Paleolithic

The Paleolithic (also spelt Palaeolithic or Palolithic) Age, Era or Period, is a

prehistoric period of human history distinguished by the development of the most
primitive stone tools discovered (Modes I and II), and covers roughly 99% of
human technological prehistory. It extends from the earliest known use of stone
tools, probably by Hominins such as Australopithecines, 2.6 million years ago, to the
end of the Pleistocene around 10,000 BP.[1] The Paleolithic era is followed by the
Mesolithic. The date of the PaleolithicMesolithic boundary may vary by locality as
much as several thousand years.

During the Paleolithic, humans grouped together in small societies such as bands,
and subsisted by gathering plants and hunting or scavenging wild animals.[2] 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. Surviving artifacts of the
Paleolithic era are known as paleoliths. Humankind gradually evolved from early
members of the genus Homo such as Homo habilis who used simple stone tools
into fully behaviorally and anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens)
during the Paleolithic era. [3] During the end of the Paleolithic, specifically the
Middle and or Upper Paleolithic, humans began to produce the earliest works of art
and engage in religious and spiritual behavior such as burial and ritual.[2][4][5][6]
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.

The term "Paleolithic" was coined by archaeologist John Lubbock in 1865. It derives
from Greek: , palaios, "old"; and , lithos, "stone", literally meaning "old
age of the stone" or "Old Stone Age."

One rich source of Paleothic artifacts has been the Euphrates river valley.
Excavations started in the 1960s, when the Turkish government built the Keban dam
on the river. The Keban historical salvage project was organized by Kemal Kurdas,
then rector of Middle East Technical University, and a team of Turkish, American
and Dutch archeologists led by Maurits van Loon excavated. Later more dams were
built and salvage operations took place, unearthing settlements going back to the
Paleolithic.
[edit] Human evolution

Main article: Human evolution

Human evolution is the part of biological evolution

concerning the emergence of humans as a distinct
species.

[edit] Paleogeography and climate

The climate of the Paleolithic Period spanned two

geologic epochs known as the Pliocene and the
Pleistocene. Both of these epochs experienced important geographic and climatic
changes that affected human societies.

During the Pliocene, continents continued to drift from possibly as far as 250 km
from their present locations to positions only 70 km 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. Central America
formed completely during the Pliocene, allowing fauna from North and South
America to leave their native habitats and colonize new areas.[7] Africa's collision
with Asia created the Mediterranean Sea, 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 from each other since the beginning of the period. [8]

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 Ma is signaled by an abrupt shift in oxygen isotope ratios and ice-rafted
cobbles in the North Atlantic and North Pacific ocean beds.[9] 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.[7]

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 15003000 m
deep, resulting in temporary sea level drops of 100 m 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 Beringa land
bridge between Asia and North America was blocked by ice, [8] which may have
prevented early Paleo-Indians such as the Clovis culture from directly crossing
Beringa to reach the Americas.

According to Mark Lynas (through collected data), the Pleistocene's overall climate
could be characterized as a continuous El Nio 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 Nio
markers.[10]

The ice age ended with the end of the Paleolithic era (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 over hunting by humans.[11][12] New research suggests that the extinction of the
woolly mammoth may have been caused by the combined effect of climatic change
and human hunting.[12] 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.[12]
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. [12] Small populations of
wooly mammoths survived on isolated Arctic islands, Saint Paul Island and
Wrangel Island, till circa 3700 and 1700 BCE respectively. The Wrangel Island
population went extinct around the same time the island was settled by prehistoric
humans.[13] There's no evidence of prehistoric human presence on Saint Paul island
(though early human settlements dating as far back as 6500 BCE were found on
nearby Aleutian Islands).[14]

Currently agreed upon classifications as Paleolithic geoclimatic episodes[15]

Age America Atlantic Maghreb Mediterranean Central Europe

(before) Europe Europe
10,000 years Flandrian Flandriense Mellahiense Versiliense Flandrian
interglacial interglacial
80,000 years Wisconsin Devensiense Regresin Regresin Wisconsin Stage
140,000 Sangamoniense Ipswichiense Ouljiense Tirreniense II y III Eemian Stage
years
200,000 Illinois Wolstoniense Regresin Regresin Wolstonian
years Stage
450,000 Yarmouthiense Hoxniense Anfatiense Tirreniense I Hoxnian Stage
years
580,000 Kansas Angliense Regresin Regresin Kansan Stage
years
750,000 Aftoniense Cromeriense Maarifiense Siciliense Cromerian
years Complex
1,100,000 Nebraska Beestoniense Regresin Regresin Beestonian
years stage
1,400,000 interglaciar Ludhamiense Messaudiense Calabriense Donau-Gnz
years

