This is what life was like 50,000 years ago.

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This Is What Life Was Like 50,000 Years Ago

What were people doing 50,000 years ago? They weren’t just surviving - they were transforming human history.

At this time, our ancestors were standing at the edge of a great transformation. Picture them: scattered in small, tight-knit groups, huddled around crackling campfires in the shelter of caves, their flickering shadows dancing on the walls. The world was raw and untamed, but something new was stirring. Across the continents, people were seeing the world differently - shaping stone and bone with purpose, leaving their marks on cave walls, and weaving complex social ties that reached beyond their immediate families. It was a time of profound change, a silent revolution slowly unfolding in prehistory.

These changes weren’t just practical - they were the seeds of a new kind of human story. As our ancestors mastered their environment and unlocked new ways of thinking, they set in motion a chain of events that would carry us from those ancient fires to the modern world. This was a key period, when humans were fully embracing the trends of behavioral modernity, preparing to take their place as the most adaptable and dominant species on Earth. 

So what was life like for these Stone Age ancestors of ours? 

The Stone Age of the Pleistocene

Fifty thousand years ago, the world was in the midst of the Pleistocene Epoch. This was a geologic period marked by the last Ice Age. It began about 2.6 million years ago and ended about 11,000 years ago, and consisted of various glacial and interglacial intervals. These glaciers covered much of northern Europe, Asia, and North America. This created a colder, drier climate across much of the globe, but there were still habitable regions, especially in parts of Africa, the Middle East, and southern Europe. These areas were characterized by a mix of grasslands, open woodlands, and steppes, with flora consisting mainly of resilient grasses, shrubs, and scattered trees. Now-extinct megafauna like woolly mammoths, giant ground sloths, saber-toothed cats, and short-faced bears would’ve been found inhabiting those regions. 

It is also during this Pleistocene Epoch that we see the maturation of our human lineage. Early on, Homo habilis and Homo erectus emerged as toolmaking hunter-gathers. Later, various other species like the Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Homo heidelbergensis all started evolving into their own niches. By 300,000 years ago, anatomically modern humans were living in Africa, as evidenced by fossil remains recently discovered in Morocco [1]. 

The term Paleolithic translates to “old stone age” and it describes the technological stage humans were exhibiting during the Pleistocene. It is subdivided into three periods: lower, middle, and upper. The lower Paleolithic is the oldest, dating to between 3 million and 300,000 years ago, and is represented by the cruder Oldowan and Acheulean tools of ancient hominins. The middle Paleolithic dates from around 300,000 to 50,000 years ago, and consisted of more advanced stone tools developed by Neanderthals and other later hominins. The upper Paleolithic began 50,000 years ago with further advancements and ended with the adoption of agriculture around 12,000 years ago. 

We can’t really mark the exact years for the paleolithic breakthroughs occurring between these subdivisions because the rate of cultural change was much slower back then. In more recent years, things like the Industrial Revolution occurred within a matter of decades because we had preexisting communication pathways, a division of labor, and the required infrastructure. For prehistoric people, however, the development of technology and the diffusion of ideas took much longer. So while 50,000 years ago is roughly our period of focus, the transition from the Middle to Upper Paleolithic was gradual.

Transition to the Upper Paleolithic 

During the Middle Paleolithic, humans primarily relied on Mousterian stone tools - simple flakes and hand axes that had been used by human species like Neanderthals. However, as Homo sapiens began spreading into new territories and encountering different environmental pressures, they started adopting more sophisticated tools, techniques, and cultural practices.

The Upper Paleolithic brought about significant changes, such as the following:

• Blade-based technology became prevalent, allowing for sharper, more specialized tools.

• Human sociality became more complex.

• There was an explosion in art and symbolic behavior, including the first cave paintings and the production of figurines and ornaments.

This period also saw increases in more complex social structures, with long-distance trade networks, organized group hunts, and ritualistic practices. These innovations weren’t just incremental changes - they were part of a broader trend of cultural evolution, driven by environmental pressures, resource challenges, and growing social connections.

Let’s start by diving into the tools and technology they were using.

Tools and Technology

Humans are immediately born with evolutionary disadvantages. Relative to other species in the animal kingdom, we are born altricial, heavily dependent on our parents and community for survival. We have long developmental periods, requiring years to become independent. And once we are fully grown individuals, we are still significantly weaker and slower than most of our natural predators. 

