What is the Mesolithic Era?
The Mesolithic era refers to a short period of time immediately after the recession of continental glaciers of the last Ice Age, about 11,000 years ago (9000 BCE), to the development of agriculture 10,000 – 8,000 years ago. Mesolithic cultures are those cultures during the Mesolithic era. Sometimes the word “Epipaleolithic” is used in connection with Mesolithic, to describe groups living during the period that maintained a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, while “mesolithic” is reserved specifically for those cultures in a state of transition towards agriculture. Occasionally, but more rarely, the terms have the reverse meaning. The terminology is likely to standardize in the near future. “Mesolithic” means “Middle Stone Age.” However, the prefix “meso-” in the word can mean “between,” and this has been taken some scientists to refer to cultures in between a hunter-gathering mode and an agricultural mode. The Mesolithic era begins at the end of the Pleistocene epoch and the start of the Holoc
