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.
Complaints of Khakheperraseneb
The Middle Kingdom was a period of reunification after Mentuhotep II’s defeat of the rival 10th dynasty of Herakleopolis that would last for about 400 years.[4] While the Old Kingdom could be defined by their large tombs and pyramids the Middle Kingdom holds no such trait and was more of a time of change.[5] The Middle Kingdom was a time of strong kings and military expansion into lower Nubia led by 12th dynasty kings Senusret I and Senusret III.[6] The Middle Kingdom was a period of powerful kings and military might. Going in to the 13th dynasty there were many kings and the throne was passed along from ruler to ruler, but this “image of chaos is contradicted, however, by the contemporary documentation on court officials.[7]” The Middle Kingdom was by many accounts a stable period of powerful kings up until the 13th dynasty that would eventually transition in to the Second Intermediate Period.