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.
Black Forest
Chronology: Stone Age mining of haematite (as red pigment) near Sulzburg. By the 5th and 6th centuries B.C. iron ore was being mined by the Celts in the Northern Black Forest (for example in Neuenbürg). Especially in the Middle Black Forest, but also in the south (for example in the Münster valley) ore mining was already probably taking place in Roman times (mining of silver and lead ore; evidence of this at Sulzburg and possibly Badenweiler). Until the High Middle Ages the High Black Forest was practically unsettled. In the course of inland colonisation in the Late High Middle Ages even the highlands were cultivated by settlers from the abbeys (St. Peter's, St. Märgen's). In the Late High Middle Ages (from about 1100) mining experienced another boom, especially around Todtnau, in the Münster and Suggen valleys and, later, on the Schauinsland too. It is believed that around 800–1,000 miners lived and worked in the Münster valley until the end of the Middle Ages. After the Plague, which afflicted the valley in 1516, the German Peasants' War (1524–26) and the Thirty Years' War, mining in the region declined until just a few pits remained.