Outline of prehistoric technology

• to around 55,000 years ago when modern humans likely crossed from Asia by island-hopping. The Bhimbetka rock shelters exhibit the earliest traces of human life in India
  , some of which are approximately 30,000 years old.
  • Homo neanderthalensis
    • homo neanderthalensis used Mousterian stone tools that date back to around 300,000 years ago^[12]
      and include smaller, knife-like and scraper tools.
    • homo neanderthalensis buried their dead, doing so in shallow graves along with stone tools and animal bones, although the reasons and significance of the burials are disputed.^[13][14]
  • Homo sapiens – the only living species in the genus Homo originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago. Greater mental capability and ability to walk erect provided freed hands for manipulating objects, which allowed for far greater use of tools.^[15]
    • Art of the Middle Paleolithic
    • Burial – intentional burial, particularly with
      Qafzeh, Israel with a variety of grave goods.^[17]

• Upper Paleolithic Revolution – theoretical occurrence between 60,000 and 30,000 years ago, possibly the origin of language, resulting in modern human behavior, accompanied radical advancements in technology made possible by it.^[18]
  • reasoning, language, introspection, and problem solving.^[15][19]
  • Tools – included
    bones.^[20]
  • Clothing – evidence, such as possible sewing needles from around 40,000 years ago and^[21] dyed flax fibers dated 36,000 BP found in a prehistoric cave in the Republic of Georgia suggest that people were wearing clothes at this time.^[22][23] Human beings may have begun wearing clothing as far back as 190,000 years ago.^[24]
  • Venus figurines
    , carvings and engravings of bone and ivory, and musical instruments such as flutes. The most common subject matter was large animals that were hunted by the people of the time.
    • Prehistoric music
      • Paleolithic flutes
    • Cave painting
      • Cave of Altamira and Paleolithic Cave Art of Northern Spain
      • Côa Valley Paleolithic Art

Mesolithic technology

• Mesolithic – the transitional period between the Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, beginning with the Holocene warm period around 11,660 BP and ending with the Neolithic introduction of farming, the date of which varied in each geographical region. Adaptation was required during this period due to climate changes that affected environment and the types of available food.
  • Stone tool changes – small stone tools called
    bladelets and microburins, emerged during this period.^[25]
  • Weapons –
    Mesolithic period.^[27]

• southwestern/southern Asia, northern/central Africa and Central America.^[28]
  • Defining characteristics
    • Introduction of agriculture – a defining characteristic of Neolithic societies, which resulted in a swing from a nomadic lifestyle to one that was more sedentary,^[29] and the use of agricultural tools such as the plough, digging stick and hoe (tool)
      .
    • dogs^[28][29]
    • Pottery – emerged as a defining characteristic of the Neolithic period.^[29]
  • Other
    • mud-brick and wattle and daub and the construction of storage facilities, tombs and monuments.^[30]
    • Metalworking – copper use began as early as 9000 BC in the Middle East;^[31] and a copper pendant found in northern Iraq dated to 8700 BCE.^[32]
    • Numeric counting – record keeping evolved from a system of counting using small clay tokens that began in Sumer about 8000 BCE.^[33]
    • Proto-writing – ideographic and/or early mnemonic symbols used to convey information, probably devoid of direct linguistic content. These systems emerged in the early Neolithic period, as early as the 7th millennium BCE.
      • Neolithic signs in Europe
        • Vinča signs (Tărtăria tablets), ca. 5300 BCE^[34]
      • Neolithic signs in China
        – at a range of Neolithic sites in China, small numbers of symbols of either pictorial or simple geometric nature have been unearthed which were incised into or drawn or painted on artifacts, mostly on pottery but in some instances on turtle shells, animal bones or artifacts made from bone or jade.
        • shells in Jiahu
          , ca. 6600 BC
    • Stone tools – ground and polished tools were created during the Neolithic period.^[29]
    • Religious structures – such as the Göbekli Tepe built about 12,000 years ago.
    • Wheel – in the late Neolithic period, the wheel was introduced for making pottery.^[35]

Prehistoric Bronze Age technology in the Old World

• Bronze Age – stage of development characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons and of developing trade networks.
  • • Bronze Age China
    • Bronze Age India
      • • Early Indus script, ca. 3500 BC
    • Bronze Age Europe

Prehistoric Iron Age technology in the Old World

• Iron Age – age characterized by the widespread use of iron or steel, which coincided with other changes in society, including differing agricultural practices, religious beliefs and artistic styles.
  • Tools – best tools and weapons were made from steel.^{[citation needed]}

End of prehistory and the beginning of history

• Development of true writing systems – in the Old World, true writing systems developed from
  Early Bronze Age (4th millennium BC). The Sumerian archaic (proto-cuneiform) writing and the Egyptian hieroglyphs are generally considered the earliest true writing systems, both emerging out of their ancestral proto-literate symbol systems from 3400–3200 BC with earliest coherent texts from about 2600 BC
  .

