TOP 10 STONE AGES / STONE AGE ICEBERG

 

It’s my Top 10 Stone Ages!

Wait – what? Wasn’t there only the one Stone Age?

Well, yes and no.

Yes, as in it’s another one of my (mostly) tongue in cheek top ten lists where I look at a subject which has a fundamental continuity or unity but which can also be broken up into distinct parts or perspectives. Alternatively, you can think of it as my Stone Age iceberg meme.

And no, as in when you have an “age” that is over 99% of human history (or more precisely prehistory) extending back 3 million years (and hence well before our present human species, homo sapiens) with a complexity and versatility to match its duration, it can readily be broken up or classified into smaller parts.

And indeed, it usually is, with one of the best known demarcations breaking it up into three parts – which account for my top three entries – albeit they are hardly equal parts with the first part as the overwhelming majority of the Stone Age.

Beyond that, I could have relied on further subdivisions of the traditional three-part division but I chose to get a little more creative instead with different perspectives to round out the balance of entries. I could also have relied on geographic divisions as the Stone Age persisted longer in different parts of the world, arguably even to what is otherwise the modern period of history elsewhere.

As such, like my other top ten lists for “ages”, this will be more one of my shallow dip top tens – with shorter entries – than my deep dive top tens on other subjects.

 

S-TIER (GOD-TIER)

 

 

 

(1) PALEOLITHIC STONE AGE

 

The Paleolithic or Old Stone Age is indisputably first among my Top 10 Stone Ages – “as almost the entire period of human prehistoric technology”, as indeed it is of human existence, prehistoric or historic.

Its defining characteristic is the use of stone tools, extending from the first use of such tools by hominins about 3 million years ago to the end of the Pleistocene Epoch or what is more colloquially known as the Ice Age in about 12,000 BC – the Stone Age largely overlaps with the Ice Age.

The Paleolithic has a tripartite division as the Lower Paleolithic (3 million years to 300,000 years ago) marked by hominins using stone tools, the Middle Paleolithic (300,000 years ago to 50,000 years ago) marked by the evolution of anatomically modern humans (and their migration out of Africa), and the Upper Paleolithic (50,000 to 12,000 years ago) marked by the emergence of behaviourally modern humans (and their migration beyond Africa and Eurasia).

I always find it striking that the terminology of Upper to Lower Paleolithic goes from more recent to less recent – with the Lower going very low indeed to over 3 million years ago. Hence, I was tempted to coin the term Deep Stone Age, but it is essentially synonymous with the Lower Paleolithic. As I noted in my introduction, I was also tempted to use each of these subdivisions – Upper, Middle, and Lower Paleolithic – as entries in this top ten but considered I should be more creative.

However, that terminology would match up with the Stone Age as iceberg meme, moving from upper to lower with the latter indeed proportionate to the 90% or so proportion of an iceberg under the surface that is the premise of the iceberg meme. Arguably a true Stone Age iceberg should do the same, in terms of going deeper into what I dubbed the Deep Stone Age, but I’ve inverted it with the Paleolithic on top to reflect its prominence rather than depth of time.

 

RATING:

S-TIER (GOD-TIER – OR IS THAT STONE-TIER?)

 

 

 

(2) NEOLITHIC STONE AGE

 

The New Stone Age to the Paleolithic’s Old Stone Age and equally indisputable as second among my Top 10 Stone Ages, except perhaps to dispute that its more dramatic developments – often characterized as the Neolithic Revolution – are such that it eclipses the Paleolithic. Certainly, without it the subsequent balance of human history would not have occurred as it did, and we’d all still be in our happy hunting grounds.

It varies by geographical location but generally is considered to commence in 10,000 BC or so (in the ancient Near East) and continued to the development of metallurgy, variously from 4,500 BC in the ancient Near East to 2,000 BC in China.

“This ‘Neolithic package’ included the introduction of farming, domestication of animals, and change from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one of settlement”.

 

(3) MESOLITHIC STONE AGE

 

Sigh – I suppose I have to count it in god-tier as part of the iconic tripartite division of the Stone Age but I don’t really believe in the Mesolithic as the amorphous period of transition between the Paleolithic and Neolithic, even if that period was generally millennia and varied by location.

I like my Stone Age as twofold division of Paleolithic and Neolithic, Old Stone Age and New Old Age. Apparently, I’m not the only one – the term was controversial for that reason upon its introduction in the nineteenth century but has subsequently been considered a useful concept.

The term Epipaleolithic is sometimes substituted, particularly for the prehistoric Near East.

 

 

 

 

 

(4) MEGALITHIC STONE AGE

 

Yes, I’ve coined the term Megalithic Stone Age because I love megaliths – “a megalith is a large stone that has been used to construct a prehistoric structure or monument, either alone or together with other stones”, such as a standing stone or stone circle respectively as at everyone’s favorite megalithic site, Stonehenge.

Of course, the Megalithic Stone Age is mostly synonymous with the Neolithic – corresponding to settled agricultural communities having the necessary resources for moving large stones around the place – although “earlier Mesolithic examples are known” and they continued to be erected in the Bronze Age (including as I understand it, some of the phases of construction at Stonehenge).

“There are over 35,000 structures in Europe alone, located widely from Sweden to the Mediterranean”.

 

 

(5) MICROLITHIC STONE AGE

 

From one end of the scale to the other – from megaliths to microliths, I bring you the Microlithic Stone Age!

