The first people to appear in the Borough of Drama in the Middle Paleolithic Age (approximately 50,000 years ago) were nomadic hunters.
These people lived in caves and rock covered shelters which were openings between calcareous rocks where they were protected from the dangers of their environment and where they lived their daily lives performing day-to-day tasks.
Apart from hunting they also continued to collect wild fruits and plants which they found as they went on their daily food expeditions. Their tools were made of stone, either natural shingle from rivers in suitable shapes or shaped using flint and quartz scrapers, knives, axes, tips for arrows and spears, all of which make clear advanced hunting methods.
This period of human activity has not yet been fully explored and systematically researched in the Prefecture of Drama. Only a few sites have been found, such as that at Arkoudorema that lies in the Municipality of Paranesti and that in the Volakas basin giving little information about the habits and life style of these first people (50,000-10,000 years). The only excavation conducted for this period was done in a cave at the source of the Angitis river (known as the Cave of Maara) where a layer from the Middle Palaeolithic Age was found.
From 10,000 BC to 7,000 BC people in the area continued to live nomadically in caves or in a semi-permanent state as hunters and gatherers.
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