Later Stone Age

The Later Stone Age or Late Stone Age (short: LSA) is an era of sub-Saharan Africa's prehistory that follows the Early Stone Age and Middle Stone Age and is defined by the technology of stone tools. The term was first introduced by Astley John Hilary Goodwin and C. van Riet Lowe in her book " The Stone Age Cultures of South Africa" ​​(1929 ) for South Africa. Even in the German Palaeolithic, the terms are used without translation, which primarily related to the different temporal structure of Europe.

The LSA begins around 50,000 BC and starts a little earlier than the Upper Paleolithic in Europe. The LSA is characterized in that a far greater variety of stone tools found than in the preceding period. In addition, in places of discovery of the LSA relatively many bone tools are found.

The end of the LSA (in the narrow sense) has - as in Europe - an approximate temporal correspondence with the end of the Pleistocene. Inventories of late LSA are called " Albany industry" (approx. 12000-9000 BP ) refers. It also follow defined on stone tools " Wilton inventories" (about 9000-2000 BP ), which are placed in the Holocene and are similar to the European Mesolithic microlithic because of their character. The term "late Later Stone Age" has it not enforced as was proposed on the basis of a symposium, 1967 and preferably to speak of lithic industries.