When was the Middle Stone Age?
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.
Outline of the Middle Ages
Medieval chronological timeline
Nordic Stone Age
The Nordic Stone Age refers to the Stone Age of Scandinavia. During the Weichselian glaciation, almost all of Scandinavia was buried beneath a thick permanent ice cover and the Stone Age came rather late to this region. As the climate slowly warmed up at the end of the ice age, nomadic hunters from central Europe sporadically visited the region, but it was not until around 12,000 BCE before permanent, but nomadic, habitation took root.
Stone Age
This period is best known as the era during which the Neanderthals lived in Europe and the Near East (c. 300,000–28,000 years ago). Their technology is mainly the Mousterian, but Neanderthal physical characteristics have been found also in ambiguous association with the more recent Châtelperronian archeological culture in Western Europe and several local industries like the Szeletian in Eastern Europe/Eurasia. There is no evidence for Neanderthals in Africa, Australia or the Americas.
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.
Iron Age Europe
In Central Europe, the Iron Age is generally divided in the early Iron Age Hallstatt culture (HaC and D, 800–450) and the late Iron Age La Tène culture (beginning in 450 BC). The transition from bronze to iron in Central Europe is exemplified in the great cemetery, discovered in 1846, of Hallstatt, near Gmunden, where the forms of the implements and weapons of the later part of the Bronze Age are imitated in iron. In the Swiss or La Tène group of implements and weapons, the forms are new and the transition complete.
Middle Stone Age
There have been two migration events out of Africa, the first was the expansion of "H. erectus" into Eurasia approximately 1.9 to 1.7 million years ago, and the second, by "H. sapiens" began during the MSA by 80 – 50 ka MSA out of Africa to Asia, Australia and Europe. Perhaps only in small numbers initially, but by 30 ka they had replaced Neanderthals and "H. erectus". Each of these migrations represent the increased flexibility of the genus "Homo" to survive in widely varied climates. Based on the measurement of a large number of human skulls a recent study supports a central/southern African origin for "Homo sapiens" as this region shows the highest intra-population diversity in phenotypic measurements. Genetic data supports this conclusion. However, there is genetic evidence to suggest that dispersal out of Africa began in eastern Africa. Sites such as the Omo Kibish Formation, the Herto Member of the Bouri Formation, and Mumba Cave contain fossil evidence to support this conclusion as well.
1000
The year falls well into the period of Old World history known as the Middle Ages; in Europe, it is sometimes and by convention considered the boundary date between the Early Middle Ages and the High Middle Ages.
The Muslim world was in its Golden Age. 
China was in its Song dynasty, Japan was in its classical Heian period.
India was divided into a number of lesser empires, such as the Rashtrakuta Dynasty, Pala Empire (Kamboja Pala dynasty; Mahipala), Chola dynasty (Raja Raja Chola I), Yadava dynasty, etc.
Sub-Saharan Africa was still in the prehistoric period, although Arab slave trade was beginning to be an important factor in the formation of the Sahelian kingdoms.
The pre-Columbian New World was in a time of general transition in many regions. Wari and Tiwanaku cultures receded in power and influence while Chachapoya and Chimú cultures rose toward florescence in South America. In Mesoamerica, the Maya Terminal Classic period saw the decline of many grand polities of the Petén like Palenque and Tikal yet a renewed vigor and greater construction phases of sites in the Yucatán region like Chichén Itzá and Uxmal. Mitla, with Mixtec influence, became the more important site of the Zapotec, overshadowing the waning Monte Albán. Cholula flourished in central Mexico, as did Tula, the center of Toltec culture.
Later Stone Age
The Later Stone Age (LSA) is a period in African prehistory that follows the Middle Stone Age.
British Museum
Stone Age (c. 3.4 million years BC – c. 2000 BC)
Stone Age
The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (from Greek: παλαιός, "palaios", "old"; and λίθος, "lithos", "stone" lit. "old stone", coined by archaeologist John Lubbock and published in 1865) is the earliest division of the Stone Age. It covers the greatest portion of humanity's time (roughly 99% of "human technological history", where "human" and "humanity" are interpreted to mean the genus "Homo"), extending from 2.5 or 2.6 million years ago, with the first documented use of stone tools by hominans such as "Homo habilis", to the end of the Pleistocene around 10,000 BCE. The Paleolithic era ended with the Mesolithic, or in areas with an early neolithisation, the Epipaleolithic.
Archaeology of Northern Europe
The Pre-Roman Iron Age (5th/4th–1st centuries BCE) was the earliest part of the Iron Age in Scandinavia and North European Plain.
Succeeding the Nordic Bronze Age, the Iron Age developed in contact with the 
Hallstatt culture in Central Europe.
Archaeologists first made the decision to divide the Iron Age of Northern Europe into distinct pre-Roman and Roman Iron Ages after Emil Vedel unearthed a number of Iron Age artifacts in 1866 on the island of Bornholm. They did not exhibit the same permeating Roman influence seen in most other artifacts from the early centuries CE, indicating that parts of northern Europe had not yet come into contact with the Romans at the beginning of the Iron Age.
Border Cave
There was unusual stratigraphic and radiometric control at Border Cave, and these data indicate that Border Cave was not always inhabited. Border cave was occupied at different points in time, and each occupancy modified the sediment at Border Cave. One particular sedimentary sequence of interest was the early age of the Middle Stone Age at about 95,000 B.P., which was originally believed to align with the Upper Paleolithic. Instead, the Middle Stone Age at Border Cave was found to extend to the beginning of the Late Interglacial. A number of sedimentary sequences on the interior and the coast, including the Klasies River Mouth site in the southern Cape, the Bushman Rock Shelter, and Florisbad, support this sedimentary pattern presented at Border Cave. Additionally, a late Middle Pleistocene age for the earliest Middle Stone Age follows the uranium-series date of 174,000 B.P.
Stone Age
The Later Stone Age (LSA, sometimes also called the Late Stone Age) refers to a period in African prehistory. Its beginnings are roughly contemporaneous with the European Upper Paleolithic. It lasts until historical times and this includes cultures corresponding to Mesolithic and Neolithic in other regions.
Middle Triassic
Formerly the middle series in the Triassic was also known as Muschelkalk. This name is now only used for a specific unit of rock strata with approximately Middle Triassic age, found in western Europe.
