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Stone Age

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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Encyclopedias
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
• Stone Age
The Nuttall Encyclopedia
• Stone Age

The term employed by anthropologists to describe the earliest stage of human civilization when man had gained no knowledge of metals, and his weapons and utensils were formed of stone, horn or bone. The term has no chronological value, as the Stone Age was earlier in some parts of the world than in others, and even to-day races exist who are still in their Stone Age. This first period of human culture has been subdivided by Lord Avebury into Palaeolithic and Neolithic, words which have been generally accepted as expressing the two stages of the rough, unpolished and the finely finished and polished stone implements.

(See ARCHAEOLOGY.)