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This time period is part of the Holocene epoch.

Pleistocene Paleolithic Lower Paleolithic Middle Paleolithic Upper Paleolithic Châtelperronian culture Aurignacian culture Gravettian culture Solutrean culture Magdalenian culture

Holocene Mesolithic or Epipaleolithic Kebaran culture Natufian culture Neolithic Halafian culture Hassuna culture Ubaid culture Uruk period culture Chalcolithic Kurgan culture

The Mesolithic (Greek mesos, "middle" and lithos, "stone", or the "Middle Stone Age"^[1]) was a period in the development of human technology between the Upper Paleolithic and Neolithic periods of the Stone Age.

Typical fossils are microliths.

Contents 1 Ambiguity of the term Mesolithic 2 In Europe 3 In the Levant 4 See also 5 Mesolithic sites in Wikipedia 6 External links 7 Notes

The term Mesolithic is used primarily with two meanings ^[2]:

• Some authors prefer to use the term Mesolithic only for those cultures, like Natufian, that are clearly transitional between hunter-gatherer and agricultural practices, using the term Epipaleolithic ("peripheral old stone age") instead for those cultures that are just late developements of hunter-gatherer traditions.

• Other authors instead use the term Mesolithic ambiguously for all sort of late paleolithic cultures, since the end of the last glacial period, independently on whether they are transitional towards agriculture or not (most of them).

Alfonso Moure says in this respect:

In the language of Prehistorical Archaeology, the most extended trend is to use the term "Epipaleolithic" for the industrial complexes of the post-glacial hunter-gatherer groups. Inversely, those that are in transitional ways towards artificial production of food are inscribed in the "Mesolithic"^[3]

Additionally, some authors, seem to prefer the opposite convention, which is most confusing.

British archaeologist Steven Mithen, in his award-winning book After the Ice, identifies the term specifically with a certain subset of European hunter-gatherer cultures that were directly descendant from the European Paleolithic and rejects the Mesolithic label for the Levant and Anatolia, where the contemporary cultures were Neolithic and had evolved directly out of the Paleolithic cultures of West Asia.^[4]

Mesolithic cultures, as designated in this way, are distinct from Paleolithic cultures in their tendency toward more partially sedentary settlements, emphasis on fishing, reliance on bow-hunting over spear-hunting, and far more advanced social and ritual structure. They are distinct from Neolithic cultures in their absence of farming and pastoralism.^[5]

It began at the end of the Pleistocene epoch around 11,000 BC and ended with the introduction of farming, the date of which varied in each geographical region. In some areas, such as the Near East, farming was already in use by the end of the Pleistocene, and there the Mesolithic is short and poorly defined. In areas with limited glacial impact, the term Epipaleolithic is sometimes preferred. Regions that experienced greater environmental effects as the last glacial period ended have a much more apparent Mesolithic era, lasting millennia. In northern Europe, for example, societies were able to live well on rich food supplies from the marshlands created by the warmer climate. Such conditions produced distinctive human behaviors which are preserved in the material record, such as the Maglemosian and Azilian cultures. Such conditions also delayed the coming of the Neolithic until as late as 5000 BC in northern Europe.

As what Mithen terms the "Neolithic package", including farming, herding, polished axes, timber longhouses and pottery, spread into Europe, by routes that remain controversial among scholars, the Mesolithic way of life was marginalized and eventually disappeared. Some late Mesolithic groups, such as Denmark's Erdbolle culture, did make some pottery and did engage in significant trade with Neolithic groups directly to their south.^[6]

Mithen notes that Mesolithic cultures were a historical dead end, unlike the somewhat earlier cultures of the late Paleolithic period in West Asia, which were evolving steadily toward the Neolithic. At the same time, genetic studies strongly suggest that modern Europeans' ancestry, especially their matrilineal mitochondrial DNA, is descended directly from these Mesolithic peoples, who must have eventually adopted the Neolithic way of life that had come to them from West Asia.^[7]

Ray Mears and paleoethnobotanist Gordon Hillman have brought the term 'Mezolithic' back into the public arena prompting individuals to learn more about it and the starchy diets of the Mezolithic people through the popular BBC2 broadcast 'Ray Mears' Wild Food'.

There are two designated periods:

Mesolithic 1 (Kebara culture; 20-18,000 BC to 12,150 BC) followed the Aurignacian or Levantine Upper Paleolithic throughout the Levant. By the end of the Aurignacian, gradual changes took place in stone industries. Microliths and retouched bladelets can be found for the first time. The microliths of this culture period differ greatly from the Aurignacian artifacts. This period is more properly called Epipaleolithic.

By 20,000 to 18,000 BC the climate and environment had changed, starting a period of transition. The Levant became more arid and the forest vegetation retreated, to be replaced by steppe. The cool and dry period ended at the beginning of Mesolithic 1. The hunter-gatherers of the Aurignacian would have had to modify their way of living and their pattern of settlement to adapt to the changing conditions. The crystallization of these new patterns resulted in Mesolithic 1. New types of settlements and new stone industries developed.

The inhabitants of a small Mesolithic 1 site in the Levant left little more than their chipped stone tools behind. The industry was of small tools made of bladelets struck off single-platform cores. Besides bladelets, burins and end-scrapers were found. A few bone tools and some ground stone have also been found.

These so-called Mesolithic sites of Asia are far less numerous than those of the Neolithic and the archeological remains are very poor.

Mesolithic 1 started somewhere around 18,000 BC in Palestine. The change from Mesolithic 1 to Mesolithic 2 can be dated more closely. The latest date from a Mesolithic 1 site in the Levant is 12,150 BC. The earliest date from a Mesolithic 2 site is 11,140 BC. The 10th millennium BC seems to correspond with three other sites at Kebara (9200 BC), Mugharet el Wad (9970 and 9525 BC), and Jericho (9216 BC). However, other sites suggest an even later start via dates of 8930 and 8540 BC. It would thus appear that Mesolithic 2 (Natufian) culture emerges around 11,000–9000 BC in Palestine and Lebanon. Mesolithic 2 is characterized by the beginnings of agriculture, which would emerge fully in the Neolithic period.

• Jōmon period

• Star Carr, England - 8700 BC
• Pulli settlement, Estonia - 9000 BC
• Lepenski Vir, Serbia - 7000 BC
• Franchthi cave, Greece - 20,000-3000 BC
• Cramond, Scotland - 8500 BC
• Mount Sandel, Ireland - 7010 BC
• Howick house, England - 7000 BC
• Newbury, England
• North Park Farm, England

• Mesolithic Miscellany - Newsletter and Information on the European Mesolithic
• 20th Century Mesolithic Sites in Mandla (Madhya Pradesh), India, discovered by Dr. Babul Roy: [1], [2], and [3]
• Picture Gallery of the Paleolithic (reconstructional palaeoethnology), Libor Balák at the Czech Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Archaeology in Brno, The Center for Paleolithic and Paleoethnological Research

1. ^ This translation can be ambiguous since Middle Stone Age is an older African prehistoric period.
2. ^ Archaeology Wordsmith: Definitions of Epiplaeolithic and Mesolithic
3. ^ A. Moure El Origen del Hombre, 1999. ISBN 84-7679-127-5
4. ^ Mithen, Steven. "After the Ice: A Global History 20,000 - 5,000 B.C." 2004. Harvard Univ. Press
5. ^ Mithen, 2004
6. ^ Mithen, 2004
7. ^ Mithen, 2004