History of the world
With civilizations flourishing, ancient history ("Antiquity," including the Classical Age, up to about 500 CE) saw the rise and fall of empires. Post-classical history (the "Middle Ages," c. 500–1500 CE ) witnessed the rise of Christianity, the Islamic Golden Age (c. 750 CE – c. 1258 CE), and the early Italian Renaissance (from around 1300 CE). The mid-15th-century invention of modern printing, employing movable type, revolutionized communication and facilitated ever wider dissemination of information, helping end the Middle Ages and ushering in the Scientific Revolution. The Early Modern Period, sometimes referred to as the "European Age", from about 1500 to 1800, included the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Discovery. By the 18th century, the accumulation of knowledge and technology had reached a critical mass that brought about the Industrial Revolution and began the Late Modern Period, which started around 1800 and has continued through the present.
Middle Pleistocene
The Middle Pleistocene is a subdivision of the Pleistocene Epoch, from 781,000 to 126,000 years ago (781–126 ka). It is preceded by the Calabrian stage, beginning with the Brunhes–Matuyama reversal, and succeeded by the Tarantian stage (equivalent ot the Late or Upper Pleistocene), taken as beginning with the last interglacial (MIS 5).
Subatlantic
After this relatively short cool interlude the climate ameliorated again and reached between 800 and 1200 almost the values of the Roman Warm Period (used temperature proxies are sediments in the North Atlantic). This warming happened during the High Middle Ages wherefore this event is known as "Medieval Global Warming" or the Medieval Warm Period. This warmer climate peaked around 850 AD and 1050 AD, and raised the tree line in Scandinavia and in Russia by 100 to 140 meters; it enabled the Vikings to settle in Iceland and Greenland. During this period the Crusades took place and the Byzantine Empire was eventually pushed back by the rise of the Ottoman Empire.
History of construction
The Middle Ages of Europe span from the 5th to 15th centuries AD from the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the Renaissance and is divided into Pre-Romanesque and Romanesque periods.
Tumulus culture
The Tumulus culture () dominated Central Europe during the Middle Bronze Age (c. 1600 to 1200 BC).
Medieval jewelry
The Middle Ages was a period that spanned approximately 1000 years and is normally restricted to Europe and the Byzantine Empire. The material remains we have from that time, including jewelry, can vary greatly depending on the place and time of their creation, especially as Christianity discouraged the burial of jewellery as grave goods, except for royalty and important clerics, who were often buried in their best clothes and wearing jewels. The main material used for jewellery design in antiquity and leading into the Middle Ages was gold. Many different techniques were used to create working surfaces and add decoration to those surfaces to produce the jewellery, including soldering, plating and gilding, repoussé, chasing, inlay, enamelling, filigree and granulation, stamping, striking and casting. Major stylistic phases include barbarian, Byzantine, Carolingian and Ottonian, Viking, and the Late Middle Ages, when Western European styles became relatively similar.
Iron Age
The duration of the Iron Age varies depending on the region under consideration. It is defined by archaeological convention, and the mere presence of cast or wrought iron is not sufficient to represent an Iron Age culture; rather, the term "Iron Age" implies that the production of carbon steel has been perfected to the point where mass production of tools and weapons superior to their bronze equivalents become possible.
In the Ancient Near East, this transition takes place in the wake of the so-called Bronze Age collapse, in the 12th century BC. The technology soon spreads throughout the Mediterranean region and to South Asia.
Its further spread to Central Asia, Eastern and Central Europe is somewhat delayed, and Northern Europe is reached still later, by about 500 BC.
Three-age system
Sir John Lubbock's use of the terms Palaeolithic ("Old Stone Age") and Neolithic ("New Stone Age") were immediately popular. They were applied, however, in two different senses: geologic and anthropologic. In 1867-1868 Ernst Haeckel in 20 public lectures in Jena, entitled "General Morphology", to be published in 1870, referred to the Archaeolithic, the Palaeolithic, the Mesolithic and the Caenolithic as periods in geologic history. He could only have got these terms from Hodder Westropp, who took Palaeolithic from Lubbock, invented Mesolithic ("Middle Stone Age") and Caenolithic instead of Lubbock's Neolithic. None of these terms appear anywhere, including the writings of Haeckel, before 1865. Haeckel's use was innovative.
Israel Finkelstein
Following the results of the excavations at Megiddo, Finkelstein argued that the material culture of the Iron I in the northern valleys continues that of the Late Bronze Age. In other words, the collapse of the Late Bronze city-states under Egyptian domination in the late 12th century BCE was followed by revival of some of the same centers and rise of others in the Iron I. He termed this phenomenon "New Canaan". Accordingly, the major break in the material culture of Canaan took place at the end of the Iron I in the 10th century BCE rather than the end of the Late Bronze Age. Finkelstein associated the violent destruction of the revived city-states with the expansion of the highlanders (early Israelites). He suggested that memories of the turmoil in the lowlands in the late Iron I can be found in northern traditions regarding skirmishes with Canaanite cities which appear in the heroic stories in the Book of Judges.
Early Middle Ages
The Early Middle Ages or Early Medieval Period, sometimes referred to as the Dark Ages, are typically regarded as lasting from the 5th or 6th century to the 10th century CE. They marked the start of the Middle Ages of European history. The term "Late Antiquity" is used to emphasize elements of continuity with the Roman Empire, while "Early Middle Ages" is used to emphasize developments characteristic of the earlier medieval period. As such it overlaps with Late Antiquity, following the decline of the Western Roman Empire, and precedes the High Middle Ages (c. 10th to 13th centuries).
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history: classical civilisation, or Antiquity; the Middle Ages; and the Modern Period. The "Middle Ages" first appears in Latin in 1469 as "media tempestas" or "middle season". In early usage, there were many variants, including "medium aevum", or "middle age", first recorded in 1604, and "media saecula", or "middle ages", first recorded in 1625. The alternative term "medieval" (or occasionally "mediaeval" or "mediæval") derives from "medium aevum".
Historical climatology
The Medieval Warm Period was a time of warm weather between about AD 800–1300, during the European Medieval period.
