Neolithic: the period of prehistory when people began to use ground stone tools, to cultivate plants, and to domesticate livestock, but before the use of metal for tools. It is the technical name for the New Stone Age in the Old World following the Mesolithic. In the Neolithic, villages were established, pottery and weaving appeared, and farming began. The Neolithic began about 8000–7000 bc in the Middle East and about 4000–3000 bc in Europe. It was followed by the Bronze Age, which began about 3500–3000 bc in the Middle East and about 2000–1500 bc in Europe. The criteria for “defining” the Neolithic has become progressively more difficult to apply as both food production and metalworking took a long time to develop. In Britain, the Neolithic has other more specific characteristics: the use of pottery and of ground stone (beside the long-employed flaked stone), and the appearance of construction works like the long barrow, causewayed camp, and megalithic tomb. Elsewhere, however, some Mesolithic cultures made use of pottery, in Japan for example; and certain so-called Pre-Pottery Neolithic groups had none, as at Jericho. If the term Neolithic is to be retained at all, it must be based on the appearance of food production (especially cereal grains), sometimes called the Neolithic Revolution, commencing in southwest Asia 9000–6000 bc. This might be considered the most important single advance ever made by man, since it allowed him to settle permanently in one spot. This in turn encouraged the accumulation of material possessions, stimulated trade, and by producing a storable surplus of food allowed a larger population and craft specialization. All these were prerequisite to further human progress. The Neolithic was followed by the Mesolithic period, the Chalcolithic, or the Bronze Age, depending on the terminology used in different areas and the nature of the archaeological sequence itself. The Neolithic followed the Paleolithic period
