Historical Significance
The Stone Age is nearly contemporaneous with the evolution of the genus Homo, the only exception possibly being at the very beginning, when species prior to Homo may have manufactured tools. According to the age and location of the current evidence, the cradle of the genus is the East African Rift System, especially toward the north in Ethiopia, where it is bordered by grasslands. The closest relative among the other living Primates, the genus Pan, represents a branch that continued on in the deep forest, where the primates evolved. The rift served as a conduit for movement into southern Africa and also north down the Nile into North Africa and through the continuation of the rift in the Levant to the vast grasslands of Asia.
Starting from about 3 mya a single biome established itself from South Africa through the rift, North Africa, and across Asia to China, which has been called "transcontinental 'savannahstan'" recently. Starting in the grasslands of the rift, the ancestors of man found an ecological niche as a tool-maker and developed a dependence on it. Homo erectus, the predecessor of modern humans, became a "tool equipped savanna dweller."
Read more about this topic: Stone Age
Famous quotes containing the words historical and/or significance:
“It is hard to believe that England is so near as from your letters it appears; and that this identical piece of paper has lately come all the way from there hither, begrimed with the English dust which made you hesitate to use it; from England, which is only historical fairyland to me, to America, which I have put my spade into, and about which there is no doubt.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The hysterical find too much significance in things. The depressed find too little.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)