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Old Stone Age

3. The Stone Age is a broad prehistoricperiod during which stone was widelyused to make
implements with a sharpedge, a point, or a percussion surface.The period lasted roughly 3.4
millionyears, and ended between 6000 BCEand 2000 BCE with the advent ofmetalworking.
4. Stone Age artifacts include tools usedby humans and by their predecessorspecies in the
genus Homo, as well asthe earlier partly contemporaneousgenera Australopithecus
andParanthropus. Bone tools were usedduring this period as well but are rarelypreserved in the
archaeological record.
5. Stone tools
6. The Stone Age is the first of the three-agesystem of archaeology, whichdivides human
technological prehistoryinto three periods: The Stone Age The Bronze Age The Iron Age
7. Historical Significance
8. The Stone Age is contemporaneous with theevolution of the genus Homo, the onlyexception
possibly being at the verybeginning, when species prior to Homo mayhave manufactured tools.
According to theage and location of the current evidence, thecradle of the genus is the East
African RiftSystem, especially toward the north inEthiopia, where it is bordered by grasslands.
9. Beginning of Stone AgeDuring 2010, fossilised animal bonesbearing marks from stone
tools were foundin the Lower Awash Valley in Ethiopia.Discovered by an international team led
byShannon McPherron, at 3.4 million yearsold they are the oldest evidence of stonetool use ever
found anywhere in the world.
10. End of Stone AgeInnovation of the technique of smeltingore ended the Stone Age and
began theBronze Age. The first most significantmetal manufactured was bronze, analloy of
copper and tin, each of whichwas smelted separately.
11. The transition from the Stone Age tothe Bronze Age was a period duringwhich modern
people could smeltcopper, but did not yet manufacturebronze, a time known as the CopperAge,
or more technically theChalcolithic, "copper-stone" age.
12. The Chalcolithic by convention is the initialperiod of the Bronze Age and isunquestionably
part of the Age of Metals.The Bronze Age was followed by the IronAge. During this entire time
stone remainedin use in parallel with the metals for someobjects, including those also used in
theNeolithic, such as stone pottery.
13. The transition out of the StoneAge occurred between 6000BCE and 2500 BCE for much
ofhumanity living in North Africaand Eurasia.
14. The first evidence of human metallurgydates to between the 5th and 6thmillennium BCE
in the archaeologicalsites of Majdanpek, Yarmovac andPlonik (a copper axe from 5500
BCEbelonging to the Vinca culture),
15. though not conventionally consideredpart of the Chalcolithic or "CopperAge", this
provides the earliest knownexample of copper metallurgy and theRudna Glava mine in Serbia.
16. tzi the Iceman, a mummy from about3300 BCE carried with him a copperaxe and a flint
knife.
17. Old Stone AgeRock Painting
18. Prehistoric art is visible in the artifacts.Prehistoric music is inferred from
foundinstruments, while parietal art can befound on rocks of any kind. The latterare petroglyphs
and rock paintings. Theart may or may not have had a religiousfunction.
19. Petroglyphs appeared in the Neolithic. APetroglyph is an intaglio abstract orsymbolic
image engraved on naturalstone by various methods, usually byprehistoric peoples. They were
adominant form of pre-writing symbols.
20. Petroglyphs have been discovered indifferent parts of the world, includingAsia
(Bhimbetka, India), NorthAmerica (Death Valley National Park),South America (Cumbe Mayo,
Peru),and Europe (Finnmark, Norway).
21. Petroglyphs
22. In paleolithic times, mostly animalswere painted, in theory ones that wereused as food or
represented strength,such as the rhinoceros or large cats (asin the Chauvet Cave). Signs such
asdots were sometimes drawn. Rarehuman representations includehandprints and half-
human/half-animalfigures.
23. The Cave of Chauvet in the Ardchedpartement, France, contains the mostimportant cave
paintings of the paleolithicera, dating from about 31,000 BCE. TheAltamira cave paintings in
Spain were done14,000 to 12,000 BCE and show, amongothers, bisons. The hall of bulls in
Lascaux,Dordogne, France, dates from about 15,000to 10,000 BCE.
24. The meaning of many of thesepaintings remains unknown. They mayhave been used for
seasonal rituals. Theanimals are accompanied by signs thatsuggest a possible magic use.
25. Rock Paintings
26. Modern interpretation of the bison from theAltamira cave ceiling, one of the mostfamous
paintings in the cave.
27. Old Stone Age Rock PaintingPresenters:Adami, Girlie E.Arrieta, Mark Anthony
G.Chaves, Soren Amcil L.Chaves, Diana C.Lumajang, Junderick A.Macalaguing, Jay Ann B.
Hieroglyphics" redirects here. For other uses, see Hieroglyph (disambiguation).
Egyptian hieroglyphs

