Prehistoric technology is technology that predates recorded

history. History is the study of the past using written records.

Anything prior to the first written accounts of history is
prehistoric, including earlier technologies. About 2.5 million
years before writing was developed, technology began with
the earliest hominids who used stone tools, which they may
have used to start fires, hunt, and bury their dead.

There are several factors that made the evolution of

prehistoric technology possible or necessary. One of the key
factors is behavioral modernity of the highly developed brain
of Homo sapiens capable of abstract reasoning, language,
introspection, and problem solving. The advent of agriculture
resulted in lifestyle changes from nomadic lifestyles to ones
lived in homes, with domesticated animals, and land farmed
using more varied and sophisticated tools. Art, architecture,
music and religion evolved over the course of the prehistoric
periods.
 The Stone Age is a broad prehistoric
period during which stone was
widely used in the manufacture of
implements with a sharp edge, a
point, or a percussion surface. The
period lasted roughly 2.5 million
years, from the time of early
hominids to Homo sapiens in the
later Pleistocene era, and largely
ended between 6000 and 2000 BCE
with the advent of metalworking.
 The Lower Paleolithic period was the
earliest subdivision of the Paleolithic
or Old Stone Age. It spans the time
from around 2.5 million years ago
when the first evidence of craft and
use of stone tools by hominids
appears in the current archaeological
record, until around 300,000 years
ago, spanning the Oldowan ("mode
1") and Acheulean ("mode 2") lithic
technology.
 The Middle Paleolithic period occurred in
Europe and the Near East, during which the
Neanderthals lived (c. 300,00028,000 years
ago). The earliest evidence (Mungo Man) of
settlement in Australia dates to around
40,000 years ago when modern humans
likely crossed from Asia by island-hopping.
The Bhimbetka rock shelters exhibit the
earliest traces of human life in India, some
of which are approximately 30,000 years
old.
 During the Upper Paleolithic Revolution,
advancements in human intelligence and
technology changed radically with the
advent of Behavioral modernity between
60,000 and 30,000 years ago.[3] Behavioral
modernity is a set of traits that distinguish
Homo sapiens from extinct hominid
lineages. Homo sapiens reached full
behavior modernity around 50,000 years
ago due to a highly developed brain
capable of abstract reasoning, language,
introspection, and problem solving.
 The Mesolithic period was a transitional era between the
Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, beginning with the Holocene
warm period around 11,660 BP and ending with the
Neolithic introduction of farming, the date of which varied
in each geographical region. Adaptation was required
during this period due to climate changes that affected
environment and the types of available food.[citation
needed]

Small stone tools called microliths, including small

bladelets and microburins, emerged during this
period.[27] For instance, spears or arrows were found at
the earliest known Mesolithic battle site at Cemetery 117
in the Sudan.[28] Holmegaard bows were found in the
bogs of Northern Europe dating from the Mesolithic
period.
 The Neolithic Revolution was the first
agricultural revolution, representing a
transition from hunting and gathering
nomadic life to an agriculture existence. It
evolved independently in six separate
locations worldwide circa 10,0007000
years BP (8,0005,000 BC). The earliest
known evidence exists in the tropical and
subtropical areas of southwestern/southern
Asia, northern/central Africa and Central
America.
 The Stone Age developed into the Bronze Age after the
Neolithic Revolution. The Neolithic Revolution involved
radical changes in agricultural technology which included
development of agriculture, animal domestication, and
the adoption of permanent settlements.[citation needed]

The Bronze Age is characterised by metal smelting of

copper and its alloy bronze, an alloy of tin and copper, to
create implements and weapons. Polished stone tools
continued to be used due to their abundance compared
with the less common metals (especially tin).[citation
needed]

This technological trend apparently began in the Fertile

Crescent, and spread outward.
 The Iron Age involved the adoption
of iron or steel smelting technology,
either by casting or forging. Iron
replaced bronze,[37][38] and made it
possible to produce tools which were
stronger, lighter and cheaper to
make than bronze equivalents.[39]
The best tools and weapons were
made from steel.
Prehistoric Cupules
The oldest cultural phenomenon,
found throughout the prehistoric
world, the cupule remains one of the
least understood types of rock art.
Venus of Willendorf (25,000 BCE)
One of the famous Venus Figurines
of the Upper Paleolithic.
Stone Age lions watching prey.
Chauvet Cave (c.30,000 BCE)
Franco-Cantabrian cave art from
the Late Aurignacian.
Maikop Gold Bull (c.2,500 BCE)
One of the greatest treasures of
prehistoric sculpture from Russia.
See: Oldest Stone Age Art: Top 100.
 The longest phase of Stone Age culture -
known as the Paleolithic period - is a
hunter-gatherer culture which is usually
divided into three parts: (1) Lower
Paleolithic (2,500,000-200,000 BCE)
(2) Middle Paleolithic (200,000-40,000 BCE)
(3) Upper Paleolithic (40,000-10,000 BCE)
 Magdalenian is the final culture of the
period and the apogee of Paleolithic art, of
the Old Stone Age. Its name comes from
the type-site of La Madeleine near Les
Eyzies in the French Dordogne.
Magdalenian tool technology is defined by
the production of smaller and more
sophisticated tools (from barbed points to
needles, well-crafted scrapers to parrot-
beak gravers) made from fine flint-flakes
and animal sources (bone, ivory etc), whose
specialized functions and delicacy testify to
the culture's advanced nature.
 Magdalenian culture attached a growing importance to
aesthetic objects, such as personal jewellery, ceremonial
accessories, clothing and especially fine art. Ceramics also
appeared in Europe - see Vela Spila pottery (15,500 BCE),
for instance, from Croatia.

