Stone Age
The Stone Age was a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used to make implements with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted roughly 3.4 million years[1] and ended between 8700 BCE and 2000 BCE with the advent of metalworking.[citation needed]
Stone Age artifacts include tools used by modern humans and by their predecessor species in the genus Homo, and possibly by the earlier partly contemporaneous genera Australopithecus and Paranthropus. Bone tools were used during this period as well but are rarely preserved in the archaeological record. The Stone Age is further subdivided by the types of stone tools in use.
The Stone Age is the first period in the three-age system of archaeology, which divides human technological prehistory into three periods:
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The Stone Age
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The Bronze Age
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The Iron Age