the paleolithic age man used a hard stone
2.6 million years ago
title: Paleolithic text: Paleolithic The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic () is a period in human prehistory distinguished by the original development of stone tools that covers c. 99% of human technological prehistory. It extends from the earliest known use of stone tools by hominins c. 3.3 million years ago, to the end of the Pleistocene c. 11,650 cal BP. The Paleolithic is followed in Europe by the Mesolithic, although the date of the transition varies geographically by several thousand years. During the Paleolithic, hominins grouped together in small societies such as bands, and subsisted by gathering plants and fishing, hunting or scavenging wild animals. title: Stone Age text: Stone Age The Stone Age was a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used to make implements with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted roughly 3.4 million years and ended between 8700 BCE and 2000 BCE with the advent of metalworking. Stone Age artifacts include tools used by modern humans and by their predecessor species in the genus "Homo", and possibly by the earlier partly contemporaneous genera "Australopithecus" and "Paranthropus". Bone tools were used during this period as well but are rarely preserved in the archaeological record. The Stone Age is further subdivided title: Stone Age text: (and culture) to another. The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (from Greek: παλαιός, "palaios", "old"; and λίθος, "lithos", "stone" lit. "old stone", coined by archaeologist John Lubbock and published in 1865) is the earliest division of the Stone Age. It covers the greatest portion of humanity's time (roughly 99% of "human technological history", where "human" and "humanity" are interpreted to mean the genus "Homo"), extending from 2.5 or 2.6 million years ago, with the first documented use of stone tools by hominans such as "Homo habilis", to the end of the Pleistocene around 10,000 BCE. The Paleolithic era ended with the Mesolithic, title: Paleolithic Europe text: Paleolithic Europe Paleolithic Europe, the Lower or Old Stone Age in Europe encompasses the era from the arrival of the first archaic humans, about 1.4 million years ago until the beginning of the Mesolithic (also Epipaleolithic) around 10,000 years ago. The period thus covers over 99% of human history on the European continent. The period is usually divided into: The oldest evidence of human occupation in Eastern Europe comes from the Kozarnika cave in Bulgaria where a single human tooth and flint artifacts have been dated to at least 1.4 million years ago. In Western Europe at Atapuerca in Spain, title: Stone Age text: or in areas with an early neolithisation, the Epipaleolithic. At sites dating from the Lower Paleolithic Period (about 2,500,000 to 200,000 years ago), simple pebble tools have been found in association with the remains of what may have been the earliest human ancestors. A somewhat more sophisticated Lower Paleolithic tradition, known as the Chopper chopping-tool industry, is widely distributed in the Eastern Hemisphere. This tradition is thought to have been the work of the hominin species named Homo erectus. Although no such fossil tools have yet been found, it is believed that H. erectus probably made tools of wood and