"Cromer Forest Bed" has been dated as being approximately 900,000 years old and has given us flints, footprints and the oldest hand axe to be found in north-west Europe. Middle Paleolithic(300,000 to 30,000 BC) In 2002 there was a major discovery of one of the most important sites of Neanderthal man, dated to around 58,000 BC, in the Thetford Forest at Lynford. David Miles the chief archaeologist at English Heritage said: "It is extremely rare to find any evidence of Neanderthals and even rarer to find it in association with mammoth remains. We may have discovered a butchery site, or what would be even more exciting, first evidence in Britain of a Neanderthal hunting site which would tell us much about their organisational and social abilities." The site was found to contain organic material and a Mousterian hand axe was found in a good state of preservation. A further 30 Mousterian hand axes were found along with reindeer bones covered in cut marks. The animal remains have revealed the presence of woolly mammoths, woolly rhinoceros, brown bears, spotted hyenas and other smaller remains such as fish jaws, frog bones and several types of mollusc. Although the site contains such exotic animals the temperatures were still below those felt today as Norfolk was still in the clutches of the remnants of an Ice-Age. The average temperature in July has been estimated as 13 °C and the area would have been below freezing for most of the winter months. From plant and insect remains it has been deduced that the area was marshy and covered with small areas of open still water similar to the modern day broads. Upper Paleolithic(40,000 to 10,000 BC) During the last Ice age, reaching its greatest extent between 22,000 and 17,000 years ago, the so-called Last Glacial Maximum (LGM)the whole of Britain was either ice sheet or polar desert thus wiping out the entire gene pool. The return of pioneer groups, evidenced by the so-called Creswellian culture, began about 15,000 years ago. Neolithic and Chalcolithic(9500 to 3000 BC) This period covers the stages of change from the pottery of the stoneage into the age of metals. The Chalcolithic Age is the start of the Copper Age and marks the end of the time when people could only work mainly single element metals such as silver, tin, copper and gold. The Copper Age precedes the Bronze Age when