The Paleolithic period is very fascinating to me for many reasons. One of them is the sheer length of it. It is almost incomprehensible that things existed not only thousands of years ago, but also hundreds of thousands of years ago, even millions of years ago. Although we focused on the most recent Paleolithic period, the Upper Paleolithic period in class, it is still amazing that our ancestors lived 50,000 years ago. Additionally, the fact that we have actual physical artifacts that were created during this time period is extraordinary. I enjoyed seeing the paintings on the walls of the caves because to me, it was a real telling of what these humans saw back then. We sometimes forget that evolution is occurring everyday and considering the vast time period we are looking at, animals are bound to look very different today than what they looked like hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago.

During class I wondered how long these artifacts took to make. Without machinery or production methods used today, the detail and size of some of the figurines we saw seemed remarkable. Did the artists sit down and carve these out all at one time or was it more of a hobby that they came back to every few days or weeks? I know the tools they made were very efficient but it still made me wonder how difficult it was to make these. In the same context, what materials was the ochre used to make the handprints on the walls of the caves made of? It would be interesting to see exactly how people used the environment around them to make products such as these.

Another thing I enjoyed discussing in class were the 4 Key Characteristics of the Upper Paleolithic Revolution. When we discussed the Increased Ecological Range, I thought about how long it must have taken them to migrate from one place to another over the glaciers during the Ice Age and what they must have been thinking not knowing if there was any destination within a reachable distance. When discussing the Stone Tool Technology, I thought the structure made out of mammoth bone was amazing because who knows how many individual mammoths went into making these structures. Additionally, had they not hunted these mammoths so much at this point in time, is there a chance they wouldn’t be extinct today?