The lifestyle of hunters and gatherers of the Golden Age of Venus Figurines
Venus figurines in context.
Part 2-2
After several million years of evolution since the divergence from the line of apes, there are people in prehistoric Europe belonging to the same species as we do, Homo sapiens, and that is why we call them modern humans. This name is used to distinguish them from archaic humans like the Neanderthals or Denisovans.
They created works of art, with human beings also being the subjects of their creative works. Among human beings, women were depicted most often. So, we have the legacy of prehistoric Venus figurines.
The Golden Age of Venus Figurines
In this lifestyle depiction, I will focus on the "Golden Age" of Venuses, about 30,000 years ago, give or take several thousand years. The culture connected with the Golden Age is called the Gravettian. During this age, the Venus of Willendorf (from Austria), the most famous prehistoric Venus was created, as well as the Venus of Věstonice (from the Czech Republic), the world's oldest ceramic artefact. So how did they live? They lived in line with the outcomes of their long preceding evolution (see part 2-1).
Cooperative breeding, empathy and altruism
They lived as hunters and gatherers in groups, closely cooperating with each other, practicing empathy and altruism widely, because it was the best time-proven way to survive and prosper. This way of life is closely connected with cooperative breeding, which means that care for children and their upbringing is a matter of the whole community, not just their parents. The caretakers, who are not the parents, are called "alloparents".
The connectedness to each other within the community led to the need of each member to be positively viewed and to trust the others. Both were important for survival.
Division of labour based on abilities
To ensure the prosperity of a group, it was necessary that every member did what he or she was best talented at. It also concerned sexual division of labour that was not generally practised, which is different from the patterns observed in modern hunter-gatherers. (This can be judged based on bone analyses of the then people.)
Harsh natural conditions of the Ice Age meant that every work which was not done properly, or a silly decision, could have resulted in a disaster: insufficient supply of fuel, inadequate clothing or footwear, carelessness in forgetting about the existence of dangerous animals. A present-day European could find the animals of those times quite exotic: besides mammoths there were lions, leopards, rhinoceroses, aurochs, musk oxen etc.
Longevity
Evolutionary pressure was strong and weaker individuals did not often survive. It is estimated that about one quarter of children died before their first birthday, another quarter died before the age of 15. Those who survived this period of "childhood illnesses" had a reasonable chance to live to be 70. Scientific studies show that longevity potential in mammals is connected with the brain volume, which is in line with a relatively long lifespan in humans.
Good nutrition
We can say that the then people were well-fed. Short episodes of insufficient nutrition are thought to have been connected with weaning as weaning was most common during the age of four or five. (It is possible to determine it by analyses of teeth.)
Plenty of movement, more robust women and larger brains in comparison with present Europeans
Lower limb bones testify to high mobility, both in men and women. At the same time, differences in upper limbs robusticity between men and women were much lower than they are today. However, there was remarkable sexual dimorphism. Females were heavy and robust, whereas males were lightly built.
(Literature 15)
Brain volumes of the people were larger in comparison with present Europeans.
Technologies
Besides widely using various stones and stone tools, they also used plant fibres to manufacture cordage, basketry, textiles and netting. (Their impressions were found on fragments of fired clay), using (among other tools) awls and needles. They also manufactured and used pigments, shovels, personal adornments, javelins, bows and arrows as well as many other things.
Fire use and innovations in pyrotechnology was another typical cultural trait of the Gravettian people. They used fire extensively while burning various fuels including coal, animal fat and mammoth bones.
Indeed, they created Venus figurines made of different materials such as mammoth ivory, various stones and, typically of "peoples of fire", of fired clay.
It is supposed that there were also Venus figurines made of perishable materials, but only those that survived up to our times could be found.
Pan-European Culture
We know that they travelled a lot and transported suitable raw materials over long distances, even hundreds of kilometres. Groups scattered throughout the then habitable Europe met each other, people exchanged their knowledge, raw materials, products and genes, individual groups split, moved, merged. Emphasis was put on maintaining large mating network to avoid inbreeding. Therefore, the whole habitable Europe was inhabited by people of similar kind and similar cultures. That is why we speak of the mosaic of pan-European culture.
Spirituality: material and spiritual worlds inseparable, belief in afterlife and shamanism
There is no doubt that they lived a rich spiritual life because for hunters and gatherers, spirituality and certain sacredness permeated all their actions, and material and spiritual worlds were inseparably interconnected. Sacred landscapes, sacred animals, plants, rituals, rites of passage were typical. There were probably widespread ideas that were supposed to reconcile people mentally with killing animals for a living, for example that animals give themselves to people voluntarily, or that animal souls, like human souls, persist after death. For example, there is evidence that Arctic whalers held ceremonies for the souls of the whales they caught, analogous to funeral masses for humans. There were male and female shamans, who were endowed with skills to communicate with invisible forces of nature better than the other members of their community. Some Gravettian burials were similar to the burials of Siberian shamans. Their spirituality was not an equivalent to a moralistic doctrinal religion, as these religions emerged much, much later.
Cooperative breeding and its reflection in family relationships
As I have already mentioned, cooperative breeding was typical of the then people. It means that childcare is not limited to the parents and other members of the community (close relatives, distant relatives and non-relatives) are involved.
A hallmark of cooperative breeders is a flexible mating system, which means different forms of marriages.
