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stone age
a. Archæol. The period or stage in the development of human culture which is marked by the exclusive or greatly predominant use of stone as material for weapons and implements, in contradistinction to the later ‘ages’ in which bronze or iron was used.
The stone age is divided into the palæolithic and neolithic periods.
[1863Lyell Antiq. Man ii. (ed. 2) 10 The age of stone in Denmark coincides with the period of the first vegetation, or that of the Scotch fir.] 1864J. Hunt tr. Vogt's Lect. Man xii. 343 Long heavy skulls, which differ entirely from those of the stone-age. 1874Pitt-Rivers Evol. Culture, Princ. Classif. (1906) 14 The Fijians..at the time of their discovery were still in the stone age.
attrib.1878J. C. Southall Epoch of Mammoth iv. 45 In the Stone-Age lake-stations, pottery (hand-made) is found in abundance. 1910Haddon Races of Man 20 The Tasmanians..never advanced beyond an early stage of stone-age culture.
b. fig., esp. as the type of an outmoded or unsophisticated era. Also attrib. and as adj.
1927Kipling in Maclean's Mag. 15 Sept. 52/4 The old lady..was primitive Stone-Age—bless her! She looked on us as a couple of magicians. 1937F. Scott Fitzgerald Let. 5 July (1964) 15 The girls who were what we called ‘speeds’ (in our stone-age slang) at sixteen were reduced to anything they could get at the marrying time. 1959M. Laski Offshore Island iii. 84 I've enjoyed civilization too much to be happy in a new stone age. 1973R. Thomas If you can't be Good (1974) xvi. 147 Back in the mid-fifties was back in the stone age. It was way before the Pill. 1981Quarto May 4/2 In the age of computerised type-setting, the technology of the book trade seems more and more stone age. |