The Discovery of Early European Modern Humans…

The Gravettian toolmaking culture was a distinct archaeological industry of the European Upper Paleolithic, flourishing before the last glacial maximum. It is named after its type site, La Gravette, in the Dordogne region of France, where its characteristic tools were first identified and studied.

The earliest evidence of the Gravettian culture dates to 32,000 years ago in the Crimean Mountains, and it lasted until approximately 22,000 years ago. Where found, it succeeds the Aurignacian culture in the archaeological record.

Gravettian Tools and Artistic Achievements

The defining artifacts of the Gravettian industry include:

• Small, pointed restruck blades with a blunt, straight back,
• The Noailles burin, a specialized carving tool, and
• Evidence of net hunting, used for catching small game.

The Gravettian cultural stage is also renowned for its artistic achievements, particularly the widespread creation of Venus figurines—hundreds of small, stylized depictions of the female form found across Europe. These figurines have ties to similar carvings from the preceding culture.

Regional Variations

The Gravettian culture is divided into two major regional groups:

1. Western Gravettian – Found mostly in cave sites in France.
2. Eastern Gravettian – Associated with specialized mammoth hunters, whose settlements were located on the open plains of Central Europe and Russia.

Cro-Magnon Burials and Evidence of Community Care

The intentional burials practiced by Cro-Magnons suggest that they possessed a knowledge of ritual and a concept of death and the afterlife. Graves containing necklaces and tools indicate that these early humans may have engaged in ceremonial burial practices, possibly reflecting spiritual beliefs or cultural traditions. Alternatively, burial may have also been motivated by a practical understanding of disease, with bodies interred to prevent contamination of living spaces.

Pathology and the Hardships of Cro-Magnon Life

• Analysis of Cro-Magnon skeletons reveals that these early humans endured a physically demanding existence marked by frequent injuries and infections.
• Some individuals exhibited fused vertebrae in their necks, likely the result of traumatic injury, which would have caused chronic pain and limited mobility.
• One adult female found at a shelter had suffered a skull fracture but survived for an extended period, indicating that she received care and support from her community.

Community Support and Early Public Health

Given the severity of these injuries, survival would have been unlikely without social cooperation. This suggests that Cro-Magnons practiced community care, providing aid to the sick and injured, much like early forms of public health. Their willingness to support and protect vulnerable members of their group reflects a complex social structure and an understanding of collective well-being, qualities that played a crucial role in human survival and cultural evolution.

Archaeological evidence from Bluefish Caves in Yukon, Canada, suggests human presence around 24,000 years ago based on cut-marked animal bones. Initially controversial when first reported by Jacques Cinq-Mars in the 1980s, recent reanalysis by Lauriane Bourgeon and colleagues has provided stronger evidence for the early dates, though the findings remain debated within the archaeological community. The site is currently being re-investigated with new techniques.

 

Fully advanced humans, sometimes referred to as Upper Cave people, hunt, fish, and produce shell and bone artifacts near Beijing (Peking) by about 25,000 BCE.

Modern human settlement in Ukraine and its vicinity dates back to 32,000 BCE, with later evidence of the Gravettian culture in the Crimean Mountains.

One typical artifact of the industry, once considered diagnostic, is a small pointed blade with a straight blunt back, known as the Gravette point.

These are used to hunt big game including bison, horse, reindeer and mammoth.

Gravettians also use nets to hunt small game.

The origins of the Gravettian people are not clear; they seem to appear simultaneously all over Europe.

The Ends of the Earth, one twelfth of the Earth’s surface, is bordered by the South Atlantic and South Pacific Oceans and includes Subcontinental South America, the Chonos Archipelago, Chiloé Island, Tierra del Fuego, the Falkland Islands, the remote Juan Fernández Islands (notably home to the marooned sailor Alexander Selkirk from 1704 to 1709, an experience thought to have inspired Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe), the even more remote Easter Island, and West Antarctica—the portion of Antarctica that lies within the Western Hemisphere and includes the Antarctic Peninsula.

Easter Island, culturally Polynesian yet governed by Chile, is among the most isolated inhabited islands in the world, positioned in the eastern South Pacific Ocean at the northwestern edge of The Ends of the Earth, along with the equally remote Pitcairn Islands.

The southeastern and southwestern boundaries divide West Antarctica from the much larger East Antarctica.

The northeastern boundary follows the approximate courses of the Colorado and Barrancas Rivers, which flow from the Andes to the Atlantic Ocean and are traditionally recognized as the northern limit of Argentine Patagonia.

For Chilean Patagonia, most geographers and historians identify its northern boundary at the Huincul Fault in the Araucanía Region.

HistoryAtlas contains 153 entries for The Ends of the Earths from the Upper Paleolithic period to 1899.

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The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) refers to the time of maximum extent of the ice sheets during the last glacial period, between twenty-six thousand five hundred and nineteen thousand to twenty thousand years ago.

The Younger Dryas will follow the Last Glacial Maximum.

Ice sheets cover the whole of Iceland and all but the southern extremity of the British Isles.

This ice extends northward to cover Svalbard and Franz Josef Land and eastward to occupy the northern half of the West Siberian Plain, ending at the Taymyr Peninsula, and damming the Ob and Yenisei rivers forming a West Siberian Glacial Lake.