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Material World
Event

Stone Age

Almost the whole of human history, named for the material that survives — which is exactly the problem with the name.

The Stone Age covers roughly three million years, from the earliest recognised stone tools to the adoption of metal, and it is named for stone because stone is what is left. Wood, bone, fibre, hide and resin were used throughout and almost none of it survives, so the period's name records the preservation bias of the archaeological record as much as the technology.

What the stone tools do show is real and remarkable: a sustained, transmitted understanding of which rocks fracture predictably. Flint, chert, obsidian and quartzite were selected, quarried and traded over hundreds of kilometres, and the selection is for one property — conchoidal fracture, which lets a knapper control where the break goes and produce an edge sharper than surgical steel.

History

Conventionally divided into the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic, and the divisions are about ways of living rather than about stone: the Neolithic is defined by agriculture and by ground rather than flaked stone tools.

It ends at wildly different dates in different places, and in some regions it does not end at all before contact. The Near East reaches metal in the sixth and fifth millennia BC; Australia has no pre-contact metallurgy and an unbroken lithic tradition until the eighteenth century, which is not a delay but a different history.

Economic significance

Long-distance exchange in stone is among the earliest economic behaviour that can be traced, because the source of a piece of obsidian can be identified chemically with confidence. Obsidian from Melos reached the Greek mainland by the eleventh millennium BC; Anatolian obsidian moved across the Near East.

That is the first material supply chain there is evidence for, and it has the shape of every one since: a scarce material with a property nothing local can match, moving a long way because it is worth the journey.

Medium confidence Weak evidence

How we know: checked recently · only one source, so there is nothing to cross-check it against · stated directly by the source.

How this connects

Where a connection has been confirmed by an outside reference, that reference is named beside it.

involved

  • Hand axe — object · made to essentially one design for over a million years, which no other artefact type approaches
  • Flint — rock · selected for conchoidal fracture, quarried, and traded hundreds of kilometres — the first material supply chain there is evidence for
  • Obsidian — rock · and its source can be identified chemically, which is how the earliest trade routes are traced at all
  • Earthenware — material · fired clay figurines are around 29,000 years old and predate pottery vessels by some fifteen thousand years — people fired clay into shapes long before using it to hold anything

Sources

  • Wikidata
    Wikimedia Foundation · Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (public domain dedication)
  • Material World
    Our own writing

Where it comes from, and what it becomes

Follow Stone Age back to what it starts as, and forward into what it becomes. Each step is a documented one — a real route material takes, not a chain of inference.

Upstream — what it comes from

  • Stone Age → involved (made to essentially one design for over a million years, which no other artefact type approaches) → Hand axe → is made of (the commonest material where it occurs, and chosen for a fracture that a knapper can direct) → Flint → is sourced from (as nodules and bands within chalk and other limestones, the silica having come from sponge and diatom skeletons and been reprecipitated in the sediment) → Limestone → is sourced from (precipitated from it, mostly by organisms building shells and skeletons out of dissolved calcium and carbonate) → Seawater → is composed of (about 96.5 per cent by mass — seawater is 3.5 per cent dissolved solids and the rest of it is this) → Water
  • Stone Age → involved (fired clay figurines are around 29,000 years old and predate pottery vessels by some fifteen thousand years — people fired clay into shapes long before using it to hold anything) → Earthenware → is produced by (to around 1,000 °C, which is not hot enough to vitrify — earthenware stays porous, which is why it must be glazed to hold anything) → Firing → takes as input (to 1200–1300 °C, which is the vitrification that separates it from earthenware — and it is a temperature rather than a recipe) → Stoneware → is sourced from (a clay that survives 1200 °C and above, which an earthenware clay does not) → Clay → is sourced from (clay is chiefly what feldspar becomes when it weathers) → Orthoclase
  • Stone Age → involved (selected for conchoidal fracture, quarried, and traded hundreds of kilometres — the first material supply chain there is evidence for) → Flint → is sourced from (as nodules and bands within chalk and other limestones, the silica having come from sponge and diatom skeletons and been reprecipitated in the sediment) → Limestone → is sourced from (precipitated from it, mostly by organisms building shells and skeletons out of dissolved calcium and carbonate) → Seawater → is composed of (about 96.5 per cent by mass — seawater is 3.5 per cent dissolved solids and the rest of it is this) → Water
  • Stone Age → involved (and its source can be identified chemically, which is how the earliest trade routes are traced at all) → Obsidian
  • Stone Age → involved (fired clay figurines are around 29,000 years old and predate pottery vessels by some fifteen thousand years — people fired clay into shapes long before using it to hold anything) → Earthenware → is sourced from (almost any clay, which is why it is the ceramic every early culture reached first) → Clay → is sourced from (clay is chiefly what feldspar becomes when it weathers) → Orthoclase
  • Stone Age → involved (selected for conchoidal fracture, quarried, and traded hundreds of kilometres — the first material supply chain there is evidence for) → Flint → is composed of (silica in crystals too small to see, which is what gives it a conchoidal fracture and no grain to follow) → Quartz

These are the most distinct paths back. Stone Age can be traced through others besides.