Life in the Stone age

Our ancestors lived a primitive life and relied heavily on stone as their primary tool and weapon material, but since the invention of a written language was thousands of years away, we can only piece together what we have found from archeological digs.

When was the stone age?

Most estimates put the beginning of the Stone Age at around 2.5 million years ago, with the earliest start being as long ago as 3.5 million years. The Stone Age began as soon as our ancestors evolved enough to work out how to use stone as a tool, with the earliest actual evidence of stone shaping happening 2.5 million million years ago when humans, or whatever we were at the time learned how to chip stone to make it sharper. The Stone Age ended between 8,700 BC and 2,000 BC depending on the area of the world, but in Britain, it ended around 3,500 BC when someone worked out how to smelt a new metal alloy, and so the Bronze Age began.

Why was it called the Stone Age?

Ages are usually defined by either political or royal influence or a significant invention that advanced the race as a whole. During the Stone Age, the most advanced thing they had was a carved piece of stone, but this simple invention allowed them to farm, build, and hunt more effectively which allowed for larger populations. The Stone Age is named as such because the human race relied so heavily on stone in their daily lives, and it was also the most advanced material they had.

Did people live in caves during the stone age?

Life in the Stone Age is often thought of as people living in caves, and even though there has been evidence of people using caves as shelter for thousands of years, whether they lived in them permanently is another question. The problem with caves is that they can be very dangerous, especially if a fire is being used in one as the heating and cooling can loosen rock and cause collapse, something they must have worked out at some point. The other issue is that there simply wouldn’t be enough caves for everyone, or the caves wouldn’t be in the right place such as close to hunting or gathering grounds. Another important reason is the caves themselves would have been very cold and difficult to heat, especially in winter, and they were more likely used as temporary shelters or just while the tribe was hunting in the area.

What did stone age people wear?

In the early Stone Age people hadn’t worked out how to thatch roofs or weave fabric, so making their own clothes from farmed crops was not possible. Towards the later part of the age, flax was farmed in the northern hemisphere to make linen but this didn’t start to happen until close to the copper age. Animal skins would be the only choice for someone in the Stone Age, with leather clothing and furs being made into everything from boots to shirts. This wouldn’t be as hard to maintain as it may sound because not only does leather last a very long time, but the animals it would have come from were often huge like the Megalocerous above which could provide a full set of clothes for a family of four.

(A stone age leather shoe preserved in the ground for thousands of years)

What did people eat?

The answer depends entirely on the area of the world you are looking at, but in this example, I’ll use food from Stone Age Britain. Most of the food we take for granted today didn’t exist in Britain at the time and people survived mostly by hunting and gathering. Farming crops was a lot of work and very difficult when you only had stone to work with, and combined with the huge amount of wilderness with such a tiny population, wild food was abundant and varied. Deer, Boar, Beaver, game birds, and small animals were hunted when the tribe didn’t want to go after something big like a wooly rhino or cave bear. Fish was a big part of their diet because it provided a year-round food source, but plants mostly consisted of roots, berries, and nuts. Grain was gathered from the wild in small amounts during the beginning of the age, with evidence of wheat and barley being a priority crop on farms towards the later part of the age when populations grew.

What were their homes like?

In the early part of the age, they were always covered with animal skins to keep out the weather, with the supports made of branches. Towards the end of the age, people worked out how to thatch roofs using straw or reeds and how to weave sticks to make wattle walls covered in daub. Homes would have been very small and usually only consisted of a single room. There has recently been an archeological dig in Russia that has unearthed a large 25,000-year-old structure that appears to have been made using mammoth bones as the supports, a good example of how resourceful Stone Age people could be.

Was there only one stone age?

There is only one era in history called the Stone Age, but it is split into three major categories that reflect the advancement of the human race. It began with the Paleolithic period (Old Stone Age) which ran from 30,000 BC until 10,000 BC, then was followed by the Mesolithic period (Middle Stone Age) from 10,000 BC to 8,000 BC, and ended with the Neolithic period (New Stone Age) 8,000 BC until 3,500 BC.

How did they make fire?

There have been no artifacts recovered from the Stone Age that show the use of something like a bow drill or fire plow because the material would have long since been destroyed and wouldn’t be recognizable, but it is highly likely they weren’t able to make such things since they didn’t even know what pottery was at this point. The most likely answer is that someone worked out that hitting a stone with another stone produced a spark, and Flint produced the best sparks of all. Chipping flint sparks into Tinder would have been the most likely method used because the intricate carving techniques and knowledge of how to make and use some kind of contraption would probably have been unknown to them.