Our innovative solution to this problem is twofold. First, we form highly cooperative groups - the complexity of which we’ll go into in the next section. Second, we create tools to compensate for our physical deficits. Without powerful claws or fanged teeth, our tools act as adaptations. 

The earliest tools, notably the Oldowan and Acheulean industries, consisted of stone nodules that were flaked to produce sharp-edged cores. As stated earlier, these defined the lower Paleolithic, with species like Homo habilis and Homo erectus. The rise of Neanderthals in the Middle Paleolithic saw the introduction of novel technologies that continued through 50,000 years ago.

The primary industry associated with this period, at least for the European Neanderthals, and later Homo sapiens in Europe, North Africa, and Asia, is the Mousterian Complex. It differs from previous technologies in the types of tools produced and how they were made. Older stone tools were larger, less precise, and the core stone was the primary tool. 

The Mousterian industry saw the application of the Levallois technique. This was a leap forward in stone tool-making, employing a more refined process than earlier methods. It began with shaping a stone core by carefully removing flakes to establish a flat striking platform. Then, the edges were meticulously trimmed, forming a distinctive domed shape that resembled a tortoise shell - hence the name “tortoise core.” With the final strike, a single flake would detach from the core, emerging with a distinct, slightly curved profile and sharpened edges, all the result of the intentional preparatory work. This approach allowed early humans to create consistent, efficiently-crafted flakes with precision.

Rather than the large bifacial handaxes of the Acheulean industry, Levallois tools were smaller, and curved to create a functional asymmetry, and the core was the means to the end - not the end tool itself. They varied in size and shape to some degree, presumably for different functions. Some would’ve been used as scrappers for butchering, while others would have been employed as hunting projectile points.

An archaeological site in Syria gives us a good sample of Levallois technology put to use [2]. The site lies near the Euphrates River on a plateau that has been sculpted by thousands of years of erosion. Known as Umm el Tlel, it consists of occupation layers spanning many thousands of years. Some of the deepest, oldest layers, roughly 6 meters below the ground surface, hold evidence of Acheulean tools. The uppermost layers show evidence of more recent neolithic occupation. 

One layer, dating to around 50,000 years ago gives us a glimpse into the life of a Mousterian hunter-gatherer. Various Levallois tools and even bone tools have been found here, but there is one in particular that sparked the interest of the archaeologists who discovered it. A fragment of a Levallois point was found embedded in the vertebral bone of a wild African donkey. It penetrated the 3rd vertebrae of the animal, in the neck, indicating a lethal strike. 

The researchers rejected the idea that it was the result of butchery due to the force required to enter the bony material and the way the stone fractured. Their analysis of its position, angle, and fracture suggested that it must have taken a parabolic trajectory. This, in addition to the necessary kinetic energy, means that it was most likely thrown at the animal while hafted to a spear. 

Another cultural complex that appeared shortly after 50,000 years ago, and overlapped with the Mousterian in some cases, was the Aurignacian. The Aurignacian culture marks the arrival of early modern humans, known as Cro-Magnons, into Paleolithic Europe. These groups, part of a broader migration from Africa through the Near East, introduced several cultural innovations. 

These people distinguished themselves with their ever-more refined and sophisticated tools. Using techniques similar to those of the Mousterian Levallois industry, they produced slender flint blades and bladelets struck from carefully prepared cores. They were longer and narrower than Mousterian flakes and often had intentionally parallel edges. The Aurignacian culture also encompassed a wide variety of other tool materials. In addition to these lightweight stone blades, they instituted ivory, bone, and antlers to be used as points and other tools [3]. These tools were implemented sparsely prior to 50,000 years ago by other human groups, but they became more systemic during this period.

But these people were more than just their tools and we can see that in their spatial organization. I want to take you to a special archaeological site in the Eastern Alps where we can see a fascinating example of this. It’s a cave site situated on the southern slope of a mountain at the border between Slovenia and Austria [4]. Archaeologists have known about the site since the 1920s, and excavations have revealed a large assemblage of Aurignacian bone and ivory points dating to about 30,000 years ago.

Importantly, the material culture recovered from the cave is not one representing a uniformity of use. Different parts of the cave were used differently. For example, archaeologists have investigated the breakage patterns of these bone artifacts and found a distinction between the front entrance of the cave and deep in the back of the cave. 

There are more flakes and broken points at the entrance, while the back of the cave consists of more complete specimens. What does this tell us about the people that were living there? The archaeologists suggest that this could represent a separation in function. The high proportion of flakes and broken points in the front of the cave can be interpreted as a workstation, where points were created, retooled, and reshaped. The back of the cave, on the other hand, was more likely to have been a storage area, represented by the cache of already complete points. 

