The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic () is a period
in human prehistory distinguished by the original
development of stone tools that covers c.
99% of human technological prehistory. It
extends from the earliest known use of stone
tools by hominins c. 3.3 million years ago,
to the end of the Pleistocene c. 11,650 cal
BP.The Paleolithic is followed in Europe by
the Mesolithic, although the date of the transition
varies geographically by several thousand
years.
During the Paleolithic, hominins grouped together
in small societies such as bands, and subsisted
by gathering plants and fishing, hunting or
scavenging wild animals. The Paleolithic 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; however, due to their
nature, these have not been preserved to any
great degree.
About 50,000 years ago, there was a marked
increase in the diversity of artifacts. In
Africa, bone artifacts and the first art appear
in the archaeological record. The first evidence
of human fishing is also noted, from artifacts
in places such as Blombos cave in South Africa.
Archaeologists classify artifacts of the last
50,000 years into many different categories,
such as projectile points, engraving tools,
knife blades, and drilling and piercing tools.
Humankind gradually evolved from early members
of the genus Homo—such as Homo habilis,
who used simple stone tools—into anatomically
modern humans as well as behaviorally modern
humans by the Upper Paleolithic. During the
end of the Paleolithic, specifically the Middle
or Upper Paleolithic, humans began to produce
the earliest works of art and began to engage
in religious and spiritual behavior such as
burial and ritual. The climate during the
Paleolithic consisted of a set of glacial
and interglacial periods in which the climate
periodically fluctuated between warm and cool
temperatures. Archaeological and genetic data
suggest that the source populations of Paleolithic
humans survived in sparsely wooded areas and
dispersed through areas of high primary productivity
while avoiding dense forest cover.By c. 50,000
– c. 40,000 BP, the first humans set foot
in Australia. By c. 45,000 BP, humans lived
at 61°N latitude in Europe. By c. 30,000
BP, Japan was reached, and by c. 27,000
BP humans were present in Siberia, above the
Arctic Circle. At the end of the Upper Paleolithic,
a group of humans crossed Beringia and quickly
expanded throughout the Americas.
== Etymology of paleolithic ==
The term "Palaeolithic" was coined by archaeologist
John Lubbock in 1865. It derives from Greek:
παλαιός, palaios, "old"; and λίθος,
lithos, "stone", meaning "old age of the stone"
or "Old Stone Age".
== Paleogeography and climate ==
The Paleolithic coincides almost exactly with
the Pleistocene epoch of geologic time, which
lasted from 2.6 million years ago to about
12,000 years ago. This epoch experienced important
geographic and climatic changes that affected
human societies.
During the preceding Pliocene, continents
had continued to drift from possibly as far
as 250 km (160 mi) from their present locations
to positions only 70 km (43 mi) from their
current location. South America became linked
to North America through the Isthmus of Panama,
bringing a nearly complete end to South America's
distinctive marsupial fauna. The formation
of the isthmus had major consequences on global
temperatures, because warm equatorial ocean
currents were cut off, and the cold Arctic
and Antarctic waters lowered temperatures
in the now-isolated Atlantic Ocean.
Most of Central America formed during the
Pliocene to connect the continents of North
and South America, allowing fauna from these
continents to leave their native habitats
and colonize new areas. Africa's collision
with Asia created the Mediterranean, cutting
off the remnants of the Tethys Ocean. During
the Pleistocene, the modern continents were
essentially at their present positions; the
tectonic plates on which they sit have probably
moved at most 100 km (62 mi) from each other
since the beginning of the period.Climates
during the Pliocene became cooler and drier,
and seasonal, similar to modern climates.
Ice sheets grew on Antarctica. The formation
of an Arctic ice cap around 3 million years
ago is signaled by an abrupt shift in oxygen
isotope ratios and ice-rafted cobbles in the
North Atlantic and North Pacific Ocean beds.
Mid-latitude glaciation probably began before
the end of the epoch. The global cooling that
occurred during the Pliocene may have spurred
on the disappearance of forests and the spread
of grasslands and savannas.
The Pleistocene climate was characterized
by repeated glacial cycles during which continental
glaciers pushed to the 40th parallel in some
places. Four major glacial events have been
identified, as well as many minor intervening
events. A major event is a general glacial
excursion, termed a "glacial". Glacials are
separated by "interglacials". During a glacial,
the glacier experiences minor advances and
retreats. The minor excursion is a "stadial";
times between stadials are "interstadials".
Each glacial advance tied up huge volumes
of water in continental ice sheets 1,500–3,000
m (4,900–9,800 ft) deep, resulting in temporary
sea level drops of 100 m (330 ft) or more
over the entire surface of the Earth. During
interglacial times, such as at present, drowned
coastlines were common, mitigated by isostatic
or other emergent motion of some regions.
The effects of glaciation were global. Antarctica
was ice-bound throughout the Pleistocene and
the preceding Pliocene. The Andes were covered
in the south by the Patagonian ice cap. There
were glaciers in New Zealand and Tasmania.
The now decaying glaciers of Mount Kenya,
Mount Kilimanjaro, and the Ruwenzori Range
in east and central Africa were larger. Glaciers
existed in the mountains of Ethiopia and to
the west in the Atlas mountains. In the northern
hemisphere, many glaciers fused into one.
