Prehistory: How did the Paleolithic hunters and gatherers live?

In a previous article we already talked about Prehistory and specifically, about hunters and gatherers in the Paleolithic.We suggest you learn more about how these societies lived hundreds of thousands of years ago.

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Prehistory: Paleolithic hunters and gatherers, how did they live?

The prehistoric era encompassed the longest period of humanity, and in fact includes from the appearance of man until the first writings are given.We can say that the prehistory is divided between Neolotic, Paleolithic and stone age.

Focusing on the paleolotico , the remains of paintings of the man who lived in the caves, has allowed us to know that these were mainly dedicated to hunting animals and also n collected.

Adaptation to the Environment

In order to carry out the collection, it was necessary to adapt to the environment that is the ability of man to obtain resources from the environment for the subsistence and growth of the society.

The humans of the Paleolithic got their food through the hunting of large and small animals, the collection of wild fruits and the fishing .This form of adaptation to the environment is the simplest technique, since natural resources are taken as they occur in nature, without producing them.

How the paleolithic man lived

Settlement form

Paleolithic humans were nomads since they had to move in search of new resources for hunting and gathering.If so they avoided running out of resources of a place.

This mode of life in which they went from one place to another prevented them from having to build houses or a fixed settlement mode.If things were, the paleolithic man lived in caves or built very precarious camps with the materials they obtained from nature : leather, wood, reeds, skins, mud, animal bones.

Social organization

The hunter groups lived in small groups l hordes or bands lamados.They were composed of one or more families and the number of members was variable according to the times.

Initially, the person making the decisions was rotating.this was modified and emerged bosses or " head of band ": This was an important person because he made decisions but lacked privileges and had to work like everyone else.they are called egalitarian societies .

Cultural production

The first tools were rough hand axes carved on both sides.they created other instruments of stone, wood or bone that were used to tear animals, cut, sew skins or work wood and bone.Later they invented the bow and arrow.

E These societies also made other symbolic manifestations such as cave paintings , statuettes and burials with offerings.These were ways of expressing their beliefs about death, or rituals to request abundance and fertility from the forces of nature.

Illustration that recreates life in a nomadic tribe

Ekain Cave, in the Basque Country

Paintings Cave in Altamira Cave

Food preservation

The hunter-gatherers, as we have already indicated, adapted to the environment in which they lived and managed to survive using the means they had to their Willingness to do so, however, hunting, fishing and gathering were activities that suffered fluctuations and times of scarcity or, simply, when the arrival of winter made many food sources useless, the first human communities would have trouble feeding themselves.Therefore, hunter-gatherers devised various ways of storing food by if they needed to use them to ensure their livelihood.

One of the products that researchers have discovered that hunter-gatherers stored most regularly were the nuts .and prehistoric women understood very quickly that the various nuts bore very well the passage of time and that they constituted a very valuable source of energy, especially during the hard months of winter.Thus, nuts such as nuts or chestnuts soon became the emergency reserve of our ancestors.

On the other hand, hunter-gatherer groups also learned to implement different techniques that allowed products from hunting, fishing and collection to last longer.Many of these conservation techniques that the first human groups were already used, they were practically used until the twentieth century, when technological advances allowed us to start preserving food in other ways.If, for example, it is known that they used the sun-dried meat and especially of vegetables, smoking and cold preservation, also documenting the existence of salty in the last millennia of the Prehistoric era.This way, hunter-gatherer communities secured their livelihoods even in the times of greatest scarcity.However, the need to seek new resources was constant and the mobility of these first human communities was a c necessary condition to ensure their survival until the emergence of agriculture and livestock.

The knowledge of the environment in which they moved allowed hunter-gatherers to be aware of the possibilities it gave them and also of knowing what resources were available at each time of the year.While, as noted above, hunter-gatherers were fundamentally nominated, the knowledge of their territory was essential for their adequate survival, so they spent important seasons in a specific place or also moved more frequently through a wider but well-known area.Without great means to deal with unknown dangers, a good knowledge of the environment in which they They found it was essential for the survival of hunter-gatherer communities.Therefore, with the foresight to return to a specific place (unless the provisions of e In the area they will be considered to be definitely finished or too scarce to have guarantees of survival in that area) storage places have been found where food could be safely stored until it was needed to have it available.

Video about what life was like in the Paleolithic: