Prehistoric technology Ground and polished stone tools continued to be created and used during the Neolithic period. Numeric record keeping evolved from a system of counting using small clay tokens that began in Sumer about 8000 BC. The Stone Age developed into the Bronze Age after the Neolithic Revolution. The Neolithic Revolution involved radical changes in agricultural technology which included development of agriculture, animal domestication, and the adoption of permanent settlements. The Bronze Age is characterised by metal smelting of copper and its alloy bronze, an alloy of tin and copper, to create implements and weapons. Polished stone tools continued to be
Neolithic British Isles into Europe, being adopted by hunter-gathering societies in what is now Turkey, Greece, the Balkans, and across the Mediterranean, eventually reaching north-western Europe and the British Isles. The archaeological community still debate whether the Neolithic Revolution was brought to the British Isles through adoption by natives, or by migrating groups of continental Europeans who settled there. Changes in Neolithic culture could have been due to the mass migrations that occurred in that time. A 2017 study showed that British Neolithic farmers had formerly been genetically similar to contemporary populations in the Iberian peninsula, but from the Beaker culture period onwards,