The Cordilleran ice sheet covered the North
American northwest; the Laurentide covered
the east. The Fenno-Scandian ice sheet covered
northern Europe, including Great Britain;
the Alpine ice sheet covered the Alps. Scattered
domes stretched across Siberia and the Arctic
shelf. The northern seas were frozen. During
the late Upper Paleolithic (Latest Pleistocene)
c. 18,000 BP, the Beringia land bridge between
Asia and North America was blocked by ice,
which may have prevented early Paleo-Indians
such as the Clovis culture from directly crossing
Beringia to reach the Americas.
According to Mark Lynas (through collected
data), the Pleistocene's overall climate could
be characterized as a continuous El Niño
with trade winds in the south Pacific weakening
or heading east, warm air rising near Peru,
warm water spreading from the west Pacific
and the Indian Ocean to the east Pacific,
and other El Niño markers.The Paleolithic
is often held to finish at the end of the
ice age (the end of the Pleistocene epoch),
and Earth's climate became warmer. This may
have caused or contributed to the extinction
of the Pleistocene megafauna, although it
is also possible that the late Pleistocene
extinctions were (at least in part) caused
by other factors such as disease and overhunting
by humans. New research suggests that the
extinction of the woolly mammoth may have
been caused by the combined effect of climatic
change and human hunting. Scientists suggest
that climate change during the end of the
Pleistocene caused the mammoths' habitat to
shrink in size, resulting in a drop in population.
The small populations were then hunted out
by Paleolithic humans. The global warming
that occurred during the end of the Pleistocene
and the beginning of the Holocene may have
made it easier for humans to reach mammoth
habitats that were previously frozen and inaccessible.
Small populations of woolly mammoths survived
on isolated Arctic islands, Saint Paul Island
and Wrangel Island, until c. 3700 BCE and
c. 1700 BCE respectively. The Wrangel Island
population became extinct around the same
time the island was settled by prehistoric
humans. There is no evidence of prehistoric
human presence on Saint Paul island (though
early human settlements dating as far back
as 6500 BCE were found on the nearby Aleutian
Islands).
== Human way of life ==
Nearly all of our knowledge of Paleolithic
human culture and way of life comes from archaeology
and ethnographic comparisons to modern hunter-gatherer
cultures such as the !Kung San who live similarly
to their Paleolithic predecessors. The economy
of a typical Paleolithic society was a hunter-gatherer
economy. Humans hunted wild animals for meat
and gathered food, firewood, and materials
for their tools, clothes, or shelters.Human
population density was very low, around only
one person per square mile. This was most
likely due to low body fat, infanticide, women
regularly engaging in intense endurance exercise,
late weaning of infants, and a nomadic lifestyle.
Like contemporary hunter-gatherers, Paleolithic
humans enjoyed an abundance of leisure time
unparalleled in both Neolithic farming societies
and modern industrial societies. At the end
of the Paleolithic, specifically the Middle
or Upper Paleolithic, humans began to produce
works of art such as cave paintings, rock
art and jewellery and began to engage in religious
behavior such as burial and ritual.
=== Distribution ===
At the beginning of the Paleolithic, hominins
were found primarily in eastern Africa, east
of the Great Rift Valley. Most known hominin
fossils dating earlier than one million years
before present are found in this area, particularly
in Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia.
By c. 2,000,000 – c. 1,500,000 BP, groups
of hominins began leaving Africa and settling
southern Europe and Asia. Southern Caucasus
was occupied by c. 1,700,000 BP, and northern
China was reached by c. 1,660,000 BP. By
the end of the Lower Paleolithic, members
of the hominin family were living in what
is now China, western Indonesia, and, in Europe,
around the Mediterranean and as far north
as England, southern Germany, and Bulgaria.
Their further northward expansion may have
been limited by the lack of control of fire:
studies of cave settlements in Europe indicate
no regular use of fire prior to c. 400,000
– c. 300,000 BP.East Asian fossils from
this period are typically placed in the genus
Homo erectus. Very little fossil evidence
is available at known Lower Paleolithic sites
in Europe, but it is believed that hominins
who inhabited these sites were likewise Homo
erectus. There is no evidence of hominins
in America, Australia, or almost anywhere
in Oceania during this time period.
Fates of these early colonists, and their
relationships to modern humans, are still
subject to debate. According to current archaeological
and genetic models, there were at least two
notable expansion events subsequent to peopling
of Eurasia c. 2,000,000 – c. 1,500,000
BP. Around 500,000 BP a group of early humans,
frequently called Homo heidelbergensis, came
to Europe from Africa and eventually evolved
into Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthals).
In the Middle Paleolithic, Neanderthals were
present in the region now occupied by Poland.
Both Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis
became extinct by the end of the Paleolithic.
Descended from Homo Sapiens, the anatomically
modern Homo sapiens sapiens emerged in eastern
Africa c. 200,000 BP, left Africa around
50,000 BP, and expanded throughout the planet.
Multiple hominid groups coexisted for some
time in certain locations. Homo neanderthalensis
were still found in parts of Eurasia c. 30,000
BP years, and engaged in an unknown degree
of interbreeding with Homo sapiens sapiens.
