Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that can help answer the question.
Query: When was the Middle Stone Age?
The Middle Stone Age (or MSA) was a period of African prehistory between the Early Stone Age and the Later Stone Age. It is generally considered to have begun around 280,000 years ago and ended around 50–25,000 years ago.[1] The beginnings of particular MSA stone tools have their origins as far back as 550–500,000 years ago and as such some researchers consider this to be the beginnings of the MSA.[2] The MSA is often mistakenly understood to be synonymous with the Middle Paleolithic of Europe, especially due to their roughly contemporaneous time span, however, the Middle Paleolithic of Europe represents an entirely different hominin population, Homo neanderthalensis, than the MSA of Africa, which did not have Neanderthal populations. Additionally, current archaeological research in Africa has yielded much evidence to suggest that modern human behavior and cognition was beginning to develop much earlier in Africa during the MSA than it was in Europe during the Middle Paleolithic.[3] The MSA is associated with both anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) as well as archaic Homo sapiens, sometimes referred to as Homo helmei. Early physical evidence comes from the Gademotta Formation in Ethiopia, the Kapthurin Formation in Kenya and Kathu Pan in South Africa.[2]
Stone tools are first attested around 2.6 Million years ago, when hominins in Eastern Africa used so-called core tools, choppers made out of round cores that had been split by simple strikes. This marks the beginning of the Paleolithic, or Old Stone Age; its end is taken to be the end of the last Ice Age, around 10,000 years ago. The Paleolithic is subdivided into the Lower Paleolithic (Early Stone Age), ending around 350,000–300,000 years ago, the Middle Paleolithic (Middle Stone Age), until 50,000–30,000 years ago, and the Upper Paleolithic, (Late Stone Age), 50,000–10,000 years ago.
Fish remains are present, but not abundant, in all phases at Blombos Cave. Fish are more abundant in the Later Stone Age but a wider range of species are present in the Middle Stone Age sequence. Chemical analysis of fish bone from the Later Stone Age and Middle Stone Age levels, using the carbon/nitrogen method, confirms the antiquity of the Middle Stone Age specimens. Most of the species present are not known to wash up after cold water upwelling events, hence scavenging of wash-ups was not the primary source of fish. No artefacts that appear to be obvious fishing equipment have been found, but the range and sizes of species present indicate that a number of methods must have been employed. These may have included: baited hooks, spearing and tidal traps.
Language has been suggested to be necessary to maintain exchange networks. Evidence of some form of exchange networks during the Middle Stone Age is presented in Marwick (2003) in which the distance between the source of raw material and location in which a stone artifact was found was compared throughout sites containing early stone artifacts.[38] Five Middle Stone Age sites contained distances between 140–340km and have been interpreted, when compared with ethnographic data, that these distances were made possible through exchange networks.[38] Barham[39] also views syntactic language as one aspect of behavior that in fact allowed MSA people to settle in the tropical forest environments of what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The "Mesolithic", or "Middle Stone Age" (from the Greek "mesos", "middle", and "lithos", "stone") was a period in the development of human technology between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic periods of the Stone Age.
There is evidence of seven settlements from the Stone Age. However between the Stone Age and the Middle Ages there is no evidence of settlement. During the Middle Ages the current settlement was established. There is also a deserted grave yard in the socken, as well as remnants of old foundries and trip hammers.
The stone tool technology in use during the Middle Stone Age shows a mosaic of techniques. Beginning approximately 300 kya, the large cutting tools of the Achuelian are gradually displaced by Levallois prepared core technologies, also widely used by Neanderthals during the European Middle Palaeolithic.[15] As the MSA progresses, highly varied technocomplexes become common throughout Africa and include pointed artifacts, blades, retouched flakes, end and side scrapers, grinding stones, and even bone tools.[1][5] However, the use of blades (associated mainly with the Upper Palaeolithic in Europe) is seen at many sites as well.[1] In Africa, blades may have been used during the transition from the Early Stone Age to the Middle Stone Age onwards.[16] Finally, during the later part of the Middle Stone Age, microlithic technologies aimed at producing replaceable components of composite hafted tools are seen from at least 70 ka at sites such as Pinnacle Point and Diepkloof Rock Shelter in South Africa.[17][18]
The Later Stone Age (LSA) is a period in African prehistory that follows the Middle Stone Age. 
Gillings argued that the stone row and cairn were part of a wider monumental landscape incorporating Porlock Stone Circle. He suggested that the cairn was built in the Early Bronze Age, with additions of a rough paving around its perimeter made in the Middle Bronze Age. He also put forward the possibility that the stone circle was built during the Middle Bronze Age as part of a wider "re-organisation of the landscape" around the cairn.
