Map of the world showing approximate centres of origin of agriculture and its spread in prehistory: eastern USA (4000-3000 BP), Central Mexico (5000-4000 BP), Northern South America (5000-4000 BP), sub-Saharan Africa (5000-4000 BP, exact location unknown), the Fertile Crescent (11000 BP), the Yangtze and Yellow River basins (9000 BP) and the New Guinea Highlands (9000-6000 BP) by Joe Roe for Wikipedia “Neolithic” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

(2) NEOLITHIC

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

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.