Editing Three-age system (section)

== Stone Age subdivisions ==

=== The savagery and civilization of Sir John Lubbock ===
It was to be a full generation before British archaeology caught up with the Danish. When it did, the leading figure was another multi-talented man of independent means: [[John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury]]. After reviewing the Three-age System from Lucretius to Thomsen, Lubbock improved it and took it to another level, that of [[cultural anthropology]]. Thomsen had been concerned with techniques of archaeological classification. Lubbock found correlations with the customs of savages and civilization.

In his 1865 book, ''Prehistoric Times'', Lubbock divided the Stone Age in Europe, and possibly nearer Asia and Africa, into the [[Palaeolithic]] and the [[Neolithic]]:<ref>{{harvnb|Lubbock|1865|pp=2–3}}</ref><blockquote>{{ordered list|list-style-type=upper-roman
 | "That of the Drift... This we may call the 'Palaeolithic' Period."
 | "The later, or polished Stone Age ... in which, however, we find no trace ... of any metal, excepting gold, ... This we may call the 'Neolithic' Period."
 | "The Bronze Age, in which bronze was used for arms and cutting instruments of all kinds."
 | "The Iron Age, in which that metal had superseded bronze."
}}
</blockquote>

By "drift", Lubbock meant river-drift, the alluvium deposited by a river. For the interpretation of Palaeolithic artifacts, Lubbock, pointing out that the times are beyond the reach of history and tradition, suggests an analogy, which was adopted by the anthropologists. Just as the paleontologist uses modern elephants to help reconstruct fossil pachyderms, so the archaeologist is justified in using the customs of the "non-metallic savages" of today to understand "the early races which inhabited our continent."<ref>{{harvnb|Lubbock|1865|pp=336–337}}</ref> He devotes three chapters to this approach, covering the "modern savages" of the Indian and Pacific Oceans and the Western Hemisphere, concluding:<ref>{{harvnb|Lubbock|1865|p=472}}, final para. "Perhaps it will be thought that in the preceding chapter I have selected from various works all the passages most unfavorable to savages, and that the picture I have drawn of them is unfair. In reality the very reverse is the case. Their real condition is even worse and more abject than that which I have endeavoured to depict. I have been careful to quote only from trustworthy authorities, but there are many things stated by them which I have not ventured to repeat; and there are other facts which even the travellers themselves were ashamed to publish."</ref>
<blockquote>Perhaps it will be thought{{nbsp}}... I have selected{{nbsp}}... the passages most unfavorable to savages.{{nbsp}}... In reality the very reverse is the case.{{nbsp}}... Their real condition is even worse and more abject than that which I have endeavoured to depict.</blockquote>

=== The elusive Mesolithic of Hodder Westropp ===
[[File:Arpón con microlitos.png|thumb|upright=0.8|Bone harpoon studded with microliths, a Mode 5 composite hunting implement]]
Sir John Lubbock's use of the terms Palaeolithic ("Old Stone Age") and Neolithic ("New Stone Age") were immediately popular. They were applied, however, in two different senses: geologic and anthropologic. In 1867–68 [[Ernst Haeckel]] in 20 public lectures in [[Jena]], entitled ''General Morphology'', to be published in 1870, referred to the Archaeolithic, the Palaeolithic, the Mesolithic and the Caenolithic as periods in geologic history.<ref>{{Cite journal |date=6 August 1870 |title=Reviews |journal=The Medical Times and Gazette: A Journal of Medical Science, Literature, Criticism and News |location=London |publisher=John Churchill and Sons |volume=II}}</ref> He could only have got these terms from Hodder Westropp, who took Palaeolithic from Lubbock, invented Mesolithic ("Middle Stone Age") and Caenolithic instead of Lubbock's Neolithic. None of these terms appear anywhere, including the writings of Haeckel, before 1865. Haeckel's use was innovative.

