Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that can help answer the question.
Query: What came before the Bronze Age?
The Bronze Age was the period in human cultural development when the most advanced metalworking (at least in systematic and widespread use) included techniques for smelting copper and tin from naturally-occurring outcroppings of copper ores, and then combining those ores to cast bronze. These naturally-occurring ores typically included arsenic as a common impurity. Copper/tin ores are rare, as reflected in the fact that there were no tin bronzes in western Asia before 3000 BC. In some parts of the world, a Copper Age follows the Neolithic and precedes the Bronze Age.
Sumer () is the earliest known civilization in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia, modern-day southern Iraq, during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze ages, and one of the first civilizations in the world along with Ancient Egypt and the Indus Valley. Living along the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, Sumerian farmers were able to grow an abundance of grain and other crops, the surplus of which enabled them to settle in one place. Prehistoric proto-writing dates back before 3000 BC. The earliest texts, from c. 3300 BC, come from the cities of Uruk and Jemdet Nasr; early cuneiform script emerged around 3000 BC.
Originally assessed as being between 380,000 and 400,000 years old, they represent the oldest completely preserved hunting weapons of prehistoric Europe so far discovered. 
As such they predate the age of Neanderthal Man (by convention taken to emerge after 300,000 years ago), and is associated with "Homo heidelbergensis".
The spears support the practice of hunting by archaic humans in Europe in the late Lower Paleolithic.
The age of the spears was estimated from their stratigraphic position, "sandwiched between deposits of the Elsterian and Saalian glaciations, and situated within a well-studied sedimentary sequence.". More recently, thermoluminescence dating of heated flints in a deposit beneath that which contained the spears suggested that the spears were between 337,000 and 300,000 years old.
More complete writing systems were preceded by proto-writing. Early examples are the Jiahu symbols (c. 6600 BCE), Vinča signs (c. 5300 BCE), early Indus script (c. 3500 BCE) and Nsibidi script (c. before 500 CE). There is disagreement concerning exactly when prehistory becomes history, and when proto-writing became "true writing" However, invention of the first writing systems is roughly contemporary with the beginning of the Bronze Age in the late Neolithic of the late 4th millennium BCE. The Sumerian archaic cuneiform script and the Egyptian hieroglyphs are generally considered the earliest writing systems, both emerging out of their ancestral proto-literate symbol systems from 3400–3200 BCE with earliest coherent texts from about 2600 BCE.
The Middle Stone Age (or MSA) was a period of African prehistory between the Early Stone Age and the Later Stone Age. It is generally considered to have begun around 280,000 years ago and ended around 50–25,000 years ago. The beginnings of particular MSA stone tools have their origins as far back as 550–500,000 years ago and as such some researchers consider this to be the beginnings of the MSA. The MSA is often mistakenly understood to be synonymous with the Middle Paleolithic of Europe, especially due to their roughly contemporaneous time span, however, the Middle Paleolithic of Europe represents an entirely different hominin population, "Homo neanderthalensis", than the MSA of Africa, which did not have Neanderthal populations. Additionally, current archaeological research in Africa has yielded much evidence to suggest that modern human behavior and cognition was beginning to develop much earlier in Africa during the MSA than it was in Europe during the Middle Paleolithic. The MSA is associated with both anatomically modern humans ("Homo sapiens") as well as archaic "Homo sapiens", sometimes referred to as "Homo helmei". Early physical evidence comes from the Gademotta Formation in Ethiopia, the Kapthurin Formation in Kenya and Kathu Pan in South Africa.
Writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, systems of ideographic and/or early mnemonic symbols. The best known examples are:The invention of the first writing systems is roughly contemporary with the beginning of the Bronze Age in the late Neolithic of the late 4th millennium BC. The Sumerian archaic cuneiform script and the Egyptian hieroglyphs are generally considered the earliest writing systems, both emerging out of their ancestral proto-literate symbol systems from 3400 to 3200 BC with earliest coherent texts from about 2600 BC. It is generally agreed that Sumerian writing was an independent invention; however, it is debated whether Egyptian writing was developed completely independently of Sumerian, or was a case of cultural diffusion.
The earliest "Proto-Sinaitic" inscriptions are mostly dated to between the mid-19th (early date) and the mid-16th (late date) century BC.
"The principal debate is between an early date, around 1850 BC, and a late date, around 1550 BC. The choice of one or the other date decides whether it is proto-Sinaitic or proto-Canaanite, and by extension locates the invention of the alphabet in Egypt or Canaan respectively."
The evolution of "Proto-Sinaitic" and the various "Proto-Canaanite" scripts during the Bronze Age is based on rather scant epigraphic evidence;
it is only with the Bronze Age collapse and the rise of new Semitic kingdoms in the Levant that "Proto-Canaanite" is clearly attested (Byblos inscriptions 10th – 8th century BC, Khirbet Qeiyafa inscription c. 10th century BC).
