The Stone Age: Life Long Ago

The Stone Age is the name given to the very earliest period of human history, when people made tools and weapons from stone. It began millions of years ago and ended when humans learned to use metal. It is called the Stone Age because stone was the hardest, most useful material people had.

Early Stone Age people were hunter-gatherers. They did not farm — instead they moved from place to place, hunting animals and collecting berries, nuts, and roots to eat. Because they followed the animals and the seasons, they did not build permanent homes; they used caves or simple shelters made of branches and animal skins.

A favourite stone for tools was flint, because you could chip it to make a razor-sharp edge. People made hand axes for cutting, spear tips for hunting, and scrapers for cleaning animal skins to wear as clothes. Making a good tool took real skill and lots of practice.

Then came one of the biggest changes in all of history. In the later Neolithic period, people discovered farming. They grew crops like wheat and kept animals like sheep and cattle. This meant they could settle in one place and build permanent homes, the very first villages.

Once people settled down to farm, they could store food and have more children, so villages slowly grew bigger. They built monuments too — Stonehenge in England, made of enormous standing stones, was built by Neolithic and Bronze Age people thousands of years ago, and we still are not sure exactly how they moved the giant stones.