Tag Archives: Top 10 Stone Ages

Top Tens – Tropes & Other: Top 10 Stone Ages / Stone Age Iceberg (1) Paleolithic

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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?)

Top Tens – Tropes & Other: Top 10 Stone Ages / Stone Age Iceberg (Introduction)

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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

 

 

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.