Archaeological evidence supports studies of the Norse sagas which describe the settlement of Greenland in the 9th century AD of land now quite unsuitable for cultivation. For example, excavations at one settlement site have shown the presence of birch trees during the early Viking period. The same period records the discovery of an area called Vinland, probably in North America, which may also have been warmer than at present, judging by the alleged presence of grape vines. The interlude is known as the Medieval Warm Period.
Walcott, Norfolk
Little activity is noted in the vicinity during the Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age Era (10,000 – 5000 BC) with few artefacts recorded.
History of shamanism
In a excavation of a Mesolithic archaeological site, Star Carr located in North Yorkshire, England, evidence of shamanism can be found in the archaeological findings. The Mesolithic period or otherwise known as the Middle Stone Age dates between 10,000 BC and 4000 BC. At the Star Carr excavation site they found twenty one adult red deer skull parts where there was evidence that these skull parts was deliberately carved and shaped to make it possible for them to be worn on the head of humans with archaeologists suggesting these were used on special occasions or for shamanic practices. This was suggested due to the fact that a characteristic part of shamanic rituals was the headdress's seen on shamans as part of the ceremonial costume where is was believed that headdresses had the effect of increasing concentration in shamans when they are in meditation or performing spiritual ceremonies. To this day Star Carr plays a vital role in understanding the history of shamanism especially from a western point of view due to limited historical records as they have not been able to be preserved throughout time.
Middle Ages
During the High Middle Ages, which began after 1000, the population of Europe increased greatly as technological and agricultural innovations allowed trade to flourish and the Medieval Warm Period climate change allowed crop yields to increase. Manorialism, the organisation of peasants into villages that owed rent and labour services to the nobles, and feudalism, the political structure whereby knights and lower-status nobles owed military service to their overlords in return for the right to rent from lands and manors, were two of the ways society was organised in the High Middle Ages. The Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation-states, reducing crime and violence but making the ideal of a unified Christendom more distant. Intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. The theology of Thomas Aquinas, the paintings of Giotto, the poetry of Dante and Chaucer, the travels of Marco Polo, and the Gothic architecture of cathedrals such as Chartres are among the outstanding achievements toward the end of this period and into the Late Middle Ages.
Stone Age
It was early realized that the threefold division of culture into Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages adopted in the nineteenth century for Europe had no validity in Africa outside the Nile valley.
Prehistoric technology
The Stone Age is a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used in the manufacture of implements with a sharp edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted roughly 2.5 million years, from the time of early hominids to "Homo sapiens" in the later Pleistocene era, and largely ended between 6000 and 2000 BCE with the advent of metalworking.
High Middle Ages
The Crisis of the Late Middle Ages began at the start of the 14th century and marked the end of the period.
Israel Finkelstein
According to Finkelstein's Low Chronology, the Iron Age I lasted until the middle of the 10th century BCE, while the Iron IIA is dated between the middle of the 10th century and ca. 800 BCE, if not slightly later. This means that the Megiddo palaces and other features which had traditionally been attributed to the time of King Solomon – features which date to the late Iron IIA – should indeed be associated with the endeavors of the Omride Dynasty in the first half of the 9th century BCE. A big debate ensued. Starting in the late 1990s, the focus of the discussion shifted to the interpretation of radiocarbon determinations for organic samples from key sites, such as Tel Rehov and Megiddo. All in all, the radiocarbon results put the Iron I/IIA transition ca. the middle of the 10th century (rather than 1000 BCE as had traditionally been proposed), and the Iron IIA/B transition in the early days of the 8th century (rather than ca. 925 BCE).
Neolithic
The Neolithic (, also known as the "New Stone Age"), the final division of the Stone Age, began about 12,000 years ago when the first development of farming appeared in the Epipalaeolithic Near East, and later in other parts of the world. 
The division lasted until the transitional period of the Chalcolithic from about 6,500 years ago (4500 BC), marked by the development of metallurgy, leading up to the Bronze Age and Iron Age.
In Northern Europe, the Neolithic lasted until about 1700 BC, while in China it extended until 1200 BC.
Other parts of the world (the New World) remained in the Neolithic stage of development until European contact.
Timeline of the Middle Ages
The following is a timeline of the major events during the period spanning the 5th to 15th centuries, loosely corresponding to the Old World Middle Ages, intermediate between Late Antiquity and the Early modern period.
Stone Age
Some scenes of the Mesolithic, however, can be typed and therefore, judging from their various modifications, are fairly clear. One of these is the battle scene between organized bands of archers. For example, "the marching Warriors", a rock painting at Cingle de la Mola, Castellón in Spain, dated to about 7,000–4,000 BCE, depicts about 50 bowmen in two groups marching or running in step toward each other, each man carrying a bow in one hand and a fistful of arrows in the other. A file of five men leads one band, one of whom is a figure with a "high crowned hat".
Golden Age
The earliest attested reference to the European myth of the Ages of Man 500 BCE–350 BCE appears in the late 6th century BCE works of the Greek poet Hesiod's "Works and Days" (109–126). Hesiod, a deteriorationist, identifies the Golden Age, the Silver Age, the Bronze Age, the Heroic Age, and the Iron Age. With the exception of the Heroic Age, each succeeding age was worse than the one that went before. Hesiod maintains that during the Golden Age, before the invention of the arts, the earth produced food in such abundance that there was no need for agriculture:
Bronze Age
The late Bronze Age Urnfield culture (1300–700 BC) is characterized by cremation burials. It includes the Lusatian culture in eastern Germany and Poland (1300–500 BC) that continues into the Iron Age. The Central European Bronze Age is followed by the Iron Age Hallstatt culture (700–450 BC).
South Asian Stone Age
In South India the Neolithic began by 3000 BCE and lasted until around 1400 BCE. South Indian Neolithic is characterized by Ashmounds since 2500 BCE in the Andhra-Karnataka region that expanded later into Tamil Nadu. Comparative excavations carried out in Adichanallur in the Thirunelveli District and in Northern India have provided evidence of a southward migration of the Megalithic culture. The earliest clear evidence of the presence of the megalithic urn burials are those dating from around 1000 BCE, which have been discovered at various places in Tamil Nadu, notably at Adichanallur, 24 kilometers from Tirunelveli, where archaeologists from the Archaeological Survey of India unearthed 12 urns containing human skulls, skeletons and bones, husks, grains of charred rice and Neolithic celts, confirming the presence of the Neolithic period 2800 years ago. Archaeologists have made plans to return to Adhichanallur as a source of new knowledge in the future.
