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The Neolithic, or "New Stone Age", is the last part of the Stone Age. It began with the start of farming, and ended when metal tools began to be used.
- Earlier Mesolithic
- Later Bronze Age
The advent of farming caused great change in people's lives. Instead of living as nomads and wandering from place to place in search of food, people increasingly stayed in one place, giving rise to towns, and later cities and states. Because of the profound differences in the way humans interacted once agriculture began, the New Stone Age is sometimes called the neolithic revolution.
With very minor exceptions (a few copper hatchets and spear heads in the Great Lakes region) the peoples of the Americas remained at the neolithic level of technology up until the time of the European contacts. A glance at such cultures as the Iroquois, Pueblo, and Maya shows that a culture may be highly sophisticated in many ways without knowledge of the use of metals.