Editing Stone Age (section)

==Sub-periods==
* ''Paleolithic'': Basically everything from the discovery of fire to about 20,000 years ago. It includes a wide variety of things from primitive hominids with sharp rocks and pointy sticks to anatomically modern H. Sapiens Sapiens with tents, sewn clothes and multi-part hatchets who made elaborate cave paintings.
* ''Mesolithic'': Roughly about 20,000 to 12,000 years ago. Things begin to get more complicated, tools get more sophisticated and specialized. Items such as bows and arrows and (in Asia) pottery shows up. Dogs and humans team up.
* ''Neolithic'': About 12,000 to 7,000 years ago people began to farm, slowly at first by weeding out patches of food plants as they went through and seeding areas with food plants and catching pliable animals, penning them and feeding them before slaughter, killing the uppity ones first. People figure out they can make plants and animals have desired characteristics by breeding them. They begin building permanent structures and eventually settle down and build small villages, then towns and eventually small cities such as ''Çatalhöyük''. Some specialize, honing their crafts, relying on others for food and teaching their kids what they know. This was a fairly rocky process and there were some false starts and set backs, even so there was net progress. Eventually someone works out how to smelt Copper, thus bringing the Stone Age to a close.

'''Note''': these end dates are of a first past the post nature. The Stone Age did not end for everyone the second someone [[Bronze Age|started making copper tools]]. Technically there are a few Stone Age peoples around today in odd corners of the world. The people of North Sentinel Island come to mind. They famously killed two drunk Indian fishermen and a stupid American missionary with bows and arrows and often shoot at any boats or helicopters that get too close. That said, they're not a pure example, since they also routinely scavenge metal to make into arrowheads.