Makuleke
The Middle Stone age is followed in this region by the Latest Stone Age and most places have evidence of the micro-lithic cultures that characterize this hunter-gather lifestyle of modern humans. The Latest Stone Age merges with the culture of Iron-aged Bantu speaking pastoralists who moved into the region around 1500 to 2000 years ago. Rock art from this period is abundant in the region, particularly South of the Luvuvhu, but good examples have recently been discovered in the Pafuri region itself.
Middle Assyrian
Middle Assyrian refers to the Middle Assyrian period of the Ancient Near East, ca. 16th to 10th centuries BC (the Late Bronze Age). It may refer to:
Stone Age
The Early Stone Age in Africa is not to be identified with "Old Stone Age", a translation of Paleolithic, or with Paleolithic, or with the "Earlier Stone Age" that originally meant what became the Paleolithic and Mesolithic. In the initial decades of its definition by the Pan-African Congress of Prehistory, it was parallel in Africa to the Upper and Middle Paleolithic. However, since then Radiocarbon dating has shown that the Middle Stone Age is in fact contemporaneous with the Middle Paleolithic. The Early Stone Age therefore is contemporaneous with the Lower Paleolithic and happens to include the same main technologies, Oldowan and Acheulean, which produced Mode 1 and Mode 2 stone tools respectively. A distinct regional term is warranted, however, by the location and chronology of the sites and the exact typology.
Christianity in the Middle Ages
Christianity in the Middle Ages covers the history of Christianity from the Fall of the Western Roman Empire () until the Fall of Constantinople (1453), which is usually taken to make the end of the Middle Ages in the History of Europe.
Middle Bronze Age migrations (Ancient Near East)
Various and currently outdated theories have been proposed that postulate waves of migration during the Middle Bronze Age in the Ancient Near East. While the turmoils that separate the Late Bronze Age from the Early Iron Age are well documented (see Bronze Age collapse), theories of migration during the Middle Bronze Age (20th century BCE) have little direct support. Some suggestions connect these alleged "mass migrations" with the coming of the Greeks, moving from their former settlements into the southern and central Balkans displacing the former pre-Greek inhabitants of Greece. Others make reference to a supposed migration of the Hittites to their earliest known home in Kültepe during the same period.
Howieson's Poort Shelter
Howieson’s Poort Shelter is a small rock shelter in South Africa containing the archaeological site from which the Howiesons Poort period in the Middle Stone Age gets its name. This period lasted around 5,000 years, between roughly 65,800 BP and 59,500 BP.
This period is important as it, together with the Stillbay period 7,000 years earlier, provides the first evidence of human symbolism and technological skills that were later to appear in the Upper Paleolithic.
Middle Jurassic
The Middle Jurassic is the second epoch of the Jurassic Period. It lasted from about 174 to 163 million years ago. 
Fossil-bearing rocks from the Middle Jurassic are relatively rare, but some important formations include the Forest Marble Formation in England, the Kilmaluag Formation in Scotland, the Daohugou Beds in China, Itat Formation in Russia, and the Isalo III Formation of western Madagascar.
Later Stone Age
The LSA follows the Middle Stone Age and begins about 50,000 years ago. The LSA is characterized by a wider variety in stone artifacts than in the previous MSA period. These artifacts vary with time and location, unlike Middle Stone Age technology which appeared to have been relatively unchanged for several hundreds of thousands of years. LSA technology is also characterized by the use of bone tools. The LSA was associated with modern human behavior, but this view was modified after discoveries in MSA sites such as Blombos Cave and Pinnacle Point.
History of ancient Egypt
The Middle Kingdom is the period in the history of ancient Egypt stretching from the 39th regnal year of Mentuhotep II of the Eleventh Dynasty to the end of the Thirteenth Dynasty, roughly between 2030 and 1650 BC.
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages (or medieval period) lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery. The Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history: classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early, High, and Late Middle Ages.
Border Cave
The study of bones from larger mammals provides knowledge about the features, and sequence at Border Cave during the Middle Stone Age and early Late Stone Age (c. 125,000 to 35,000 B.P.). Studies were conducted to understand people in the Middle Stone Age and Early Late Stone Age through animal bones and vegetation that they brought back to the site. Additionally, lithostratigraphic analysis of Border Cave provides significant information about when Border Cave was inhabited.
Mycenaean Greece
The Bronze Age in mainland Greece is generally termed as the "Helladic period" by modern archaeologists, after "Hellas", the Greek name for Greece. This period is divided into three subperiods: The Early Helladic (EH) period (c. 2900–2000 BC) was a time of prosperity with the use of metals and a growth in technology, economy and social organization. The Middle Helladic (MH) period (c. 2000–1650 BC) faced a slower pace of development, as well as the evolution of megaron-type dwellings and cist grave burials. Finally, the Late Helladic (LH) period (c. 1650–1050 BC) roughly coincides with Mycenaean Greece.
Iron Age
In South Asia, the Iron Age is taken to begin with the ironworking Painted Gray Ware culture and to end with the reign of Ashoka (3rd century BC). The use of the term "Iron Age" in the archaeology of South, East and Southeast Asia is more recent, and less common, than for western Eurasia; at least in China prehistory had ended before iron-working arrived, so the term is infrequently used. The Sahel (Sudan region) and Sub-Saharan Africa are outside of the three-age system, there being no Bronze Age, but the term "Iron Age" is sometimes used in reference to early cultures practicing ironworking such as the Nok culture of Nigeria.
Increasingly the Iron Age in Europe is being seen as a part of the Bronze Age collapse in the ancient Near East, in ancient India (with the post-Rigvedic Vedic civilization), ancient Iran, and ancient Greece (with the Greek Dark Ages). In other regions of Europe the Iron Age began in the 8th century BC in Central Europe and the 6th century BC in Northern Europe. The Near Eastern Iron Age is divided into two subsections, Iron I and Iron II. Iron I (1200–1000 BC) illustrates both continuity and discontinuity with the previous Late Bronze Age. There is no definitive cultural break between the 13th and 12th centuries BC throughout the entire region, although certain new features in the hill country, Transjordan and coastal region may suggest the appearance of the Aramaean and Sea People groups. There is evidence, however, of strong continuity with Bronze Age culture, although as one moves later into Iron I the culture begins to diverge more significantly from that of the late 2nd millennium.
