| The Mesolithic With the final retreat of the last ice age, there is a definite break with the past and it is at this point, around 10,000 BP, that regionalism takes over. Relatively small geographical areas, such as South Yorkshire, Northwest Spain, part of Denmark, show the influence of different groups experimenting and diversifying their economy. However, the archaeological record is by no means clear and conflicting interpretations are commonplace. Traditionally, the period is known as the Mesolithic in Northwest Europe and fills that gap between the end of the last glaciation and the beginning of agricultural and stock-rearing communities. The era of the Great Plains animals - bison, mammoth, giant elk - had gone, and Mesolithic groups had to adapt to an environment of increasing afforestation, which meant smaller game. Some tribes collected shell-fish and their waste-mounds (middens) can be found in great numbers around the Scottish coast. The principal implements are still of flint, the emphasis now being on tiny shaped flakes known as microliths, which were set in rows on wood or bone handles and used as cutting and sawing tools. The sowing and reaping of barley began in Mesolithic times in the Middle East and flint sickles showing "silica-gloss" have been found in Palestine dating to about 6000BC. The Neolithic Neolithic or New Stone Age - (c. 3,500 BC to 2,000 BC) The Neolithic period is characterised by the first settled agricultural communities. Stone tools such as adzes, chisels and gouges were used. The finest and most delicate flint-work is to be found in Neolithic times, that period succeeding Mesolithic cultures and which also witnessed the rise in farming and urban civilization. Blades and arrow-heads were flaked so finely as to be translucent, and some of the shapes, such as foliates and laurel-leaf points, were exquisitely manufactured. Perhaps the finest worked piece of flint ever discovered is a knife some 30 cm long and 5 cm wide found in an Egyptian tomb of c. 3000 BC. The entire surface was polished, and then lightly ripple-flaked all over. Polishing of flint and stone implements is a feature of the Neolithic and there is evidence for extensive trade in good quality flint and like stones. The rise of the metal-using cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean in the 5th millennium BC profoundly altered man's approach to the manufacture of implements. For a while flint continued to predominate outside the privileged metal-using areas. Some arrowheads and smaller blades display definite signs of having been copied from metal originals. As man's development approaches historical times, it could be said that the writing was on the wall for flint, except in areas untouched by the Middle-eastern impetus. However, wherever there is flint today, the testimony of the past is never far away, and the future can only help to slot more pieces into the prehistoric jigsaw. |