DNA studies also suggest an unknown degree
of interbreeding between Homo sapiens sapiens
and Homo sapiens denisova.Hominin fossils
not belonging either to Homo neanderthalensis
or to Homo sapiens species, found in the Altai
Mountains and Indonesia, were radiocarbon
dated to c. 30,000 – c. 40,000 BP and
c. 17,000 BP respectively.
For the duration of the Paleolithic, human
populations remained low, especially outside
the equatorial region. The entire population
of Europe between 16,000 and 11,000 BP likely
averaged some 30,000 individuals, and between
40,000 and 16,000 BP, it was even lower at
4,000–6,000 individuals.
=== Technology ===
==== Tools ====
Paleolithic humans made tools of stone, bone,
and wood. The early paleolithic hominins,
Australopithecus, were the first users of
stone tools. Excavations in Gona, Ethiopia
have produced thousands of artifacts, and
through radioisotopic dating and magnetostratigraphy,
the sites can be firmly dated to 2.6 million
years ago. Evidence shows these early hominins
intentionally selected raw materials with
good flaking qualities and chose appropriate
sized stones for their needs to produce sharp-edged
tools for cutting.The earliest Paleolithic
stone tool industry, the Oldowan, began around
2.6 million years ago. It contained tools
such as choppers, burins, and stitching awls.
It was completely replaced around 250,000
years ago by the more complex Acheulean industry,
which was first conceived by Homo ergaster
around 1.8–1.65 million years ago. The Acheulean
implements completely vanish from the archaeological
record around 100,000 years ago and were replaced
by more complex Middle Paleolithic tool kits
such as the Mousterian and the Aterian industries.Lower
Paleolithic humans used a variety of stone
tools, including hand axes and choppers. Although
they appear to have used hand axes often,
there is disagreement about their use. Interpretations
range from cutting and chopping tools, to
digging implements, to flaking cores, to the
use in traps, and as a purely ritual significance,
perhaps in courting behavior. William H. Calvin
has suggested that some hand axes could have
served as "killer Frisbees" meant to be thrown
at a herd of animals at a waterhole so as
to stun one of them. There are no indications
of hafting, and some artifacts are far too
large for that. Thus, a thrown hand axe would
not usually have penetrated deeply enough
to cause very serious injuries. Nevertheless,
it could have been an effective weapon for
defense against predators. Choppers and scrapers
were likely used for skinning and butchering
scavenged animals and sharp-ended sticks were
often obtained for digging up edible roots.
Presumably, early humans used wooden spears
as early as 5 million years ago to hunt small
animals, much as their relatives, chimpanzees,
have been observed to do in Senegal, Africa.
Lower Paleolithic humans constructed shelters,
such as the possible wood hut at Terra Amata.
==== Fire use ====
Fire was used by the Lower Paleolithic hominins
Homo erectus and Homo ergaster as early as
300,000 to 1.5 million years ago and possibly
even earlier by the early Lower Paleolithic
(Oldowan) hominin Homo habilis or by robust
Australopithecines such as Paranthropus. However,
the use of fire only became common in the
societies of the following Middle Stone Age
and Middle Paleolithic. Use of fire reduced
mortality rates and provided protection against
predators. Early hominins may have begun to
cook their food as early as the Lower Paleolithic
(c. 1.9 million years ago) or at the latest
in the early Middle Paleolithic (c. 250,000
years ago). Some scientists have hypothesized
that hominins began cooking food to defrost
frozen meat, which would help ensure their
survival in cold regions.
==== Rafts ====
The Lower Paleolithic Homo erectus possibly
invented rafts (c. 840,000 – c. 800,000
BP) to travel over large bodies of water,
which may have allowed a group of Homo erectus
to reach the island of Flores and evolve into
the small hominin Homo floresiensis. However,
this hypothesis is disputed within the anthropological
community. The possible use of rafts during
the Lower Paleolithic may indicate that Lower
Paleolithic hominins such as Homo erectus
were more advanced than previously believed,
and may have even spoken an early form of
modern language. Supplementary evidence from
Neanderthal and modern human sites located
around the Mediterranean Sea, such as Coa
de sa Multa (c. 300,000 BP), has also indicated
that both Middle and Upper Paleolithic humans
used rafts to travel over large bodies of
water (i.e. the Mediterranean Sea) for the
purpose of colonizing other bodies of land.
==== Advanced tools ====
By around 200,000 BP, Middle Paleolithic stone
tool manufacturing spawned a tool making technique
known as the prepared-core technique, that
was more elaborate than previous Acheulean
techniques. This technique increased efficiency
by allowing the creation of more controlled
and consistent flakes. It allowed Middle Paleolithic
humans to create stone tipped spears, which
were the earliest composite tools, by hafting
sharp, pointy stone flakes onto wooden shafts.
In addition to improving tool making methods,
the Middle Paleolithic also saw an improvement
of the tools themselves that allowed access
to a wider variety and amount of food sources.
For example, microliths or small stone tools
or points were invented around 70,000–65,000
BP and were essential to the invention of
bows and spear throwers in the following Upper
Paleolithic.Harpoons were invented and used
for the first time during the late Middle
Paleolithic (c. 90,000 BP); the invention
of these devices brought fish into the human
diets, which provided a hedge against starvation
and a more abundant food supply. Thanks to
their technology and their advanced social
structures, Paleolithic groups such as the
Neanderthals—who had a Middle Paleolithic
level of technology—appear to have hunted
large game just as well as Upper Paleolithic
modern humans. and the Neanderthals in particular
may have likewise hunted with projectile weapons.
