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.

One form of cave art suggestive of symbolic thinking — geometric engravings on pieces of ochre, from the Blombos Cave in southern Africa — has been estimated to be at least 70,000 years old. Such symbolic art indicates a cognitive capacity that humans took with them to the rest of the world.

Because the cave art found in Indonesia shared similarities with the cave art in western Europe—namely, that early people seemed to have a fascination animals, and had a propensity for painting abstractions of those animals in caves—many scientists now believe that the impressive works are evidence of the way the human …

During the Paleolithic Age, hominins grouped together in small societies such as bands and subsisted by gathering plants, fishing, and hunting or scavenging wild animals. The Paleolithic Age is characterized by the use of knapped stone tools, although at the time humans also used wood and bone tools.

: painted by a person and not by a machine hand-painted tiles.

Early humans may have used art as a way of helping themselves in their struggle for survival. Paintings of animals on cave walls are common. Perhaps this was thought to bring success when hunting or acted as a call for help from a spirit world the people believed in.

homo sapiens

The painters used the caves uneven walls as a part of their composition. At the lower left wall, a ledge juts out from the wall. The artist painted horses to look as it they are running along it.

1. From cave paintings, social scientists can learn what kinds of animals roamed the Earth, what methods people used to hunt them, and what people believed. 2. Sketches will vary but may include bits of rope, lamps, and tools for painting and engraving.

Lascaux Cave