大象传媒

The Middle Stone Age

  • The Stone Age in Britain took place between around 15000BC to 2500BC.

  • The Middle Stone Age is also known as the Mesolithic period.

  • Humans were hunter-gatherers and had to catch or find everything they ate.

  • They moved from place to place in search of food. This is called a nomadic lifestyle.

Prehistoric family living in cave
Back to top

How did Stone Age people find food?

  • Early Stone Age people hunted with sharpened sticks.
  • Later, they used bows and arrows and spears tipped with flint or bone.
  • People gathered nuts and fruits and dug up roots.
  • They went fishing using nets and harpoons.
  • Stone Age people cut up their food with sharpened stones and cooked it on a fire.
Back to top

Watch: How did Stone Age people make tools?

Raksha Dave finds out how our ancient ancestors made tools and weapons from flint.

Back to top

Some prehistoric animals

 A hunter and a wooly mammoth
Image caption,
During the Ice Ages, prehistoric people hunted mammoths in Britain.

Climate change caused two ice ages.

During the Ice Ages, Britain was covered by ice and snow. There were herds of:

  • mammoths
  • reindeer
  • woolly rhinoceroses

In the warm periods between the Ice Ages, Britain became as hot as Africa is today! There were:

  • elephants
  • hippos
  • rhinos
  • hyenas

The last Ice Age ended around 15,000 years ago and the British climate became very similar to how it is today. The forests were full of:

  • foxes
  • red squirrels
  • wolves

Britain was home to most of the species of birds, fish and shellfish we have today, so people had a wide range of food to eat.

 A hunter and a wooly mammoth
Image caption,
During the Ice Ages, prehistoric people hunted mammoths in Britain.
Back to top

Stone Age art

  • Stone Age Britons made necklaces and bracelets from tusks, bones and shells.
  • They drew patterns on their bodies, using a kind of paint made from ochre (a type of red clay).
 An engraved antler bone, depicting a horse, found in the Magdalenian, Robin Hood Cave
Image caption,
This work of art was found in a cave at Cresswell Crags, Derbyshire. It was made around 12,000 years ago. The Stone Age artist used a sharp stone to scratch the outline of a horse onto a piece of bone.

Evidence from elsewhere in Europe shows that people living in caves decorated their walls with pictures of animals. Carvings found on cave walls show:

  • giant bulls
  • stags
  • horses
  • bison
  • birds
Back to top

Watch: What was a family like in Mesolithic Britain?

This video from 大象传媒 Teach uses archaeological evidence that has been found to imagine what the lives of people could have been like.

An introduction to the precarious nature of life in Mesolithic Britain through the eyes of a typical family.

Back to top

Activities

Activity 1: Explore Stone Age cave art

Explore this picture to find out about Grey Otter, an imaginary Stone Age boy. Details about his way of life are based on evidence found at a camp in Star Carr in Yorkshire.

Back to top

Activity 2: Explore footprints, bones and tools

Explore the image below to find out what footprints, bones and tools can tell us about prehistoric people.

Back to top
Back to top

Bitesize Primary games. game

Play fun and educational primary games in science, maths, English, history, geography, art, computing and modern languages.

Bitesize Primary games
Back to top

More on Prehistoric

Find out more by working through a topic