We can infer from this study that this group of Aurignacian people perceived and used different spaces differently, but we can only speculate as to why. Maybe they found that the back of the cave was less susceptible to theft, animal manipulation, or weathering, which could have all displaced their finished points. Their cognition, beliefs, and ideas about space and time may forever be a mystery.

But maybe we can start to unravel that mystery by looking into the social world of these ancient beings. 

Social Life

Sociality is our second big advantage over other creatures in the animal kingdom. One human could easily get taken out by a saber-toothed cat. But 20 coordinated individuals at least stand a chance to survive. By the 50,000-year mark, humanity was essentially socially modern. They were hunter-gatherers, capable of language, cooperative planning, and rituals. Groups, probably similar in size to those of modern hunter-gatherers (around 150 individuals), were exploring the world together. 

While groups of hominins like Neanderthals and Denisovans had escaped the confines of Africa many years earlier, Homo sapiens had begun to follow their lead. Our species was expanding in all directions, migrating north into Europe and east into Asia. By around 50,000 or 60,000 years ago, they made it all the way to Australia. We still don’t have a firm conclusion as to how they got there, but I made a video and you can watch it here linked in the description.

Along their travels, they encountered new environments with new threats and opportunities. Evidence suggests that these explorations were accompanied by an expanding diet. The dietary breadth of the Upper Paleolithic seems to have increased when compared to that of the Middle Paleolithic [5]. Specifically, it included more marine resources, like aquatic birds, mollusks, and fish. 

In addition to new foods, these migrating people were discovering new lithic outcrops and traveling around with the materials collected. For example, the Alpine cave site discussed in the last section included stone tools made from non-local materials that are found about 80 km to the east [4]. That being said, not all of the resources found at sites where they don’t naturally occur were the result of transportation.

According to Paleoanthropologist Allison Brooks, there is ample evidence for trade networks in Africa between 120,000 and 50,000 years [6]:

These trade networks between bands must’ve been extensive, requiring a knowledge of the land, how to navigate it, and maybe even the establishment of meeting grounds. This data, in addition to the fact that modern hunter-gatherers often walk about 9 hours per day [7], suggests that the people of 50,000 years ago were probably putting in many miles per day, whether for subsistence or social reasons.

I’d like to tie in another aspect of modern hunter-gatherer life that was likely occurring 50,000 years ago. Controlling fire is a staple feature of human life. We’ve been doing it for maybe 1 million years, and it’s partly why we’ve conquered so many different climates. It provides warmth, it allows us to cook our food and make it more digestible, and it has probably helped keep predators at bay. It also has some serious social implications. 

Anthropologist Polly Wiessner conducted a study looking at the social dynamics of the !Kung Bushmen of Namibia and Botswana [8]. She found a stark difference between their daytime and nighttime conversations. More than 60% of daytime discussions were related to economics and general complaints. However, more than 80% of nighttime conversations around the fire were story-driven - they were narratives and myths. 

Given that Homo sapiens were using fire throughout the Middle and Upper Paleolithic, it's not unreasonable to pose that these firelight stories influenced the evolution of animism, religious beliefs, shamanism, and cultural rituals. In fact, we do see evidence of ritualistic behavior throughout this time period - in the form of burials.

Humans, notably Neanderthals, certainly buried their dead in the Middle Paleolithic. But again, it was a sparse behavior and became more common after 50,000 years ago. At least 195 human burials have been found across Europe dating to the Upper Paleolithic [9]. Many of these are associated with the Gravettian culture, which were essentially the Homo sapiens who followed the Aurignacian culture. It’s not obvious that a burial immediately signifies ritual, but many Gravettian graves include grave goods like shells and personal ornamentation. This gives us firmer grounds to believe that it may have been more than just a casual disposal of a body.

For example, one Gravettian burial dating to between 30,000 and 20,000 years ago has some especially peculiar characteristics [10]. The site is in the Moravian region of the Czech Republic and it is actually a triple burial. It consists of three individuals, the middle individual placed first slightly beneath, and various indicators of symbolic ritual. Their heads were covered with red ochre and pierced carnivore teeth and ivory beads surrounded them. These grave goods were they were symbols, perhaps of status, protection, or beliefs in an afterlife. This triple burial hints at a culture deeply connected to both their physical world and the mysteries beyond death.