Medievalism
In the 1330s, Petrarch expressed the view that European culture had stagnated and drifted into what he called the ""Dark Ages"", since the fall of Rome in the fifth century, owing to among other things, the loss of many classical Latin texts and to the corruption of the language in contemporary discourse. Scholars of the Renaissance believed that they lived in a new age that broke free of the decline described by Petrarch. Historians Leonardo Bruni and Flavio Biondo developed a three tier outline of history composed of Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. The Latin term "media tempestas" (middle time) first appears in 1469. The term "medium aevum" (Middle Ages) is first recorded in 1604. "Medieval" first appears in the nineteenth century and is an Anglicised form of "medium aevum".
Outline of the Middle Ages
Middle Ages in history
Bronze Age India
South India, by contrast, remains in the Mesolithic stage until about 2500 BCE. 
In the 2nd millennium BCE, there may have been cultural contact between North and South India, even though South India skips a Bronze Age proper and enters the Iron Age from the Chalcolithic stage directly. In February 2006, a school teacher in the village of Sembian-Kandiyur in Tamil Nadu discovered a stone celt with an inscription estimated to be up to 3,500 years old.
Early history of South Africa
The Late Stone Age in South Africa corresponds to the later phase of the Sangoan, beginning about 50,000 years ago, followed by Lupemban culture, from about 30,000 to 12,000 years ago (also known as "Second Intermediate", between Middle and Late Stone Age.
The term Late Stone Age was introduced for South Africa in 1929 by John Hilary Goodwin and C. van Riet Lowe
The Lupemban is followed by the so-called Albany industry (12,000 to 9,000 years ago). Finally, the time from 9,000 to 2,000 years ago (7th to 1st millennia BC) is accounted for by the so-called "Wilton inventory" microliths.
Beginning around 2,000 years ago, there are trances of pastoralism. This reflects the arrival of the Khoikhoi herders; from this time, hunting and gathering gradually gave way to herding as the dominant economic activity. The arrival of livestock is thought to have introduced concepts of personal wealth and property-ownership as well as the establishemt of a political structure of chiefdoms.
High Middle Ages
The Medieval Warm Period, the period from 10th century to about the 14th century in Europe, was a relatively warm and gentle interval ended by the generally colder Little Ice Age. Farmers grew wheat well north into Scandinavia, and wine grapes in northern England, although the maximum expansion of vineyards appears to occur within the Little Ice Age period. During this time, a high demand for wine and steady volume of alcohol consumption inspired a viticulture revolution of progress. This protection from famine allowed Europe's population to increase, despite the famine in 1315 that killed 1.5 million people. This increased population contributed to the founding of new towns and an increase in industrial and economic activity during the period. They also established trade and a comprehensive production of alcohol. Food production also increased during this time as new ways of farming were introduced, including the use of a heavier plow, horses instead of oxen, and a three-field system that allowed the cultivation of a greater variety of crops than the earlier two-field system—notably legumes, the growth of which prevented the depletion of important nitrogen from the soil.
Archaeology of Northern Europe
Out of the Late Bronze Age Urnfield culture of the 12th century BCE developed the Early Iron Age Hallstatt culture of Central Europe from the eighth to sixth centuries BCE, which was followed by the La Tène culture of Central Europe (450 BCE to 1st century BCE). Albeit the metal iron came into wider use by metalsmiths in the Mediterranean as far back as 1300 BCE due to the Late Bronze Age collapse, the Pre-Roman Iron Age of Northern Europe started only as early as the 5th/4th to the 1st century BCE.
Middle-Danube Urnfield culture
The Middle-Danube Urnfield culture (c. 1300 BC – 800 BC) was a late Bronze Age culture of the middle Danube region.
Middle Stone Age
Archaeological evidence from eastern Africa extending from the Rift Valley from Ethiopia to northern Tanzania represents the largest archaeological evidence of the shift from the Late Acheulian to the Middle Stone Age tool technologies. This transition is characterized by stratigraphic layering of Acheulian stone tools, a bifacial handaxe technology, underneath and even contemporaneous with MSA technologies, such as Levallois tools, flakes, flaked tools, pointed flakes, smaller bifaces that are projectile in form, and, on rare occasions, hafted tools. Evidence of the gradual displacement of Acheulian by MSA technologies is further supported by this layering and contemporaneous placement, as well as by the earliest appearance of MSA technologies at Gademotta and the latest Acheulian technologies at the Bouri Formation of Ethiopia, dated to 154 to 160 kya. This suggests a possible overlap of 100-150 thousand years.
Medieval studies
The term 'Middle Ages' first began to be common in English-language history-writing in the early nineteenth century. Henry Hallam's 1818 "View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages" has been seen as a key stage in the promotion of the term, along with Ruskin's 1853 "Lectures on Architecture". The term "medievalist" was, correspondingly, coined by English-speakers in the mid-nineteenth century.
Bronze Age Europe
In Great Britain, the Bronze Age is considered to have been the period from around 2100 to 700 BC. Immigration brought new people to the islands from the continent. Recent tooth enamel isotope research on bodies found in early Bronze Age graves around Stonehenge indicate that at least some of the immigrants came from the area of modern Switzerland. The Beaker people displayed different behaviors from the earlier Neolithic people and cultural change was significant. Integration is thought to have been peaceful as many of the early henge sites were seemingly adopted by the newcomers. The rich Wessex culture developed in southern Britain at this time. Additionally, the climate was deteriorating; where once the weather was warm and dry it became much wetter as the Bronze Age continued, forcing the population away from easily defended sites in the hills and into the fertile valleys. Large livestock ranches developed in the lowlands which appear to have contributed to economic growth and inspired increasing forest clearances. The Deverel-Rimbury culture began to emerge in the second half of the 'Middle Bronze Age' (c. 1400–1100 BC) to exploit these conditions. Cornwall was a major source of tin for much of western Europe and copper was extracted from sites such as the Great Orme mine in northern Wales. Social groups appear to have been tribal but with growing complexity and hierarchies becoming apparent. 