Westropp first used Mesolithic and Caenolithic in 1865, almost immediately after the publication of Lubbock's first edition. He read a paper on the topic before the [[Anthropological Society of London]] in 1865, published in 1866 in the ''Memoirs''. After asserting:<ref>{{harvnb|Westropp|1866|p=288}}</ref>
<blockquote>Man, in all ages and in all stages of his development, is a tool-making animal.</blockquote>

Westropp goes on to define "different epochs of flint, stone, bronze or iron; ..." He never did distinguish the flint from the Stone Age (having realized they were one and the same), but he divided the Stone Age as follows:<ref>{{harvnb|Westropp|1866|p=291}}</ref>
# "The flint implements of the gravel-drift"
# "The flint implements found in Ireland and Denmark"
# "Polished stone implements"
These three ages were named respectively the Palaeolithic, the Mesolithic and the Kainolithic. He was careful to qualify these by stating:<ref>{{harvnb|Westropp|1866|p=290}}</ref>
<blockquote>Their presence is thus not always an evidence of a high antiquity, but of an early and barbarous state; ...</blockquote>

Lubbock's savagery was now Westropp's barbarism. A fuller exposition of the Mesolithic waited for his 1872 book, ''Pre-Historic Phases'', which was dedicated to Lubbock. At that time he restored Lubbock's Neolithic and defined a Stone Age divided into three phases and five stages.

The First Stage, "Implements of the Gravel Drift", contains implements that were "roughly knocked into shape".<ref>{{harvnb|Westropp|1872|p=41}}</ref> His illustrations show Mode 1 and Mode 2 [[stone tool]]s, basically Acheulean handaxes. Today they are in the Lower Palaeolithic.

The Second Stage, "Flint Flakes" are of the "simplest form" and were struck off cores.<ref>{{harvnb|Westropp|1872|p=45}}</ref> Westropp differs in this definition from the modern, as Mode 2 contains flakes for scrapers and similar tools. His illustrations, however, show Modes 3 and 4, of the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic. His extensive lithic analysis leaves no doubt. They are, however, part of Westropp's Mesolithic.

The Third Stage, "a more advanced stage" in which "flint flakes were carefully chipped into shape", produced small arrowheads from shattering a piece of flint into "a hundred pieces", selecting the most suitable and working it with a punch.<ref>{{harvnb|Westropp|1872|p=53}}</ref> The illustrations show that he had microliths, or Mode 5 tools in mind. His Mesolithic is therefore partly the same as the modern.

The Fourth Stage is a part of the Neolithic that is transitional to the Fifth Stage: axes with ground edges leading to implements totally ground and polished. Westropp's agriculture is removed to the Bronze Age, while his Neolithic is pastoral. The Mesolithic is reserved to hunters.

=== Piette finds the Mesolithic ===
[[File:Mas-d'Azil-grotte 02.JPG|thumb|left|[[Mas-d'Azil]] Grotto]]
In that same year, 1872, Sir [[John Evans (archaeologist)|John Evans]] produced a massive work, ''The Ancient Stone Implements'', in which he in effect repudiated the Mesolithic, making a point to ignore it, denying it by name in later editions. He wrote:<ref>{{harvnb|Evans|1872|p=12}}</ref>
<blockquote>Sir John Lubbock has proposed to call them the Archaeolithic, or Palaeolithic, and the Neolithic Periods respectively, terms which have met with almost general acceptance, and of which I shall avail myself in the course of this work.</blockquote>

Evans did not, however, follow Lubbock's general trend, which was typological classification. He chose instead to use type of find site as the main criterion, following Lubbock's descriptive terms, such as tools of the drift. Lubbock had identified drift sites as containing Palaeolithic material. Evans added to them the cave sites. Opposed to drift and cave were the surface sites, where chipped and ground tools often occurred in unlayered contexts. Evans decided he had no choice but to assign them all to the most recent. He therefore consigned them to the Neolithic and used the term "Surface Period" for it.

Having read Westropp, Sir John knew perfectly well that all the former's Mesolithic implements were surface finds. He used his prestige to quell the concept of Mesolithic as best he could, but the public could see that his methods were not typological. The less prestigious scientists publishing in the smaller journals continued to look for a Mesolithic. For example, [[Isaac Taylor (canon)|Isaac Taylor]] in ''The Origin of the Aryans'', 1889, mentions the Mesolithic but briefly, asserting, however, that it formed "a transition between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic Periods".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Taylor |first=Isaac |title=The Origin of the Aryans. An Account of the Prehistoric Ethnology and Civilisation of Europe |publisher=C. Scribner's sones |year=1889 |location=New York |page=60}}</ref> Nevertheless, Sir John fought on, opposing the Mesolithic by name as late as the 1897 edition of his work.

