60 free The Stone Age trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Stone Age trivia quiz spans 99% of human history, from the first sharp-edged rocks knapped 3.3 million years ago in Kenya to the copper axe carried by Ötzi the Iceman. The easy questions are the ones any school pupil should get: the three ages of prehistory, the three divisions of the Stone Age, what ended it, and what the Neolithic people started doing that changed everything. From there it gets deeper: the site of Lomekwi 3, the Olduvai Gorge industry, the pear-shaped hand axe, the Neanderthals' Mousterian tools, the Danish museum curator who invented the three-age system, the huts built of mammoth bones, the oldest known battle in Egypt, the dog joining the hunt, the mysterious pillars of Göbekli Tepe, the Orkney village with stone beds and an indoor toilet, and the 61 tattoos on the mummy from the Alps. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on the Stone Age, its tool industries and its key sites before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our cave paintings, ancient history and archaeology quizzes next.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Roughly how long did the Stone Age last?
About 3.4 million years
That is roughly 99% of human history; it ended between 4000 and 2000 BC depending on the region.
Q 02What technological development marks the end of the Stone Age?
The smelting of copper
Gold and copper were hammered for ornaments earlier, but melting and smelting copper is the true dividing line.
Q 03The Stone Age is the first period of which archaeological scheme?
The three-age system
The Bronze Age and Iron Age follow it.
Q 04Which Danish museum curator first arranged prehistory scientifically into stone, bronze and iron ages?
Christian Jürgensen Thomsen
He worked with the collections of the Museum of Northern Antiquities in Copenhagen from 1816 to 1825.
Q 05What are the three divisions of the Stone Age, in order?
Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic
Old stone, middle stone and new stone; the Neolithic often overlaps the Copper Age.
Q 06Where were the oldest known stone tools, dated to 3.3 million years, excavated?
Lomekwi 3, West Turkana, Kenya
They pushed the record back about 500,000 years beyond the Gona tools of Ethiopia.
Q 07The oldest indirect evidence of tool use, 3.4-million-year-old cut-marked bones, comes from which country?
Ethiopia
They were found in the Lower Awash Valley.
Q 08The Oldowan tool industry is named after which site in Tanzania?
Olduvai Gorge
Oldowan tools were made by knocking flakes off river pebbles with a hammerstone.
Q 09What is the characteristic tool of the Acheulean industry associated with Homo erectus?
The pear-shaped hand axe
The industry is named for the French type site of Saint-Acheul.
Q 10About how long ago did the hand axe first appear as a new Lower Paleolithic tool?
700,000 years ago
The earliest European hand axes belong to the Abbevillian industry of the Somme valley.
Q 11Which stone-tool industry is associated with the Neanderthals?
Mousterian
Neanderthals nursed their elderly and practised ritual burial, suggesting an organised society.
Q 12Who coined the term 'Paleolithic', published in 1865?
John Lubbock
It comes from Greek palaios (old) and lithos (stone).
Q 13Neanderthals lived in Europe and the Near East - which of these places has NO evidence of them?
Africa
They are also absent from Australia and the Americas.
Q 14Which Upper Paleolithic culture's makers, modern human or Neanderthal, are long disputed?
Q 21The first Neolithic cultures began around 7000 BC in which region?
The Fertile Crescent
Maize in Mesoamerica and rice in the Far East were probably independent centres of farming.
Q 22Skara Brae, one of Europe's best-preserved Neolithic villages, is in which island group?
Orkney
Its houses have stone beds, shelves and even an indoor toilet linked to a stream.
Q 23How was Skara Brae revealed?
A storm stripped sand dunes from the stone structures
It was occupied from about 3180 to 2500 BC and is part of the UNESCO 'Heart of Neolithic Orkney'.
Châtelperronian
Aurignacian, Gravettian, Solutrean and Magdalenian are all linked to anatomically modern humans.
Q 15In which country was Mungo Man, the earliest modern human remains found beyond Africa, discovered?
Australia
The remains are dated to about 42,000 years old.
Q 16Via which route did people first reach the Americas, exposed by lower sea levels?
The Bering land bridge
The earliest widely accepted dates are the Clovis culture sites, some 13,500 years ago.
Q 17What tiny tools, used in composite implements, characterise the Mesolithic?
Microliths
They allowed more efficient hunting and fishing as sea levels rose after the last ice age.
Q 18Which animal was probably first domesticated, as a hunting companion, in the Mesolithic?
The dog
More complex settlements such as Lepenski Vir also appeared in this period.
Q 19The earliest known battle, in the Mesolithic, took place at Cemetery 117 in which country?
Egypt
Mesolithic rock art in Spain also depicts organised bands of archers marching against each other.
Q 20The Neolithic is characterised above all by the adoption of what?
Agriculture
Pottery, polished stone tools and larger settlements came with it, in the so-called Neolithic Revolution.
Q 24Göbekli Tepe, with some of the world's oldest megaliths, is in which modern country?
Turkey
Its circular structures of carved pillars were used from around 9500 BC in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic.
Q 25What does the name Göbekli Tepe mean in Turkish?
Potbelly Hill
Its Kurdish name means Wish Hill.
Q 26Ötzi the Iceman, found in the Alps in 1991, carried an axe made of which metal, alongside a flint knife?
Copper
He also had a flint knife, marking the very end of the Stone Age around 3300 BC.
Q 27What evidence suggests Ötzi was killed by another person?
An arrowhead in his left shoulder
He also had 61 tattoos and a quiver of 14 arrows.
Q 28How many tattoos did Ötzi have?
61
He is Europe's oldest known natural human mummy.
Q 29The Venus of Willendorf, carved about 30,000 years ago, was found in 1908 in which country?
Austria
It is 11.1 cm tall, made of non-local oolitic limestone tinted with red ochre.
Q 30Stone Age hunters in Ukraine, Moravia and Poland built huts out of what unusual material?
Mammoth bones
The builders were expert mammoth hunters of the Dnieper valley and beyond.