Differences in stone tool technologies are often used to distinguish between the Middle Stone Age and the Later Stone Age. The larger prepared platform flake-based stone tool industries of the Middle Stone Age, such as Levallois were increasingly replaced with industries that focused on producing blades and bladelets on cores with simple platforms. African stone tool technologies are divided into modes as proposed by Grahame Clark in 1969 and outlined by Lawrence Barham and Peter Mitchell as follows:The lithic technologies of the Later Stone Age often fall into Modes 4 and 5. They have been further broken into four stages within the LSA.
The Early Stone Age in Africa is not to be identified with "Old Stone Age", a translation of Paleolithic, or with Paleolithic, or with the "Earlier Stone Age" that originally meant what became the Paleolithic and Mesolithic. In the initial decades of its definition by the Pan-African Congress of Prehistory, it was parallel in Africa to the Upper and Middle Paleolithic. However, since then Radiocarbon dating has shown that the Middle Stone Age is in fact contemporaneous with the Middle Paleolithic. The Early Stone Age therefore is contemporaneous with the Lower Paleolithic and happens to include the same main technologies, Oldowan and Acheulean, which produced Mode 1 and Mode 2 stone tools respectively. A distinct regional term is warranted, however, by the location and chronology of the sites and the exact typology.
An age of over 279,000 years old is published for the oldest Middle Stone Age site in the Formation. Although similar in age with the oldest Middle Stone Age site in the Kapthurin Formation, Kenya, the oldest occupation at Gademotta is characterized by technological elements that are exclusively attributable to the Middle Stone Age. Stone-tipped throwing spears of that age have been studied; they predate known "Homo sapiens" fossils.
The terms "Early Stone Age", "Middle Stone Age" and "Later Stone Age" in the context of African archaeology are not to be confused with the terms Lower Paleolithic, Middle Paleolithic, and Upper Paleolithic. 
They were introduced in the 1920s, as it became clear that the existing chronological system of Upper, Middle, and Lower Paleolithic was not a suitable correlate to the prehistoric past in Africa. Some scholars, however, continue to view these two chronologies as parallel, arguing that they both represent the development of behavioral modernity. 
In archaeology, Fauresmith industry is a stone tool industry that is transitional between the Acheulian and the Middle Stone Age. It is at the end of the Acheulian or beginning of the Middle Stone Age. It is named after the town of Fauresmith in South Africa. The Fauresmith is found at a number of other archaeological sites such as Wonderwerk Cave and Kathu Pan where it is potentially dated to at least 420,000 years ago. The Fauresmith consists of Middle Stone Age technology such as blades, points and prepared core technology as well as retaining handaxes from the Acheulian. The type sites are Brakfontein 321 and Riverview Estates Site VI. The Fauresmith culture shows Levalloisean influence, with hand-axes and flakes with faceted striking platforms.
Vegetation was very broad in the earlier Upper Pleistocene interval, ranging approximately from 125,000 to 35,000 B.P. There were five clearly defined layers containing cultural remains and distinct environmental differences (from older to younger): Middle Stone Age 1, Middle Stone Age 2, Middle Stone Age 3, Early Later Stone Age, and Iron Age. There were specific changes in the vegetation frequencies between the Middle Stone Age and Late Stone Age, and the difference was specifically quantifiable in the relative amounts of grass versus bush in the vegetational mosaic presented. There was more bush present in a majority of the Middle Stone Age 1 and 2 and the Early Late Stone Age. This is reflected in the climatic conditions being very different from the current climatic conditions. There was potentially more grass during the Middle Stone Age 3, which most likely reflects present climatic conditions.
The study of bones from larger mammals provides knowledge about the features, and sequence at Border Cave during the Middle Stone Age and early Late Stone Age (c. 125,000 to 35,000 B.P.). Studies were conducted to understand people in the Middle Stone Age and Early Late Stone Age through animal bones and vegetation that they brought back to the site. Additionally, lithostratigraphic analysis of Border Cave provides significant information about when Border Cave was inhabited.