Meanwhile, Haeckel had totally abandoned the geologic uses of the -lithic terms. The concepts of Palaeozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic had originated in the early 19th century and were gradually becoming coin of the geologic realm. Realizing he was out of step, Haeckel started to transition to the -zoic system as early as 1876 in ''The History of Creation'', placing the -zoic form in parentheses next to the -lithic form.<ref name="Haeckel15">{{Cite book |last1=Haeckel |first1=Ernst Heinrich Philipp August |url=https://archive.org/details/cu31924089940419 |title=The history of creation, or, The development of the earth and its inhabitants by the action of natural causes : a popular exposition of the doctrine of evolution in general, and of that of Darwin, Goethe, and Lamarck in particular |last2=Lankester |first2=Edwin Ray |publisher=D. Appleton |year=1876 |location=New York |page=[https://archive.org/details/cu31924089940419/page/n35 15]}}</ref>

The gauntlet was officially thrown down before Sir John by J. Allen Brown, speaking for the opposition before the [[Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland|Anthropological Institute]] on 8 March 1892. In the journal he opens the attack by striking at a "hiatus" in the record:<ref>{{harvnb|Brown|1893|p=66}}</ref>
<blockquote>It has been generally assumed that a break occurred between the period during which ... the continent of Europe was inhabited by Palaeolithic Man and his Neolithic successor ... No physical cause, no adequate reasons have ever been assigned for such a hiatus in human existence ...</blockquote>

The main hiatus at that time was between British and French archaeology, as the latter had already discovered the gap 20 years earlier and had already considered three answers and arrived at one solution, the modern. Whether Brown did not know or was pretending not to know is unclear. In 1872, the very year of Evans' publication, [[Gabriel de Mortillet]] had presented the gap to the Congrès international d'Anthropologie at [[Brussels]]:<ref name="Piette236">{{harvnb|Piette|1895|p=236}}: "Entre le paléolithique et le neolithique, il y a une large et profonde lacune, un grand hiatus; ..."</ref>
<blockquote>Between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic, there is a wide and deep gap, a large hiatus.</blockquote>

Apparently prehistoric man was hunting big game with stone tools one year and farming with domestic animals and ground stone tools the next. Mortillet postulated a "time then unknown ({{lang|fr|époque alors inconnue}})" to fill the gap. The hunt for the "unknown" was on. On 16 April 1874, Mortillet retracted.<ref>{{harvnb|Piette|1895|p=237}}</ref> "That hiatus is not real" (''{{lang|fr|Cet hiatus n'est pas réel}}''), he said before the ''Société d'Anthropologie'', asserting that it was an informational gap only. The other theory had been a gap in nature, that, because of the ice age, man had retreated from Europe. The information must now be found. In 1895 [[Édouard Piette]] stated that he had heard [[Édouard Lartet]] speak of "the remains from the intermediate period (''{{lang|fr|les vestiges de l'époque intermédiaire}}'')", which were yet to be discovered, but Lartet had not published this view.<ref name=Piette236 /> The gap had become a transition. However, asserted Piette:<ref>{{harvnb|Piette|1895|p=239}}: "J'ai eu la bonne fortune découvrir les restes de cette époque ignorée qui sépara l'àge [[magdalénien]] de celui des haches en pierre polie ... ce fut, au [[Mas-d'Azil]], en 1887 et en 1888 que je fis cette découverte."</ref>
<blockquote>I was fortunate to discover the remains of that unknown time which separated the Magdalenian age from that of polished stone axes ... it was, at [[Mas-d'Azil]] in 1887 and 1888 when I made this discovery.</blockquote>

He had excavated the type site of the [[Azilian]] culture, the basis of today's Mesolithic. He found it sandwiched between the Magdalenian and the Neolithic. The tools were like those of the Danish [[Midden|kitchen-middens]], termed the Surface Period by Evans, which were the basis of Westropp's Mesolithic. They were Mode 5 [[stone tool]]s, or [[microlith]]s. He mentions neither Westropp nor the Mesolithic, however. For him this was a "solution of continuity" ({{lang|fr|solution de continuité}}) To it he assigns the semi-domestication of dog, horse, cow, etc., which "greatly facilitated the work of Neolithic man" ({{lang|fr|a beaucoup facilité la tàche de l'homme néolithique}}). Brown in 1892 does not mention Mas-d'Azil. He refers to the "transition or 'Mesolithic' forms" but to him these are "rough hewn axes chipped over the entire surface" mentioned by Evans as the earliest of the Neolithic.<ref>{{harvnb|Brown|1893|pp=74–75}}.</ref> Where Piette believed he had discovered something new, Brown wanted to break out known tools considered Neolithic.

