The Mesolithic era followed the last ice age and preceded the development of agriculture. Mesolithic cultures were in a transitional state towards agriculture. The era was short and artifacts are hard to find. Mesolithic cultures hunted and gathered, and may have begun intentionally planting edible plants.
The Mesolithic era refers to a short period of time immediately following the recession of continental glaciers of the last ice age, about 11,000 years ago (9000 BC), the development of agriculture 10,000 – 8,000 years ago. Mesolithic cultures are those cultures during the Mesolithic era. Sometimes the word “Epipaleolithic” is used in connection with the Mesolithic, to describe groups who lived during the period who maintained a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, while “Mesolithic” is reserved specifically for those cultures in a transitional state towards agriculture. Occasionally, but more rarely, the terms have the reverse meaning. The terminology is likely to standardize in the near future.
“Mesolithic” means “Middle Stone Age”. However, the prefix “meso-” in the word can mean “between,” and this has been taken by some scientists to refer to cultures between a hunter-gathering mode and an agricultural mode. The Mesolithic era begins at the end of the Pleistocene and the beginning of the Holocene, the most recent geological epoch.
Before the Mesolithic era, mile-thick continental glaciers covered most of Eurasia and North America. Any land north of 50°N was essentially uninhabitable, until the ice melted about 11,000 years ago. Global temperatures have risen, making life easier for humans around the world. By the Mesolithic, humans had already spread across the globe, with the exception of Antarctica and a few remote islands. The Americas and Australia were fully colonized.
The Mesolithic era was an unusual transitional period between the Paleolithic and Neolithic. Because the period was relatively short, Mesolithic artifacts are relatively hard to find, mostly made up of scrap heaps or mounds. In coastal areas around the world, there are large mounds of shells dating back to the Mesolithic era. In British Columbia, there is a mound several feet deep that has been around for at least 10,000 years.
The Mesolithic cultures were about as advanced as you could get before establishing agriculture and cities. They hunted animals with a variety of bows and spears and drove most of the world’s megafauna (large animals such as mammoths) to extinction. Like civilizations before them, they survived through a mix of hunting and gathering, though they may have begun by intentionally planting the seeds of edible plants in fertile soil, pulling weeds and performing artificial selection.
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