• General developmental stages leading from proto-writing to true writing:
  • Picture writing system: glyphs directly represent objects and ideas or objective and ideational situations. In connection with this the following substages may be distinguished:
    1. The mnemonic: glyphs primarily a reminder;
    2. The pictographic (pictography): glyphs represent directly an object or an objective situation such as (A) chronological, (B) notices, (C) communications, (D) totems, titles, and names, (E) religious, (F) customs, (G) historical, and (H) biographical;
    3. The ideographic (ideography): glyphs represent directly an idea or an ideational situation.
  • Transitional system: glyphs refer not only to the object or idea which it represents but to its name as well.
  • Phonetic system: glyphs refer to sounds or spoken symbols irrespective of their meanings. This resolves itself into the following substages:
    1. The verbal: glyph (logogram) represents a whole word;
    2. The syllabic: glyph represent a syllable;
    3. The alphabetic: glyph represent an elementary sound.

Prehistoric technology of the Americas

The New World periods began with the crossing of the

• herbivores far into Alaska.^[40]
• Athabaskan
  -speakers
• Aleuts
• Inuit
• Yup'ik^[41]

Lithic technology

• Plano culture.^[38] Clovis culture was once considered the first culture to use projectile points to hunt on the North American continent. Since then, a pre-Clovis site was found in Manis, Washington that found use of projectile points to hunt mastodons.^[42]

• Archaic – was dated from 8,000 to 2,000 years before present.^[38] People were hunters of small game, such as deer, antelope and rabbits, and gatherers of wild plants, moving seasonally to hunting and gathering sites. Late in the Archaic period, about 200-500 CE, corn was introduced into the diet and pottery-making became an occupation for storing and carrying food.^[43]

• Ancient Pueblo People, Mississippian culture and Olmec cultures.^[38]

• Prehistoric art – art produced in preliterate, prehistorical cultures beginning somewhere in very late geological history, and generally continuing until that culture either develops writing or other methods of record-keeping, or makes significant contact with another culture that has, and that makes some record of major historical events.
  • List of Stone Age art
  • Types of prehistoric art
    • Parietal art
      • Rock art
        • Cave painting
    • Prehistoric sculpture
      • Venus figurines
    • Stone circle
  • Prehistoric art by region
    • Japanese Prehistoric Art
    • Scottish art in the Prehistoric era

Domestication of animals

• Origin of the domestic dog

Language / numbers

• Language itself
  • Origin of language
• Prehistoric numerals

Prehistoric fishing

• History of whaling#Prehistoric to medieval times
• History of fishing#Prehistory

Prehistoric hunting

• Hunting#Paleolithic
  • Game drive system
  • Hunting hypothesis

Prehistoric mining

• Mining#Prehistoric mining

Prehistoric medicine

• Prehistoric medicine
• Dentistry#History

Prehistoric tools

• Timeline of historic inventions#Prehistoric
• History of materials science#Prehistory
• Archaeological industry
  • Oldowan
  • Mousterian
  • Acheulean

Prehistoric clothing

• History of clothing and textiles#Prehistoric development
• Shoe#History

Stone Age tools

• Biface
• Hand axe
• Control of fire by early humans
• Bone tool
• Spear#Prehistory
• Prepared-core technique
• Blade (archaeology)
• Chopper (archaeology)
• Cleaver (tool)
• Tool stone
• Lithic flake
• Lithic core
• Lithic reduction
• Tranchet flake
• Langdale axe industry
• Bow and arrow#History
• Chopping tool
• Cupstone
• Bann flake
• Bare Island projectile point, just a few of many kinds of projectile points
• Canaanean blade
• Celt (tool)
• Adze#Europe
• Anvil#History
• Arrow#History
• Sewing needle#Needles in archaeology
• Basket#History
• Pigment#History
• Glue#History
• Rope#History
• Bow drill#History
• Woodworking#History

Prehistoric weapons

• Prehistoric warfare
  • Prehistoric weapons

Gallery

• 
  Reconstruction of how homo erectus may have looked
• 
  Fire started using a bow drill
• 
  Selection of prehistoric tools
• 
  Aurochs on a cave painting in Lascaux, France

See also

• Aboriginal stone arrangement
• Paleolithic diet
• Prehistoric Autopsy (2012 BBC documentary)
• Timeline of human prehistory

Sites