Paleolithic Era (jan 1, 300000 BC – jan 1, 9000 BC)

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Paleolithic Era: The period of human history up to about 9000 B.C.E., when tools were made from stone and bone and people gained their food through foraging.
"...people generally lived in small groups of related individuals and moved throughout the landscape in search of food. They ate mostly plants, and much of the animal protein in their diet came from foods gathered or scavenged rather than hunted directly. Paleolithic peoples did, however, hunt large game, often hunting in groups. Groups working together forced animals over cliffs, threw spears to kill them, and, beginning about 15,000 B.C.E., used bows to shoot projectiles so that they could stand farther away from their prey while hunting."

"Beginning in the Paleolithic era, human beings have expressed themselves through what we would now term the arts or culture: painting and decorating walls and objects, making music, telling stories, dancing alone or in groups."

"Burials, paintings, and objects suggest that people may have developed ideas about supernatural forces that controlled some aspects of the natural world and the humans in it, what we now term spirituality or religion."

"In a few especially fertile areas, however, the natural environment provided enough food that people could become more settled. About 15,000 years ago, the earth’s climate entered a warming phase, and more parts of the world were able to support people who did not move very much or at all."

"Scholars used to think that crop raising was the cause of sedentism, or a sedentary way of life, but they now know that in many places villages preceded intentional crop raising by thousands of years, so the primary line of causation runs the other way: people began to raise crops because they were living in permanent communities."

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