Table 2
Period Epoch Age Length
yrs. B.P.Headlines Bronze 3,000-Present Man Writes History! Neolithic 5,000-2,000 Man Forges Metal! Holocene Mesolithic 10,000-5,000 Man Fires Clay! Quaternary Pleistocene Paleolithic 500,000-10,000 Man Controls Fire! Tertiary Pliocene Pre-Historic 730,000-500,000 Magnetic Reversal!
3.5 million years ago a semi-arboreal apith s. pithecanthropus begat s. homo. These early hominids: h. habilis and h. erectus are thought to have been chiefly scavengers, surviving in daylight on the kills of their nocturnal neighbors. Finds of ancient campsites evidence that these people made base camps near water, and brought food back to the females and young; a sharing behaviour which may be the distinctive characteristic of man.
Between 1 million-200,000 years ago h. erectus begat the "Ancients", h. sapiens, who were anatomically modern humans. Co-existing with our earliest ancestors 200,000-40,000 yeas ago, was h. neanderthalensis: an unexplained anomaly in the evolutionary record.
It is probably mythical to believe Marco Polo actually found some of that primitive type on his travels.
When the first glacial advance began 40,000-10,000 years ago the family of man faces the first of many provisional setbacks.
To meet the needs of the harsher environment these resilient people began to refine and perfect their tool repertoire. Long bladed knives with finer serrations replaced their forefathers' crude chopping tools.
It was the beginning of an accelerating technological race!