The earliest known stone tools date 2.5 million years old.

The Stone Age marks a period of prehistory in which humans used primitive stone tools. Lasting roughly 2.5 million years, the Stone Age ended around 5,000 years ago when humans in the Near East began working with metal and making tools and weapons from bronze.

During the Stone Age, humans shared the planet with a number of now-extinct hominin relatives, including Neanderthals and Denisovans.

The Stone Age began about 2.6 million years ago, when researchers found the earliest evidence of humans using stone tools, and lasted until about 3,300 B.C. when the Bronze Age began. It is typically broken into three distinct periods: the Paleolithic Period, Mesolithic Period and Neolithic Period.

Some experts believe the use of stone tools may have developed even earlier in our primate ancestors, since some modern apes, including bonobos, can also use stone tools to get food.

Stone artifacts tell anthropologists a lot about early humans, including how they made things, how they lived and how human behavior evolved over time. Read the free article.