[edit] Human way of life

Due to a lack of written records from this time period, 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. [16] The economy of a typical
Paleolithic society was a hunter-gatherer economy. [17] Humans hunted wild animals
for meat and gathered food, firewood, and materials for their tools, clothes, or
shelters.[17] Human population density was very low, around only one person per
square mile.[2] This was most likely due to low body fat, infanticide, women
regularly engaging in intense endurance exercise,[18] late weaning of infants and a
nomadic lifestyle.[2] Like contemporary hunter-gatherers, Paleolithic humans
enjoyed an abundance of leisure time unparalleled in both Neolithic farming
societies and modern industrial societies. [17][19] At the end of the Paleolithic,
specifically the Middle and 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.[20]

[edit] Technology

Paleolithic humans
made tools of stone,
bone, and wood. [17] The
earliest Paleolithic stone
tool industry, the
Olduwan, was
developed by the
earliest members of the
genus Homo such as Homo habilis, around 2.6 million
years ago. [21] It contained tools such as choppers, burins and 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 or 1.65 million
years ago. [22] The most recent Lower Paleolithic (Acheulean) implements
completely vanished from the archeological record around 100,000 years ago and
were replaced by more complex Middle Paleolithic/Middle Stone Age tool kits such
as the Mousterian and the Aterian industries. [23]

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, flake cores, the use in traps and a purely ritual
significance, maybe 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 water hole 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.[24] Lower Paleolithic humans constructed shelters such as the
possible wood hut at Terra Amata.

Fire was used by the Lower Paleolithic hominid Homo erectus/Homo ergaster as early
as 300,000 or 1.5 million years ago and possibly even earlier by the early Lower
Paleolithic (Oldowan) hominid Homo habilis and/or by robust australopithecines
such as Paranthropus.[2] However, the use of fire only became common in the
societies of the following Middle Stone Age/Middle Paleolithic Period. [1] Use of fire
reduced mortality rates and provided protection against predators.[25] Early
hominids 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). [26] Some scientists have hypothesized that Hominids began cooking food to
defrost frozen meat, which would help ensure their survival in cold regions. [26]

The Lower Paleolithic hominid Homo erectus possibly invented rafts (c. 800,000 or
840,000 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 hominid Homo
floresiensis. However, this hypothesis is disputed within the anthropological
community.[27][28][29] The possible use of rafts during the Lower Paleolithic may
indicate that Lower Paleolithic Hominids such as Homo erectus were more advanced
than previously believed, and may have even spoken an early form of modern
language.[28] 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. [30][28]

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. [3] This technique increased efficiency by
allowing the creation of more controlled and consistent flakes.[3] 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 or 65,000 BP and were essential to the invention of bows and spear throwers
in the following Upper Paleolithic period. [25] Harpoons were invented and used for
the first time during the late Middle Paleolithic (c.90,000 years ago); the invention of
these devices brought fish into the human diets, which provided a hedge against
starvation and a more abundant food supply.[30][31] 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 [32] and the Neanderthals in particular
may have likewise hunted with projectile weapons.[33] 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 mle weapons such as thrusting spears rather than attacking
them from a distance with projectile weapons.[20][34]

During the Upper Paleolithic, further inventions were made, such as the net (c.
22,000 or 29,000 BP)[25] bolas,[35] the spear thrower (c.30,000 BP), the bow and arrow
(c. 25,000 or 30,000 BP)[2][36] and the oldest example of ceramic art, the Venus of
Doln Vstonice (c. 29,00025,000 BCE). [2] Early dogs were domesticated, sometime
between 30,000 BP and 14,000 BP, presumably to aid in hunting.[37] 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. [38] Archeological 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 following Neolithic period. [39] Upper Paleolithic cultures were
probably able to time the migration of game animals such as wild horses and
deer.[31] This ability allowed humans to become efficient hunters and to exploit a
wide variety of game animals.[31] Recent research indicates that the Neanderthals
timed their hunts and the migrations of game animals long before the beginning of
the Upper Paleolithic. [32]

[edit] Social organization

The social organization of the earliest Paleolithic (Lower Paleolithic) societies

remains largely unknown to scientists, though Lower Paleolithic hominids such as
Homo habilis and Homo erectus are likely to have had more complex social structures
than chimpanzee societies. [40] 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; [3] 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. [3]

Similarly, scientists disagree whether Lower Paleolithic humans were largely

monogamous or polygamous.[40] 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 polygamous than other primates, which suggests that Lower
Paleolithic humans had a largely polygamous lifestyle, because species that have the
most pronounced sexual dimorphism tend more likely to be polygamous.[41]

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,[42] though
during the end of the Lower Paleolithic, the latest populations of the hominid Homo
erectus may have begun living in small-scale (possibly egalitarian) bands similar to
both Middle and Upper Paleolithic societies and modern hunter-gatherers.[42]

Middle Paleolithic societies, unlike Lower Paleolithic and early Neolithic ones,
consisted of bands that ranged from 20 to 30 or 25 to 100 members and were usually
nomadic.[2][42][43] 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. [2] By the end of the Paleolithic era,
about 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 [44][45]) and raw
materials, as early as 120,000 years ago in Middle Paleolithic. [20] 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).[20] Like in modern hunter-gatherer societies, individuals in Paleolithic
societies may have been subordinate to the band as a whole.[16][17] Both
Neanderthals and modern humans took care of the elderly members of their
societies during the Middle and Upper Paleolithic. [20]

Some sources claim that most Middle and Upper Paleolithic societies were possibly
fundamentally egalitarian[2][30][17][42][42] and may have rarely or never engaged in
organized violence between groups (i.e. war).[30][46][47][48] 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.[30][49] 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.[5] 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.[50][51]
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.[42] 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. [48]
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. [52]

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.[2][30] However, analogies to existent hunter-
gatherer societies such as the Hadza people and the Australian aborigines 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.[30][47]
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.[53][54] Sexual division of labor may have been developed to allow
humans to acquire food and other resources more efficiently.[54] 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.[43][46][55][56] Archeological evidence from art and funerary rituals indicates
that a number of individual women enjoyed seemingly high status in their
communities, [56] and it is likely that both sexes participated in decision making. [43]
The earliest known Paleolithic shaman (c. 30,000 BP) was female.[57] 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. [58] 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 following Neolithic period. [25][45]

[edit] Art and music

Early examples of artistic expression, such as the

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 period comes from Middle
Paleolithic/Middle Stone Age sites such as Blombos
Cave in the form of bracelets,[59] beads,[60] rock art,[44]
and ochre used as body paint and perhaps in
ritual.[30][44] Undisputed evidence of art only becomes
common in the following Upper Paleolithic period. [61]

According to Robert G. Bednarik, Lower Paleolithic

Acheulean tool users began to engage in symbolic behavior such as art around
850,000 BP and decorated themselves with beads and collected exotic stones for
aesthetic rather than utilitarian qualities. [62] According to Bednarik, traces of the
pigment ochre from late Lower Paleolithic Acheulean archeological sites suggests
that Acheulean societies, like later Upper Paleolithic societies, collected and used
ochre to create rock art.[62] Nevertheless, it is also possible that the ochre traces
found at Lower Paleolithic sites is naturally occurring. [63]

Vincent W. Fallio interprets Lower and Middle Paleolithic marking on rocks at sites
such as Bilzingsleben (such as zig zagging lines) as accounts or representation of
altered states of consciousness[64] 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. [31] 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.[31] Cave paintings have been interpreted in a number of ways
by modern archeologists. The earliest explanation, by the prehistorian Abbe Breuil,
interpreted the paintings as a form of magic designed to ensure a successful
hunt. [65] 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.[65] 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.[66] Venus figurines have evoked similar controversy. Archeologists 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. [30][67]

R. Dale Guthrie[68] 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 sometimes been interpreted as representing a mother

goddess; the abundance of such female imagery has led some to believe that Upper
Paleolithic (and later Neolithic) societies had a female-centered religion and a
female-dominated society. For example, this was proposed by the archeologist
Marija Gimbutas and the feminist scholar Merlin Stone who was the author of the
1978 book When God Was a Woman.[69][70] Various other explanations for the purpose
of the figurines have been proposed, such as Catherine McCoid and LeRoy
McDermotts hypothesis that the figurines were created as self portraits of actual
women[67] and R.Dale Gutrie's hypothesis that the venus figurines represented a
kind of "stone age pornography".

The origins of music during the Paleolithic are unknown, since the earliest forms of
music probably did not use musical instruments but instead used the human voice
and or natural objects such as rocks, which leave no trace in the archaeological
record. However, the anthropological and archeological designation suggests that
human music first arose when language, art and other modern behaviors developed
in the Middle or the Upper Paleolithic period. Music may have developed from
rhythmic sounds produced by daily activities such as cracking nuts by hitting them
with stones, because maintaining a rhythm while working may have helped people
to become more efficient at daily activities. [71] An alternative theory originally
proposed by Charles Darwin explains that music may have begun as a hominid
mating strategy as many birds and some other animals produce music like calls to
attract mates.[72] This hypothesis is generally less accepted than the previous
hypothesis, but it nonetheless provides a possible alternative. Another explanation is
that humans began to make music simply because of the pleasure it produced.

Upper Paleolithic (and possibly Middle Paleolithic[73]) humans used flute-like bone
pipes as musical instruments, [30][74] and music may have played a large role in the
religious lives of Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers. Like in 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.[31][57]

[edit] Religion and beliefs

Main article: Paleolithic Religion

The established anthropological view is that it is more

probable that humankind first developed religious
and spiritual beliefs during the Middle Paleolithic or
Upper Paleolithic.[75] 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[76] or Early Lower
Paleolithic (Oldowan) societies. [64][77] 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.[64]

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
archeologists, 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". [78] 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 archeological findings from H.
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 Bchler suggested (based on archeological evidence from Middle
Paleolithic caves) that a bear cult was widespread among Middle Paleolithic
Neanderthals.[79] 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.[6][80] Animal cults in
the following Upper Paleolithic period, such as the bear cult, may have had their
origins in these hypothetical Middle Paleolithic animal cults. [81] Animal worship
during the Upper Paleolithic was intertwined with hunting rites.[81] For instance,
archeological 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. [81] 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 Epi-Paleolithic/Mesolithic or late Upper Paleolithic period. [47]

The existence of anthropomorphic images and half-human, half-animal images in

the Upper Paleolithic period may further indicate that Upper Paleolithic humans
were the first people to believe in a pantheon of gods or supernatural beings,[82]
though such images may instead indicate shamanistic practices similar to those of
contemporary tribal societies. [65] 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.[57] 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.[17]
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. [83]

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. [64] 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 Popular Religion and Elite
Religion. [64]

Religion was possibly apotropaic; specifically, it may have involved sympathetic

magic.[30] The Venus figurines, which are abundant in the Upper Paleolithic
archeological 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. [2] 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.[81][84] James
Harrod has described them as representative of female (and male) shamanistic
spiritual transformation processes. [85]

[edit] Diet and nutrition

Paleolithic hunting and gathering peoples ate primarily

meat, fish, shellfish, leafy vegetables, fruit, nuts and insects
in varying proportions. [87][88] However, there is little direct
evidence of the relative proportions of plant and animal
foods.[89] 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, it is
almost undisputed (with only a few scholars adopting the divergent view) that, for
much of the Paleolithic, humans did not possess the control of fire, 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 available.

According to some anthropologists and advocates of the modern Paleolithic diet,

Paleolithic hunter-gatherers consumed a significant amount of meat and possibly
obtained most of their food from hunting.[90] Competing hypotheses suggest that
Paleolithic humans may have consumed a plant-based diet in general,[53] or that
hunting and gathering possibly contributed equally to their diet. [91] One hypothesis
is that carbohydrate tubers (plant underground storage organs) may have been
eaten in high amounts by pre-agricultural humans.[92][93][94][95] The relative
proportions of plant and animal foods in the diets of Paleolithic peoples probably
varied between regions, with more meat being necessary in colder regions (which
weren't populated by anatomically modern humans till 30,000-50,000 BP). [96] 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.[25] The only hunting tools widely available to humans during any
significant part of the Paleolithic period were hand-held spears and harpoons.
There's evidence of Paleolithic people killing and eating seals and elands as far as
100,000 years 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. [97]

