How did the Paleolitic people adapt to their enviornment?

Question

How did the Paleolitic people adapt to their enviornment?

Thanks in advance =]

Answer 1

We do not know anything about these early people--we can only look at artifacts, observe the very few remaining gatherer/hunter societies, and attempt to reach conclusions without letting cultural assumptions get in the way.

Why am I calling these earliest groups "gatherer-hunters?" Don't most people put it the other way, with hunters first? I do this because about 70 percent of the diet of most of these groups consisted of seeds, fruits, nuts, etc. which were gathered. Sharon Tiffany (7-35) and Frances Dahlberg (1-33) go into this in greater detail. As I mentioned earlier, one of the newer methods of determining diet is by finding the ratio of calcium to strontium in the ancient bones. Both animals and plants absorb strontium along with calcium, but animal bodies incorporate less strontium into their living organisms. The result is that carnivores end up with less strontium than herbivores. Each time an animal eats another animal, the strontium level goes down. Not only does this method of analysis suggest general patterns, but it can also show if a group has different male/female eating patterns. (Ehrenberg 27-28)

How were the never-ending tasks of obtaining subsistence divided up? By sex, or by other factors? The hunting was done primarily by men, and the gathering primarily by women. It was not because men were generally bigger and stronger, as is somewhat the case today. (Skeletal remains from the paleolithic period show much less difference in size--sexual dimorphism--than exists today.) It was simply the most practical way to do things. It was not a gendering of tasks. Because women had the biiological task of childbearing and breastfeeding, it was more practical for mothers to stay close to the temporary camp. Can you imagine trying to go on an extended hunt with a toddler tagging along? The gathering and the hunting had equal value to the group, and those who mostly gathered had the same status as those who mostly hunted. (This is one of my problems with the novel Clan of the Cave Bear.) The tasks were complementary--different, but equally necessary and valued. Based on anthropological studies of contemporary gatherer-hunter and large ape societies, scholars generally consider it probable that decision-making was done by these small groups as a whole.

Merely having sufficient food was not enough to ensure the survival of a society. Reproduction was as essential to the group's survival as obtaining food. Gathering and hunting are extremely labor-intensive, and if the group did not at least reproduce itself with an average of two children who survived to maturity per couple, it quickly lost the people-power necessary to provide communally for that group. Here we have a task--reproduction--that is limited to biological females. A woman's unique ability to bring forth another life has long been a major factor in the way society regards her.

Yes, I am aware that a male is also needed in this task. Women no doubt figured out that lack of menses, combined with an enlarging midsection, meant that an infant was on its way. It is not likely that the cause and effect connection between intercourse and a baby became apparent to humans until they domesticated and herded animals. Nine months is a long time between the act and the fact.

The man's reproductive task takes potentially only a few minutes, and then he can go on with life as usual. Once the child was born, the mother had to nurse it, usually until the next pregnancy. The female (for many millennia) was looking at about three to four years of limits to her activities, assuming the child lived. Breast-feeding for about three years was necessary when the only other foods available were meats and fibrous plants. This extended nursing resulted in child spacing of about three years. (When breast-feeding is the sole source of nourishment, the return of fertility is usually delayed by about two years, thus resulting in a "natural" child spacing of about three years.) During this time, the female's activities became somewhat restricted. Since early gatherer-hunters seldom stayed in one location very long, the child would have to be carried for about three years, or until it could keep up with the group. Twins presented major logistical problems, and (based on contemporary anthropolgical observations) it is believed that in some groups one of the newborns was abandoned at birth in order to give the other a greater chance of survival.

Women's reproductive ability was of great value to the group. It is not unlikely, according to Gerda Lerner, that one group might raid another to get more women so that their numbers would increase. (This would also result in broadening the gene pool, although this would not have been a consideration at that time!) Lerner points out that actions such as woman-stealing showed that the woman was valued not as a person, but only as a reproductive device. She became a sexual being. (Lerner, 47) This is something else to think about as we begin to find restrictions placed on women's activities.

Based on current scholarship, I have described the Paleolithic societies of gatherer-hunters as essentially egalitarian, with complementary roles for men and women. It is definitely not the patriarchy that the Victorian anthropologists assumed was the natural order of things. Was there ever a time when social roles were the reverse of today and women ruled, in a matriarchal society?

Despite legends and myths, the answer at this time appears to be No. Although evidence exists that suggests that the principal deity of ancient times was female and represented fertility, to date no solid evidence exists for a society in which males had all aspects of their lives and activities controlled by a female hierarchy.

Many societies have been--and a few still are--matrilineal and/or matrilocal. Matrilineal descent is traced through the mother's line. A woman's property is generally inherited by her brothers' sons, rather than her husband's sons. In a matrilocal society the married couple usually takes up residence with the woman's kinship group. Matrilineal and matrilocal societies tend to be more common in horticultural societies, and women frequently have greater status than in patrilineal and patrilocal groups. But, power and decision-making still usually rests with the males

Answer 2

They were a people who 'knew' the last ice age, if i remember correctly.. 10-12 thousand yrs ago... rite?..glaciers were rivers of ice, flowing outward from vast areas affected climatologicly,...it has been estimated those glasures moved many miles in short periods of time, so the palio's would by necessity have been nomadic, or transient.
Adaptation would have ment 'versatile', ingenious, experimental, exploitative, self sufficiency, courageous, intr-relient, clan optimizing,
that sort of stuff.
Do ya think they held any philosophy's that we today might recognize,..?..i have always wondered how deeply the early peoples considered things. were they cognizant of spiritual things, ..of material things, .. of preasus things,.. did they plant any thing,.. did they consider futuresticly,.. did the understand conception,.. did they prey, or hope, or dream of better,..?/

Answer 3

i do no longer think of Muslims would desire to unavoidably adapt to their atmosphere, yet they'd desire to be innovative and understand that lots of the regulations in Islam have been for a undeniable era in basic terms and not for all time and by no ability for at present. Too many terrible issues proceed at present simply by fact that is written interior the quran.