Outline of prehistoric technology

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to prehistoric technology.

Anything prior to the first written accounts of history is prehistoric (meaning "before history"), including earlier technologies.

About 2.5 million years before writing was developed, technology began with the earliest hominids who used stone tools, which they may have used to start fires, hunt, cut food, and bury their dead.

Prehistoric technology can be described as: The New World periods began with the crossing of the Paleo-Indians, Athabaskan, Aleuts, Inuit, and Yupik peoples along the Bering Land Bridge onto the North American continent.

[36] In their book, Method and Theory in American Archaeology, Gordon Willey and Philip Phillips defined five cultural stages for the Americas, including the three prehistoric Lithic, Archaic and Formative stages.

Acheulean hand axes from Kent . The types shown are (clockwise from top) cordate, ficron and ovate. It was the longest-used tool of human history .