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hello and welcome back to another aspects of archeology today we're going to be looking at the three-age system or as I have called it the three and a bit age system now the main reason for this is because I am forever being asked and by email and messages through YouTube what do you mean when you say the Iron Age the Bronze Age the Neolithic the mezzo lithic and you refer to these things all the time but but I don't really know what they are and I have sort of touched on what they are in in previous videos but I thought I would devote a whole aspects of archeology to this issue and tackle it head-on and so let's get going the three and a bit age system really has its roots in a cannonball in 1807 the British Navy launched a preemptive strike on Copenhagen this was an effort to siege the day no Norwegian fleet and became known as the bombardment of Copenhagen the city was not a safe place to be and many buildings were destroyed by cannon fire there was even a direct hit upon the palace causing much distress and heartache not least for the King for his personal Museum his room of curiosities had been damaged enter Christian jergensen Thompson a man of independent means and a passion for collecting ancient coins he was assigned to sort out the mess and the first thing he did was to send all of the animal bones to a zoology museum he then turned his attention to all the man-made objects and artifacts and began to sort them many of these artifacts had been found by farmers and Thompson was aware that things were changing farming was intensifying in Denmark and with intensification in farming came a threat to the places where these objects were found burrows are being dug up and the mood from farmlands at an alarming rate Thompson knew that people in ancient times often left objects underneath or within these mounds and though he accepted the right of a farmer when faced with a mound to dig it out of the way he requested that objects found within including bones were to him at the central museum with each new find came more information about those objects and more importantly where they hadn't found Thompson noticed the pattern there appear to be three distinct technological ages a Stone Age a Bronze Age and an Iron Age with this observation came a revelation and a way of organizing the entire museum so the public might understand which objects went with which so by virtue of his passion for collecting and sorting CJ Thompson laid the groundwork for what would become the three-age system however it was far from complete and many other people would have something to contribute it was quickly suspected that each technological age inferred cultural differences archaeologist and banker john lubbock was an early proponent of this and suspected that the best way to understand these tools was to understand the way that we used he observed the Inuits and the way that they made use of particular tools in very particular environments this observation was key to understanding that the Stone Age was in fact many stone ages with different types of tools adapted for different periods and different environments and along these lines emerged the old Stone Age the Paleolithic the Middle Stone Age also known as the Mesolithic and also the new Stone Age also known as the Neolithic many more people worked to add new ones to these categories through observations of stratigraphy we developed an understanding of how these technologies had changed over time and relative to each other by observing the environment that these technologies came from we came to deeper understanding of what they were used for and of course with the advent of various scientific dating techniques came the ability to more accurately assign these periods their place in time and these periods of time are approximately this between 2.5 million years ago and three hundred thousand years ago is called the lower Paleolithic three hundred thousand 250 thousand years ago is called the middle Paleolithic and approximately 50 thousand years ago to ten thousand years ago is called the Upper Paleolithic between roughly and 7,000 years bc was the Mesolithic between approximately 7,000 and 5,000 years bc was the neolithic the years 5000 to 2000 BC correspond approximately with the Bronze Age and again depending upon where you are the Iron Age is between 1500 BC and 400 AD from there we enter more conventional history and the myriad of epochs assigned to more recent times and there we go the three and a bit age system that we all know and love largely speaking there are a series of technological ages or epochs which archaeologists can observe through time and therefore assign people to that period of time based upon the material culture that they're living with and are more from the north this M is rooted in the technology which is being used at that time however things aren't quite that simple the eminent archaeologist via Gordon Child in the 1920s coined the phrase the Neolithic or the farming revolution this phrase emphasized the momentous nature of the arrival of farming into human histories however it has been criticised as sounding political as though humanity was aching and looking for the big change this can lead to a progressionist view of history as though each age is demonstrably better than the previous as though all of society is getting harder better faster and stronger such a view of history cannot easily explain for example the switch from bronze to iron if progression is key at first iron was a bad choice not least because the temperatures involved in making iron were so much greater than those needed to make bronze and believe it or not early iron was inferior as a weapon and a tool to bronze the reality must be more nuanced and connected probably to the prestige of owning this new substance iron another non progressive change is to be found with the Natufian culture on the eastern Mediterranean around 12,000 BC they are famous for wonderful items of jewelry but also something else they were living in a mythic world acting very much like Mesolithic people burying their dead and living off the land hunting and gathering as they went except in this case they began to gather together early cereals and were even probably eating early bread like foods this could have been the beginning of farming as we know it today sedentary lifestyle based on agriculture but something possibly environmental changed and people it seemed reverted to a hunting and gathering lifestyle so these observable epochs do not follow progress they are rather an adaptation to the environment around us so as we have seen the three-age system is not a map of progress it's not a straight-line getting better and better as a friend of mine once said they're worth were missed as highly evolved as human beings in so much as they can dig through soil and all the different bits and bobs that they need to do can can you eat soil well I mean obviously you can but but should you so am to compare these different periods and say that one is better than the another it's probably incorrect the best way to think about it is that each of these time periods are best adapted at that time for their particular environments and their culture so that's been the three and a bit age system hopefully this video has been interesting and all useful to you and hopefully it will go some way to clarifying what it is that I'm talking about when I talk about the Iron Age the Bronze Age and the various stone ages and so if you have any questions feel free to send them my way and I will definitely get back to you about that though and however in the meantime please feel free to comment below or alternatively subscribe to the channel by pushing their button above and we do actually have a Facebook page and most things that don't make it on to the YouTube channel make it on to that Facebook page instead and if you are a Twitter right concurrently all things that go on to the Facebook page are being posted on to Twitter and that is at our Keough soup and the soup it is spelt with a zero instead of an O so that's been it for today and until next time thank you very much you