Nonetheless, Neanderthal use of projectile
weapons in hunting occurred very rarely (or
perhaps never) and the Neanderthals hunted
large game animals mostly by ambushing them
and attacking them with mêlée weapons such
as thrusting spears rather than attacking
them from a distance with projectile weapons.
==== Other inventions ====
During the Upper Paleolithic, further inventions
were made, such as the net c. 22,000 or
c. 29,000 BP) bolas, the spear thrower (c. 30,000
BP), the bow and arrow (c. 25,000 or c. 30,000
BP) and the oldest example of ceramic art,
the Venus of Dolní Věstonice (c. 29,000
– c. 25,000 BCE). Early dogs were domesticated,
sometime between 30,000 and 14,000 BP, presumably
to aid in hunting. However, the earliest instances
of successful domestication of dogs may be
much more ancient than this. Evidence from
canine DNA collected by Robert K. Wayne suggests
that dogs may have been first domesticated
in the late Middle Paleolithic around 100,000
BP or perhaps even earlier.Archaeological
evidence from the Dordogne region of France
demonstrates that members of the European
early Upper Paleolithic culture known as the
Aurignacian used calendars (c. 30,000 BP).
This was a lunar calendar that was used to
document the phases of the moon. Genuine solar
calendars did not appear until the Neolithic.
Upper Paleolithic cultures were probably able
to time the migration of game animals such
as wild horses and deer. This ability allowed
humans to become efficient hunters and to
exploit a wide variety of game animals. Recent
research indicates that the Neanderthals timed
their hunts and the migrations of game animals
long before the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic.
=== Social organization ===
The social organization of the earliest Paleolithic
(Lower Paleolithic) societies remains largely
unknown to scientists, though Lower Paleolithic
hominins such as Homo habilis and Homo erectus
are likely to have had more complex social
structures than chimpanzee societies. Late
Oldowan/Early Acheulean humans such as Homo
ergaster/Homo erectus may have been the first
people to invent central campsites or home
bases and incorporate them into their foraging
and hunting strategies like contemporary hunter-gatherers,
possibly as early as 1.7 million years ago;
however, the earliest solid evidence for the
existence of home bases or central campsites
(hearths and shelters) among humans only dates
back to 500,000 years ago.Similarly, scientists
disagree whether Lower Paleolithic humans
were largely monogamous or polygynous. In
particular, the Provisional model suggests
that bipedalism arose in pre-Paleolithic australopithecine
societies as an adaptation to monogamous lifestyles;
however, other researchers note that sexual
dimorphism is more pronounced in Lower Paleolithic
humans such as Homo erectus than in modern
humans, who are less polygynous than other
primates, which suggests that Lower Paleolithic
humans had a largely polygynous lifestyle,
because species that have the most pronounced
sexual dimorphism tend more likely to be polygynous.Human
societies from the Paleolithic to the early
Neolithic farming tribes lived without states
and organized governments. For most of the
Lower Paleolithic, human societies were possibly
more hierarchical than their Middle and Upper
Paleolithic descendants, and probably were
not grouped into bands, though during the
end of the Lower Paleolithic, the latest populations
of the hominin Homo erectus may have begun
living in small-scale (possibly egalitarian)
bands similar to both Middle and Upper Paleolithic
societies and modern hunter-gatherers.Middle
Paleolithic societies, unlike Lower Paleolithic
and early Neolithic ones, consisted of bands
that ranged from 20–30 or 25–100 members
and were usually nomadic. These bands were
formed by several families. Bands sometimes
joined together into larger "macrobands" for
activities such as acquiring mates and celebrations
or where resources were abundant. By the end
of the Paleolithic era (c. 10,000 BP), people
began to settle down into permanent locations,
and began to rely on agriculture for sustenance
in many locations. Much evidence exists that
humans took part in long-distance trade between
bands for rare commodities (such as ochre,
which was often used for religious purposes
such as ritual) and raw materials, as early
as 120,000 years ago in Middle Paleolithic.
Inter-band trade may have appeared during
the Middle Paleolithic because trade between
bands would have helped ensure their survival
by allowing them to exchange resources and
commodities such as raw materials during times
of relative scarcity (i.e. famine, drought).
Like in modern hunter-gatherer societies,
individuals in Paleolithic societies may have
been subordinate to the band as a whole. Both
Neanderthals and modern humans took care of
the elderly members of their societies during
the Middle and Upper Paleolithic.Some sources
claim that most Middle and Upper Paleolithic
societies were possibly fundamentally egalitarian
and may have rarely or never engaged in organized
violence between groups (i.e. war).
Some Upper Paleolithic societies in resource-rich
environments (such as societies in Sungir,
in what is now Russia) may have had more complex
and hierarchical organization (such as tribes
with a pronounced hierarchy and a somewhat
formal division of labor) and may have engaged
in endemic warfare. Some argue that there
was no formal leadership during the Middle
and Upper Paleolithic. Like contemporary egalitarian
hunter-gatherers such as the Mbuti pygmies,
societies may have made decisions by communal
consensus decision making rather than by appointing
permanent rulers such as chiefs and monarchs.
