Did advanced civilizations thrive on earth before the stone age

A: The Stone Age represents that period in the evolution of civilisation when people had not yet learnt to make metal tools and weapons. If we define ‘advanced civilisations’ as those that worked with metal and were able to produce advanced products made from or by using metal, then the answer must be no. If we define ‘advanced civilisations’ as those that achieved complex social structures and used advanced farming, construction or gathering artefacts, in spite of their primitive stone tools, then the answer could be that these advanced civilisations evolved during the Stone Age, but not before.

Note that the Stone Age came to an end in the Near East some time before three thousand BCE, but the term could be applied appropriately to native societies right up to recent times.