¡Ü What is the Paleolithic?


The Paleolithic is the time period from the first appearance of human beings to about 10,000 years ago. In the 19th century, the prehistory of Europe used to be divided into three ages: stone, bronze, and iron age, and later, stone age was subdivided in terms of the way of manufacturing tools: the Neolithic when ground stone tools were added, and the Paleolithic when only chipped stone tools were used.
While many Paleolithic artifacts were found in the layer formed during the Pleistocene of the Cenozoic era, the fossil remains of Australopithecus with tools were identified even from the lower layers than the Pleistocene in Africa and other areas so that the Paleolithic is now thought to have begun earlier than the Pleistocene.
The oldest fossil of early hominid so far is Australopithecus afarensis identified in the Afar site of Ethiopia, dated up to 4.5 ~ 4 million years ago. The oldest stone tool with clear evidence of intentional blowing was found from the Laetoli site of Tanzania associated with fossils of Australopithecus, dated to about 3.5 million years ago. As seen, the Paleolithic is a long period over millions of years, seeing the emergence and disappearance of diverse early hominids.
The cultural evolution proceeded very slowly in the Paleolithic, however: there had been no big change in manufacturing technique and type of tools until about 100,000 years ago since the first appearance of tools. The Paleolithic is usually divided into the Lower, the Middle, and the Upper Paleolithic based on the changes of artifacts, most of which are stone tools, but each cultural region has its own Paleolithic chronology. For example, the temporal boundaries between the Lower and the Middle, and between the Middle and the Upper Paleolithic in the southwestern France are set around 80,000~75,000 years ago and 40,000~35,000 years ago respectively. The Paleolithic study in Korea has not been developed yet to be able to outline the cultural sequence in terms of space and time, but the increasing number of Paleolithic sites is expected to help with answering to many related questions.