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? before Homo (Pliocene)
The term Paleolithic (or Palaeolithic) (from Greek pa?a???, palaios, "old"; and ?????, lithos, "stone" lit. "old age of the stone") was coined by archaeologist John Lubbock in 1865, and refers to a prehistoric era distinguished by the development of the first stone tools. It covers the greatest portion of humanity's time (roughly 99% of human history[1]) on Earth, extending from 2.5[2] or 2.6[3][1] million years ago, with the introduction of stone tools by hominids such as Homo habilis, to the introduction of agriculture and the end of the Pleistocene around 10,000 BC.[1][4][5] The Paleolithic era ended with the Mesolithic, in Western Europe, and in areas not affected by the Ice Age with the Epipaleolithic (such as Africa).[6] During the Paleolithic humans were grouped together in small scale societies such as bands and gained their subsistence from gathering plants and hunting or scavenging wild animals.[7] The Paleolithic is characterized by the use of knapped stone tools, although at the time humans also used wood and bone tools. Other organic commodities were adapted for use as tools, including leather and vegetable fibers; however, given their nature, these have not been preserved to any great degree. Surviving artifacts of the Paleolithic era are known as Paleoliths. Humankind gradually evolved from early members of the genus Homo such as Homo habilis — who used simple stone tools — into fully behaviorally and anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) during the Paleolithic era.[8] During the end of the Paleolithic, specifically the Middle and or Upper Paleolithic, humans began to produce the earliest works of art and engage in religious and spiritual behavior such as burial and ritual.[9][10][11][7] The climate during the Paleolithic consisted of a set of glacial and interglacial periods in which the climate periodically fluctuated between warm and cool temperatures. The three-age system divides human technological prehistory into three periods the Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. The modern periodization of the Stone Age stretches from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic in the following scheme (crossing an epoch boundary on the geologic time scale)
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