The document summarizes the three main stages of the primitive era: Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic. 1) The Paleolithic age from 2.6 million to 10,000 years ago was characterized by early humans living as hunter-gatherers using basic stone tools. Cave paintings indicated a developing religious practice. 2) During the Mesolithic from 10,000 to 6,000 years ago, humans adapted to environmental changes by developing fishing, domesticating animals, and living in settlements. 3) The Neolithic revolution began around 9500 BC with the adoption of agriculture, development of pottery, and construction of permanent mud brick houses, marking a shift to settled life.

1. Introduction
The definition of primitive is something lacking in sophistication, or not advanced, or
bare-bones condition or instincts that resemble animal-instincts and don't require thought.
Existing in the beginning or the earliest times or ages; ancient; original.
Indicating people or society organized in bands or tribes and having a simple economy
and technology, Preliterate people having cultural or physical similarities with their early
ancestors.
An example of primitive is a society that has not yet developed or industrialized.
Three Stages of Primitive Era:
1. Paleolitic age:
The Paleolithic Period is a prehistoric period of human history distinguished by the development
of the most primitive stone tools discovered and covers roughly 99% of human technological
prehistory.
It is the period when humans were just hunters-gatherers. Even if the name of the period referred
to the stone tools, first people most likely made also tools from bones. Stone scrapers were used
for removing the skins of the animals. Stone axes were used for wounding or cutting up the prey.
They had handles made of wood or deer antlers. Stone drills were used too. The main stone raw
material was the quartz. Wooden tools did not preserve in time.
Paleolithic people were also great artists; they left cave wall paintings in the whole Europe. They
painted especially animals they wanted to bring down: horses, mammoths, reindeer, and bison;
these paintings had a magic character, being meant for the capture of the represented animals.
The Paleolithic people had a nomadic life style, following the herds of wild animals they relied
on. They extensively used caves for sheltering, but probably they also made tents of skins,
sustained by sticks. They wore skins and adorned their bodies with stone beads and collars made
of animal canines (which could have been protective amulets).
At the end of the Paleolithic, specifically the Middle and or Upper Paleolithic, humans began to
produce works of art such as cave paintings, rock art and jewellery and began to engage in
religious behaviour such as burial and ritual.

2. The Palaeolithic period is further divided into 3 stages.
 Upper Palaeolithic
During the Upper Paleolithic (40,000 to 10,000 BC), more complex stone tools appeared, like
stone lamps that were filled with grease and had a wick made of plant fibres. The silex arrow
points were complex, having rods that allowed them to be joined to the shaft via a resin or
tendons. Bone harpoons and needles from this period were found in Europe.
Modern humans spread out further across the earth during the period known as the Upper
Palaeolithic. The Upper Paleolithic is marked by a relatively rapid succession of often complex
stone artefact technologies and a large increase in the creation of art and personal ornaments.
 Middle Paleolithic
The Middle Paleolithic period includes the Mousterian culture, often associated with Neanderthal
man, an early form of humans, living between 100,000 and 40,000 years ago. Neanderthal
remains are often found in caves with evidence of the use of fire. Neanderthals were hunters of
prehistoric mammals, and their cultural remains, though unearthed chiefly in Europe, have been
found also in N Africa, Palestine, and Siberia. Stone tools of this period are of the flake tradition,
and bone implements, such as needles, indicate that crudely sewn furs and skins were used as
body coverings. Since the dead were painted before burial, a kind of primitive religion may have
been practiced.
 Lower Paleolithic
The earliest Paleolithic stone tool industry in prehistory, the Oldowan in Africa being used
during the Lower Paleolithic period, 2.6 million years ago up until 1.7 million years ago, by
Hominines was developed by the earliest members of the genus Homo such as Homo habilis,
around 2.6 million years ago. The earliest documented stone tools were found in East Africa.
The tools were formed by knocking pieces off a river stones like it, with a hammer stone to
obtain large and small pieces with one or more sharp edges. The original stone is called a core;
the resultant pieces, flakes. Typically, but not necessarily, small pieces are detached from a
larger piece, in which case the larger piece may be called the core and the smaller pieces the
flakes
Paleolithic era is followed by the Mesolithic.
2. Mesolithic age:
The period starting from the end of the last ice age, 10,000 years ago, to around 6,000 years ago
was characterized by rising sea levels and a need to adapt to a changing environment and find
new food sources.

3. During this period humans hunted and fished and began to learn how to domesticate animals and
plants. They were derived from the previous Palaeolithic tools, hence the term Mesolithic
(Middle Stone Age). The choice of a word depends on exact circumstances. Microliths were used
in the manufacture of more efficient composite tools, resulting in intensification of hunting and
fishing and with increasing social activity the development of more complex settlements. People
were nomadic hunter-gatherers. The animals which they killed for food also provided them with
bone and antlers, from which tools or weapons could be made, and skins, which could be
utilised, not only for clothing, but as sacks and water carriers. They would have also employed
wood, reeds and grass, clay, flint and stone.
The late Mesolithic hunters are known to have developed pottery (ceramic objects) and sedentary
lifestyles. People started living in huts instead of caves. War fear was frequent as compared to
Paleolithic period, as they used to quarrel over animals, pastures, lands for cultivation, water.
3. Neolithic
Neolithic was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in the
Middle East that is traditionally considered the last part of the Stone Age. New Stone Age, was
approximately characterized by the adoption of agriculture, the shift from food gathering to food
producing in itself is one of the most revolutionary changes in human history so-called Neolithic
Revolution, the development of pottery, polished stone tools and more complex, larger
settlements. During most of the Neolithic age, people lived in small tribes composed of multiple
bands or lineages. In the Palaeolithic, people did not normally live in permanent constructions. In
the Neolithic, mud brick houses started appearing that were coated with plaster. The first large-
scale constructions were built, including settlement towers and walls. The growth of agriculture
made permanent houses possible.
Some of these features began in certain localities even earlier, in the transitional Mesolithic. The
first Neolithic cultures started around 7000 BCE in the other areas of the world; however, the
Near East was probably not the only nucleus of agriculture, the cultivation of maize in Meso-
America and of rice in the Far East being others.
Neolithic peoples were skilled farmers, manufacturing a range of tools necessary for the tending,
harvesting and processing of crops and food production. Due to the increased need to harvest and
process plants, ground stone and polished stone artefacts became much more widespread,
including tools for grinding, cutting, and chopping. The community contains stone beds, shelves
and even an indoor toilet linked to a stream. Food sources of the Paleolithic hunter gathers were
wild plants and animals harvested from the environment. They liked animal organ meats,
including the livers, kidneys and brains.
The pre-historical and primitive period represents the true infancy of the mind.
James M. Baldwin