Describe the Upper Paleolithic in Europe, including the environment,
tools, and art of the period.
Describe the features of the Preagricultural Developments, including at least one regional culture as an example.
Based on your reading of the text, what is the best explanation for the domestication of plants and animals worldwide? (Present a logical argument, and support your answer using details and data from the text.)
The environment in Europe during the Upper Paleolithic consisted of giant ice glaciers all around, even all the way North America. The reasoning being is because the earth was coming off an ice age (Ember). The annual temperatures then were 50 degrees less than today’s while also experiencing heavy snowfall (Ember). Most of the plants and animals adapted to the drastic change and even introduced large game animals to Europe (Ember). Also 2 new tool making techniques emerged, indirect percussion and pressure flaking. Blades, which were mainly used during the Upper Paleolithic, were commonly made using indirect percussion using
a hammer-struck punch (Ember). Pressure Flaking does not use percussion to strike off flakes, you would apply pressure with bone, wood, or antler to remove small flakes (mainly used in the
final touches) (Ember). Beads, carvings, and paintings were all discovered at Upper Paleolithic sites. There were even cave paintings that showed some skill to make found in southern France.
The paintings found were mainly of animals because there was a belief that it would increase their luck with hunting and also that drawing a human image can cause death or injury (Ember).
During the Upper Paleolithic were seen more than just as drawings, they had some kind of spiritual meaning behind it (Ember). Preagricultural development is the development of food production and settled life in an area (Ember). The Near East would be a good example for this. There was a shift from hunting big game to utilizing the natural resources in the area (Ember). People lived off of fish, mollusks, deer, sheep, grains, and nuts (Ember). This in turn led to people beginning to establish settlements and live sedentary lives (Ember). The best explanation for domestication of plants and animals would be that people started to live settled lives rather than constantly moving each time the game they hunted moved to a different location. The idea of this quickly spread worldwide and settlements began to become a more common occurrence. A good example of this would be the people of Ali Kosh in southwest Iran building small multiroom structures which could have been used as either storage or living (Ember). What they mainly ate were cultivated wheat, barley, and domesticated goats. The reason why the goats were known to be domesticated is because there was no evidence that goats lived in the area prior to that (Ember). Ember, C., Ember, M., & Peregrine, P. (n.d.). Anthropology
. Pearson Revel.