=== The Epipaleolithic and Protoneolithic of Stjerna and Obermaier ===
[[File:Caballo de Mas d'Azil.gif|thumb|upright=1.15|right|Small Magdalenian carving representing a horse]]
Sir John Evans never changed his mind, giving rise to a dichotomous view of the Mesolithic and a multiplication of confusing terms. On the continent, all seemed settled: there was a distinct Mesolithic with its own tools and both tools and customs were transitional to the Neolithic. Then in 1910, the Swedish archaeologist, [[Knut Stjerna]], addressed another problem of the Three-Age System: although a culture was predominantly classified as one period, it might contain material that was the same as or like that of another. His example was the [[Gallery grave]] Period of Scandinavia. It was not uniformly Neolithic, but contained some objects of bronze and more importantly to him three different subcultures.<ref>{{harvnb|Stjerna|1910|p=2}}</ref>

One of these "civilisations" (sub-cultures) located in the north and east of Scandinavia<ref>{{harvnb|Stjerna|1910|p=10}}</ref> was rather different, featuring but few gallery graves, using instead stone-lined pit graves containing implements of bone, such as harpoon and javelin heads. He observed that they "persisted during the recent Paleolithic period and also during the Protoneolithic." Here he had used a new term, "Protoneolithic", which was according to him to be applied to the Danish [[Ertebølle culture|kitchen-middens]].<ref>{{harvnb|Stjerna|1910|p=12}}: "... a persisté pendant la période paléolithique récente et même pendant la période protonéolithique."</ref>

Stjerna also said that the eastern culture "is attached to the Paleolithic civilization (''{{lang|fr|se trouve rattachée à la civilisation paléolithique}}'')." However, it was not intermediary and of its intermediates he said "we cannot discuss them here (''{{lang|fr|nous ne pouvons pas examiner ici}}'')." This "attached" and non-transitional culture he chose to call the [[Epipaleolithic]], defining it as follows:<ref>{{harvnb|Stjerna|1910|p=12}}</ref>
<blockquote>With Epipaleolithic I mean the period during the early days that followed the age of the reindeer, the one that retained Paleolithic customs. This period has two stages in Scandinavia, that of Maglemose and that of Kunda. (''{{lang|fr|Par époque épipaléolithique j'entends la période qui, pendant les premiers temps qui ont suivi l'âge du Renne, conserve les coutumes paléolithiques. Cette période présente deux étapes en Scandinavie, celle de Maglemose et de Kunda.}}'')</blockquote>

[[File:Pointe de Tardenois.png|thumb|left|Tardenoisian Mode 5-point – Mesolithic or Epipaleolithic?]]
There is no mention of any Mesolithic, but the material he described had been previously connected with the Mesolithic. Whether or not Stjerna intended his Protoneolithic and Epipaleolithic as a replacement for the Mesolithic is not clear, but [[Hugo Obermaier]], a German archaeologist who taught and worked for many years in Spain, to whom the concepts are often erroneously attributed, used them to mount an attack on the entire concept of Mesolithic. He presented his views in {{lang|es|El Hombre fósil}}, 1916, which was translated into English in 1924. Viewing the Epipaleolithic and the Protoneolithic as a "transition" and an "interim" he affirmed that they were not any sort of "transformation:"<ref>{{Cite book |last=Obermaier |first=Hugo |url=https://archive.org/details/fossilmaninspain00ober |title=Fossil man in Spain |publisher=Yale University Press |year=1924 |location=New Haven |page=[https://archive.org/details/fossilmaninspain00ober/page/322 322] |url-access=registration}}</ref>
<blockquote>But in my opinion this term is not justified, as it would be if these phases presented a natural evolutionary development – a progressive transformation from Paleolithic to Neolithic. In reality, the final phase of the [[Capsian]], the [[Tardenoisian]], the [[Azilian]] and the northern [[Maglemosian|Maglemose]] industries are the posthumous descendants of the Palaeolithic ...</blockquote>

The ideas of Stjerna and Obermaier introduced a certain ambiguity into the terminology, which subsequent archaeologists found and find confusing. Epipaleolithic and [[Protoneolithic]] cover the same cultures, more or less, as does the Mesolithic. Publications on the Stone Age after 1916 include some sort of explanation of this ambiguity, leaving room for different views. Strictly speaking the Epipaleolithic is the earlier part of the Mesolithic. Some identify it with the Mesolithic. To others it is an Upper Paleolithic transition to the Mesolithic. The exact use in any context depends on the archaeological tradition or the judgement of individual archaeologists. The issue continues.

