Gjantija Temples in Gozo, Malta, 3600-2500 BC, by Bone A and used as the feature image for Wikipedia “Stone Age” under license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

(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.

Close-up of Stonehenge (public domain image)

(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).

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.

Hunting a glyptodon – painting by Heinrich Harder c1920 (public domain image)

(1) PALEOLITHIC

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?)