded. First moving south, our populations moved into the Indian subcontinent around 70,000 years ago and into Australia about 65,000 years ago. We were slower to expand to Europe, perhaps because of the challenging climate and the fact that Neanderthals already lived there. By around 45,000 years ago, our species lived in much of southern Europe and by around 40,000 years ago, we more or less completely replaced the Neanderthals. The same process happened throughout Asia. Though we replaced various hominins, we did hybridize with at least the Denisovans, Neanderthals and yet unknown populations or species. Humans in the modern day all have a small percent of archaic hominin DNA in our genomes, but we are still by far homo sapiens of African origin. These modern humans expanded throughout their range, attaining much higher population sizes than any hominin before, and our species was the first to have entered the Americas by at least 16,000 years ago, but likely more around 22,000 years ago. We also got some furry companions around this time. These populations were all still largely nomadic hunter-gatherer groups. Some populations were sedentary for a part of the year and some people of the Natufian culture began to make permanent stone structures and intensively wild grain. The onset of the Younger Dryas, a drier period at the end of the last ice age, appears to have led to a reliance on wild grains, the formations of true villages and eventually agriculture. Various crops and eventually animals would be domesticated in the Middle East, which spread around Western Asia, North Africa and later into Europe. Rice cultivation began in China around 10,000 years ago and bean, tomatoes and peppers and eventually maize were all domesticated in the Americas. Agriculture would revolutionize the way humans lived, leading to sedentary lifestyles and the appearance of specialized occupations within these newly formed societies. Stone was still one of the primary materials used for tools of the time, though natural pure copper deposits were utilized in various places, notably in the Great Lakes regions of the Americas. This copper simply had to be hammered in order to be turned into tools. But much of the world does not have these deposits. Copper must be smelted from ore. The first evidence of smelted copper appeared around 7,500 years ago in Southern Europe. Various cultures would learn to smelt copper from neighboring cultures and others learned to do it completely independently. Tin would eventually be smelted with copper to create much stronger bronze tools, effectively replacing most stone tool use. Bronze and the widespread use of copper would effectively end the Stone Age between 4,000 to 6,000 years ago. Though stone tools continued to be used in many areas and for various tasks, even in areas with metal available. Stone daggers continued to be made in Scandinavia for a long time after the introduction of metal and some even copied bronze dagger designs. Obsidian is still used in some medical operations as it is sharper than any metal edge and can literally cut individual cells in half. Stone tool use continues today and I myself use them quite often. I actually made an entirely new channel devoted to the creation of Paleolithic tools. On this channel I will create various Stone Age tools with detailed explanations about their purpose and origin. Go check out the new video I made over there in which I make a little obsidian knife. I hope to see you all there. This has been your host North02 and I'll see you in the next one. Arrivederci.