Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Paleolithic \Pa`le*o*lith"ic\, a. (Geol.) Of or pertaining to an era marked by early stone implements. The Paleolithic era (as proposed by Lubbock) includes the earlier half of the ``Stone Age;'' the remains belonging to it are for the most part of extinct animals, with relics of human beings.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
a. (alternative case form of Paleolithic English) Often used more generally to suggest that something is extremely outdated.
WordNet
adj. of or relating to the second period of the Stone Age (following the eolithic); "paleolithic artifacts" [syn: palaeolithic]
Wikipedia
The Paleolithic (American spelling; British spelling: Palaeolithic; pronunciation: ) Age, Era or Period is a prehistoric period of human history distinguished by the development of the most primitive stone tools discovered ( Grahame Clark's Modes I and II), and covers roughly 95% of human technological prehistory. It extends from the earliest known use of stone tools, probably by Homo habilis initially, 2.6 million years ago, to the end of the Pleistocene around 10,000 BP.
The Paleolithic era is followed by the Mesolithic. The date of the Paleolithic–Mesolithic boundary may vary by locality as much as several thousand years. During the Paleolithic period, humans grouped together in small societies such as bands, and subsisted by gathering plants and fishing, hunting or scavenging wild animals. The Paleolithic is characterized by the use of knapped stone tools, although at the time humans also used wood and bone tools. Other organic commodities were adapted for use as tools, including leather and vegetable fibers; however, due to their nature, these have not been preserved to any great degree. Surviving artifacts of the Paleolithic era are known as paleoliths.
About 50,000 years ago, there was a marked increase in the diversity of artifacts. For the first time in Africa, bone artifacts and the first art appear in the archeological record. The first evidence of human fishing is also noted, from artifacts in places such as Blombos cave in South Africa. Firstly among the artifacts of Africa, archeologists found they could differentiate and classify those of less than 50,000 years into many different categories, such as projectile points, engraving tools, knife blades, and drilling and piercing tools. The new technology generated a population explosion of modern humans which is believed to have led to the extinction of the Neanderthals.
Humankind gradually evolved from early members of the genus Homo such as Homo habilis – who used simple stone tools – into fully behaviorally and anatomically modern humans ( Homo sapiens)during the Paleolithic era. During the end of the Paleolithic, specifically the Middle and or Upper Paleolithic, humans began to produce the earliest works of art and engage in religious and spiritual behavior such as burial and ritual. The climate during the Paleolithic consisted of a set of glacial and interglacial periods in which the climate periodically fluctuated between warm and cool temperatures. Archaeological and genetic data suggest that the source populations of Paleolithic humans survived in sparsely wooded areas and dispersed through areas of high primary productivity while avoiding dense forest cover.
By 40,000-50,000 BP, first humans set foot in Australia. By 45,000 BP, humans lived at 61° north latitude in Europe. By 30,000 BP, Japan was reached, and by 27,000 BP humans were present in Siberia above the Arctic Circle. At the end of the Upper Paleolithic, a group of humans crossed the Bering land bridge and quickly expanded throughout the Americas.
The term "Paleolithic" was coined by archaeologist John Lubbock in 1865. It derives from Greek: παλαιός, palaios, "old"; and λίθος, lithos, "stone", meaning "old age of the stone" or "Old Stone Age."
Usage examples of "paleolithic".
Jan Jelinek, Director Emeritus, Anthropos Institute, Brno, Czechoslovakia, for his unfailing kindness, assistance, and astute observations and interpretations of the rich Upper Paleolithic artifacts of the region.
Paleolithic Fuzzies living in the woods, or the agricultural, house-building Fuzzies that are still in the Uplands of North Beta?
Scan Valley southeast of Rawalpindi, argues Robin Dennell, the field director of the Paleolithic Project of the British Archaeological Mission and the University of Sheffield.
The paleolithic Venuses have been found in the precincts always of domestic hearths, while the figures of the costumed males, on the other hand, appear in the deep, dark interiors of the painted temple-caves, among the wonderfully pictured animal herds.
A mutant race of supergeniuses that mysteriously arose out of nowhere during the late Paleolithic Era?
A couched spear of acuminated granite rested by him while at his feet reposed a savage animal of the canine tribe whose stertorous gasps announced that he was sunk in uneasy slumber, a supposition confirmed by hoarse growls and spasmodic movements which his master repressed from time to time by tranquilising blows of a mighty cudgel rudely fashioned out of paleolithic stone.
Testing and Recruitment team in the Caucasus on Luvah, where they ambushed Paleolithic tribes with tranquilizing darts, Tested the adolescents, and carried off those with Trainability.
His head moved minutely every so often as he animadverted on a different corner of the coordinate plane, and admired the exquisitely grotesque situation of each tooth—its paleolithic heft and its long gnarled roots trailing off into parts of his head never charted by anatomists.
And this is where the future is taking us because the secret faith of the twentieth century is not modernism, the secret faith of the twentieth century is nostalgia for the archaic, nostalgia for the paleolithic, and that gives us body piercing, abstract expressionism, surrealism, jazz, rock-n-roll and catastrophe theory.
With our wraith-hides, inner-skin g-suits, wraith-gut air bags, lower-intestine air hoses, bone spears, my plasma rifle, packs, and claw-skis, we must have looked like some Old Earth Paleolithic astronauts.
It's a Paleolithic cave painting, found in the Sahara half a century ago-back in 1959.
Fulano had described the cave paintings as the Sistine Chapel of paleolithic art.
His instincts are living fossils from the paleolithic, when men hunted large, dangerous animals, and frequently were killed.
Perhaps the pleasure was primitive, harking back to the dry Paleolithic man, snug near the fire in his cave, as the tempest raged outside.
He was still a Paleolithic man, and he had seen the effect of spells, and learned civilized behavior from the Shaman, the tribe's magic man, still the wisest person Flint had ever known.