Paleolithic Period, also spelled Palaeolithic Period, also called Old Stone Age, ancient cultural stage, or level, of human development, characterized by the use of rudimentary chipped stone tools. (See also Stone Age.)
The onset of the Paleolithic Period has traditionally coincided with the first evidence of tool construction and use by Homo some 2.5 million years ago, near the beginning of the Pleistocene Epoch (about 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago). In 2015, however, researchers excavating a dry riverbed near Kenya’s Lake Turkana discovered primitive stone tools embedded in rocks dating to 3.3 million years ago—the middle of the Pliocene Epoch (some 5.3 million to about 2.6 million years ago). Those tools predate the oldest confirmed specimens of Homo by almost 1 million years, which raises the possibility that toolmaking originated with Australopithecus or its contemporaries and that the timing of the onset of this cultural stage should be reevaluated.
Paleolithic toolmaking
At sites dating from the Lower Paleolithic Period (about 2,500,000 to 200,000 years ago), simple pebble tools have been found in association with the remains of what may have been some of the earliest human ancestors. A somewhat more-sophisticated Lower Paleolithic tradition known as the Chopper chopping-tool industry is widely distributed in the Eastern Hemisphere and tradition is thought to have been the work of the hominin species named Homo erectus. It is believed that H. erectus probably made tools of wood and bone, although no such fossil tools have yet been found, as well as of stone.
Throughout the Paleolithic, humans were food gatherers, depending for their subsistence on hunting wild animals and birds, fishing, and collecting wild fruits, nuts, and berries. The artifactual record of this exceedingly long interval is very incomplete; it can be studied from such imperishable objects of now-extinct cultures as were made of flint, stone, bone, and antler. These alone have...
READ MOREAbout 700,000 years ago a new Lower Paleolithic tool, the hand ax, appeared. The earliest European hand axes are assigned to the Abbevillian industry, which developed in northern France in the valley of the Somme River; a later, more-refined hand-ax tradition is seen in the Acheulean industry, evidence of which has been found in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Some of the earliest known hand axes were found at Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania) in association with remains of H. erectus. Alongside the hand-ax tradition there developed a distinct and very different stone tool industry, based on flakes of stone: special tools were made from worked (carefully shaped) flakes of flint. In Europe the Clactonian industry is one example of a flake tradition. The early flake industries probably contributed to the development of the Middle Paleolithic flake tools of the Mousterian industry, which is associated with the remains of Neanderthals. Other items dating to the Middle Paleolithic are shell beads found in both North and South Africa. In Taforalt, Morocco, the beads were dated to approximately 82,000 years ago, and other, younger examples were encountered in Blombos Cave, Blombosfontein Nature Reserve, on the southern coast of South Africa. Experts determined that the patterns of wear seem to indicate that some of these shells were suspended, some were engraved, and examples from both sites were covered with red ochre.
Replica stone tools of the Acheulean industry, used by Homo erectus …© Bone Clones, www.boneclones.com
The Upper Paleolithic Period (beginning about 40,000 years ago) was characterized by the emergence of regional stone tool industries, such as the Perigordian, Aurignacian, Solutrean, and Magdalenian of Europe as well as other localized industries of the Old World and the oldest known cultures of the New World. Principally associated with the fossil remains of such anatomically modern humans as Cro-Magnons, Upper Paleolithic industries exhibit greater complexity, specialization, and variety of tool types and the emergence of distinctive regional artistic traditions.
Paleolithic art
Two main forms of Paleolithic art are known to modern scholars: small sculptures; and monumental paintings, incised designs, and reliefs on the walls of caves. Such works were produced throughout the Mediterranean region and other scattered parts of Eurasia and Africa but survived in quantity only in eastern Europe and parts of Spain and France.
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Small sculptured pieces evidently dominated the Upper Paleolithic artistic traditions of eastern Europe; typical were small, portable clay figurines and bone and ivory carvings. The works from this area include simple but realistic stone and clay animal figurines, as well as carved stone statuettes of women, referred to by scholars as Venus figures. These small stylized figures are characteristically rotund, emphasizing parts of the female body associated with sexuality and fertility; many are so abstract that only protuberant breasts and exaggerated hips are clearly distinguishable.
Venus of Věstonice, clay statuette from Dolní …Werner Forman Archive
Monumental arts flourished in western Europe, the province of the so-called Franco-Cantabrian school, where limestone caves—such as those of Chauvet–Pont d’Arc and Lascaux Grotto—provided a sheltered surface for paintings, incised designs, and relief carvings. These caves have preserved much small carving of fine quality and an abundant and varied sample of prehistoric graphic art, from simple finger tracings in clay to sophisticated polychrome paintings, generally depicting animals, of dynamic naturalism and exquisite design.
The function or purpose of art in Paleolithic life remains a subject of debate. Some scholars see the human and animal representations as evidence of the use of magical rites to ensure success in hunting or to guarantee fertility. Others have suggested that Paleolithic artists’ accurate representations of animals’ coats may be an early attempt to produce a seasonal notation system. Another viewpoint, disregarding utility altogether, sees the art of Paleolithic peoples solely as an outgrowth of a basic human need to creatively record and reproduce aspects of the surrounding world.
Among the bone and ivory carvings dating to the Paleolithic are several examples of partial bone or ivory flutes, including one with five finger holes, found at Hohle Fels Cave, near Ulm, Germany, and dated to about 35,000 years ago. Those flutes give evidence of yet another art form practiced in prehistoric cultures.
Flute carved from bone about 32,000 years ago, found in Dordogne, France. It is one of the oldest …© The British Museum/Heritage-Images
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