Nor was there a formal division of labor during
the Paleolithic. Each member of the group
was skilled at all tasks essential to survival,
regardless of individual abilities. Theories
to explain the apparent egalitarianism have
arisen, notably the Marxist concept of primitive
communism. Christopher Boehm (1999) has hypothesized
that egalitarianism may have evolved in Paleolithic
societies because of a need to distribute
resources such as food and meat equally to
avoid famine and ensure a stable food supply.
Raymond C. Kelly speculates that the relative
peacefulness of Middle and Upper Paleolithic
societies resulted from a low population density,
cooperative relationships between groups such
as reciprocal exchange of commodities and
collaboration on hunting expeditions, and
because the invention of projectile weapons
such as throwing spears provided less incentive
for war, because they increased the damage
done to the attacker and decreased the relative
amount of territory attackers could gain.
However, other sources claim that most Paleolithic
groups may have been larger, more complex,
sedentary and warlike than most contemporary
hunter-gatherer societies, due to occupying
more resource-abundant areas than most modern
hunter-gatherers who have been pushed into
more marginal habitats by agricultural societies.Anthropologists
have typically assumed that in Paleolithic
societies, women were responsible for gathering
wild plants and firewood, and men were responsible
for hunting and scavenging dead animals. However,
analogies to existent hunter-gatherer societies
such as the Hadza people and the Aboriginal
Australians suggest that the sexual division
of labor in the Paleolithic was relatively
flexible. Men may have participated in gathering
plants, firewood and insects, and women may
have procured small game animals for consumption
and assisted men in driving herds of large
game animals (such as woolly mammoths and
deer) off cliffs. Additionally, recent research
by anthropologist and archaeologist Steven
Kuhn from the University of Arizona is argued
to support that this division of labor did
not exist prior to the Upper Paleolithic and
was invented relatively recently in human
pre-history. Sexual division of labor may
have been developed to allow humans to acquire
food and other resources more efficiently.
Possibly there was approximate parity between
men and women during the Middle and Upper
Paleolithic, and that period may have been
the most gender-equal time in human history.
Archaeological evidence from art and funerary
rituals indicates that a number of individual
women enjoyed seemingly high status in their
communities, and it is likely that both sexes
participated in decision making. The earliest
known Paleolithic shaman (c. 30,000 BP)
was female. Jared Diamond suggests that the
status of women declined with the adoption
of agriculture because women in farming societies
typically have more pregnancies and are expected
to do more demanding work than women in hunter-gatherer
societies. Like most contemporary hunter-gatherer
societies, Paleolithic and the Mesolithic
groups probably followed mostly matrilineal
and ambilineal descent patterns; patrilineal
descent patterns were probably rarer than
in the Neolithic.
=== Sculpture and painting ===
Early examples of artistic expression, such
as the Venus of Tan-Tan and the patterns found
on elephant bones from Bilzingsleben in Thuringia,
may have been produced by Acheulean tool users
such as Homo erectus prior to the start of
the Middle Paleolithic period. However, the
earliest undisputed evidence of art during
the Paleolithic comes from Middle Paleolithic/Middle
Stone Age sites such as Blombos Cave –South
Africa– in the form of bracelets, beads,
rock art, and ochre used as body paint and
perhaps in ritual. Undisputed evidence of
art only becomes common in the Upper Paleolithic.Lower
Paleolithic Acheulean tool users, according
to Robert G. Bednarik, began to engage in
symbolic behavior such as art around 850,000
BP. They decorated themselves with beads and
collected exotic stones for aesthetic, rather
than utilitarian qualities. According to him,
traces of the pigment ochre from late Lower
Paleolithic Acheulean archaeological sites
suggests that Acheulean societies, like later
Upper Paleolithic societies, collected and
used ochre to create rock art. Nevertheless,
it is also possible that the ochre traces
found at Lower Paleolithic sites is naturally
occurring.Vincent W. Fallio interprets Lower
and Middle Paleolithic marking on rocks at
sites such as Bilzingsleben (such as zigzagging
lines) as accounts or representations of altered
states of consciousness though some other
scholars interpret them as either simple doodling
or as the result of natural processes.
Upper Paleolithic humans produced works of
art such as cave paintings, Venus figurines,
animal carvings, and rock paintings. Upper
Paleolithic art can be divided into two broad
categories: figurative art such as cave paintings
that clearly depicts animals (or more rarely
humans); and nonfigurative, which consists
of shapes and symbols. Cave paintings have
been interpreted in a number of ways by modern
archaeologists. The earliest explanation,
by the prehistorian Abbe Breuil, interpreted
the paintings as a form of magic designed
to ensure a successful hunt. However, this
hypothesis fails to explain the existence
of animals such as saber-toothed cats and
lions, which were not hunted for food, and
the existence of half-human, half-animal beings
in cave paintings. The anthropologist David
Lewis-Williams has suggested that Paleolithic
cave paintings were indications of shamanistic
practices, because the paintings of half-human,
half-animal paintings and the remoteness of
the caves are reminiscent of modern hunter-gatherer
shamanistic practices. Symbol-like images
are more common in Paleolithic cave paintings
than are depictions of animals or humans,
and unique symbolic patterns might have been
trademarks that represent different Upper
Paleolithic ethnic groups. Venus figurines
have evoked similar controversy. Archaeologists
and anthropologists have described the figurines
as representations of goddesses, pornographic
imagery, apotropaic amulets used for sympathetic
magic, and even as self-portraits of women
themselves.R. Dale Guthrie has studied not
only the most artistic and publicized paintings,
but also a variety of lower-quality art and
figurines, and he identifies a wide range
of skill and ages among the artists. He also
points out that the main themes in the paintings
and other artifacts (powerful beasts, risky
hunting scenes and the over-sexual representation
of women) are to be expected in the fantasies
of adolescent males during the Upper Paleolithic.
