Paleolithic Age – the ability to make tools.

- Early period of human history in which humans used simple stone tools
- approximately 2,500,000 B.C. to 10,000 B.C.
- comes from Greek workds meaning “old stone”
- also called the Old Stone Age.

Paleolithic people had a close relationship with their environment. They relied on hunting and gathering
food for their daily food. They gathered wild nuts, fruits, grains and green plants. They hunted various
animals like buffalo, horses, reindeer, fish and shellfish also. Paleolithic people’s main job is to find
enough food to eat. Both men and women are responsible to find food for survival. Their parents passed
on their practices, skills and tools to their children to ensure their survival.

Paleolithic Way of Life:

- Early humans were able to sustain themselves with the use of stone tools.
- They use hard stones such as flint to make stone tools.
- They used one stone to chip away at another stone making an edge.
- Hand axes, spears, bow and arrow, harpoons and fishhooks made hunting much easier.

Paleolithic people are Nomads – people who move from place to place to survive.
- Lived in small groups of 20 to 30 people.
- They follow animal migrations and vegetation cycles to hunt and gather food.

Use of fire- as early hominids moved from the tropics into colder regions, they use fire to keep warm.
- Archaeologists have discovered that they have used fire as long as 500,000 years ago.
- Fire gave them warmth, kept animals away, use to flush out wild pigs to kill and to cook food.

Ice Ages – having fire as source of heat was important when the Ice Age descended (came) on the
Paleolithic world. This posed a threat to human life so we had to adapt for human survival. The use of
fire shows that humans sometimes adapted to survive by changing not themselves but the environment.

Paleolithic Art –cave paintings of large animals were found at Lascaux (la SKOH) in southern France and
Altamira in northern Spain. Chauvet cave discovered in southern France in 1994 contained more than
300 paintings of different animals indicating they were painted for religious or decorative purposes.
- Using stone lamps with animal fat to light the caves, early artists painted with fingers and twigs
and even blew paint through hollow reeds.
- They use mineral ores with animal fat to make different colors.

Archaeology – the study of past societies through an analysis of the items people left behind.

Anthropology – the study of human life and culture based on artifacts and human fossils.

Hominid – humans and other humanlike creatures that walk upright.