World History: Ancient and Medieval Eras
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Hunter-Gatherer Culture (Overview)
History began when humans first passed stories from one generation
to the next. Prehistory, then, covers events that occurred so long ago
that no oral or written stories about them exist. Scholars must
construct the history of prehistoric humans based on the physical
evidence they left behind.
The earliest human artifacts consist mainly of human skulls and
bones and stone tools. Starting around 40,000 years ago, during the
Paleolithic Age (Old Stone Age), human settlements—as opposed to
the random skeletal remains of earlier times—begin to appear in the
archaeological record. Such evidence becomes more plentiful for the
Neolithic Age (New Stone Age), which began about 10,000 years
ago.
What Paleolithic Artifacts Tell Us
Archaeologists have discovered many artifacts from the Paleolithic Age that
point to developments in human culture. Stone tools, piles of animal bones
scarred from butchering, split stones, piles of stone shards from toolmaking,
human burial sites, and paintings on the walls of caves indicate that Paleolithic
people were inventive and capable of abstract thought.
Many of the artifacts from those periods show advances in technology,
including standardized arrowheads and stone blades with long cutting edges. Such stone tools could be used
for a variety of purposes, like cleaning and poking holes in animal hides and boring holes in bones, wood, or
softer rocks. Archaeologists have also found bone tools, like needles for sewing clothing, harpoons for
catching big fish, and javelins and spear throwers for hunting.
The abundance of tools for working with animal hides indicates that animals
were used for clothing and shelter as well as for food. Tools found in
modern-day France, made by humans of the Solutrean culture of about 20,000
years ago, were particularly well crafted. The high quality and elaborate
decoration of those tools lead archaeologists to believe that they may have
been displayed as prized possessions or used as gifts to help create alliances
between different groups.
Small human communities probably moved around to follow the herds of horses, reindeer, bison, woolly
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rhinoceroses, and mammoths that they hunted. Scientists speculate that the domestication of horses and
reindeer may have developed out of that pattern of following the herds to hunt them. In addition to a diet of
meat, it is likely that Paleolithic humans ate fruit, seeds, shoots, and roots where and when they were
available. Because of those two main methods of acquiring food, humans living during this time are often
called hunter-gatherers.
Although no tools like spoons, ladles, or cooking pots from the Paleolithic Age have been found, there is
evidence of the use of fire, so it is certainly possible that cooking was done without using containers or that the
cooking containers were made of perishable or even edible materials, like woven reeds, leaves, or fruit peels.
Caves provided an obvious source of shelter, and humans may have used mammoth tusks to prop up doors
made of animal skins. Archaeologists have also found evidence of a conical tent with a hearth near the center.
Tools were found near the hearth, with food and domestic trash just outside the tent area. Refuse piles not far
away included flint shavings, bones of animals, and split stones.
Cave Paintings
Art in caves began to appear in the late Paleolithic Age with simple engravings. Around 30,000 BC, the first
known "paintings," created by blowing pigment over a hand held between a person's mouth and the cave wall,
were made in present-day southern France. Paleolithic humans also engraved designs on bones and
produced sculpted figurines and carvings. Those artifacts are called "moveable art" because they could be
carried around as the community moved from camp to camp.
Cave paintings discovered at three different European sites indicate that by
about 15,000 BC, Paleolithic people had highly developed symbolic forms of
communication. The caves at Altamira (in Spain), Lascaux, and ChauvetPont-d'Arc (both in France) are stunningly beautiful and complex.
The excavations at Altamira, begun in 1879, yielded many tools made of stone
and bone, which helped to form the foundation of modern understanding of
prehistoric human life. The cave also presented a variety of painted and engraved decorations: bison, wild
boars, horses, a deer, human-shaped figures, and handprints.
The cave paintings at Lascaux (discovered in 1940) and Chauvet (discovered in 1994)
in France primarily show animals, along with some hunting tools and human figures.
Many images are full of motion and harmony and seem to tell the story of a hunt,
depicted in a series of images going from left to right. More than 2,000 paintings and
engravings have been uncovered at Lascaux and more than 300 at Chauvet. Using
carbon-14 dating analysis, scientists have determined that some of the paintings at
Chauvet are at least 31,000 years old, which makes them the oldest known paintings
on Earth. Unlike those at Altamira, the French caves do not contain any other remnants
of human habitation, which leads some archaeologists to theorize that they were used
only for purposes related to the paintings, like religious or magical rituals.
Cave paintings provide evidence of the development of complex belief systems in Paleolithic cultures. Many
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images are layered over previous images, which indicates that the end result was not as important as the act
of creating the image. In any case, the very creation of two-dimensional signs for living things demonstrates
the ability to think in abstract terms—a major characteristic of human culture.
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"Hunter-Gatherer Culture (Overview)." World History: Ancient and Medieval Eras. ABC-CLIO, 2010. Web. 13
Sept. 2010. <http://ancienthistory.abc-clio.com/>
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