=== Lower, middle and upper from Haeckel to Sollas ===
[[File:Age-of-Man-wiki.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|Haeckel's tree growing through the layers. In geology, the tripartite division did not stand the test of time.]]
The post-[[Charles Darwin|Darwinian]] approach to the naming of periods in earth history focused at first on the lapse of time: early (Palaeo-), middle (Meso-) and late (Ceno-). This conceptualization automatically imposes a three-age subdivision to any period, which is predominant in modern archaeology: Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age; Early, Middle and Late Minoan, etc. The criterion is whether the objects in question look simple or are elaborative. If a horizon contains objects that are post-late and simpler-than-late they are sub-, as in Submycenaean.

[[Ernst Haeckel]]'s presentations are from a different point of view. His ''History of Creation'' of 1870 presents the ages as "Strata of the Earth's Crust", in which he prefers "upper", "mid-" and "lower" based on the order in which one encounters the layers. His analysis features an Upper and Lower Pliocene as well as an Upper and Lower Diluvial (his term for the Pleistocene).<ref name=Haeckel15 /> Haeckel, however, was relying heavily on [[Charles Lyell]]. In the 1833 edition of ''Principles of Geology'' (the first) Lyell devised the terms [[Eocene]], [[Miocene]] and [[Pliocene]] to mean periods of which the "strata" contained some (Eo-, "early"), lesser (Mio-) and greater (Plio-) numbers of "living [[Mollusca]] represented among fossil assemblages of western Europe."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Farrand |first=W.R. |title=Establishment of a Geologic Framework for Paleoanthropology |publisher=Geological Society of America |year=1990 |editor-last=Laporte |editor-first=Léo F. |series=Special Paper 242 |location=Boulder |pages=16–18 |chapter=Origins of Quaternary-Pleistocene-Holocene Stratigraphic Terminology}}</ref> The Eocene was given Lower, Middle, Upper; the Miocene a Lower and Upper; and the Pliocene an Older and Newer, which scheme would indicate an equivalence between Lower and Older, and Upper and Newer.

In a French version, {{lang|fr|Nouveaux Éléments de Géologie}}, in 1839 Lyell called the Older Pliocene the Pliocene and the Newer Pliocene the Pleistocene (Pleist-, "most"). Then in ''Antiquity of Man'' in 1863 he reverted to his previous scheme, adding "Post-Tertiary" and "Post-Pliocene". In 1873 the Fourth Edition of ''Antiquity of Man'' restores Pleistocene and identifies it with Post-Pliocene. As this work was posthumous, no more was heard from Lyell. Living or deceased, his work was immensely popular among scientists and laymen alike. "Pleistocene" caught on immediately; it is entirely possible that he restored it by popular demand. In 1880 [[William Boyd Dawkins|Dawkins]] published ''The Three Pleistocene Strata'' containing a new manifesto for British archaeology:<ref>{{harvnb|Dawkins|1880|p=3}}</ref>
<blockquote>The continuity between geology, prehistoric archaeology and history is so direct that it is impossible to picture early man in this country without using the results of all these three sciences.</blockquote>

He intends to use archaeology and geology to "draw aside the veil" covering the situations of the peoples mentioned in proto-historic documents, such as [[Caesar]]'s ''Commentaries'' and the ''Agricola'' of [[Tacitus]]. Adopting Lyell's scheme of the Tertiary, he divides Pleistocene into Early, Mid- and Late.<ref>{{harvnb|Dawkins|1880|p=124}}</ref> Only the Palaeolithic falls into the Pleistocene; the Neolithic is in the "Prehistoric Period" subsequent.<ref>{{harvnb|Dawkins|1880|p=247}}</ref> Dawkins defines what was to become the Upper, Middle and Lower Paleolithic, except that he calls them the "Upper Cave-Earth and Breccia",<ref>{{harvnb|Dawkins|1880|p=183}}</ref> the "Middle Cave-Earth",<ref>{{harvnb|Dawkins|1880|p=181}}</ref> and the "Lower Red Sand",<ref>{{harvnb|Dawkins|1880|p=178}}</ref> with reference to the names of the layers. The next year, 1881, [[James Geikie]] solidified the terminology into Upper and Lower Palaeolithic:<ref>{{Cite book |last=Geikie |first=James |url=https://archive.org/details/prehistoriceurop81geik |title=Prehistoric Europe: A Geological Sketch |publisher=Edward Stanford |year=1881 |location=London}}.</ref>
<blockquote>In Kent's Cave the implements obtained from the lower stages were of a much ruder description than the various objects detected in the upper cave-earth ... And a very long time must have elapsed between the formation of the lower and upper Palaeolithic beds in that cave.</blockquote>

