- Acheulean tools
- stone tools made by carefully chipping away flakes of the stone core to make them into teardrop-shaped implements that replaced the cruder Oldowan hand-axes
- animism
- the belief that a degree of spirituality exists not only in people but also in plants, inanimate objects, and natural phenomena
- Australopithecus
- a very distant ancestor of modern humans who lived in eastern and southern Africa between 2.5 and 4 million years ago
- Fertile Crescent
- a crescent-shaped geographical area in the Middle East where agriculture first flourished
- genus
- a taxonomic rank that includes several similar and related species
- Homo erectus
- a member of the genus Homo who emerged in East Africa around two million years ago, living entirely on the ground and walking exclusively in an upright position
- Homo habilis
- the earliest member of the genus Homo, appearing in the archaeological record about two to three million years ago
- Homo sapiens
- modern humans, members of the genus Homo who emerged in Africa first and later migrated to other areas
- hunter-gatherers
- people who survive by employing the strategies of hunting animals and gathering wild plants rather than by planting crops and raising livestock
- Mousterian tools
- stone tools and hand-axes made beginning around 250,000 years ago and consisting of flakes rather than cores
- Neanderthals
- members of the genus Homo who evolved from Homo erectus and lived in Europe and western Asia between 30,000 and 200,000 years ago
- Neolithic Age
- the final phase of the Paleolithic Age, beginning around twelve thousand years ago when human populations began growing crops and domesticating animals
- Neolithic Revolution
- the shift from hunting and gathering to a life based primarily on agriculture
- Oldowan tools
- sharpened stones used until about 1.7 million years ago for a variety of cutting, scraping, and chopping purposes
- Paleolithic Age
- the period of time beginning as early as 3.3 million years ago until nearly twelve thousand years ago, when our distant pre-human ancestors began using stone tools for a variety of purposes