The "Venus" figurines have been theorized,
not universally, as representing a mother
goddess; the abundance of such female imagery
has inspired the theory that Paleolithic (and
later Neolithic) societies centered their
religion and societies around women. Adherents
of the theory include archaeologist Marija
Gimbutas and feminist scholar Merlin Stone,
the author of the 1976 book When God Was a
Woman. Other explanations for the purpose
of the figurines have been proposed, such
as Catherine McCoid and LeRoy McDermott's
hypothesis that they were self-portraits of
woman artists and R.Dale Gutrie's hypothesis
that served as "stone age pornography".
=== Music ===
The origins of music during the Paleolithic
are unknown. The earliest forms of music probably
did not use musical instruments other than
the human voice or natural objects such as
rocks. This early music would not have left
an archaeological footprint. Music may have
developed from rhythmic sounds produced by
daily chores, for example, cracking open nuts
with stones. Maintaining a rhythm while working
may have helped people to become more efficient
at daily activities. An alternative theory
originally proposed by Charles Darwin explains
that music may have begun as a hominin mating
strategy. Bird and other animal species produce
music such as calls to attract mates. This
hypothesis is generally less accepted than
the previous hypothesis, but nonetheless provides
a possible alternative. Another explanation
is that humans began to make music simply
because it pleased them.
Upper Paleolithic (and possibly Middle Paleolithic)
humans used flute-like bone pipes as musical
instruments, and music may have played a large
role in the religious lives of Upper Paleolithic
hunter-gatherers. As with modern hunter-gatherer
societies, music may have been used in ritual
or to help induce trances. In particular,
it appears that animal skin drums may have
been used in religious events by Upper Paleolithic
shamans, as shown by the remains of drum-like
instruments from some Upper Paleolithic graves
of shamans and the ethnographic record of
contemporary hunter-gatherer shamanic and
ritual practices.
=== Religion and beliefs ===
According to James B. Harrod humankind first
developed religious and spiritual beliefs
during the Middle Paleolithic or Upper Paleolithic.
Controversial scholars of prehistoric religion
and anthropology, James Harrod and Vincent
W. Fallio, have recently proposed that religion
and spirituality (and art) may have first
arisen in Pre-Paleolithic chimpanzees or Early
Lower Paleolithic (Oldowan) societies. According
to Fallio, the common ancestor of chimpanzees
and humans experienced altered states of consciousness
and partook in ritual, and ritual was used
in their societies to strengthen social bonding
and group cohesion.Middle Paleolithic humans'
use of burials at sites such as Krapina, Croatia
(c. 130,000 BP) and Qafzeh, Israel (c. 100,000
BP) have led some anthropologists and archaeologists,
such as Philip Lieberman, to believe that
Middle Paleolithic humans may have possessed
a belief in an afterlife and a "concern for
the dead that transcends daily life". Cut
marks on Neanderthal bones from various sites,
such as Combe-Grenal and Abri Moula in France,
suggest that the Neanderthals—like some
contemporary human cultures—may have practiced
ritual defleshing for (presumably) religious
reasons. According to recent archaeological
findings from Homo heidelbergensis sites in
Atapuerca, humans may have begun burying their
dead much earlier, during the late Lower Paleolithic;
but this theory is widely questioned in the
scientific community.
Likewise, some scientists have proposed that
Middle Paleolithic societies such as Neanderthal
societies may also have practiced the earliest
form of totemism or animal worship, in addition
to their (presumably religious) burial of
the dead. In particular, Emil Bächler suggested
(based on archaeological evidence from Middle
Paleolithic caves) that a bear cult was widespread
among Middle Paleolithic Neanderthals. A claim
that evidence was found for Middle Paleolithic
animal worship c. 70,000 BCE originates
from the Tsodilo Hills in the African Kalahari
desert has been denied by the original investigators
of the site. Animal cults in the Upper Paleolithic,
such as the bear cult, may have had their
origins in these hypothetical Middle Paleolithic
animal cults. Animal worship during the Upper
Paleolithic was intertwined with hunting rites.
For instance, archaeological evidence from
art and bear remains reveals that the bear
cult apparently involved a type of sacrificial
bear ceremonialism, in which a bear was sliced
with arrows, finished off by a blast in the
lungs, and ritualistically worshipped near
a clay bear statue covered by a bear fur with
the skull and the body of the bear buried
separately. Barbara Ehrenreich controversially
theorizes that the sacrificial hunting rites
of the Upper Paleolithic (and by extension
Paleolithic cooperative big-game hunting)
gave rise to war or warlike raiding during
the following Epipaleolithic and Mesolithic
or late Upper Paleolithic.The existence of
anthropomorphic images and half-human, half-animal
images in the Upper Paleolithic may further
indicate that Upper Paleolithic humans were
the first people to believe in a pantheon
of gods or supernatural beings, though such
images may instead indicate shamanistic practices
similar to those of contemporary tribal societies.
