Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Middle Paleolithic period stretched from 300,000 to 50,000 years ago across Europe, Africa and Asia. This era fell within the geological Chibanian age of the Middle Pleistocene and extended into the Late Pleistocene ages that followed.
Stone tool manufacturing spawned the Levallois technique or prepared-core method around 200,000 BP. Wallace and Shea split core artifacts into formal cores and expedient cores to increase efficiency by creating more controlled and consistent flakes.
Middle Paleolithic burials at Krapina in Croatia dated to 130,000 BP show early burial practices. Qafzeh and Es Skhul caves in Israel held similar sites from about 100,000 BP while Neandertal valley in Germany provided key evidence for the era.
Middle Stone Age inhabitants of Democratic Republic of Congo hunted long catfish with specialized barbed fishing points around 90,000 years ago. Neandertals in Italy began catching shellfish for food about 110,000 years ago and people supplemented gathering and hunting diets with seafood consumption during this period.
Some scholars argue that behavioral modernity first appeared during the Middle Paleolithic timeframe but undisputed evidence of complex behavior only became common later during the Upper Paleolithic period. Philip Lieberman believed these cultures possessed developing religious ideologies including concepts of an afterlife while other scholars suggested bodies were buried for secular reasons instead.