Analyses of the middle skeleton, a female, have suggested that she suffered from a pathological disorder, which could have influenced how the funerary practice may have been approached. Its believed that she had chondrodysplasia calcificans punctata or CCP for short. CCP is a skeletal disorder, and she shows multiple symptoms, such as asymmetric shortening of the right femur and of the left forearm, bowing of the right femur, right humerus, and left radius, elongation of fibulae, dysplasias of the vertebral column, and very marked enamel hypoplasias.

When interpreting the relationship between the people buried, including the middle female with her ailments, and their decorative surroundings, researchers said this:

So, just like archaic funerary behaviors, we can also use burials and human remains to see how people suffered from disease and illness - or whether they even did. Research on human remains from the Upper Paleolithic shows multiple markers of good health [5]. Tooth remains indicate good dental health and the scanty evidence of infectious diseases “attests to the low pathogen load associated with a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.” That being said, we do see notable evidence of genetically inherited diseases. Congenital ear malformation, an inherited form of rickets, and even acromesomelic dwarfism have all been documented in skeletons dating to this time period.

These burial practices, marked by intricate arrangements and symbolic offerings, are more than just reflections of death - they tell a story of interconnectedness and cultural expression. As humans expanded across continents, migrating to new territories and encountering diverse landscapes, their ideas and innovations traveled with them. Trade networks were forming, allowing not just the exchange of goods, but also the flow of cultural and symbolic practices that would shape the fabric of human society. Pierced teeth, ivory beads, and red ochre found in burials point to a shared language of meaning that extended beyond survival - a testament to the evolving complexity of human identity. 

Explosions of creativity would also be expressed through art, symbols, and early forms of storytelling. It is in this transformative period that we see some of the earliest glimpses of art and symbolic expression - paintings, carvings, and objects imbued with meaning. Let's now explore how these early humans began to communicate their world through the powerful language of art and symbolism.

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Now let’s dive back into the video.

Prehistoric Art and Symbolism

While it can easily be argued that manual tools and social complexity may serve as adaptations to the natural world, this is less obvious with artistic behavior. I will not argue that art is or isn’t adaptive here. That’s a topic for another video, but let me know in the comments whether or not you think art could have an adaptive function for humans. I’m simply going to share some cool examples of the art that was being produced around 50,000 years ago.

Art is sort of this intersection between tools and sociality. Let me explain. 

We live in these culturally complex worlds where we are constantly being fed with external ideas. Those ideas, often produced by our peers, intertwine and mend with our personal ideas as individuals. This is how novelty emerges. It is the already-established idea, which is then filtered through the individual’s unique perspective, that creates something new. Our tools are the mediums we can use to then express that new idea. In music, that medium is a guitar, drum set, music software, or vocal chords. In photography, it's film or digital information. In painting, it’s acrylic, oil, or watercolor.

Prehistoric people living 50,000 years ago may not have had as wide a variety of mediums to work from, but their tools were more than sufficient to express their ideas and we can see this in the archaeological record. 

The art of the Paleolithic comes in three main forms: cave paintings, portable art, and personal adornments. Let’s start with cave paintings.

Cave Art

Many people are aware of the caves throughout Europe, especially in France and Spain, with wall paintings depicting prehistoric life. Lascaux Grotto in France is one of these more famous ones. It has elaborate paintings of the people and animals that once inhabited the area, dating back to around 17,500 years ago [11].

Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave has similar paintings of wild creatures like Steppe bison and cave hyenas. This site had at least two habitation periods: one around 35,000 years ago and one around 30,000 years ago [12]. Both sites’ paintings are largely composed of red ochre, a form of iron oxide widely used for symbolic purposes throughout the Paleolithic (including that triple burial discussed earlier).

But there are much older cave paintings by Homo sapiens, far outside of Europe, that people may be less aware of.

Let’s take a detour to Southeast Asia, where the cave art is just as enchanting - if not more. There is a series of limestone caves in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. One of them, Leang Bulu’ Sipong 4, has been known for some time. Some paintings at Leang Karampuangbut, on the other hand, are fairly recent discoveries. A study published in 2024 investigating these sites reignited some interest in the cave art of Southeast Asia [13]. 

Previous studies revealed that these paintings were among the oldest in the world, but new dating methods have improved our understanding. Using a cutting-edge technique called laser-ablation imaging on calcite accretions, researchers unveiled something extraordinary. A hunting scene at Leang Bulu’ Sipong 4, once believed to be 43,900 years old, is now estimated to be at least 50,000 years old. Even more intriguing, a newly discovered painting at Leang Karampuang, similarly depicting human-like figures interacting with wild animals, dates back at least 51,200 years. 

