Neolithic use of polished or ground stone tools, in contrast to the flaked stone tools used during the Paleolithic era. Neolithic people were skilled farmers, manufacturing a range of tools necessary for the tending, harvesting and processing of crops (such as sickle blades and grinding stones) and food production (e.g. pottery, bone implements). They were also skilled manufacturers of a range of other types of stone tools and ornaments, including projectile points, beads, and statuettes. But what allowed forest clearance on a large scale was the polished stone axe above all other tools. Together with the adze, fashioning wood for shelter,
Neolithic Expansion of the Middle East through the Old World. The Neolithic spread throughout Europe between about 8200 and 6000 years ago. Neolithic Expansion At the beginning of the Holocene, about 12,000 years ago, humanity entered a period of increasing technological sophistication, resulting in the Neolithic Revolution. Breadmaking considerably predates this period, but people in the Middle East now began cultivating wild cereal and pulses. Dogs had been domesticated over thousands of years; nomadic shepherding became possible through domestication of goats, sheep, horses, camels and cattle. About 7,000 years ago, livestock herding was sufficiently established to allow a widespread abandonment of hunter-gathering