The earliest known undisputed burial of a
shaman (and by extension the earliest undisputed
evidence of shamans and shamanic practices)
dates back to the early Upper Paleolithic
era (c. 30,000 BP) in what is now the Czech
Republic. However, during the early Upper
Paleolithic it was probably more common for
all members of the band to participate equally
and fully in religious ceremonies, in contrast
to the religious traditions of later periods
when religious authorities and part-time ritual
specialists such as shamans, priests and medicine
men were relatively common and integral to
religious life. Additionally, it is also possible
that Upper Paleolithic religions, like contemporary
and historical animistic and polytheistic
religions, believed in the existence of a
single creator deity in addition to other
supernatural beings such as animistic spirits.Vincent
W. Fallio writes that ancestor cults first
emerged in complex Upper Paleolithic societies.
He argues that the elites of these societies
(like the elites of many more contemporary
complex hunter-gatherers such as the Tlingit)
may have used special rituals and ancestor
worship to solidify control over their societies,
by convincing their subjects that they possess
a link to the spirit world that also gives
them control over the earthly realm. Secret
societies may have served a similar function
in these complex quasi-theocratic societies,
by dividing the religious practices of these
cultures into the separate spheres of folk
religion and elite religion.Religion was possibly
apotropaic; specifically, it may have involved
sympathetic magic. The Venus figurines, which
are abundant in the Upper Paleolithic archaeological
record, provide an example of possible Paleolithic
sympathetic magic, as they may have been used
for ensuring success in hunting and to bring
about fertility of the land and women. The
Upper Paleolithic Venus figurines have sometimes
been explained as depictions of an earth goddess
similar to Gaia, or as representations of
a goddess who is the ruler or mother of the
animals. James Harrod has described them as
representative of female (and male) shamanistic
spiritual transformation processes.
=== Diet and nutrition ===
Paleolithic hunting and gathering people ate
varying proportions of vegetables (including
tubers and roots), fruit, seeds (including
nuts and wild grass seeds) and insects, meat,
fish, and shellfish. However, there is little
direct evidence of the relative proportions
of plant and animal foods. Although the term
"paleolithic diet", without references to
a specific timeframe or locale, is sometimes
used with an implication that most humans
shared a certain diet during the entire era,
that is not entirely accurate. The Paleolithic
was an extended period of time, during which
multiple technological advances were made,
many of which had impact on human dietary
structure. For example, humans probably did
not possess the control of fire until the
Middle Paleolithic, or tools necessary to
engage in extensive fishing. On the other
hand, both these technologies are generally
agreed to have been widely available to humans
by the end of the Paleolithic (consequently,
allowing humans in some regions of the planet
to rely heavily on fishing and hunting). In
addition, the Paleolithic involved a substantial
geographical expansion of human populations.
During the Lower Paleolithic, ancestors of
modern humans are thought to have been constrained
to Africa east of the Great Rift Valley. During
the Middle and Upper Paleolithic, humans greatly
expanded their area of settlement, reaching
ecosystems as diverse as New Guinea and Alaska,
and adapting their diets to whatever local
resources were available.
Another view is that until the Upper Paleolithic,
humans were frugivores (fruit eaters) who
supplemented their meals with carrion, eggs,
and small prey such as baby birds and mussels,
and only on rare occasions managed to kill
and consume big game such as antelopes. This
view is supported by studies of higher apes,
particularly chimpanzees. Chimpanzees are
the closest to humans genetically, sharing
more than 96% of their DNA code with humans,
and their digestive tract is functionally
very similar to that of humans. Chimpanzees
are primarily frugivores, but they could and
would consume and digest animal flesh, given
the opportunity. In general, their actual
diet in the wild is about 95% plant-based,
with the remaining 5% filled with insects,
eggs, and baby animals. In some ecosystems,
however, chimpanzees are predatory, forming
parties to hunt monkeys. Some comparative
studies of human and higher primate digestive
tracts do suggest that humans have evolved
to obtain greater amounts of calories from
sources such as animal foods, allowing them
to shrink the size of the gastrointestinal
tract relative to body mass and to increase
the brain mass instead.Anthropologists have
diverse opinions about the proportions of
plant and animal foods consumed. Just as with
still existing hunters and gatherers, there
were many varied "diets"—in different groups—and
also varying through this vast amount of time.