Beyond these facts are some wild, bust justifiable interpretations. “On the basis of our dating work, it now seems that depictions of anthropomorphic figures… interacting with animals appear in the Late Pleistocene cave art of Sulawesi at a frequency not seen elsewhere until tens of millennia later in Europe,” say the authors of this study.

They go on to say, “This implies that a rich culture of storytelling developed at an early period in the long history of H. sapiens in this region — in particular, the use of scenic representation to tell visual stories about human-animal relationships.”

This is not just art; it’s the oldest known visual storytelling by early humans - a glimpse into a world where imagination and expression were taking shape. These findings suggest that the origins of figurative art and storytelling stretch far deeper into the past than previously imagined, hinting at an ancient culture capable of capturing their experiences in vivid, lasting imagery.

Portable Art

Another form of art that became relatively widespread shortly after 50,000 years ago is portable art. Arguably the most famous examples of these are the Venus Figurines. Venus figurines are small, stylized statues of women that date back to the Upper Paleolithic period. Found across a wide geographical range, from Western Europe to Siberia, these figurines often share common features like exaggerated hips, breasts, and abdomens, likely emphasizing fertility or womanhood. 

Crafted from a variety of materials such as limestone, mammoth ivory, clay, and bone, these carvings were shaped using simple stone tools, with some figurines also showing evidence of being fired in rudimentary kilns. Despite their broad distribution, the consistent themes in these sculptures suggest shared cultural or symbolic ideas across distant prehistoric communities. While their exact purpose remains debated, many researchers speculate they could have served as symbols of fertility, motherhood, or even spiritual or ritual objects. Their consistent appearance and artistic detail hint at a complex understanding of human form and symbolism among our Paleolithic ancestors.

The earliest figurine we have evidence of is known as the Venus of Hohle Fels [14]. In 2008 at Hohle Fels Cave in southwestern Germany, archaeologists unearthed this female figurine carved from mammoth ivory. It was found fragmented and only the left arm and shoulder still missing are missing. Dating back at least 35,000 years, this find challenges previous ideas about when and where early humans began creating such detailed 3-dimensional symbolic representations. Figurines like this became more common throughout the Grevettian period, just as burials did.

Various hypotheses have been put forth to explain the symbolic meaning or function behind these statuettes [15]. The traditional view has often assumed that they were made by men for male purposes, portraying ideals of beauty, fertility, and sexuality. Scholars have suggested that these figurines reflected male ideals rather than authentic representations of women. 

On the contrary, the idea that Venus figurines were exclusively made by men is not backed by solid evidence, highlighting how traditional biases can shape our understanding. They could be self-representations created by Upper Paleolithic women. Others have proposed that they hold religious significance, representing a “pan-European Mother Goddess.” However, this assertion to is flawed by the lack of an ability to prove or disprove such a specific religion in the Upper Paleolithic. 

As much as we use our modern imaginations, we may never know why ancient people were creating these statuettes.

Personal Adornments

While considering the idea of gender differences in the ancient world, archaeologists now concur that people have long had beliefs about self-identity. Today, we have job titles, hobbies, and friends and family that all feed into defining who we are as individuals. People living 50,000 years ago similarly had identities, which they likely displayed to their groups through personal adornments. 

Other species have colorful feathers or other evolved displays of status and or health. Humans use things like clothes and jewelry. Throughout history, personal adornment has served as one of humanity's most intimate and expressive forms of art. In ancient times, early humans transformed shells, bones, stones, and other natural materials into wearable art, and these items became an integral part of identity, signaling everything from social status to personal beliefs. In some cases, adornments even hinted at complex belief systems and abstract thinking, suggesting that the desire to craft and wear such items may have been as innate as the drive for survival itself.

Beads are one of the most common ornamental artifacts we find in archaeology, and for a long time it was believed that Homo sapiens started making bead jewelry in Europe sometime after 50,000 years ago. However, we now have evidence of older shell beads from South Africa [16]. At Blombos Cave, about 100 meters from the South African shoreline, archaeologists discovered layers upon layers of human occupation. The dates of these strata extend from 100,000 years ago until just 2,000 years ago.

When looking at the shell-bead assemblage, we see a few notable features. First, the oldest beads date to around 75,000 years ago. Second, we see change over time. The size of the shells used gets smaller with time. They also found differences in perforation and use-wear patterns. 