The Middle Paleolithic (or Middle Palaeolithic) is the second subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. The term Middle Stone Age is used as an equivalent or a synonym for the Middle Paleolithic in African archeology. The Middle Paleolithic broadly spanned from 300,000 to 30,000 years ago. There are considerable dating differences between regions. The Middle Paleolithic was succeeded by the Upper Paleolithic subdivision which first began between 50,000 and 40,000 years ago. Pettit and White date the Early Middle Paleolithic in Great Britain to about 325,000 to 180,000 years ago (late Marine Isotope Stage 9 to late Marine Isotope Stage 7), and the Late Middle Paleolithic as about 60,000 to 35,000 years ago.
The Later Stone Age is associated with the advent of modern human behavior in Africa, although definitions of this concept and means of studying it are up for debate. The transition from the Middle Stone Age to the Later Stone Age is thought to have occurred first in eastern Africa between 50,000 and 39,000 years ago. It is also thought that Later Stone Age peoples and/or their technologies spread out of Africa over the next several thousand years.
The prehistory of the area that is now the Netherlands was largely shaped by the sea and the rivers that constantly shifted the low-lying geography. The oldest human (Neanderthal) traces were found in higher soils, near Maastricht, from what is believed to be about 250,000 years ago. At the end of the Ice Age, the nomadic late Upper Paleolithic Hamburg culture (c. 13.000–10.000 BC) hunted reindeer in the area, using spears, but the later Ahrensburg culture (c. 11.200–9500 BC) used bow and arrow. From Mesolithic Maglemosian-like tribes (c. 8000 BC) the oldest canoe in the world was found in Drenthe.
The Hadean () is a geologic eon of the Earth pre-dating the Archean. It began with the formation of the Earth about 4.6 billion years ago and ended, as defined by the ICS, 4 billion years ago. , the ICS describes its status as ""informal"". Geologist Preston Cloud coined the term in 1972, originally to label the period before the earliest-known rocks on Earth. W. Brian Harland later coined an almost synonymous term, the "Priscoan period", from "priscus", the Latin word for "ancient". Other, older texts simply refer to the eon as the Pre-Archean.
The Phanerozoic eon began following the Precambrian. The first major unit of time it contained was the Cambrian period of the Paleozoic era. At the time, earth's continents were in a very different arrangement and were generally smaller than they are today. The southeastern part of the US was connected to South America and Africa and located in the polar latitudes of the southern hemisphere. The western states were located near the equator.
The Aceramic Neolithic period began roughly around 8500 BC and can be identified with over a half a dozen sites. The period was most prominent in Western Asia in an economy based on the cultivation of crops or the rearing of animals or both. Aceramic Neolithic groups are more rare outside Western Asia. Aceramic Neolithic villages had many attributes of agricultural communities: large settlement size, substantial architecture, long settlement duration, intensive harvesting of seeds with sickles, equipment and facilities for storing and grinding seeds, and containers. Morphological evidence for domestication of plants comes only from Middle PPNB (Pre-Pottery Neolithic B), and by Late PPNB some animals, notably goats, were domesticated or at least managed in most of the sites.
The emergence of the Mitanni c. 1500 BC eventually led to a short period of sporadic Mitanni domination c. 1450 BC. The Indo-European-language-family-speaking Mitanni are thought to have conquered and formed the ruling class over the indigenous Hurrians in eastern Anatolia. The Hurrians had spoken a language isolate, one neither of the Afroasiatic language family nor the Indo-European language family.) There are dozens of Mesopotamian cuneiform texts from this period, with precise observations of solar and lunar eclipses, that have been used as "anchors" in the various attempts to define the chronology of Babylonia and Assyria between c. 2000 BC – c. 1300 BC.)
The Zirconian is the second Era within the Hadean Eon in a proposed revision of the Precambrian time scale. It lasted 373 million years from the end of the Chaotian Era to the beginning of Eoarchean Era . The Zirconian follows the Chaotian Era and its beginning is chronometrically set at 4.404 ± 0.008 Gya. This corresponds to the age of the first occurrence of Hadean zircons in the Jack Hills in Western Australia (Yilgarn craton). The end of the Zirconian Era and the transition to the Acastan Period (the earliest period of the Archean Eon and Eoarchean Era) occurred with the appearance of the oldest rock at 4.031 ± 0.003 Gya.
"Homo sapiens" proper ("Homo sapiens sapiens", the Cro-Magnon type) appears in the Upper Paleolithic, which lasted from 40,000 to 9,000 BCE. During the coldest part of this Ice age period, 20,000 to 15,000 BCE, humans did not inhabit Poland. The latter, warmer part, after the climatic discontinuity and the reappearance of humans, is considered the Late Paleolithic.
