Paleolithic technology, culture, and art

Stone tools are perhaps the first cultural artifacts which historians can use to reconstruct the worlds of Paleolithic peoples. In fact, stone tools were so important in the Paleolithic age that the names of Paleolithic periods are based on the progression of tools: Lower Paleolithic, Upper Paleolithic, Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age), and Neolithic (New Stone Age).${}^1$‍

Stone tools also give us insight into the development of culture. Anthropologists think Paleolithic people likely hunted, foraged, and employed a communal system for dividing labor and resources. Anthropologists have inferred this by drawing analogies to modern hunter-gatherer groups and by interpreting cave art which depicts group hunting.

By approximately 40,000 years ago, narrow stone blades and tools made of bone, ivory, and antler appeared, along with simple wood instruments. Closer to 20,000 years ago, the first known needles were produced. Eventually, between 17,000 and 8,000 years ago, humans produced more complicated instruments like barbed harpoons and spear-throwers.

It is likely that many tools made out of materials besides stone were prevalent but simply did not survive to the present day for scientists to observe. One exception is the Neolithic “Ice Man”, found by two hikers in the Ötztal Alps, who was preserved in ice for 5,000 years! He was found with a robust set of stone and natural-fiber tools, including a six-foot longbow, deerskin case, fourteen arrows, a stick with an antler tip for sharpening flint blades, a small flint dagger in a woven sheath, a copper axe, and a medicine bag.

Language was perhaps the most important innovation of the Paleolithic era. Scientists can infer the early use of language from the fact that humans traversed large swaths of land, established settlements, created tools, traded, and instituted social hierarchies and cultures. Without the aid of language, these things would likely have been impossible.

Examinations of the craniums of archaic Homo sapiens suggest large brains with indentations that imply the development of brain areas associated with speech. Exactly how humans developed a capacity for language is a matter of considerable debate. However, the historical record shows that language allowed for increasingly complex social structures, with an enhanced capacity for deliberation, morality, spirituality, and meaning-making.

Artwork such as cave painting and portable art demonstrates creativity and group structures as well. They show an interest in sharing knowledge, expressing feelings, and transmitting cultural information to later generations. Though artwork from over 35,000 years ago is rare, there is ample evidence of cave paintings and statuettes from later periods.

In addition to cave art, portable figurines dated to Paleolithic times have been found. Many of these include finely carved facial features, while others accentuate sexual organs and buttocks, such as the 25,000 year old figurine found at Dolni Vestonice in the modern-day Czech Republic. Such an object shows a desire to create beautiful figurines, but some also suggest that objects like this are tied to an interest in human fertility.

What evidence do we have that Paleolithic people had developed a capacity for language? Could Paleolithic people have survived in the ways that they did without language?

What do you think was the purpose of Paleolithic art such as cave paintings and figurines?