Middle Stone Age
The Middle Stone Age (or MSA) was a period of African prehistory between the Early Stone Age and the Later Stone Age. It is generally considered to have begun around 280,000 years ago and ended around 50–25,000 years ago. The beginnings of particular MSA stone tools have their origins as far back as 550–500,000 years ago and as such some researchers consider this to be the beginnings of the MSA. The MSA is often mistakenly understood to be synonymous with the Middle Paleolithic of Europe, especially due to their roughly contemporaneous time span, however, the Middle Paleolithic of Europe represents an entirely different hominin population, "Homo neanderthalensis", than the MSA of Africa, which did not have Neanderthal populations. Additionally, current archaeological research in Africa has yielded much evidence to suggest that modern human behavior and cognition was beginning to develop much earlier in Africa during the MSA than it was in Europe during the Middle Paleolithic. The MSA is associated with both anatomically modern humans ("Homo sapiens") as well as archaic "Homo sapiens", sometimes referred to as "Homo helmei". Early physical evidence comes from the Gademotta Formation in Ethiopia, the Kapthurin Formation in Kenya and Kathu Pan in South Africa.
Hunsrück
The oldest witnesses from the New Stone Age are dated to no later than the Middle Neolithic, relics of the so-called Rössen culture (whose sites include Biebernheim and Reckershausen). The majority of finds, especially of stone axes date, however, to the Late Neolithic and belong to the Michelsberg culture. Up to 2007, numerous oval stone axes were discovered, especially in the Fore-Hunsrück (Morshausen, Beulich and Macken). Likewise, finds of flint arrowheads point to a Late Neolithic ("inter alia" at Bell) and very Late Neolithic (Hirzenach) settlement. Other finds from the Bronze Age prove that there was continual settlement (especially documented by graves and grave goods). A greater process of settlement took place in the Early Iron Age (Hallstatt period) with the Laufeld culture and in the La Tène period (5th– 1st century B.C.) with the Hunsrück-Eifel culture, which can be linked with the Celts. This is indicated, e.g. by the coach grave of Bell, the Waldalgesheim prince's grave, the circular rampart of Otzenhausen, the Pfalzfeld flame column, the upland settlement of Altburg in the Hahnenbach valley and the numerous fields of tumuli. At that time, the Hunsrück was the tribal area of the Treveri.