Also, the burial of dead (which until this period had usually been communal) became more individual. For example, whereas in the Neolithic a large chambered cairn or long barrow was used to house the dead, the 'Early Bronze Age' saw people buried in individual barrows (also commonly known and marked on modern British Ordnance Survey maps as Tumuli), or sometimes in cists covered with cairns.
Stone Age
From 50,000 to 10,000 years ago in Europe, the Upper Paleolithic ends with the end of the Pleistocene and onset of the Holocene era (the end of the last ice age). Modern humans spread out further across the Earth during the period known as the Upper Paleolithic.
2nd millennium BC
The 2nd millennium BC spanned the years 2000 through 1001 BC. 
In the Ancient Near East, it marks the transition from the Middle to the Late Bronze Age.
The Ancient Near Eastern cultures are well within the historical era:
The first half of the millennium is dominated by the Middle Kingdom of Egypt and Babylonia. The alphabet develops. 
At the center of the millennium, a new order emerges with Minoan Greek dominance of the Aegean and the rise of the Hittite Empire. The end of the millennium sees the Bronze Age collapse and the transition to the Iron Age.
The Third Wave (Toffler book)
The transition from the earlier hunter-gatherer societies to the agrarian and agricultural societies is also known as the Neolithic Revolution. This coincides with the transition from the Mesolithic era to the Neolithic era (respectively, the Middle and Late Stone Age). The transition from the Paleolithic to the Mesolithic (Early to Middle Stone Age), in turn, largely coincides with the emergence of the modern Homo sapiens from earlier, related archaic human species.
Mesolithic
In Old World archaeology, Mesolithic (Greek: μέσος, "mesos" "middle"; λίθος, "lithos" "stone") is the period between 
the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic is often used synonymously, especially for outside northern Europe, and for the corresponding period in the Levant and Caucasus.
The Mesolithic has different time spans in different parts of Eurasia. 
It refers to the final period of hunter-gatherer cultures in Europe and Western Asia, between the end of the Last Glacial Maximum and the Neolithic Revolution. In Europe it spans roughly 15,000 to 5,000 BP; in Southwest Asia (the Epipalaeolithic Near East) roughly 20,000 to 8,000 BP.
The term is less used of areas further east, and not at all beyond Eurasia and North Africa.
Crisis of the Late Middle Ages
A series of famines and plagues, beginning with the Great Famine of 1315–17 and especially the Black Death of 1347-1351, reduced the population perhaps by half or more as the Medieval Warm Period came to a close and the first century of the Little Ice Age began. It took 150 years for the European population to regain the levels of 1300.
Middle Stone Age
There have been a number of theories proposed regarding the development of modern human behavior, but in recent years the mosaic approach has been the most favored perspective in regards to the MSA, especially when taken in consideration with the archaeological evidence. Some scholars including Klein have argued for discontinuity, while others including McBrearty and Brooks have argued that cognitive advances can be detected in the MSA and that the origin of our species is linked with the appearance of Middle Stone Age technology at 250–300 ka.
Middle Paleolithic
In addition to developing other advanced cultural traits such as religion and art, humans also first began to take part in long distance trade between groups for rare commodities (such as ochre, which was often used for religious purposes such as ritual) and raw materials during the Middle Paleolithic as early as 120,000 years ago. Inter-group trade may have appeared during the Middle Paleolithic because trade between bands would have helped ensure their survival by allowing them to exchange resources and commodities such as raw materials during times of relative scarcity (i.e., famine or drought).
Stone Age
After its adoption by the First Pan African Congress in 1947, the Three-Stage Chronology was amended by the Third Congress in 1955 to include a First Intermediate Period between Early and Middle, to encompass the Fauresmith and Sangoan technologies, and the Second Intermediate Period between Middle and Later, to encompass the Magosian technology and others. The chronologic basis for definition was entirely relative. With the arrival of scientific means of finding an absolute chronology, the two intermediates turned out to be will-of-the-wisps. They were in fact Middle and Lower Paleolithic. Fauresmith is now considered to be a facies of Acheulean, while Sangoan is a facies of Lupemban. Magosian is "an artificial mix of two different periods".
Stone Age
The period starting from the end of the last ice age, 10,000 years ago, to around 6,000 years ago was characterized by rising sea levels and a need to adapt to a changing environment and find new food sources. The development of Mode 5 (microlith) tools began in response to these changes. They were derived from the previous Paleolithic tools, hence the term Epipaleolithic, or were intermediate between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic, hence the term Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age), used for parts of Eurasia, but not outside it. The choice of a word depends on exact circumstances and the inclination of the archaeologists excavating the site. Microliths were used in the manufacture of more efficient composite tools, resulting in an intensification of hunting and fishing and with increasing social activity the development of more complex settlements, such as Lepenski Vir. Domestication of the dog as a hunting companion probably dates to this period.
Medieval archaeology
Medieval archaeology is the study of humankind through its material culture, specialising in the period of the European Middle Ages. At its broadest, the period stretches from the 5th to the 16th century and refers to post-Roman but pre-modern remains. The period covers the upheaval caused by the fall of the Roman Empire and cultures such as the Vikings, Saxons, and Franks. Archaeologists often specialise in studying either the Early Middle Ages (Migration Period) or the High Middle Ages and Late Middle Ages, although many projects and professionals move across these chronological boundaries. The rich nature of the medieval written record has meant that archaeology has often been seen as the "handmaiden to history", especially in the later medieval period. Analysis of material culture may enrich or call into question written evidence from the medieval period and the two sources of evidence need to be used together. Medieval archaeology has examined the development of medieval settlements, particularly the development of medieval towns and castles. It has also contributed to understanding of the spread and development of Christian monasticism during the medieval period.
Iron Age
The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age system, preceded by the Stone Age (Neolithic) and the Bronze Age. It is an archaeological era in the prehistory and protohistory of Europe and the Ancient Near East, and by analogy also used of other parts of the Old World.
The three-age system was introduced in the first half of the 19th century for the archaeology of Europe in particular, and by the later 19th century expanded to the archaeology of the Ancient Near East. Its name harks back to the mythological "Ages of Man" of Hesiod. As an archaeological era it was first introduced for Scandinavia by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen in the 1830s. By the 1860s, it was embraced as a useful division of the "earliest history of mankind" in general and began to be applied in Assyriology. The development of the now-conventional periodization in the archaeology of the Ancient Near East was developed in the 1920s to 1930s.
