Stone Age

The Stone Age was a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used to make implements with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted roughly 3.4 million years and ended between 8700 BCE and 2000 BCE with the advent of metalworking.
Yayoi period
The Yayoi period , dated 1,000 BC – 300 AD, started at the beginning of the Neolithic in Japan, continued through the Bronze Age, and towards its end crossed into the Iron Age.
Behavioral modernity

Behavioral modernity is a suite of behavioral and cognitive traits that distinguishes current Homo sapiens from other anatomically modern humans, hominins, and primates. Although often debated, most scholars agree that modern human behavior can be characterized by abstract thinking, planning depth, symbolic behavior, music and dance, exploitation of large game, and blade technology, among others. Underlying these behaviors and technological innovations are cognitive and cultural foundations that have been documented experimentally and ethnographically. Some of these human universal patterns are cumulative cultural adaptation, social norms, language, and extensive help and cooperation beyond close kin. It has been argued that the development of these modern behavioral traits, in combination with the climatic conditions of the Last Glacial Period and Last Glacial Maximum causing population bottlenecks, contributed to the evolutionary success of Homo sapiens worldwide relative to Neanderthals, Denisovans, and other archaic humans.
Upper Paleolithic

The Upper Paleolithic is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago, according to some theories coinciding with the appearance of behavioral modernity in early modern humans, until the advent of the Neolithic Revolution and agriculture.
Lower Paleolithic

The Lower Paleolithic is the earliest subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. It spans the time from around 3 million years ago when the first evidence for stone tool production and use by hominins appears in the current archaeological record, until around 300,000 years ago, spanning the Oldowan and Acheulean lithics industries.
Prehistoric Europe

Prehistoric Europe is the designation for the period of human presence in Europe before the start of recorded history, beginning in the Lower Paleolithic. As history progresses, considerable regional irregularities of cultural development emerge and increase. The region of the eastern Mediterranean is, due to its geographic proximity, greatly influenced and inspired by the classical Middle Eastern civilizations, and adopts and develops the earliest systems of communal organization and writing. The Histories of Herodotus is the oldest known European text that seeks to systematically record traditions, public affairs and notable events. In contrast, the European regions furthest away from the ancient centers of civilization tended to be the slowest, regarding acculturation. In Northern and Eastern Europe in particular, writing and systematic recording was only introduced in the context of Christianization, after 1000 A.D.
Iwajuku

Iwajuku is an archaeological site in Midori, Gunma Prefecture, Japan. The site was excavated in 1949 by amateur archaeologist Aizawa Tadahiro, who confirmed the existence of two cultural strata, one of which contained small tools such as projectile points and blades made of obsidian and agate from the Japanese Paleolithic period. This overturned the prevalent theory that human habitation of the Japanese archipelago began with the Jōmon period, and indicated that humans had resided before the 10th millennium BC, or since the end of the last Ice Age.
Jōmon people

Jōmon people is the generic name of several people who lived in the Japanese archipelago during the Jōmon period. Today, most Japanese historians raise the possibility that the Jōmon were not a single homogeneous people but consisted of multiple groups. According to one study published in May 2019, modern Japanese people have inherited on average about 10% of their genome from a Jōmon population represented by a specimen obtained from the Funadomari archaeological site on Rebun Island. The indigenous Ryukyuan and Ainu peoples have higher amounts of Jōmon ancestry than the Japanese do.
South Asian Stone Age

The South Asian Stone Age covers the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic periods in South Asia. Evidence for the most ancient anatomically modern Homo sapiens in South Asia has been found in the cave sites of Cudappah of India, Batadombalena and Belilena in Sri Lanka. In Mehrgarh, in what is today western Pakistan, the Neolithic began c. 7000 BCE and lasted until 3300 BCE and the first beginnings of the Bronze Age. In South India, the Mesolithic lasted until 3000 BCE, and the Neolithic until 1400 BCE, followed by a Megalithic transitional period mostly skipping the Bronze Age. The Iron Age began roughly simultaneously in North and South India, around c. 1200 to 1000 BCE.
Prehistoric Malaysia

The earliest anatomically modern humans skeleton in Peninsular Malaysia, Perak Man, dates back 11,000 years and Perak Woman dating back 8,000 years, were both discovered in Lenggong. The site has an undisturbed stone tool production area, created using equipment such as anvils and hammer stones. The Tambun Cave paintings are also situated in Perak. From East Malaysia, Sarawak's Niah Caves, there is evidence of the oldest human remains in Malaysia, dating back 40,000 years.
Prehistoric Georgia

The prehistory of Georgia is the period between the first human habitation of the territory of modern-day nation of Georgia and the time when Assyrian and Urartian, and more firmly, the Classical accounts, brought the proto-Georgian tribes into the scope of recorded history.
Jōmon pottery
The Jōmon pottery is a type of ancient earthenware pottery which was made during the Jōmon period in Japan. The term "Jōmon" (縄文) means "rope-patterned" in Japanese, describing the patterns that are pressed into the clay.
Prehistory of the Philippines

The prehistory of the Philippines covers the events prior to the written history of what is now the Philippines. The current demarcation between this period and the Early history of the Philippines is 21 April 900, which is the equivalent on the Proleptic Gregorian calendar for the date indicated on the Laguna Copperplate Inscription—the earliest known surviving written record to come from the Philippines. This period saw the immense change that took hold of the archipelago from Stone Age cultures in the fourth century, continuing on with the gradual widening of trade until 900 and the first surviving written records.
Prehistory of Iran

The prehistory of the Iranian plateau, and the wider region now known as Greater Iran, as part of the prehistory of the Near East is conventinally divided into the Paleolithic, Epipaleolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age periods, spanning the time from the first settlement by archaic humans about a million years ago until the beginning historical record during Neo-Assyrian Empire, in the 8th century BC.
Odai Yamamoto I site

The Odai Yamamoto I site is a Jōmon-period archaeological site in Sotogahama, Aomori Prefecture, Japan. Excavations in 1998 uncovered forty-six earthenware fragments which have been dated as early as 14,500 BC ; this places them among the earliest pottery currently known. As the earliest in Japan, this marks the transition from the Japanese Paleolithic to Incipient Jōmon. Other pottery of a similar date has been found at Gasy and Khummy on the lower Amur River. Such a date puts the development of pottery before the warming at the end of the Pleistocene.
Outline of prehistoric technology

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to prehistoric technology.
Jōmon period
The Jōmon period is the time in Japanese prehistory, traditionally dated between c. 14,000–300 BCE, recently refined to about 1000 BCE, during which Japan was inhabited by a hunter-gatherer culture, which reached a considerable degree of sedentism and cultural complexity. The name "cord-marked" was first applied by the American zoologist and orientalist Edward S. Morse, who discovered sherds of pottery in 1877 and subsequently translated it into Japanese as jōmon. The pottery style characteristic of the first phases of Jōmon culture was decorated by impressing cords into the surface of wet clay and is generally accepted to be among the oldest in East Asia and the world.
Sanganji shell mound

Sanganji shell mound is a Late-to-Final Jōmon shell mound in Shinchi, Fukushima, Tōhoku region, Japan. The shell mound was excavated in 1952 by the Special Committee for Jomon Chronology of the Japanese Archaeological Association and in 1954 by the University of Tokyo Department of Anthropology. The remains of over 40 individuals were excavated from the site. The remains are now housed in The University Museum at the University of Tokyo.