This is a picture of an Old Stone Age Camp – What is your job?
The Stone Age can be divided into 2 parts. The Old Stone Age and New Stone Age
In the old stone people were hunter-gatherers. They were nomads who lived in tribes and relied on hunting, fishing and gathering wild fruits. They hunted animals like bison, mammoths, bears and deer. Meat was a source of food and animal hide was used to make clothes. They lived in clans of 20-30 people in caves, outdoors or in cabins made of tree branches and animal skin.
What do you think Ireland looked like in the Stone Age? How different do you think Blessington was?
The New Stone Age began when humans discovered agriculture and raising cattle, which allowed them to no longer have a nomadic life style. They were able to settle in fertile areas with predictable climate, usually near river basins. Rice and wheat were the first plants they cultivated, and the first animals to be domesticated were dogs, goats, sheep, oxen and horses.
What do you think has caused the the land to be like so?
This is the site of a flint mine. Flint was such an important tool in the Stone Age. Flint allowed people to make tools and make fire.
Do you think this was a useful weapon in the stone age?
The Bow and arrow was very important. People were known as hunters and gathers. They were nomads, they followed the deer and ate seasonal foods.
To make a bow and arrow needed a lot of skill. Not only was wood for the bow (Yew) and arrow (Hazel) needed but Bluebells were needed as a glue, nettles as a string and tendons from a deer for string also.
Hitting flint together causing a spark to fall on tinder is an excellent way of starting a fire but Stone Age people also had other methods of starting a fire. It was called the bow and drill method. This would work better in a dry climate.
People were known as hunters and gathers. They were nomads, they followed the deer and ate seasonal foods. They really respected the animals they hunted and killed. On killing a deer they used every part of it. The eyeballs were used to make a glue, the antlers were made into needles, the skin was turned into bedding, clothes and bags and the tendons in a deers leg was used as string.
Stone Age Art
Where in Ireland would you find the most Stone Age activity?
