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Imaginative depiction of the Stone Age, by Viktor Vasnetsov.

The Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age

The three-age system of archaeology divides human technological prehistory into three periods: Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. It was initially developed by C. J. Thomsen, director of the Royal Museum of Nordic Antiquities, Copenhagen, as a means to classify the museum’s collections according to whether the artifacts were made of stone, bronze, or iron.

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