The Middle Stone Age was invented to fill a gap
John Lubbock coined Paleolithic and Neolithic in 1865; Hodder Westropp added Mesolithic in 1866 and sparked a fight. Some preferred Epipaleolithic—a final Old Stone coda—until enough data convinced archaeologists a transitional hunter age really sat between ice and farms.
Mesolithic means middle stone, naming Old World cultures between Upper Paleolithic and Neolithic. Epipaleolithic is often used for the same span outside northern Europe and for the Levant and Caucasus. Economies shift from large-game group hunting toward broader foraging, with smaller, more sophisticated lithics. Farming marks the Neolithic door. Microliths—Mode V composite inserts—define many Mesolithic kits, though some regions kept macroliths.
Westropp's category was controversial; John Evans's British school denied any need for it. Edouard Piette offered Azilian as a filler; Knut Stjerna preferred Epipaleolithic as Paleolithic's last phase rather than a middle age. By Vere Gordon Childe's Dawn of Europe in 1947, data justified a transition. Authors still choose Epipaleolithic when foragers are not followed by farmers. Balkan Mesolithic begins about 15,000 years ago, Franco-Cantabrian Azilian about 14,000, and other European zones by 11,500 at the Holocene start; farming ends it regionally between about 8,500 and 5,500 years ago.
Ritual and sky watching appear: early Stonehenge postholes aligned east–west, and Warren Field in Scotland may encode a lunar calendar in pit sizes. Birch-pitch chewing gum from southern Denmark shows a woman ate hazelnuts and duck about 5,700 years ago; Mesolithic people also moved favored plants such as hazel through forests. As the Neolithic package of farming, herding, polished axes, longhouses, and pottery spread, forager life shrank through contact and conversion until it vanished from most of Europe.
Source: Mesolithic
