TOP 10 STONE AGES / STONE AGE ICEBERG (SPECIAL MENTION)

 

But wait – there’s more!

There are my twenty special mentions I have for my Top 10 Stone Ages

You know the drill – just like the top ten itself, it’s 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, it’s just more and deeper layers in my Stone Age iceberg meme.

It’s also one of my shallow dip top ten lists– with a few lines or so for each entry – than my deep dive top ten lists on other subjects.

So here goes…

 

(1) HOMININ STONE AGE

 

It’s striking to think that most of the period usually identified as the Stone Age – 3 million years or so – is not for our own hominin species of homo sapiens but for preceding or other hominin species. And by most, I mean 90% – anatomically modern homo sapiens only pops up in the last 10% or so and behaviourally modern homo sapiens even more recently.

You know, there’s enough hominins for their own top ten…

 

(2) NEANDERTHAL STONE AGE

 

Everyone’s favorite hominin other than homo sapiens – and viicon of the Stone Age, so they deserve their own Stone Age

 

(3) HOMO SAPIENS STONE AGE – BEHAVIOURAL MODERNITY

 

There we are.

Behavioural modernity has its own Wikipedia article, but no settled range of time for it – anywhere from 40-50,000 years ago to 150,000 years ago

 

(4) INDUSTRIAL STONE AGE – LITHIC TECHNOLOGY

 

No, we’re not talking Fred Flintstone’s job at Slate Rock and Gravel Company (as a bronto crane operator)…but surprisingly not far from it. Apparently, you didn’t just pick up any stone to make it the Stone Age – some stones are better than others and there were “industrial” sites for stone tools at locations of ideal stones, although quarry is probably a better term than factory.

Lithic technology has its own Wikipedia article

 

 

 

 

(5) SPEAR STONE AGE

 

Paleolithic salesman: (Slaps tip of spear) “This baby can fit so many megafauna extinctions into it”.

Although spears go way back, probably at least in the form of sharpened sticks – apparently chimpanzees have been observed to use sticks as spears – the development and use of spears with stone heads or points – always seemed something of a game changer to me, particularly when thrown (and when spear throwers like an atlatl were developed and used to add range and speed).

You know, like the Paleolithic equivalent of gunpowder empires, except against megafauna. Just think – we hunted the mammoth to extinction with spears.

I mean, I wouldn’t want to face off a sabertooth tiger or cave bear with a few chipped rocks, unless, you know, there was like a hundred of us pelting it with rocks or ideally dropping rocks on it from above. Add in a spear (and perhaps something like fire) and…oh, who am I kidding, I’d still want a hundred of us hurling spears from a safe distance. Or better yet, a spear gun.