The Third Wave
The Third Wave is a book published in 1980 by Alvin Toffler. It is the sequel to Future Shock, published in 1970, and the second in a trilogy that was completed with Powershift in 1990.

The transition from the earlier hunter-gatherer societies to the agrarian and agricultural societies is also known as the Neolithic Revolution. This coincides with the transition from the Mesolithic era to the Neolithic era (respectively, the Middle and Late Stone Age). The transition from the Paleolithic to the Mesolithic (Early to Middle Stone Age), in turn, largely coincides with the emergence of the modern Homo sapiens from earlier, related archaic human species.

Nearly extinct in the present-day world, hunter-gatherer societies (which one might term the "0th Wave" societies) are not recognized in Toffler's scheme. Similarly, in the classical Three-age system, distinctions are recognized between the Stone Age era Bronze Age, Iron Age, the boundary between the latter two c. 1300-1200 BC being as dramatic as that demarcating Toffler's waves. None of these phases are clearly recognized in the Toffler scheme, in part due to the prevalence of the latter phase amongst present-day pre-industrial societies.

The transition from Toffler's First Wave and Second Wave is sometimes also recognized as a transition from the Iron Age to the Steel Age. At present, there is no clear delineation of the latest transition, though sometimes the term Post-industrial society, originating from Daniel Bell, is used, in addition to Toffler's "Third Wave society".