Overall, Paleolithic peoples experienced less famine and malnutrition than the
Neolithic farming tribes that followed them. [16][98] This was partly because
Paleolithic hunter-gatherers had access to a wider variety of plants and other foods,
which allowed them a more nutritious diet and a decreased risk of famine.[16][18][58]
Many of the famines experienced by Neolithic (and some modern) farmers were
caused or amplified by their dependence on a small number of crops.[16][18][58] The
greater amount of meat obtained by hunting big game animals in Paleolithic diets
than in Mesolithic and Neolithic diets may have also allowed Paleolithic Hunter-
gatherers to enjoy a more nutritious diet than both Epipaleolithic/Mesolithic hunter-
gatherers and Neolithic agriculturalists. [98] It is also unlikely that Paleolithic hunter-
gatherers were affected by modern diseases of affluence and extended life 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
[99][100], and because the average lifespan was shorter than the age of common-onset
of these conditions. [101][102]

Large-seeded legumes were part of the human diet long before the Neolithic
agricultural revolution, as evident from archaeobotanical finds from the Mousterian
layers of Kebara Cave, in Israel. [103] Moreover, recent evidence indicates that
humans processed and consumed wild cereal grains as far back as 23,000 years ago
in the Upper Paleolithic.[104] However, seeds, such as grains and beans, were rarely
eaten and never in large quantities on a daily basis.[105] Recent archeological
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.[86] 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.[106] In particular, bananas and tubers may have
been cultivated as early as 25,000 BP in southeast Asia.[52] 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. [37] Humans also probably consumed hallucinogenic
plants during the Paleolithic period. [2] The Australian Aborigines 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 Middle Paleolithic Homo sapiens
sites at Pinnacle Point, in Africa around 164,000
BP. [30][107] Although fishing only became common
during the Upper Paleolithic,[30][108] 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. [31] For
example, the Middle Paleolithic Homo sapiens in the
region now occupied by the Democratic Republic of
the Congo hunted large 6-foot (1.8 m)-long catfish with specialized barbed fishing
points as early as 90,000 years ago. [30][31] The invention of fishing allowed some
Upper Paleolithic and later hunter-gatherer societies to become sedentary or semi-
nomadic, which altered their social structures. [74] 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.[25]

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.[109] Cannibalism in the Lower and Middle
Paleolithic may have occurred because of food shortages.[110] 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. [81][111]
Nonetheless, it remains possible that Paleolithic societies never practiced
cannibalism, and that the damage to recovered human bones was either the result of
ritual post-mortem bone cleaning or predation by carnivores such as saber tooth
cats, lions and hyenas.[81]

[edit] Events

By 11,000 B.C. - Paleo-Indians reach the Tierra del Fuego.[112]

[edit] See also

[edit] Footnotes

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1212(200009/10)10:5<379::AID-OA558>3.0.CO;2-4.
112. http://wuos.org/content/320/5877/784.short

[edit] Bibliography

Bahn, Paul (1996) "The atlas of world archeology" Copyright 2000 The Brown
Reference Group PLC

[edit] Further reading

Introduction to the human past

Wunn, Ina (2000). "Beginning of Religion", Numen, 47(4).
Christopher Boehm (1999) "Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of
Egalitarian Behavior" page 198 Harvard university press
Leften Stavros Stavrianos (1991). A Global History from Prehistory to the
Present. New Jersey, USA: Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-357005-3
Wade, Nicolas (July 15, 2003). "Early Voices: The Leap to Language". The New
York Times: Science.
White, Randall (December 2006). "The women of Brassempouy: A century of
research and interpretation". Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 13 (4):
251304.

[edit] External links

Scotese, Christopher (20012010). "Last Ice Age". Paleomap Project. Map of

Earth during the late Upper Paleolithic.
White, Nancy (2003). "Middle and Upper Paleolithic Hunter-Gatherers The
Emergence of Modern Humans, The Mesolithic". MATRIX, Indiana University
Bloomington.