The Middle Paleolithic in the modern sense made its appearance in 1911 in the 1st edition of [[William Johnson Sollas]]' ''Ancient Hunters''.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Sollas |first=William Johnson |url=https://archive.org/details/ancienthunters00solluoft |title=Ancient hunters: and their modern representatives |publisher=Macmillan and Co. |year=1911 |location=London |page=[https://archive.org/details/ancienthunters00solluoft/page/n155 130]}}</ref> It had been used in varying senses before then. Sollas associates the period with the [[Mousterian]] technology and the relevant modern people with the [[Tasmanians]]. In the 2nd edition of 1915 he has changed his mind for reasons that are not clear. The Mousterian has been moved to the Lower Paleolithic and the people changed to the [[Australian aborigines]]; furthermore, the association has been made with Neanderthals and the [[Levalloisian]] added. Sollas says wistfully that they are in "the very middle of the Palaeolithic epoch". Whatever his reasons, the public would have none of it. From 1911 on, Mousterian was Middle Paleolithic, except for holdouts. [[Alfred L. Kroeber]] in 1920, ''Three essays on the antiquity and races of man'', reverting to Lower Paleolithic, explains that he is following [[Gabriel de Mortillet]]. The English-speaking public remained with Middle Paleolithic.

=== Early and late from Worsaae through the three-stage African system ===
Thomsen had formalized the Three-age System by the time of its publication in 1836. The next step forward was the formalization of the Palaeolithic and Neolithic by Sir John Lubbock in 1865. Between these two times Denmark held the lead in archaeology, especially because of the work of Thomsen's at first junior associate and then successor, [[Jens Jacob Asmussen Worsaae]], rising in the last year of his life to [[Kultus Minister of Denmark]]. Lubbock offers full tribute and credit to him in ''Prehistoric Times''.

Worsaae in 1862 in ''Om Tvedelingen af Steenalderen'', previewed in English even before its publication by ''The Gentleman's Magazine'', concerned about changes in typology during each period, proposed a bipartite division of each age:<ref>{{Cite magazine |date=May 1862 |title=On an Earlier and Later Period in the Stone Age |magazine=The Gentleman's Magazine |page=548}}</ref><blockquote>Both for Bronze and Stone it was now evident that a few hundred years would not suffice. In fact, good grounds existed for dividing each of these periods into two, if not more.</blockquote>
He called them earlier or later. The three ages became six periods. The British seized on the concept immediately. Worsaae's earlier and later became Lubbock's palaeo- and neo- in 1865, but alternatively English speakers used Earlier and Later Stone Age, as did Lyell's 1883 edition of ''Principles of Geology'', with older and younger as synonyms. As there is no room for a middle between the comparative adjectives, they were later modified to early and late. The scheme created a problem for further bipartite subdivisions, which would have resulted in such terms as early early Stone Age, but that terminology was avoided by adoption of Geikie's upper and lower Paleolithic.

Amongst African archaeologists{{Who|date=May 2011}}, the terms [[Old Stone Age]], [[Middle Stone Age]] and [[Late Stone Age]] are preferred.

=== Wallace's grand revolution recycled ===
When Sir John Lubbock was doing the preliminary work for his 1865 ''[[magnum opus]]'', [[Charles Darwin]] and [[Alfred Russel Wallace]] were jointly publishing their first papers "[[On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection]]". Darwins's ''[[On the Origin of Species]]'' came out in 1859, but he did not elucidate the [[theory of evolution]] as it applies to man until [[the Descent of Man]] in 1871. Meanwhile, Wallace read a paper in 1864 to the [[Anthropological Society of London]] that was a major influence on Sir John, publishing in the very next year.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Wallace |first=Alfred Russel |year=1864 |title=The Origin of Human Races and the Antiquity of Man Deduced From the Theory of "Natural Selection" |url=http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S093.htm |journal=Journal of the Anthropological Society of London |volume=2 |access-date=20 May 2011 |archive-date=21 July 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110721165220/http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S093.htm |url-status=live}}</ref> He quoted Wallace:<ref>{{harvnb|Lubbock|1865|p=481}}</ref><blockquote>From the moment when the first skin was used as a covering, when the first rude spear was formed to assist in the chase, the first seed sown or shoot planted, a grand revolution was effected in nature, a revolution which in all the previous ages of the world's history had had no parallel, for a being had arisen who was no longer necessarily subject to change with the changing universe,—a being who was in some degree superior to nature, inasmuch as he knew how to control and regulate her action, and could keep himself in harmony with her, not by a change in body, but by an advance in mind.</blockquote>
Wallace distinguishing between mind and body was asserting that [[natural selection]] shaped the form of man only until the appearance of mind; after then, it played no part. Mind formed modern man, meaning that result of mind, culture. Its appearance overthrew the laws of nature. Wallace used the term "grand revolution". Although Lubbock believed that Wallace had gone too far in that direction he did adopt a theory of evolution combined with the revolution of culture. Neither Wallace nor Lubbock offered any explanation of how the revolution came about, or felt that they had to offer one. Revolution is an acceptance that in the continuous evolution of objects and events sharp and inexplicable disconformities do occur, as in geology. And so it is not surprising that in the 1874 [[Stockholm]] meeting of the [[International Union for Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences|International Congress of Prehistoric Anthropology and Archaeology]], in response to Ernst Hamy's denial of any "break" between Paleolithic and Neolithic based on material from [[dolmen]]s near Paris "showing a continuity between the paleolithic and neolithic folks," Edouard Desor, geologist and archaeologist, replied:<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Howarth |first=H. H. |year=1875 |title=Report on the Stockholm Meeting of the International Congress of Anthropology and Prehistoric Archaeology |url=https://zenodo.org/record/2452603 |journal=Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland |volume=IV |pages=347 |access-date=16 September 2019 |archive-date=20 June 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210620100222/https://zenodo.org/record/2452603 |url-status=live}}</ref> "that the introduction of domesticated animals was a complete revolution and enables us to separate the two epochs completely."

