Ice Age Food if We Go Into One Again

The most contempo water ice age peaked between 24,000 and 21,000 years ago, when vast ice sheets covered North America and northern Europe, and mountain ranges similar Africa'south Mt. Kilimanjaro and South America'southward Andes were encased in glaciers.

At that point our Homo sapien ancestors had migrated from the warm African heartland into northern European and Eurasian latitudes severely impacted by the sinking temperatures. Armed with big, creative brains and sophisticated tools, though, these early modern humans—nearly identical to ourselves physically—not only survived, but thrived in their harsh surroundings.

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Language, Fine art and Storytelling Helped Survival

For our Homo sapien forebears living during the terminal water ice historic period, there were several critical advantages to having a big brain, explains Brian Fagan, an emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of many books, including Cro Magnon: How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans and Climate Chaos: Lessons on Survival from our Ancestors.

"1 of the nigh important things about Homo sapiens is that we had fluent voice communication," says Fagan, "plus the ability to conceptualize and plan ahead."

With the appearance of language, noesis about the natural earth and new technologies could exist shared between neighboring bands of humans, and also passed down from generation to generation via storytellers.

"They had institutional retentivity through symbolic storytelling, which gave them a human relationship with the forces of the environs, the supernatural forces which governed their world."

Also through music, dance and art, our ancestors collected and transmitted vast amounts of information about the seasons, edible plants, animal migrations, weather patterns and more than. The elaborate cave paintings at sites similar Lascaux and Chauvet in France brandish the intimate agreement that late ice age humans possessed near the natural world, specially the casualty animals they depended on for survival.

This painting in the Chauvet Cave in southern France dates to around 32,000-thirty,000 B.C.

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"When wildlife biologists expect at those paintings of reindeer and bison, they can tell y'all what time of year it was painted just from the appearance of the animals' hides and skins," says Fagan. "The manner these people knew their environment was absolutely incredible by our standards."

The terminal ice age corresponds with the Upper Paleolithic catamenia (forty,000 to x,000 years ago), in which humans made bully leaps forward in toolmaking and weaponry, including the first tools used exclusively for making other tools.

One of the well-nigh important of these was called a burin, a humble-looking stone chisel that was used to cut grooves and notches into bone and antler, lightweight fabric that was also hard and durable. The intricate spearheads and harpoon tips made from that bone and antler were pocket-sized and light enough to be carried on foot past hunters over long distances, and were besides detachable and interchangeable, creating the first compound tools.

"Remember of the Swiss army knife—it's the aforementioned matter," says Fagan. "The weaponry they made covered an extraordinary range of specialized tools, almost of which were made from grooving antler and bone."

Microliths were added to os tools like these, including needles, harpoons and projectile points.

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Only even these sophisticated hunting weapons were useless outside of close-range attacks, which sometimes required the hunter to leap on the back of his massive prey. Over again, our human ancestors used their intelligence and planning skills to take some of the danger and guesswork out of hunting.

In 1 famed hunting ground in eastern France, ice historic period hunters built fires every autumn and spring to corral migrating herds of wild horses and reindeer into a narrow valley marked by a limestone tower known as the Roche de Salutré.

Once in the corral, the animals could safely and easily be killed at close quarters, harvesting an abundance of meat that was then dried for the summertime and winter months. Archeological evidence shows that this well-coordinated slaughter went on for tens of thousands of years.

Invention of the Needle Brings Tailored Wear

When the first humans migrated to northern climates about 45,000 years agone, they devised rudimentary wearable to protect themselves from the cold. They draped themselves with loose-plumbing equipment hides that doubled every bit sleeping bags, infant carriers and manus protection for chiseling stone.

But everything inverse around 30,000 years ago with what Fagan argues is the most important invention in human being history: the needle.

"If yous saw a needle from 20,000 or 30,000 years agone, you'd know what it was in an instant, a very fine-pointed tool with a pigsty in ane end to put thread through," says Fagan. "The phenomenon of the needle was that it enabled humans to make tight-plumbing fixtures article of clothing that was tailored to the individual, and that's vital."

Like modern mountaineering clothing, clothes from the late ice age were meant to be worn in layers. An ice-age tailor would advisedly select different animal skins—reindeer, chill foxes, hares, fifty-fifty birds like ptarmigans—and run up together three or four layers, from moisture-wicking underwear to waterproof pants and parkas.

Thread was made from wild flax and other vegetable fibers and fifty-fifty dyed dissimilar colors like turquoise and pinkish. The result was a fitted, versatile wardrobe that fully protected its wearer from sub-freezing temperatures.

Video: How Humans Survived the Ice Historic period

Rock Shelters Provided Protection From Weather

For shelter in the coldest months, our water ice age ancestors didn't live deep in caves as Victorian archeologists once believed, only they did make homes in natural stone shelters. These were commonly roomy depressions cut into the walls of riverbeds beneath a protective overhang.

Fagan says there's strong evidence that ice age humans made extensive modifications to weatherproof their stone shelters. They draped large hides from the overhangs to protect themselves from piercing winds, and congenital internal tent-like structures made of wooden poles covered with sewn hides. All of this was situated around a blazing hearth, which reflected heat and lite off the rock walls.

In the brief summer months, the hunters would movement out into the open up plains that stretched from the Atlantic coast of Europe all the way to Siberia. With cold temperatures persisting at night, shelter was taken in dome-shaped huts partially dug into the earth.

"The framework was built from a latticework of mammoth bones, either hunted or raided from carcasses," says Fagan. "On top of it they'd lay sod or fauna hides to brand a house that was occupied for months on cease."

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Source: https://www.history.com/news/ice-age-human-survival

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