Mesolithic
From the Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can change
The "Mesolithic," or "Middle Stone Age" (from the Greek "mesos," "middle," and "lithos," "stone") was a period in the development of human technology between the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods of the Stone Age.
The Mesolithic period began at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, about 12,000 BCE, and ended with the introduction of agriculture.
In some areas, such as the Near East, agriculture was already underway by the end of the Pleistocene, and there the Mesolithic is short. In areas with limited influence of ice age, the term "Epipaleolithic" is sometimes preferred.
Regions that experienced greater environmental effects as the last ice age ended have a much more evident Mesolithic era. This lasted millennia. In Northern Europe, societies were able to live well on rich food supplies from the marshlands. Such conditions produced distinctive human behaviours which are preserved in characteristic finds. These conditions also delayed the coming of the Neolithic until as late as 4000 BCE (6,000 before present) in northern Europe.
[change] Other websites
- Mesolithic Miscellany - Newsletter and Information on the European Mesolithic
- 20th Century Mesolithic Sites in Mandla (Madhya Pradesh), India, discovered by Dr. Babul Roy: [1], [2], and [3]
- Picture Gallery of the Paleolithic (reconstructional palaeoethnology), Libor Balák at the Czech Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Archaeology in Brno, The Center for Paleolithic and Paleoethnological Research