Some paleolithic hunter-gatherers consumed
a significant amount of meat and possibly
obtained most of their food from hunting,
while others are shown as a primarily plant-based
diet, Most, if not all, are believed to have
been opportunistic omnivores. One hypothesis
is that carbohydrate tubers (plant underground
storage organs) may have been eaten in high
amounts by pre-agricultural humans. It is
thought that the Paleolithic diet included
as much as 1.65–1.9 kg (3.6–4.2 lb) per
day of fruit and vegetables. The relative
proportions of plant and animal foods in the
diets of Paleolithic people often varied between
regions, with more meat being necessary in
colder regions (which weren't populated by
anatomically modern humans until c. 30,000
– c. 50,000 BP). It is generally agreed
that many modern hunting and fishing tools,
such as fish hooks, nets, bows, and poisons,
weren't introduced until the Upper Paleolithic
and possibly even Neolithic. The only hunting
tools widely available to humans during any
significant part of the Paleolithic were hand-held
spears and harpoons. There's evidence of Paleolithic
people killing and eating seals and elands
as far as c. 100,000 BP. On the other hand,
buffalo bones found in African caves from
the same period are typically of very young
or very old individuals, and there's no evidence
that pigs, elephants, or rhinos were hunted
by humans at the time.Paleolithic peoples
suffered less famine and malnutrition than
the Neolithic farming tribes that followed
them. This was partly because Paleolithic
hunter-gatherers accessed a wider variety
natural foods, which allowed them a more nutritious
diet and a decreased risk of famine. Many
of the famines experienced by Neolithic (and
some modern) farmers were caused or amplified
by their dependence on a small number of crops.
It is thought that wild foods can have a significantly
different nutritional profile than cultivated
foods. The greater amount of meat obtained
by hunting big game animals in Paleolithic
diets than Neolithic diets may have also allowed
Paleolithic hunter-gatherers to enjoy a more
nutritious diet than Neolithic agriculturalists.
It has been argued that the shift from hunting
and gathering to agriculture resulted in an
increasing focus on a limited variety of foods,
with meat likely taking a back seat to plants.
It is also unlikely that Paleolithic hunter-gatherers
were affected by modern diseases of affluence
such as type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease,
and cerebrovascular disease, because they
ate mostly lean meats and plants and frequently
engaged in intense physical activity, and
because the average lifespan was shorter than
the age of common onset of these conditions.Large-seeded
legumes were part of the human diet long before
the Neolithic Revolution, as evident from
archaeobotanical finds from the Mousterian
layers of Kebara Cave, in Israel. There is
evidence suggesting that Paleolithic societies
were gathering wild cereals for food use at
least as early as 30,000 years ago. However,
seeds—such as grains and beans—were rarely
eaten and never in large quantities on a daily
basis. Recent archaeological evidence also
indicates that winemaking may have originated
in the Paleolithic, when early humans drank
the juice of naturally fermented wild grapes
from animal-skin pouches. Paleolithic humans
consumed animal organ meats, including the
livers, kidneys, and brains. Upper Paleolithic
cultures appear to have had significant knowledge
about plants and herbs and may have, albeit
very rarely, practiced rudimentary forms of
horticulture. In particular, bananas and tubers
may have been cultivated as early as 25,000
BP in southeast Asia. Late Upper Paleolithic
societies also appear to have occasionally
practiced pastoralism and animal husbandry,
presumably for dietary reasons. For instance,
some European late Upper Paleolithic cultures
domesticated and raised reindeer, presumably
for their meat or milk, as early as 14,000
BP. Humans also probably consumed hallucinogenic
plants during the Paleolithic. The Aboriginal
Australians have been consuming a variety
of native animal and plant foods, called bushfood,
for an estimated 60,000 years, since the Middle
Paleolithic.
People during the Middle Paleolithic, such
as the Neanderthals and Middle Paleolithic
Homo sapiens in Africa, began to catch shellfish
for food as revealed by shellfish cooking
in Neanderthal sites in Italy about 110,000
years ago and in Middle Paleolithic Homo sapiens
sites at Pinnacle Point, Africa around 164,000
BP. Although fishing only became common during
the Upper Paleolithic, fish have been part
of human diets long before the dawn of the
Upper Paleolithic and have certainly been
consumed by humans since at least the Middle
Paleolithic. For example, the Middle Paleolithic
Homo sapiens in the region now occupied by
the Democratic Republic of the Congo hunted
large 6 ft (1.8 m)-long catfish with specialized
barbed fishing points as early as 90,000 years
ago. The invention of fishing allowed some
Upper Paleolithic and later hunter-gatherer
societies to become sedentary or semi-nomadic,
which altered their social structures. Example
societies are the Lepenski Vir as well as
some contemporary hunter-gatherers, such as
the Tlingit. In some instances (at least the
Tlingit), they developed social stratification,
slavery, and complex social structures such
as chiefdoms.Anthropologists such as Tim White
suggest that cannibalism was common in human
societies prior to the beginning of the Upper
Paleolithic, based on the large amount of
“butchered human" bones found in Neanderthal
and other Lower/Middle Paleolithic sites.
Cannibalism in the Lower and Middle Paleolithic
may have occurred because of food shortages.
However, it may have been for religious reasons,
and would coincide with the development of
religious practices thought to have occurred
during the Upper Paleolithic. Nonetheless,
it remains possible that Paleolithic societies
never practiced cannibalism, and that the
damage to recovered human bones was either
the result of excarnation or predation by
carnivores such as saber-toothed cats, lions,
and hyenas.A modern-day diet known as the
Paleolithic diet exists, based on restricting
consumption to the foods presumed to be available
to anatomically modern humans prior to the
advent of settled agriculture.
== See also ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Human Timeline (Interactive) – Smithsonian,
National Museum of Natural History (August
2016).
Donsmaps: a vast repository of Paleolithic
resources
Interactive Timeline Simile/Timemap index
of Eurasian sites
