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![]() The vital raw materials, stone, copper and iron were the criteria for creating the tripartite division of Prehistory and Protohistory into Stone age, Bronze age and Iron age. This division was established in 1824 by Christian Thomsen, the Danish founder of Prehistory and Protohistory. The Stone Age is subdivided into Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic periods based on technological and largely economic developments. However, these periods were not synchronous in every corner of the earth.
The Palaeolithic period corresponds in time with the Pleistocene (2,600.000-10,000 BP), and was marked by continuous climatic and geological changes with direct consequences on the anthropological development of the human species and his living conditions. Continuously on the move, hunting, fishing, collecting shells and plants constituted Man's activities in the Palaeolithic economy. His stone industries included chopping tools, handaxes, flakes and blades. During the Upper Palaeolithic (35,000-10,000 BC) art (plastic, rock engravings), was developed for the first time by Homo sapiens sapiens. The Mesolithic period (10,000-8000 BP) corresponds in time with the early Holocene, a period marked by the first settlements of the postglacial period with a semi-permanent character. In the Near East ("The Fertile Crescent"), we find permanent settlements already by the 9th millenium BC. Nevali Cori, in the region of Urfa (Harran), is a unique example of a permanent settlement of specialized hunters in the 10th and 9th millenium BC. In Europe an example of permanent settlement is the site of Lepenski Vir at the Iron Gates of the Danube. During the Mesolithic period there was an intensification in the forms of economy which had already emerged in the Palaeolithic period, namely fishing as well as collecting shells, fruits and wild cereals. The first attempts to navigate long distances were made, testified in the Aegean by the transportation and the processing of obsidian (volcanic material from Melos) to the coastal Argolid. Microliths were the representative stone tools of that period. The Neolithic period (8000-3000 BC) was characterized by a stabilization in climatic conditions and the subsequent organization of permanent settlements, whose economy was based on systematic farming, animal husbandry, the exchange of raw materials and artefacts, ceramic production (baked clay), and polymorphism in art. The earliest evidence of Neolithic economy appeared in the Near East during the 8th millennium BC. In the Greek and in the wider Aegean area, the Stone Age can be traced since 350,000 BC. Archaeological researches in the Mainland and on the islands of Greece have rendered anthropological finds, settlement remains (caves, rocksheltes, dwellings) and artefacts of stone, bone, shell, clay and other perishable or rare precious materials (silver, gold). |
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