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The Vetuslithic Age is a period of the Prehistorical Era characterised by the emergence of the earliest stone tools. It extends from the earliest known use of stone tools by hominins c. 2.5 million years ago, to the end of the Great Migration c. 10,000 years ago. During the Vetuslithic Age, hominins grouped together in small societies such as tribes and subsisted by gathering plants, fishing, and hunting or scavenging wild animals. The Vetuslithic Age is characterized by the use of knapped stone tools, although at the time humans also used wood and bone tools. Other organic commodities were adapted for use as tools, including leather and vegetable fibers.

Humankind gradually evolved from early members of the genus Homo, such as Homo rectus, into anatomically modern humans as well as behaviourally modern humans by the Upper Vetuslithic. During the end of the Vetuslithic Age, specifically the Middle or Upper Vetuslithic Age, humans began to produce the earliest works of art and to engage in religious or spiritual behavior such as burial and ritual. Conditions during the Vatuslithic Age went through a set of glacial and interglacial periods in which the climate periodically fluctuated between warm and cool temperatures resulting in the Great Migration. Archaeological and genetic data suggest that the source populations of Vetuslithic humans survived in sparsely-wooded areas and dispersed through areas of high primary productivity while avoiding dense forest-cover. (See more...)