A revolution as defined by Wallace and adopted by Lubbock is a change of regime, or rules. If man was the new rule-setter through culture then the initiation of each of Lubbock's four periods might be regarded as a change of rules and therefore as a distinct revolution, and so ''[[Chambers's Journal]]'', a reference work, in 1879 portrayed each of them as:<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Chambers, William and Robert |date=20 December 1879 |title=Pre-historic Records |journal=Chambers's Journal |volume=56 |issue=834 |pages=805–808}}</ref><blockquote>...an advance in knowledge and civilization which amounted to a revolution in the then existing manners and customs of the world.</blockquote>
Because of the controversy over Westropp's Mesolithic and Mortillet's Gap beginning in 1872 archaeological attention focused mainly on the revolution at the Palaeolithic–Neolithic boundary as an explanation of the gap. For a few decades the Neolithic Period, as it was called, was described as a kind of revolution. In the 1890s, a standard term, the Neolithic Revolution, began to appear in encyclopedias such as Pears. In 1925 the [[Cambridge Ancient History]] reported:<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Garašanin |first=M. |year=1925 |title=The Stone Age in the Central Balkan Area |journal=Cambridge Ancient History}}</ref><blockquote>There are quite a large number of archaeologists who justifiably consider the period of the Late Stone Age to be a Neolithic revolution and an economic revolution at the same time. For that is the period when primitive agriculture developed and cattle breeding began.</blockquote>

=== Vere Gordon Childe's revolution for the masses ===
In 1936 a champion came forward who would advance the Neolithic Revolution into the mainstream view: [[Vere Gordon Childe]]. After giving the Neolithic Revolution scant mention in his first notable work, the 1928 edition of ''New Light on the Most Ancient East'', Childe made a major presentation in the first edition of ''Man Makes Himself'' in 1936 developing Wallace's and Lubbock's theme of the human revolution against the supremacy of nature and supplying detail on two revolutions, the Paleolithic–Neolithic and the Neolithic–Bronze Age, which he called the Second or Urban revolution.

Lubbock had been as much of an [[ethnologist]] as an archaeologist. The founders of [[cultural anthropology]], such as [[Edward Burnett Tylor|Tylor]] and [[Lewis Henry Morgan|Morgan]], were to follow his lead on that. Lubbock created such concepts as savages and barbarians based on the customs of then modern tribesmen and made the presumption that the terms can be applied without serious inaccuracy to the men of the Paleolithic and the Neolithic. Childe broke with this view:<ref>{{harvnb|Childe|1951|p=44}}</ref>
<blockquote>The assumption that any savage tribe today is primitive, in the sense that its culture faithfully reflects that of much more ancient men is gratuitous.</blockquote>

Childe concentrated on the inferences to be made from the artifacts:<ref>{{harvnb|Childe|1951|pp=34–35}}</ref>
<blockquote>But when the tools ... are considered ... in their totality, they may reveal much more. They disclose not only the level of technical skill ... but also their economy .... The archaeologists's ages correspond roughly to economic stages. Each new "age" is ushered in by an economic revolution ....</blockquote>

