The Stone Age

The Stone Age is typically divided into two periods:

• Early Stone Age
• Late Stone Age

This division is based on the advent of agriculture. During the Early Stone Age, people likely relied on hunting and fishing for their livelihood, while in the Late Stone Age, they became more settled and learned to farm.

The Stone Age is named as such because most everyday tools were made from bone, horn, or stone, as metals were not yet in use. The Early Stone Age was incredibly long, while the Late Stone Age is estimated to have lasted about 1,000 years, ending around 1800 BCE.

Incidentally, it was Erik Gustaf Geijer who first introduced the classification of the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age in Sweden. He had visited a Danish museum where an archaeologist had organized ancient finds into these periods, rather than grouping them arbitrarily, with stone finds in one place, bronze in another, and so on.