Indeed, the cultural horizons of Magdalenian people are

easily appreciated by studying the upsurge of drawing,
painting, relief sculpture of the period, exemplified by the
Altimira Cave paintings - whose symbolism in particular
represents the first attempt by humans to impose their
own sense of meaning on a relatively uncertain world - as
well as the Addaura Cave engravings (11,000 BCE) whose
style is remarkably modern. This unstoppable trend would
- within only a few millennia - lead to the appearance of
pictographs, hieroglyphics and written language. For
details, see: Magdalenian Art.
 The Mesolithic period is a transitional era between
the ice-affected hunter-gatherer culture of the
Upper Paleolithic, and the farming culture of the
Neolithic. The greater the effect of the retreating ice
on the environment of a region, the longer the
Mesolithic era lasted. So, in areas with no ice (eg.
the Middle East), people transitioned quite rapidly
from hunting/gathering to agriculture. Their
Mesolithic period was therefore short, and often
referred to as the Epi-Paleolithic or Epipaleolithic. By
comparison, in areas undergoing the change from
ice to no-ice, the Mesolithic era and its culture
lasted much longer.
 Archeological discoveries of
Mesolithic remains bear witness to a
great variety of races. These include
the Azilian Ofnet Man (Bavaria);
several later types of Cro-Magnon
Man; types of brachycephalic
humans (short-skulled); and types of
dolichocephalic humans (long-
skulled).
 As the ice disappeared, to be replaced by grasslands and
forests, mobility and flexibility became more important in
the hunting and acquisition of food. As a result, Mesolithic
cultures are characterized by small, lighter flint tools,
quantities of fishing tackle, stone adzes, bows and arrows.
Very gradually, at least in Europe, hunting and fishing was
superceded by farming and the domestication of animals.
The three main European Mesolithic cultures are: Azilian,
Tardenoisian and Maglemosian. Azilian was a stone
industry, largely microlithic, associated with Ofnet Man.
Tardenoisian, associated with Tardenoisian Man, produced
small flint blades and small flint implements with
geometrical shapes, together with bone harpoons using
flint flakes as barbs. Maglemosian (northern Europe) was a
bone and horn culture, producing flint scrapers, borers
and core-axes.
 Mesolithic art reflects the arrival of new living
conditions and hunting practices caused by the
disappearance of the great herds of animals from
Spain and France, at the end of the Ice Age. Forests
now cloaked the landscape, necessitating more
careful and cooperative hunting arrangements.
European Mesolithic rock art gives more space to
human figures, and is characterized by keener
observation, and greater narrative in the paintings.
Also, because of the warmer weather, it moves from
caves to outdoor sites in numerous locations.
 This prehistoric age undoubtedly required
major attention to detail, patience and a
great deal of time. Fast forward to the
present day and we barely have enough
time to complete the basics of stopping,
looking or even listening. As content
marketers, this lack of attention poses a
very significant problem. Its kind of ironic
considering what a recent Optimal
Targeting infographic calls todays
communication superhighway, which
includes widely accepted social media
platforms like Facebook, YouTube,
Instagram and Twitter.
 The Metal Age starts when human beings began to
use metal to make tools. For archaeologists, the
transition from the stone to the metal age occurs
when these metal tools appear alongside stone
tools. The type of metal used initially was probably
influenced by the surface availability of the metal in
natural form, and appears to have been either gold
or copper, both being softer, lower melting point
metals. A lower melting point was probably critical
since the development of metallurgy closely
paralleled the ability to produce hotter fires as well
as the development of containers to hold and cast
the melted metal. The use of gold may even have
started with the mechanical shaping of the metal,
first in cold form, then heated and softened, and
finally melted and cast.
 Aryan and Saka legends place the use of gold
before the use of copper - possibly a few thousand
years earlier. Gold was the more readily available
metal in Central Asia. The legends of Ferdowsi state
that gold was used in ancient times to make surgical
knives used to perform Caesarean operations.

Most of the ancient gold artefacts were plundered,

smelted and reused. The unearthing of gold
artefacts that predated copper tools, requires
finding sites that were hidden or otherwise
inaccessible to robbers. We will have to await
archaeological evidence to support the legendary
evidence that the use of gold preceded the use of
copper.
 The Copper Age in Central Asia and the rest of the
Aryan lands is currently said to begin in the late 5th
millennium BCE and lasted for about a millennium
(4,300-3,200 BCE) leading in to the Early Bronze
Age. Transition from the European Copper Age to
the Bronze Age occurs about a millennium later -
between the late 4th and the late 3rd millennia BCE.

The use of copper required the development of

metallurgy - the science of extracting metal from
metal ores - and casting the molten metal in
castings.