Fine-grained stone such as silcrete and quartz make up a large percentage of Howiesons Poort artifacts than in both earlier and later Middle Stone Age cultures. Howiesons Poort tools seem not to differ greatly in shape from those of the Late Stone Age lithic tools such as those manufactured by Wilton culture though they tend to be larger but somewhat smaller than the typical flake and blade tools elsewhere in the Middle Stone Age. They have indeed been described as ‘fully “Upper Palaeolithic” in almost every recognized technological and typological sense’. The Howiesons Poort Industry is anomalous not only for its early appearance, which Vishnyatsky calls ‘running ahead of time’, but because it is replaced by Middle Stone Age industries that are similar to those of pre-Howiesons Poort. This change seems to have happened gradually.
Evidence of local inhabitants in and around Jettenbach includes almost every period back to the Stone Age. Of particular note is a settlement hub from the Middle Stone Age which was archaeologically surveyed and analysed over a several years. For centuries, Stone Age people camped along the ridge east of the “Witthau” forest. One archaeological find witnessing their presence, a small-bladed knife dates from the late Old Stone Age. At the same site, which was visited several times in the early 1990s, artefacts mainly from the Middle Stone Age were excavated. Only sporadic items were found to date from the New Stone Age.
In regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa, the Stone Age was followed directly by the Iron Age. The Middle East and southeastern Asian regions progressed past Stone Age technology around 6000 BCE. Europe, and the rest of Asia became post-Stone Age societies by about 4000 BCE. The proto-Inca cultures of South America continued at a Stone Age level until around 2000 BCE, when gold, copper and silver made their entrance. The Americas notably did not develop a widespread behavior of smelting Bronze or Iron after the Stone Age period, although the technology existed. Stone tool manufacture continued even after the Stone Age ended in a given area. In Europe and North America, millstones were in use until well into the 20th century, and still are in many parts of the world.
There was unusual stratigraphic and radiometric control at Border Cave, and these data indicate that Border Cave was not always inhabited. Border cave was occupied at different points in time, and each occupancy modified the sediment at Border Cave. One particular sedimentary sequence of interest was the early age of the Middle Stone Age at about 95,000 B.P., which was originally believed to align with the Upper Paleolithic. Instead, the Middle Stone Age at Border Cave was found to extend to the beginning of the Late Interglacial. A number of sedimentary sequences on the interior and the coast, including the Klasies River Mouth site in the southern Cape, the Bushman Rock Shelter, and Florisbad, support this sedimentary pattern presented at Border Cave. Additionally, a late Middle Pleistocene age for the earliest Middle Stone Age follows the uranium-series date of 174,000 B.P.
Amongst African archaeologists, the terms Old Stone Age, Middle Stone Age and Late Stone Age are preferred.
The Cave of Hearths is part of the Historic Cave complex and preserves a remarkably complete record of human occupation from Early Stone Age “Acheulian” times in the oldest sediments through the Middle Stone Age, the Later Stone Age and up to the Iron Age. Nineteenth century European relics such as brass ware and musket balls were found at the surface when excavations started. The site was re-excavated and re-analysed as part of the 'Makapan Middle Pleistocene Research Project' run by the University of Liverpool (UK) between 1996 and 2001. This work has shown that coloured sediment horizons in the Early Stone Age levels are not from fire use. A Homo mandible also recovered from these layers may also represent one of the earliest representatives of "Homo sapiens".
The Middle Stone Age was a period of African prehistory between Early Stone Age and Late Stone Age. It began around 300,000 years ago and ended around 50,000 years ago. It is considered as an equivalent of European Middle Paleolithic. It is associated with anatomically modern or almost modern "Homo sapiens". Early physical evidence comes from Omo and Herto, both in Ethiopia and dated respectively at c. 195 ka and at c. 160 ka.
Where the same fish species have survived in both Later Stone Age and Middle Stone Age levels, analysis of relative bone element occurrence show a significant deficit in the Middle Stone Age. In other words, age-related taphonomic processes have resulted in the loss of many fish bones, and it is likely that more fish were originally deposited in the Middle Stone Age levels than have been recovered through archaeological excavations. Fish are seldom reported from other southern African MSA sites, and by implication, it was thought that Middle Stone Age people were incapable of exploiting coastal resources efficiently. The evidence for fishing at Blombos Cave and Klasies River contradicts this theory.
Several stone ages, when stone tools prevailed and make up the bulk of artifacts, are followed by periods when other technologies came into use. They lent their names to the different periods. The basic framework for the southern Levant is, as follows: Paleolithic or Old Stone Age is often divided up into phases called, from early-to-late: Lower Paleolithic, Middle Paleolithic and Upper Paleolithic. An Epipaleolithic (latest Paleolithic) period, also known as Mesolithic (transition to Neolithic) follows and is, in turn succeeded by a Neolithic (New Stone Age).