Hieroglyphs from the Great Hypostyle Hall in


Karnak (Seti I, 13th century BC)
Type Logography usable as an abjad
Languages Egyptian language
Time period ca. 3200 BC[1] AD 400
(Proto-writing)
Parent
systems Egyptian hieroglyphs

Hieratic, Demotic, Coptic, Meroitic,


Child systems
Proto-Sinaitic
Egyptian hieroglyphs (/harlf, -ro-/[2][3]) were the formal writing system used in Ancient
Egypt. It combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with a total of some 1,000
distinct characters.[4][5] Cursive hieroglyphs were used for religious literature on papyrus and
wood. The later hieratic and demotic Egyptian scripts are derived from hieroglyphic writing;
Meroitic was a late derivation from demotic.

Use of hieroglyphic writing arises from proto-literate symbol systems in the Early Bronze Age,
around the 32nd century BC (Naqada III),[1] with the first decipherable sentence written in the
Egyptian language dating to the Second Dynasty (28th century BC). Egyptian hieroglyphs
developed into a mature writing system used for monumental inscription in the classical
language of the Middle Kingdom period; during this period, the system made use of about 900
distinct signs. The writing system continued to be used throughout the Late Period, as well as the
Persian and Ptolemaic periods. Late survivals of hieroglyphic use are found well into the Roman
period, extending into the 4th century AD.

uneiform is a system of writing first developed by the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia


c. 3500-3000 BCE. It is considered the most significant among the many cultural contributions
of the Sumerians and the greatest among those of the Sumerian city of Uruk which advanced the
writing of cuneiform c. 3200 BCE. The name comes from the Latin word cuneus for 'wedge'
owing to the wedge-shaped style of writing.

In cuneiform, a carefully cut writing implement known as a stylus is pressed into soft clay to
produce wedge-like impressions that represent word-signs (pictographs) and, later, phonograms
or `word-concepts' (closer to a modern day understanding of a `word'). All of the great
Mesopotamian civilizations used cuneiform (the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Elamites,
Hatti, Hittites, Assyrians, Hurrians and others) until it was abandoned in favour of the alphabetic
script at some point after 100 BCE.

Early Cuneiform

The earliest cuneiform tablets, known as proto-cuneiform, were pictorial, as the subjects they
addressed were more concrete and visible (a king, a battle, a flood) but developed in complexity
as the subject matter became more intangible (the will of the gods, the quest for immortality). By
3000 BCE the representations were more simplified and the strokes of the stylus conveyed word-
concepts (honour) rather than word-signs (an honourable man). The written language was further
refined through the rebus which isolated the phonetic value of a certain sign so as to express
grammatical relationships and syntax to determine meaning. In clarifying this, the scholar Ira
Spar writes:

It is the official script for nearly all the languages of Western Europe, and of some Eastern
Europe languages. It is also used by some non-European languages such as Turkish,
Vietnamese, Malay language, Swahili, and Tagalog. It is an alternative writing system for
languages such as Hindi, Urdu, and Somali. The alphabet is a writing system which
evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet. It was the Etruscans who first
developed it after borrowing the Greek alphabet, and the Romans developed it further.
The sounds of some letters changed, some letters were lost and gained, and several
writing styles ('hands') developed.

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