As its name suggests, Iron Age technology is characterized by the production of tools and weaponry by ferrous metallurgy (ironworking), more specifically from carbon steel.
Prehistoric Cyprus
The Middle Bronze Age which followed the Early Bronze Age (1900–1600 BC) is a relatively short period and its earlier part is marked by peaceful development.
The Middle Bronze Age is known from several excavated settlements: Marki Alonia, Alambra Mouttes and Pyrgos Mavroraki. These give evidence of economy and architecture of the period.
From Alambra and Marki in central Cyprus we know that the houses were rectangular with many rooms, with lanes allowing people to move freely in the community. At the end of the Middle Bronze Age fortresses were built in various places, a clear indication of unrest, although its cause is uncertain.
The most important cemeteries are at Bellapais, Lapithos, Kalavasos and Deneia. An extensive collection of Bronze Age pottery can be seen on-line from the cemeteries at Deneia.
12th century BC
The 12th century BC is the period from 1200 to 1101 BC. The Late Bronze Age collapse in the ancient Near East and eastern Mediterranean is often considered to begin in this century.
Middle Stone Age
A series of innovations have been documented by 170–160,000 years ago at the site of Pinnacle Point 13B on the southern Cape coast of South Africa. This includes the oldest confirmed evidence for the utilization of ochre and marine resources in the form of shellfish exploitation for food. Based on his analysis of the MSA bovid assemblage at Klasies, Milo reports MSA people were formidable hunters and that their social behavior patterns approached those of modern humans. Deacon maintains that the management of plant food resources through deliberate burning of the veld to encourage the growth of plants with corms or tubers in the southern Cape during the Howiesons Poort (c. 70–55 ka) is indicative of modern human behavior. A family basis to foraging groups, color symbolism and the reciprocal exchange of artifacts and the formal organization of living space are, he suggests, further evidence for modernity in the MSA.
Jettenbach, Rhineland-Palatinate
Evidence of local inhabitants in and around Jettenbach includes almost every period back to the Stone Age. Of particular note is a settlement hub from the Middle Stone Age which was archaeologically surveyed and analysed over a several years. For centuries, Stone Age people camped along the ridge east of the “Witthau” forest. One archaeological find witnessing their presence, a small-bladed knife dates from the late Old Stone Age. At the same site, which was visited several times in the early 1990s, artefacts mainly from the Middle Stone Age were excavated. Only sporadic items were found to date from the New Stone Age.
Middle Stone Age
Early blades have been documented as far back as 550-500,000 years in the Kapthurin Formation in Kenya and Kathu Pan in South Africa. Backed pieces from the Twin Rivers and Kalambo Falls sites in Zambia, dated at sometime between 300 and 140,000 years, likewise indicate a suite of new behaviors. A high level of technical competence is also indicated for the c. 280 ka blades recovered from the Kapthurin Formation, Kenya.
Middle Stone Age
In southern Africa, we see the technocomplexes of Howiesons Poort and Stillbay, named after the sites at which they were first discovered. Several others have not been dated or have been dated unreliably; these include the Lupemban technocomplex of central Africa, the Bambatan in southeast Africa, 70-80ka, and the Aterian technocomplex of northern Africa, 160-90ka.
Ground stone
The adoption of ground stone technology is associated closely with the Neolithic, also called the New Stone Age. The Stone Age comes from the three-age system developed by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen. In the Levant ground stones appear in Mesolithic 2 (Natufian). In prehistoric Japan, ground stone tools appear during the Japanese Paleolithic, possibly predating adoption elsewhere in the Neolithic by 25,000 years.
History of England
The New Stone Age, or Neolithic era, began with the introduction of farming, ultimately from the Middle East, around 4000 BC. It is not known whether this was caused by a substantial folk movement or native adoption of foreign practices or both. People began to lead a more settled lifestyle. Monumental collective tombs were built for the dead in the form of chambered cairns and long barrows. Towards the end of the period, other kinds of monumental stone alignments begin to appear, such as Stonehenge; their cosmic alignments show a preoccupation with the sky and planets. Flint technology produced a number of highly artistic pieces as well as purely pragmatic. More extensive woodland clearance was done for fields and pastures. The Sweet Track in the Somerset Levels is one of the oldest timber trackways known in Northern Europe and among the oldest roads in the world, dated by dendrochronology to the winter of 3807–3806 BC; it too is thought to have been a primarily religious structure.
Ancient history
The preceding Iron Age is often thought to have ended in the Middle East around 550 BC due to the rise of Historiography (the historical record). The Axial Age is used to describe history between 800 and 200 BC of Eurasia, including Ancient Greece, Persia, India and China. Widespread trade and communication between distinct regions in this period, including the rise of the Silk Road. This period saw the rise of philosophy and proselytizing religions.
Stockport
The earliest evidence of human occupation in the wider area are microliths from the hunter-gatherers of the Mesolithic period (the Middle Stone Age, about 8000–3500 BC) and weapons and stone tools from the Neolithic period (the New Stone Age, 3500–2000 BC). Early Bronze Age (2000–1200 BC) remains include stone hammers, flint knives, palstaves (bronze axe heads), and funerary urns; all finds were chance discoveries, not the results of systematic searches of a known site. There is a gap in the age of finds between about 1200 BC and the start of the Roman period in about 70 AD, which may indicate depopulation, possibly due to a poorer climate.
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.
Stone Age
The Stone Age was a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used to make implements with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted roughly 3.4 million years and ended between 8700 BCE and 2000 BCE with the advent of metalworking.
Post-classical history
The term "Middle Ages" first appears in Latin in the 15th century and reflects the view that this period was a deviation from the path of classical learning, a path supposedly reconnected by Renaissance scholarship.
Iron Age
By convention, the Iron Age in the Ancient Near East is taken to last from c. 1200 BC (the Bronze Age collapse) to c. 550 BC (or 539 BC), taken as the beginning of historiography (Herodotus) or the end of the proto-historical period.
In Central and Western Europe, the Iron Age is taken to last from c. 800 BC to c. 1 BC, in Northern Europe from c. 500 BC to 800 AD.
In China, there is no recognizable prehistoric period characterized by ironworking, as Bronze Age China transitions almost directly into the Qin dynasty of imperial China; "Iron Age" in the context of China is sometimes used for the transitonal period of c. 500 BC to 100 BC during which ferrous metallurgy was present even if not dominant.
