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,
Pastoral Neolithic goats) in the eighth to seventh millennia BP. As the grasslands of the Sahara began drying out in the mid-Holocene, herders then spread into the Nile Valley and eastern Africa. During the Pastoral Neolithic in eastern Africa (4500-1200 BP), archaeologists have identified two pastoralist groups who co-existed alongside Eburran phase 5 hunter/gatherers; these groups are known as the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic and the Elmenteitan. The Pastoral Neolithic in eastern Africa was followed by the Pastoral Iron Age approximately two thousand years ago, during which agriculture, iron technology, and Bantu languages spread into the region. Pastoral Neolithic The Pastoral Neolithic refers