Partitioning history into multiple ages has helped us comprehend human developments and events throughout time, but what decides when one age transitions to the next? It turns out that the answer isn’t so clear-cut. Civilizations across the ancient world progressed at varying rates, complicating the task of drawing a clean divide between ages.
Scholars have relied on overarching themes, though, to explain how human history changed trajectory over time. This is embodied by the three ages of prehistory that are so often mentioned in essays and textbooks alike — the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age. The three-age model does the unthinkable, taking millions of years of history and squeezing them into these distinct categories in which tool-making materials stand front and center as the driving force of societal growth.
The move from stone to bronze to iron makes for a useful synopsis of prehistory, but in truth, these ages require a bit more attention to truly understand their importance.
1. The Stone Age
Out of the three ages, the Stone Age covers the widest spread of time by far. Its nebulous starting point may cause confusion; the beginning of this age correlates with the earliest evidence of archaic humans using stone tools.
