Venus of Laussel. An image of a woman carved in relief on a cave wall in central France more than 20,000 years ago.

The Last Period of a Global Human Culture

• Communities– Size dictated by resources– Leadership: alpha males

• Probable gender roles–Male dominance–“Liberation” of women for reproduction–Women connected with the sacred

• Diet: 3,000 calories per day!– Varied diet

• Hunting strategies– Stampeding animals off cliffs or into

lakes, bogs– Development of the bow and arrow– Domestication/use of dogs

• Cave Art– What was it for?

• Ritual, instructional uses• Depiction of hunting scenes

– How was it made?• Colors of ochre mixed with animal fat and

applied with wood, bone, and animal hair

.

• Religion: Shamanism– Depiction of people wearing animal masks– Intermediaries between this world and a

spiritual world– Example: Chukchi hunters of Siberia

• Social Stratification– Evidence from burials of differences in grave

goods• Ability to adapt even to extreme and

hostile environments– Inuit: development of a lamp that used

blubber as a fuel and thus enabled hunting during dark Arctic winter

– San of the Kalahari: developed physical endurance to run down game in desert conditions

Shaman

Sunghir burial. A profusion of beads distinguishes the graves of people of high status at Sunghir in Russia, from about 24,000 years ago. The distribution of signs of wealth in burials suggests that even in the Ice Age inequalities were rife and that status could be inherited.

Monte Verde. About 12,000 years ago, a young person trod in fresh clay that lined a hearth in Monte Verde, Chile. Peat sealed and preserved the footprint to be rediscovered by archaeologists inthe 1970s. Excavations at Monte Verde revealed a village of mammoth hunters so old that it made previous theories about when people arrived in the Americas questionable or even untenable.

Human Migrations• Out of Africa first around 100,000

years ago– Why?

• Rise in population due to use of fire in cooking

– More types of food available• War: competition for resources

– Humans reach China: 67,000 years ago• Australia: 50,000 years ago• Europe: 40,000 years ago

– Migration to the Americas: around 15,000 years ago

• Land bridge across the Bering Strait as the last Ice Age ended

• Multiple groups or one migration?• Clovis culture?

– Mass extinction of 35 species of mammals around 10,000 years ago

– Questions about date of the peopling of the Americas raised by archaeological investigations at

• Meadowcroft shelter• Monte Verde in Chile

Bushmen of South Africa.

Human Evolution: www.becominghuman.org is an excellent resource constructed by The Institute of Human Origins and Arizona State University that provides an enormous amount of up-to-date information about human evolution and recent discoveries in the field. “Out of Africa”: http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/johanson.html presents an argument for the “Out of Africa” theory with an outline of the leading alternative theory and references to further reading by a leading researcher in the field.   Lascaux Cave Painting: http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/lascaux/en/ provides background on the excavation and a tour of the cave and its paintings.