Makuleke
Tools of the Middle Stone Age are also in abundance in the area, particularly on top of hills and mountains in the region where these humans were apparently using overlooks and high spots to scout for game. On top of many hills, at particularly good outlooks, can be found quite literally thousands of Middle Stone age knives, scrapers and spear-points. The Middle Stone Age begins around 250,000 years ago and ends around 25 – 35 thousand years ago. It holds within this temporal period not only the origins of a new and more complex toolkit used by humans, but the origin in Africa of modernity itself – it is during the middle part of this period that we see not only the emergence of the modern human brain and physical features but modern human culture – our infinite toolkit, artwork and burial of the dead.
Stone Age
The transition out of the Stone Age occurred between 6000 BCE and 2500 BCE for much of humanity living in North Africa and Eurasia. The first evidence of human metallurgy dates to between the 5th and 6th millennium BCE in the archaeological sites of Majdanpek, Yarmovac, and Pločnik in modern-day Serbia (a copper axe from 5500 BCE belonging to the Vinca culture), though not conventionally considered part of the Chalcolithic or "Copper Age", this provides the earliest known example of copper metallurgy. Note the Rudna Glava mine in Serbia. Ötzi the Iceman, a mummy from about 3300 BCE carried with him a copper axe and a flint knife.
Ancient literature
Middle Bronze Age: ca. 2000 to 1600 BC (approximate dates shown)
Middle Stone Age
In a different convention, MSA refers to sites characterized by the use of Levallois methods for flake production, to the exclusion of Acheulean sites with large cleavers or handaxes.
Following McBrearty and Tryon (2006), the term "early MSA" (EMSA) refers to sites predating the 126 kya interglacial, and 
"later MSA" (LMSA) refers to site younger than 126 kya.
In this convention, Fauresmith sites of 500 to 300 kya are within the ESA, and the MSA begins after about 280 kya and is largely associated with "H. sapiens", the earliest reliably dated MSA site in East Africa being Gademotta in Ethiopia, 
at 276 kya. 
The Middle Awash valley of Ethiopia and the Central Rift Valley of Kenya constituted a major center for behavioural innovation. It is likely that the large terrestrial mammal biomass of these regions supported substantial human populations with subsistence and manufacturing patterns similar to those of ethnographically known foragers.
History of Europe
The Middle Ages are commonly dated from the fall of the Western Roman Empire (or by some scholars, before that) in the 5th century to the beginning of the early modern period in the 16th century, marked by the rise of nation states, the division of Western Christianity in the Reformation, the rise of humanism in the Italian Renaissance, and the beginnings of European overseas expansion which allowed for the Columbian Exchange.
Middle Stone Age
Artifact technology during the Middle Stone Age shows a pattern of innovation followed by disappearance. This occurs with technology such as the manufacture of shell beads, arrows and hide working tools including needles, and gluing technology. These pieces of evidence provide a counterpoint to the classic "Out of Africa" scenario in which increasing complexity accumulated during the Middle Stone Age. Instead, it has been argued that such technological innovations "appear, disappear and re-appear in a way that best fits a scenario in which historical contingencies and environmental rather than cognitive changes are seen as main drivers".
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.
Stone Age
In regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa, the Stone Age was followed directly by the Iron Age. The Middle East and southeastern Asian regions progressed past Stone Age technology around 6000 BCE. Europe, and the rest of Asia became post-Stone Age societies by about 4000 BCE. The proto-Inca cultures of South America continued at a Stone Age level until around 2000 BCE, when gold, copper and silver made their entrance. The Americas notably did not develop a widespread behavior of smelting Bronze or Iron after the Stone Age period, although the technology existed. Stone tool manufacture continued even after the Stone Age ended in a given area. In Europe and North America, millstones were in use until well into the 20th century, and still are in many parts of the world.
Middle Stone Age
The earliest remains of Homo sapiens date back to approximately 195 thousand years ago in eastern Africa. In the archaeological record of both eastern Africa and southern Africa, there is immense variability associated with Homo sapiens sites, and it is during this time that we see evidence of the origins of modern human behavior. According to McBrearty and Brooks, there are four features that are characteristic of modern human behavior: abstract thinking, the ability to plan and strategize, "behavioral, economic and technological innovativeness," and symbolic behavior. Many of these aspects of modern human behavior can be broken down into more specific categories, including art, personal adornment, technological advancement, yet these four overarching categories allow for a thorough, albeit significantly overlapping, discussion of behavioral modernity.
List of pharaohs
The Middle Kingdom (2060–1802 BC) is the period from the end of the First Intermediate Period to the beginning of the Second Intermediate Period. In addition to the Twelfth Dynasty, some scholars include the Eleventh, Thirteenth and Fourteenth Dynasties in the Middle Kingdom. The Middle Kingdom can be noted for the expansion of trade outside of the kingdom that occurred during this time. This opening of trade eventually led to the downfall of the Middle Kingdom, induced by an invasion from the Hyksos.
African archaeology
European archaeology, as well as that of North Africa, is generally divided into the Stone Age (comprising the Lower Paleolithic, the Middle Paleolithic, the Upper Paleolithic, the Mesolithic, and the Neolithic), the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age. For Africa south of the Sahara, African archaeology is classified in a slightly different way, with the Paleolithic generally divided into the Early Stone Age, the Middle Stone Age, and the Later Stone Age. After these three stages come the Pastoral Neolithic, the Iron Age and then later historical periods.
History of the Middle East
Geographically, the Middle East can be thought of as Western Asia with the addition of Egypt (which is the non-Maghreb region of Northern Africa) and with the exclusion of the Caucasus. The Middle East was the first to experience a Neolithic Revolution (c. the 10th millennium BC), as well as the first to enter the Bronze Age (c. 3300–1200 BC) and Iron Age (c. 1200–500 BC).
Early Middle Ages
The Viking Age spans the period roughly between the late 8th and mid-11th centuries in Scandinavia and Britain, following the Germanic Iron Age (and the Vendel Age in Sweden). During this period, the Vikings, Scandinavian warriors and traders raided and explored most parts of Europe, south-western Asia, northern Africa, and north-eastern North America.