ABSTRACT
The Neolithic Stone Age was called the Age of Civilisation, because this is when the earliest signs of organised society appeared, with several revolutionary changes in early man’s lifestyle. Crude mining tools consisted of rough picks and hammers of flint, and pointed stone with handles of stag horns. Picks of red deer antlers were used to loosen chunks of flint. Shovels were made from the shoulder blades of animals. Fire-setting was used to loosen up a working face of flint. Although flint and other stones had become the raw materials for fashioning tools, implements and weapons, and haematitic ochres had been used in the powder form for decorative and funerary purposes, the use of metals to be followed later. The knowledge of gold mining and the ancient art of goldsmithing travelled from Nubia and the Nile valley to many cultures via the Middle East and Far East in those days and also spread to western Europe and the Iberian Peninsula.
