Greek Old Stone Age

A good deal of the Old Stone Age, or Paleolithic, time period had gone by before anyone came to live in Greece. The first definite signs of people living in Greece are from around 55,000 BC. We still know very little about them. They lived mainly from gathering wild plants and got their meat by hunting wild animals. They did not farm. They probably knew how to plant seeds, but chose not to because there was already plenty of food growing wild for the few people who lived in Greece at this time.

Franchthi Cave

These people used stone, wood, plant fibers, and bone to make their tools, but they did not use metal. They did not build houses, but lived mainly in caves along the coastline. One example of a cave where people lived in the Old Stone Age is Franchthi Cave. The people living in Franchthi Cave hunted deer and rabbits, caught fish, and gathered wild grain for bread or porridge, wild peas and beans, and nuts.

To find out more about the Greek Stone Age, check out these books from Amazon.com or from your local library:

The Stone Age: What Life Was Like for the Earliest Humans, by Philip Steele (2000). Ages 9-12; includes instructions for projects.

Eyewitness: Early Humans, by Nick Merriman (2000). Ages 9-12, with great pictures.

The Archaeology of Greece: An Introduction, by William Biers (revised edition 1996) This is NOT a children's book, but Biers writes very clearly and has a lot of good pictures.

The Early Neolithic in Greece : The First Farming Communities in Europe (Cambridge World Archaeology), by Catherine Perlès and Norman Yoffee(Editor) (2001).

Middle Stone Age Greece
Main Greek History page
Main Greeks page