The shells in the upper strata had perforations shaped like keyholes near the shell’s edge. In the lower strata, the holes were more elliptical, stretching from one edge of the shell to the other. Additionally, the holes in the more recent beads are smaller than those in the older beads, and this difference isn’t just due to shell size, as the correlation between shell size and hole size is weak. Lastly, the shells display less use-wear as time goes on.

The changes in shell size could be explained by differences in availability due to climate shifts. But how can we explain the different approaches to how these people punctured their beads or why they may have been used or worn differently based on their wear patterns? It could be that the beads are telling us a story of shifting cultural norms or beauty standards - new ideas about how they were displaying their identities to their fellow humans. More answers will require more research.

The tradition of adorning the body reveals how creativity and symbolism intersected in prehistoric societies. Ornaments were often used in rituals, worn as shell necklaces, or shared to foster group identity, with designs and materials that likely evolved as part of a broader cultural language. At sites like Blombos Cave and others, carefully crafted beads and pendants provide glimpses into the lives and connections of people thousands of years ago. Examining these artifacts, we can see how our ancestors used wearable art to communicate, connect, and create beauty even in the simplest of forms. And how those beauty standards may have changed over time. 

Conclusion:

Now, if you’ve been paying close attention, you may have realized that I didn’t mention the people of North America once throughout the video. This is because the presence of humans in North America 50,000 years ago is still hotly debated. If you want to learn more about this contentious disagreement, make sure you watch my video on The Oldest Archaeological Sites in North America. Just tap the link on the screen!

References:

[1] Hublin, JJ., et al. 2017. “New fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the pan-African origin of Homo sapiens.” Nature 546:289–292. 

[2] Boëda, E., et al. 1999. “A Levallois point embedded in the vertebra of a wild ass (Equus africanus): hafting, projectiles and Mousterian hunting weapons.” Antiquity 73(280):394-402.

[3] Straus, L. 2005. “The Upper Paleolithic of Europe: An Overview.” Evolutionary Anthropology Issues News and Reviews 4(1):4-16

[4] Verpoorte, A. 2012. “CACHING AND RETOOLING IN POTOČKA ZIJALKA (SLOVENIA) IMPLICATIONS FOR LATE AURIGNACIAN LAND USE STRATEGIES.” Archaologisches Korrespondenzblatt 42(2):135-151.

[5] Holt, B. and Formicola, V. 2008. “Hunters of the Ice Age: The biology of Upper Paleolithic people.” YEARBOOK OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 51:70–99.

[6] https://web.archive.org/web/20050813013143/http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/02/0220_030220_humanorigins2_2.html 

[7] Leonard, W., and Robertson, M. 1997. “Comparative primate energetics and hominid evolution.” Am J Phys Anthropol. 102:265-281.

[8] Wiessner, Polly. 2014. “Embers of society: Firelight talk among the Ju/'hoansi Bushmen.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111(39):14027-14035.

[9] d'Errico, F., and Vanhaeren, M. 2015. Upper Palaeolithic Mortuary Practices: Reflection of Ethnic Affiliation, Social Complexity, and Cultural Turnover. In book: Death Rituals, Social Order and the Archaeology of Immortality in the Ancient World (pp.45-62)

[10] Formicola, V., et al. 2001. “The Upper Paleolithic triple burial of Dolní Vestonice: pathology and funerary behavior.” Am J Phys Anthropol. 115(4):372-9.

[11] Sylvain Ducasse and Mathieu Langlais. 2019. “Twenty years on, a new date with Lascaux. Reassessing the chronology of the cave’s Paleolithic occupations through new 14C AMS dating.” PALEO 30(1):130-147.

[12] Zorich, Z. 2011. "A Chauvet Primer." Archaeology 64(2):39

[13] Oktaviana, A., et al. 2024. “Narrative cave art in Indonesia by 51,200 years ago.” Nature 631:814–818.

[14] Conard, N. 2009. “A female figurine from the basal Aurignacian of Hohle Fels Cave in southwestern Germany.” Nature 459, 248–252. 

[15] Vandewetering, K. 2015. "Upper Paleolithic Venus Figurines and Interpretations of Prehistoric Gender Representations," PURE Insights Vol. 4 , Article 7.

[16] Vanhaeren M., et al. 2013. “Thinking strings: additional evidence for personal ornament use in the Middle Stone Age at Blombos Cave, South Africa.” Journal of Human Evolution 64(6):500-17.