The earliest people
The Stone Age was the dawn of human history, and this word search gathers it. You'll be finding the CAVEMAN and his world — the FLINT used to make TOOLS, the SPEAR and AXE for HUNTING, the mighty MAMMOTH they hunted, and the all-important FIRE.
Each puzzle pulls a fresh selection from the list, so the dig changes every time you play — gentle on Easy, and a Hard-mode trek through prehistory once the diagonals and backwards words appear.
Hunters, gatherers and survival
Stone Age people were HUNTER-GATHERERs, and the words are here. Living as a TRIBE and a NOMAD, they found SHELTER in a CAVE, made cave PAINTING with charcoal and ANTLER tools, carved BONE, shaped POTTERY, and slowly learned new skills — even the WHEEL and, later, BRONZE. Every day was about SURVIVAL, and the great stone circle of STONEHENGE still stands from those distant times.
How we know about a world before writing
The Stone Age is by far the longest chapter of human history — it lasted hundreds of thousands of years, compared to the few thousand since writing began. Nobody wrote anything down, so everything we know comes from what survived: chipped FLINT TOOLS, a carved ANTLER or BONE, the bones of a hunted MAMMOTH, and the charcoal-and-ochre CAVE PAINTINGs that early artists left on rock walls, some over 30,000 years old and still showing the animals they hunted.
Two changes ended it. First, people learned to farm instead of only HUNTING and gathering, so a roaming NOMAD TRIBE could settle in one place, build a SHELTER and make POTTERY to store food. Then they discovered how to mix metals, and the harder, sharper BRONZE slowly replaced stone — which is why the next era is called the Bronze Age. STONEHENGE was raised right around that turning point, its huge stones hauled and lifted without metal machines or even the WHEEL in common use, which is exactly the kind of mystery that makes the Stone Age such a gripping classroom topic.
Great for a Stone Age topic
It pairs perfectly with a primary history topic on early people, prehistory and Stonehenge — Easy mode keeps the grid small with no diagonals or reverse words. Play online, print a PDF pack, or use our Make Your Own tool to build a grid from your own prehistory words.