Prehistoric society - Paleolithic culture
- Asya Chub
- May 30
- 3 min read
Culture is an inherent part of humanity. Along with biological evolution, we started to evolve socially, creating various cultures descendants of which we can observe around the world today. Let’s take a look at some of the early culture of our ancestors.
The Paleolithic period (3.3 million to c. 11,700 years ago), also known as the “Old Stone Age” refers to the time when people started developing tools from stone, but can be generally applied to the time before agriculture, where foraging, fishing and hunting were the primary sources of nutrition. The population of humans was small and people lived in small communities of 20 to 30 people, called bands. In these times people enjoyed a lot of spare time in between hunting and gathering, keeping close interpersonal relationships. Those groups were egalitarian, meaning that there was no hierarchy and all members of the community had a say in group decision-making. Around the time of Middle and Upper Paleolithic we can find several archeological artifacts indicating culture. Several works of art and burial sites can provide an insight into day to day life of early humans.
Cave art is definitely the most famous piece of paleo culture. Among the most famous caves with paintings are Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc, Lascaux, Pech Merle, and Altamira. Most of the artworks depict animals, less often humans. There are several theories about the meaning behind animal paintings. Some scientists say that they are a part of a ritual that grants luck in the next hunt, and some believe these are just accounts of previous hunts. To make the paintings, people mixed together pigments such as ochre or carbon with animal fat, blood or tree sap.
Another prominent piece of art is prehistoric sculpture. Most of them were small figurines or decorative beads. “Venus figurines” is a term often used to describe figurines of women from the Upper Paleolithic. There is also some debate about their meaning. A popular belief is that they were religious figures representing fertility, hence the name Venus, referring to the Roman goddess of beauty. Another opinion suggests that these figures were the self-portraits of the women themselves.
Artistic expression isn’t the only remainder of early human history. Several burial sites are of particular interest. People often were buried with various tools and decorations, such as mammoth ivory beads. The same ochre used in paintings was applied to the bodies. Two bodies buried in Bonn-Oberkassel, Germany, were also accompanied by what was identified as a partial skeleton of a dog. Intricate burial rituals suggest a complex worldview of these ancient humans, such as the belief in the afterlife.
Although the research into the life of early humans is quite challenging and is full of uncertainties, the more we look into the history, the more we can understand about our own species.
Bibliography:
Buis, Alena. “Paleolithic Art.” Pressbooks.bccampus.ca, pressbooks.bccampus.ca/cavestocathedrals/chapter/paleolithic/. Accessed 16 May 2025.
“Cave Paintings in Lascaux, France.” Amazonaws.com, 2022, s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/1849/2017/05/31155129/lascaux-painting.jpeg. Accessed 16 May 2025.
Orschiedt, Jörg. “The Late Upper Palaeolithic and Earliest Mesolithic Evidence of Burials in Europe.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, vol. 373, no. 1754, July 2018, p. 20170264, https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2017.0264.
“The Venus of Hohle Fels: A 6 Cm Female Figure Carved from a Mammoth’s Tusk, Discovered in Germany’s Hohle Fels Cave in 2008.” Amazonaws.com, 2025, s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/1849/2017/05/31155137/hlen-fels-original-frontal.jpeg. Accessed 16 May 2025.
Wikipedia Contributors. “Paleolithic.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 28 Feb. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic. Accessed 16 May 2025.
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