Prehistoric britain

Prehistoric Britain

FUNDAMENTALS

The Stone Age is usually divided into three separate periods--Paleolithic Period, Mesolithic Period, and Neolithic Period--based on the degree of sophistication in the fashioning and use of tools.  

Paleolithic Period

Throughout the Paleolithic, man was a food gatherer, depending for his subsistence on hunting wild animals and birds, fishing, andcollecting wild fruits, nuts, and berries. Their tools were made of flint, stone, bone, and antler. 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. These together with the remains of contemporary animalshunted are all that scholars have to guide them in attempting to reconstruct human. 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. The most outstanding feature of the Paleolithic period was the evolution of the human species from an apelike creature, or near human, to true Homo sapiens.

Mesolithic Period

Middle Stone Age, period in human development between the end of the Paleolithic period and the beginning of the Neolithic period. It began with theend of the last glacial period over 10,000 years ago and evolved into the Neolithic period; this change involved the gradual domestication of plants and animals and the formation of settled communities at various times and places. Mesolithic cultures represent a wide variety of hunting, fishing, and food gathering techniques. This variety may be the result of adaptations to changed ecologicalconditions associated with the retreat of glaciers, the growth of forests, and the disappearance of the Ice Age-

Neolithic Period

New Stone Age. The term Neolithic is used to designate a stage of cultural evolution or technological development characterized by the use of stone tools, the existence of settled villages largely dependent on domesticated plants and animals, and the presence ofsuch crafts as pottery and weaving. The termination of the Neolithic period is marked by such innovations as the rise of urban civilization or the introduction of metal tools or writing

British prehistory timeline

700.000 B.C.: Date of the earliest human implements find on Suffolk Coast.

Thirty two black worked flints found at Pakefield on the Suffolk Coast, proved that humans were activein northern Europe far earlier than previously believed.

480.000 B.C.: Likely date of hominid activity at Boxgrove in west Sussex.

The shin-bone and two incisor teeth of the Boxgrove specimen that were discovered at the site revealed that it was about 1.80 m tall and around 80 kg in weight.

250.000 B.C. : Evidence of two different kinds of Inhabitants.

The Ice Age was not just onelong equally cold period. There were warmer times. Our first evidence of human life is a few stone tools .These simple objects show that there were two different kinds of inhabitant. The earlier group made their tools from flakes of flint. The other group made tools from a central core of flint, probably the earliest method of human tool making, which spread from Africa to Europe. Hand axes made inthis way have been found as far north as Yorkshire and as far west as Wales.

180.000 B.C. : English channel is formed, separating Britain form main land (recent research)

An alternative hypothesis is that much of the land was inundated about the same time by a tsunami, caused by a submarine landslide off the coast of Norway.

130.000 B.C.: Probable date for appearance of Neanderthals...