The Stone Age is a broad prehistoricperiod during which stone was widely used to make implements with a sharp edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted roughly 3.4 million years, and ended between 6000 BCEand 2000 BCE with the advent ofmetalworking.[1] Stone Age artifacts include tools used by modern humans and by their predecessor species in the genus Homo, as well as the earlier partly contemporaneous generaAustralopithecus and Paranthropus.Bone tools were used during this period as well but are rarely preserved in thearchaeological record. The Stone Age is further subdivided by the types of stone tools in use.The Stone Age is the first of the three-age system of archaeology, which divides human technological prehistoryinto three periods: