The STONE AGE
The Old Stone Age or Palaeolithic - about 1,000,000 years ago
The Middle Stone Age or Mesolithic - about 11,000 years ago
The New Stone Age or Neolithic - about 6000 - 4500 years ago
The Stone Age ended when people discovered how to make bronze.
There is evidence that people lived
in Langar and Barnstone
during the Stone Age.
But first read about Britain during the Stone Age.
The Stone Age
2 million years ago
Our human ancestors evolved in Africa. Fossil evidence of the earliest modern humans (Homo sapiens) dates from about 300,000 years ago.
From about 80,000 years ago modern humans gradually spread across the world.
1,000,000 years ago
The Old Stone Age or the Palaeolithic
Early humans arrived in Britain; human species such as Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthals) and Homo heidelbergensis travelled the country hunting wild animals and gathering plants to eat.
There were periods of severe cold, ice ages when Britain was covered with a thick layer of ice and nothing could live here. But there were also warmer periods between the ice ages (interglacials).
44,000 years ago Our own ancestors, Homo sapiens reached Britain. They were hunter-gatherers who made stone tools. Sea levels were lower and Britain was connected to the rest of Europe by a land bridge across the North Sea and English Channel.
26,000 years ago The last ice age was at its peak. Huge thick sheets of ice covered Britain north of Nottingham. Britain was cold and bleak and uninhabitable.
11,000 years ago
The Middle Stone Age or the Mesolithic
The end of the Ice Age
Temperatures rose and the ice began to melt. The last Ice Age came to an end. Tribes of hunters using stone tools and bows and arrows came back to Britain. They followed the herds of mammoth, aurochs, reindeer and horses on the grasslands and hunted deer, wild cattle and pigs in the forests. They caught fish in rivers, lakes and ponds. As well as eating animals for food, the people of the Middle Stone Age ate seeds, berries and nuts, roots and leaves. Finding food was difficult in winter.
A revolution - FARMING!
6000 - 4500 years ago - The New Stone Age or the Neolithic
The people of the New Stone Age stopped being nomads, moving around the country searching for food. People began to settle in villages to farm the land and keep animals. Forest trees were chopped down so that cereals such as wheat and barley could be grown. People learned how grow a wide range of wild plants to eat. By choosing the best seeds to plant each year, they improved the quality of the crop. New Stone Age people kept herds of cattle and pigs and later sheep and goats. Everybody had a dog.
Some Stone Age technologies
Weblinks
Find out more about the Stone Age:
Have a look at the BBC Bitesize website - click here.
or watch these BBC videos:
The Story of Britain - The Middle Stone Age
Life in Mesolithic Britain seen through the eyes of a Stone Age family.
The Story of Britain - The New Stone Age
Life in Neolithic Britain: a family hunt and farm food to live on.
These weblinks take you out of this website.
Want to know more? Click here to see a TIMELINE from
the Stone Age to the Iron Age on Historic England's website.
The weblink takes you out of this website.
