# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
The Stone Age | Prehistoric age | Stone Age Humans | 

# data[].attributes.body
The Stone Age is a very ancient period of human history, when people used weapons and tools made of stone.

Scientists divide the Stone Age into three major periods:

The Paleolithic Period

The Mesolithic Period

The Neolithic Period

The Stone Age is a period of history in which humans used primitive stone tools. Lasting about 2.5 million years, the Stone Age ended approx 5,000 years ago when humans in the Near East, began working with metal.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Stone Age | Prehistoric age | Stone Age Humans | Video for kids

# data[].attributes.body
The earliest part of the Stone Age is called the Palaeolithic.

Palaeolithic people were nomadic. This means they were always moving with their families. They gathered food, firewood, and materials for tools, clothes and shelter, all from their surroundings. Their diet was made up mainly from animal meat, fruits and plants. The animals they ate included wild horse, red deer, arctic hare, reindeer, wild cattle, lynx and red fox. They used every part of the animal to help them live, the meat for food, fur and skin for clothes and bones for marrow and glue. Their discovery of fire also helped them stay warm, cook and frighten away dangerous animals.

# data[].attributes.body
The Paleolithic begins with the appearance of the first human beings and ends 8000 years before Christ. During the Paleolithic period, people were nomads meaning they didn't live in one place, no, they were constantly on the move in search of animals to hunt. As they were hunters and gatherers, they needed to follow the animals in order to capture them and at the same time they collected wild fruits found on the way.

They lived in tribes, in small groups  formed by families, and they found refuge in caves where they would paint on the wall. These paintings were done with a mixture of charcoal, earth, animal fat and water. Look here are a few examples…truth is, its absolutely fascinating to think that these first paintings, these first artistic representations, were drawn thousands of years ago. Don't you think?

Both Paleolithic men and women wore animal skins which they had hunted previously and they used tools such as an ax and spears made out of stones, wood and bones which they themselves carved. With the passing of time, or rather centuries, these first human beings became more and more intelligent and they began to domesticate animals such as dogs, goats, sheep and pigs; they also began to cultivate plants which was then eaten. It is in these times, with the arrival of agriculture and farming, when everything changed, when man stopped being a nomad and becomes sedentary and the fist villages are made.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Paleolithic  | Educational Video for Kids

# data[].attributes.body
The middle part of the Stone Age is called the Mesolithic. As the climate continued to warm up, sea levels rose and this led to Britain becoming an island. Before this, there was no sea between Britain and Europe. You would have been able to walk from Britain to France! Mesolithic people moved around the country side following animal herds and finding the best flint which could be used for tool making. They travelled in groups of about 10-40 people and hunted animals in woodlands.

# data[].attributes.body
Nestled between the Paleolithic and Neolithic Periods, the Mesolithic Period or Middle Stone Age comprised the last phase of hunter-gatherer cultures in Europe and Western Asia, between the end of the Last Glacial Maximum and the Neolithic Revolution, which saw the rise of agriculture and animal husbandry in human civilizations. Developing at different time spans throughout the Mesolithic timeline, in Europe, the Mesolithic Period is thought to span from 15,000 to 5,000 years Before the Present, while Southwest Asia saw the period span from 20,000 to 8,000 years Before the Present.

While social cultures associated with the Mesolithic Period also vary based on geography, the period is most associated with the decline in group hunts of large animals in favor of a broader hunter-gatherer lifestyle, which also saw the development of more intricate and smaller lithic tools and weapons, compared to the heavy-chipped equivalents employed by their Paleolithic ancestors. The period also witnessed the early use of pottery and textiles, along with permanent and semi-permanent settlements near coastal oceans and inland waters, which offered consistent and bountiful food supplies. Religion and burial rites remained fairly primitive during the Mesolithic Period, contrasted by the grandiose burial mounds and spiritual shrines of the Neolithic Period.

As temperatures began to rise after the end of the last Ice Age, abundant plant matter and rising animal populations allowed late Mesolithic humans to continue their hunter-gatherer lifestyles, despite bumping up repeatedly against sedentary human societies of the early Neolithic Revolution. As developing techniques in farming, herding, polished stone axes, timber longhouses and pottery spread across Europe, many late Mesolithic groups rejected the Neolithic Revolution due to ideological resistance, differing world views and an overall dismissal of the sedentary farming lifestyle. Many archeologists and historians believe that crossover resistance to farming may have lasted for more than 2000 years after the first arrival of farming societies, while in northeastern Europe, the hunter-gatherer lifestyle persisted into the Medieval Period in regions less suited to agriculture, making the Mesolithic Period a time of slow transition into the unhurried birth of modern civilization.

# data[].attributes.body
Around 4,000BC, people begin to stop moving around, and start to live in one place permanently. They began to farm crops like spelt and wheat, and kept animals like goats and sheep. More land was needed for farming, and lots of woodlands were cut down to make space. Flint was still used to make tools, and flint mines were used to find the best flint deep underground.

It was during the Neolithic that people started using pottery in Britain, although it had already been used in Greece for 2,500 years! Items made from pottery were used for cooking and storing food.

# data[].attributes.body
The Neolithic Revolution—also referred to as the Agricultural Revolution—is thought to have begun about 12,000 years ago. It coincided with the end of the last ice age and the beginning of the current geological epoch, the Holocene. And it forever changed how humans live, eat, and interact, paving the way for modern civilization.

During the Neolithic period, hunter-gatherers roamed the natural world, foraging for their food. But then a dramatic shift occurred. The foragers became farmers, transitioning from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a more settled one.

Though the exact dates and reasons for the transition are debated, evidence of a move away from hunting and gathering and toward agriculture has been documented worldwide. Farming is thought to have happened first in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, where multiple groups of people developed the practice independently. Thus, the “agricultural revolution” was likely a series of revolutions that occurred at different times in different places.

As humans began to experiment with farming, they also started domesticating animals. Evidence of sheep and goat herding has been found in Iraq and Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) as far back as about 12,000 years ago. Domesticated animals, when used as labor, helped make more intensive farming possible and also provided additional nutrition via milk and meat for increasingly stable populations.

The agricultural revolution had a variety of consequences for humans. It has been linked to everything from societal inequality—a result of humans’ increased dependence on the land and fears of scarcity—to a decline in nutrition and a rise in infectious diseases contracted from domesticated animals. But the new period also ushered in the potential for modern societies—civilizations characterized by large population centers, improved technology and advancements in knowledge, arts, and trade.

click here for reference:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
THE NEOLITHIC  | Educational Videos for Kids