Cast iron was first produced in China during 5th century BC, but was hardly in Europe until the medieval period. The earliest cast iron artifacts were discovered by archaeologists in what is now modern Luhe County, Jiangsu in China. Cast iron was used in ancient China for warfare, agriculture, and architecture. During the medieval period, means were found in Europe of producing wrought iron from cast iron (in this context known as pig iron) using finery forges. For all these processes, charcoal was required as fuel.
Ancient Egypt developed over at least three and a half millennia. It began with the incipient unification of Nile Valley polities around 3500 BC and is conventionally thought to have ended in 30 BC when the early Roman Empire conquered and absorbed Ptolemaic Egypt as a province. (Though this last did not represent the first period of foreign domination, the Roman period was to witness a marked, if gradual transformation in the political and religious life of the Nile Valley, effectively marking the termination of independent civilisational development).
Ear piercing is one of the oldest known forms of body modification, with artistic and written references from cultures around the world dating back to early history. Gold, silver and bronze hoop earrings were prevalent in the Minoan Civilization (2000–1600 BCE) and examples can be seen on frescoes on the Aegean island of Santorini, Greece. During the late Minoan and early Mycenaean periods of Bronze Age Greece hoop earrings with conical pendants were fashionable. Early evidence of earrings worn by men can be seen in archeological evidence from Persepolis in ancient Persia. The carved images of soldiers of the Persian Empire, displayed on some of the surviving walls of the palace, show them wearing an earring.
Archaeological excavation in this area proved that humans lived in what is now Quảng Bình province in the Stone Age. Many artifacts, such as ceramic vases, stone tools, and china, have been unearthed in Quảng Bình.
The Cryptic era is an informal term for the earliest geologic evolution of the Earth and Moon. It is the oldest (informal) era of the Hadean eon, and it is commonly accepted to have begun close to 4533 million (about 4.533 billion) years ago when the Earth and Moon formed. No samples exist to date the transition between the Cryptic era and the following Basin Groups era for the Moon (see also Pre-Nectarian), though sometimes it is stated that this era ended 4150 million years ago for one or both of these bodies. Neither this time period, nor any other Hadean subdivision, has been officially recognized by the International Commission on Stratigraphy.
The term Bronze Age refers to a period in human cultural development when the most advanced metalworking (at least in systematic and widespread use) included techniques for smelting copper and tin from naturally occurring outcroppings of ores, and then combining them to cast bronze. These naturally occurring ores typically included arsenic as a common impurity. Copper/tin ores are rare, as reflected in the fact that there were no tin bronzes in Western Asia before 3000 BCE. The Bronze Age forms part of the three-age system for prehistoric societies. In this system, it follows the Neolithic in some areas of the world.
The Bronze Age began around 2500 BC with the appearance of bronze objects. This coincides with the appearance of the characteristic Beaker culture; again this might have occurred primarily by folk movement or by cultural assimilation or both. The Bronze Age saw a shift of emphasis from the communal to the individual, and the rise of increasingly powerful elites whose power came from their prowess as hunters and warriors and their controlling the flow of precious resources to manipulate tin and copper into high-status bronze objects such as swords and axes. Settlement became increasingly permanent and intensive. Towards the end of the Bronze Age, many examples of very fine metalwork began to be deposited in rivers, presumably for ritual reasons and perhaps reflecting a progressive change in emphasis from the sky to the earth, as a rising population put increasing pressure on the land. England largely became bound up with the Atlantic trade system, which created a cultural continuum over a large part of Western Europe. It is possible that the Celtic languages developed or spread to England as part of this system; by the end of the Iron Age there is much evidence that they were spoken across all England and western parts of Britain.
After 2500 BC came the knowledge of making tools and weapons of copper then of bronze - far more adaptable and effective materials than flint in most cases. Relics of the Bronze Age have been unearthed in Henry Preston Road where a distinctive beaker marked a probable early Bronze Age burial and behind Hall Farm in the far south of the parish where burial mounds have been traced. In both cases the burials had been made on what was then the fringe of the likely cultivated area. Their style indicates the development of an upper class.
New lords arose soon after 500 BC when the warlike, artistic Celts brought access to iron, a far stronger and more accessible metal than bronze. Iron axes and iron-shod ploughs may well now have made inroads into the heavily forested claylands. Forty-three pieces of Iron Age pottery have been found close by the church, indicating that occupation continued in this area. By the first century AD the people of Norfolk and north Suffolk had become a single tribe, the lceni, and coins of this age inscribed IC.DURO.T are reported to have been found in Tasburgh.
The Terramare was an early Indo-European civilization in the area of what is now Pianura Padana (northern Italy) before the arrival of the Celts, and in other parts of Europe. They lived in square villages of wooden stilt houses. These villages were built on land, but generally near a stream, with roads that crossed each other at right angles. The whole complex denoted the nature of a fortified settlement. Terramare were widespread in the Pianura Padana (specially along the Panaro river, between Modena and Bologna) and in the rest of Europe. The civilization developed in the Middle and Late Bronze Age, between the 17th and the 13th centuries BC.