The archaeological periods were indications of economic ones:<ref>{{harvnb|Childe|1951|p=14}}</ref>
<blockquote>Archaeologists can define a period when it was apparently the sole economy, the sole organization of production ruling anywhere on the earth's surface.</blockquote>
These periods could be used to supplement historical ones where history was not available. He reaffirmed Lubbock's view that the Paleolithic was an age of food gathering and the Neolithic an age of food production. He took a stand on the question of the Mesolithic identifying it with the Epipaleolithic. The [[Mesolithic]] was to him "a mere continuance of the Old Stone Age mode of life" between the end of the [[Pleistocene]] and the start of the Neolithic.<ref>{{harvnb|Childe|1951|p=42}}</ref> Lubbock's terms "savagery" and "barbarism" do not much appear in ''Man Makes Himself'' but the sequel, ''What Happened in History'' (1942), reuses them (attributing them to Morgan, who got them from Lubbock) with an economic significance: savagery for food-gathering and barbarism for Neolithic food production. Civilization begins with the urban revolution of the Bronze Age.<ref>Childe, who was writing for the masses, did not make use of critical apparatus and offered no attributions in his texts. This practice led to the erroneous attribution of the entire three-age system to him. Very little of it originated with him. His synthesis and expansion of its detail is however attributable to his presentations.</ref>

=== The Pre-pottery Neolithic of Garstang and Kenyon at Jericho ===
Even as Childe was developing this revolution theme the ground was sinking under him. Lubbock did not find any pottery associated with the Paleolithic, asserting of its to him last period, the Reindeer, "no fragments of metal or pottery have yet been found."<ref>{{harvnb|Lubbock|1865|p=323}}</ref> He did not generalize but others did not hesitate to do so. The next year, 1866, [[William Boyd Dawkins|Dawkins]] proclaimed of Neolithic people that "these invented the use of pottery...."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Dawkins |first=W. Boyd |date=July 1866 |title=On the Habits and Conditions of the Two earliest known Races of Men |journal=Quarterly Journal of Science |volume=3 |page=344}}</ref> From then until the 1930s pottery was considered a [[sine qua non]] of the Neolithic. The term Pre-Pottery Age came into use in the late 19th century but it meant Paleolithic.

Meanwhile, the [[Palestine Exploration Fund]] founded in 1865 completing its survey of excavatable sites in Palestine in 1880 began excavating in 1890 at the site of ancient [[Lachish]] near [[Jerusalem]], the first of a series planned under the licensing system of the [[Ottoman Empire]]. Under their auspices in 1908 [[Ernst Sellin]] and [[Carl Watzinger]] began excavation at Jericho ([[Tell es-Sultan]]) previously excavated for the first time by Sir [[Charles Warren]] in 1868. They discovered a Neolithic and Bronze Age city there. Subsequent excavations in the region by them and others turned up other walled cities that appear to have preceded the Bronze Age urbanization.

All excavation ceased for [[World War I]]. When it was over the Ottoman Empire was no longer a factor there. In 1919 the new [[Council for British Research in the Levant|British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem]] assumed archaeological operations in Palestine. [[John Garstang]] finally resumed excavation at Jericho 1930–1936. The renewed dig uncovered another 3000 years of prehistory that was in the Neolithic but did not make use of pottery. He called it the [[Pre-pottery Neolithic]], as opposed to the Pottery Neolithic, subsequently often called the Aceramic or Pre-ceramic and Ceramic Neolithic.

[[Kathleen Kenyon]] was a young photographer then with a natural talent for archaeology. Solving a number of dating problems she soon advanced to the forefront of British archaeology through skill and judgement. In [[World War II]] she served as a commander in the [[Red Cross]]. In 1952–1958 she took over operations at Jericho as the Director of the British School, verifying and expanding Garstang's work and conclusions.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Kenyon Institute |url=http://www.kenyon-institute.org.uk/history_bsaj.html |access-date=31 May 2011 |archive-date=25 July 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110725051301/http://www.kenyon-institute.org.uk/history_bsaj.html |url-status=live}}</ref> There were two Pre-pottery Neolithic periods, she concluded, A and B. Moreover, the PPN had been discovered at most of the major Neolithic sites in the near East and Greece. By this time her personal stature in archaeology was at least equal to that of V. Gordon Childe. While the three-age system was being attributed to Childe in popular fame, Kenyon became gratuitously the discoverer of the PPN. More significantly the question of revolution or evolution of the Neolithic was increasingly being brought before the professional archaeologists.