And no – sadly, that doesn’t mean there’s a tiny Stonehenge out there. “A microlith is a small stone tool, usually made of flint or chert and typically a centimetre or so in length and half a centimetre wide…were used in spear points and arrowheads”.

Microliths point to a greater sophistication of stone tools characteristic of the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic or even Neolithic, although they generally declined with the introduction of agriculture (as their predominant use was for hunting weapons).

 

(6) GOLDEN STONE AGE

 

Paleo paradise!

Or Neolithic mommy utopia?

“Man was born free and everywhere he is in chains!”

It’s the Golden Stone Age – that recurring rosy-eyed view of the Stone Age or at least our primal past as Garden of Eden, from which it’s all been downhill for humanity afterwards.

No, seriously – I may be caricaturing it somewhat but there has indeed been recurring claims or theories of the Stone Age as ideal or idealized state of humanity, although they differ widely in detail and intellectual rigor (or elements of truth).

There’s probably enough for their own top ten but perhaps the most famous is the French philosopher Rousseau’s state of nature, itself preceded by the longstanding European concept of the noble savage.

Throw in notions of a peaceful prehistory, environmental harmony, Neolithic matriarchy, Marxist primitive communism, Marshall Sahlin’s Stone Age Economics or Original Affluent Society, anarcho-primitivism or so on and you’ve got yourself a heady if eclectic brew.

However, one thing such claims of the Golden Stone Age have in common, consistent with the Stone Age as Garden of Eden, is a fall – although where that fall, well, falls differs on the details where they place the Garden.

A commonly argued one is the horizon between the Paleolithic and Neolithic – with the advent of agriculture, and even more so the state as it moved into the Bronze Age. Personally, I like to see the fall argued in the other direction, with the fall of homo sapiens from Neanderthal paradise or a hominin Garden of Eden. Or to borrow from the words of Grant Morrison writing for the Animal Man comic – “We should never have come down from the trees. We’ve fallen so far and there’s still no bottom”.

 

(7) DARK STONE AGE

 

“The life of man…solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”.

Bellum omnium contra omnes – “the war of all against all” or Hobbesian state of nature.

It’s the Dark Stone Age, the competing contention to the Golden Stone Age – although I am inclined to believe that the real Stone Age had elements of both.

Claims or theories of the Dark Stone Age are perhaps not quite as varied as those of the Golden Stone Age, with a focus on violence. English philosopher Thomas Hobbes famously proposed that the original “state of nature” of humanity was inherently violent – the war of all against all in which “the life of man” is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”.

That proposal of violent prehistory continues – it essentially boils down to those who argue for prehistoric war and violence, potentially at even higher rates than those in recorded history (at least as supported by evidence of violent deaths), against those who argue for more peaceful prehistory. I tend towards the former, influenced by books such as Azar Gat’s War and Human Civilization.

 

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

 

 

(8) ICE STONE AGE

 

We hunted the mammoth!

As I stated in my top entry for the Paleolithic, the Ice Age is the Stone Age – or rather, the most recent period of glaciation or Pleistocene Epoch, the Ice Age of popular imagination and culture, almost entirely overlaps with the Paleolithic Stone Age.

I have only the most superficial knowledge of human evolution, so I sometimes wonder how much the evolution of hominins depended on the impact of Pleistocene climate changes on Africa – or the evolution of our hominin species, homo sapiens, which occurred entirely within the Pleistocene, or its migration from Africa, similarly depended on that impact.

For that matter, the Stone Age of popular imagination and culture seems predominated by that of Paleolithic homo sapiens – and Neanderthals – in glacial or sub-glacial Europe, perhaps due to the striking imagery of Pleistocene megafauna and the cave art in Europe depicting it.

 

 

(9) FIRE STONE AGE

 

It’s always struck me that no matter how much stone technology was instrumental for or definitive of this period, the Stone Age is something of a misnomer because the truly impactful and game-changing technology was not stone but fire.

Claims for the control of fire by hominins extends almost as far back as that for stone tools or the Stone Age – potentially as early as 1.7 to 2 million years ago.

I’m tempted to substitute the term Cooked Stone Age as opposed to the preceding Raw Stone Age. Certainly, French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss might have agreed with me on that one, given his book The Raw and the Cooked.

But seriously, although the use of fire was not limited to cooking, its use in cooking dramatically changed human food habits – allowing for a much wider range of food, particularly allowing a significant increase in meat consumption, to the extent of biological changes such as smaller teeth and digestive traits.

 

 

(10) MARITIME STONE AGE

 

There’s the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis or Theory, proposing that the ancestors of modern humans diverged from the other great apes by adapting to an aquatic lifestyle.

That hypothesis or theory is highly contested, such that it is generally dismissed by anthropologists or other scholars of human evolution. The true aquatic watershed (heh) of human history might be described as the Maritime Stone Age – for the development of watercraft to allow humans or hominins to conquer the seas and other bodies of water. Indeed, that might date back before homo sapiens to homo erectus, with claims the latter used rafts or similar watercraft to cross straits between landmasses or to islands as early as a million years ago.

The Maritime Stone Age might also be characterized by the migration of humans beyond the African and Eurasian continents to the Americas and Oceania, whether following coastlines of land bridges or island-hopping. For the latter, the maritime achievements of Austronesian expansion and Polynesian navigation used functionally Stone Age technology.

For this concept of the Maritime Stone Age, I was tempted to substitute the Exolithic or Xenolithic – to describe those societies with functionally Stone Age technology, usually tribal hunter-gatherers, that persisted elsewhere as other societies developed into the Bronze Age or beyond, even into the modern period.