It is difficult to say what forms of marriages were practised. For an illustration, I mention several types of family relationships in cooperative breeders, as they were recorded by researches:
Wife-exchange (wife-swapping) practised among Inuits, called non-residential polygynous polyandry. All children of involved pairs were considered siblings.
Besides polygyny (one man, several women) and polyandry (one woman, several men e.g. in Tibet), there is serial monogamy. A man and a woman live in a pair, but only for (rather) limited time. Such pattern was very common among studied hunters and gatherers. For example, Aché people in Paraguay: Women had a mean of 12 spouses in a lifetime, and most women produced children with 2 to 5 different men.
Traditional matrilineal Mosuo in China is also worth mentioning:
"In particular, the modes of courtship and reproduction of the traditional Mosuo revolve around a practice known as walking marriages, which involves no contract or obligations, where men do not use social status or resources to court women, women do not expect commitment from men, and multiple sexual relationships are permitted for both sexes and incite conflict. Children borne from walking marriages are cared for not so much by fathers but rather their mothers' brothers (...) We suggest that cases that appear like evolutionary exceptions, such as the traditional Mosuo, can bring into question the mating practices and preferences we take for granted as relatively universal..." (source of the quotation see literature 11)
Advantages of genetic diversity
Genetic diversity was advantageous for survival and health of a community. More genetically different members of a community meant that in times of extreme adversity and hardship (pathogens, extreme weather) more members of a group survived. Low genetic diversity, on the other hand, means that deleterious (harmful) genes in individuals are not "diluted" and can lead to their fragility and illnesses. That is why lifelong monogamy was not beneficial and thus not favoured by natural selection.
Cooperative breeding and formation of women's coalition
Considering our evolution, cooperative breeding and alloparenting, and also certain analogies between bonobos and humans, it is worth mentioning another interesting thing.
It has been documented that female bonobos tend to form coalitions. Although the bonobos are not aggressive in general, in the event of a conflict such a female coalition is able to face a male, even if the male is physically stronger than a female.
Psychology research showed that women tend to like each other than more than men tend to like each other. For example, words associated with femininity women perceived more positively than word associated with masculinity.
Besides that, it is proven fact that women in general tend to be to some extent sexually attracted to other women (consciously or unconsciously) even if they identify themselves as heterosexuals.
From evolutionary point of view, it is not surprising when we take into consideration cooperative breeding and way of life of prehistoric people in general. Core of alloparents could be formed by a "coalition" of women. Their care included alloparental nursing, which points also to evolutionary advantage of induced lactation. Their mutual intimate relationships could strengthen their friendship and sense of belonging.
So, such was the probable picture of European people some 30,000 years ago, give or take several thousand years.
But, climate stabilization and following onset of agriculture changed everything.
Next (and the last part): 2-3 What brought about the end of hunters-gatherer and onset of agriculture.
Previous part: 2-1 Trends in human evolution that shaped us.
Literature
In 2008, I published rather detailed article about mammoth hunters called WINDOW...
Although the article is several years old, I believe that its main points are still valid and it also contains lots of references (156).
The article is here (pdf):
Books
1.
Hunters of the Golden Age. The Mid Upper Palaeolithic of Eurasia 30,000 to 20,000 BP.
Edited by Wil Roebroeks, Margherita Mussi, Jiří Svoboda and Kelly Fennema.
University of Leiden, 2000
2.
Early Modern Human Evolution in Central Europe. The People of Doní Věstonice and Pavlov.
Edited by Erik Trinkaus and Jiří Svoboda.
The Dolní Věstonice Studies Volume 12
Oxford University Press, 2006
3.
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers.
Edited by Richard B. Lee and Richard Daly. Cambridge University Press, 2006 (reprint)
4.
Jennifer C. French:
Palaeolithic Europe A Demographic and Social Prehistory.
Cambridge University Press, 2021
5.
Christopher Ryan, Cacida Jethá:
Na počátku byl sex. Kořeny moderní sexuality Jak se dáváme dohromady a proč se rozcházíme
Argo Praha, 2014
(original: Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality, PublishedJune 29, 2010 by HarperCollins)
6.
Jaroslav Skupnik:
Manželství a sexualita z antropologické perspektivy.
Panoráma biologické a sociokulturní antropologie (Jaroslav Malina editor)
Masarykova Univerzita v Brně a nakladatelství a vydavatelství Nauma Brno, 2002
Articles
1.
Brigitte M. Holt:
Mobility in Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Europe: Evidence from the Lower Limb.
American Journal of Physical Anthropology 122, str. 200 – 215, 2003
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ajpa.10256
2.
Ed Yong:
Deformed skull of prehistoric child suggests that early humans cared for disabled children.
National Geographic Website March 30, 2009
3.
Endicott, Karen:
The conditions of egalitarian male-female relationships in foraging societies.
Canberra Anthropology. October 1981. 1-10. 10.1080/03149098109508588.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233095485_The_conditions_of_egalitarian_male-female
4.
Martin Sikora et al.:
Ancient genomes show social and reproductive behavior of early Upper Paleolithic foragers.
Science 358, 659-662 (2017).DOI:10.1126/science.aao1807
5.
Liran Samuni, Martin Surbeck:
Cooperation across social borders in bonobos.
Science 382,805-809(2023).DOI:10.1126/science.adg0844
6.
Surbeck, M., Cheng, L., Kreyer, M. et al.:
Drivers of female power in bonobos.
Communications Biology 8, 550 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-025-07900-8
Published24 April 2025
DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-025-07900-8
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-025-07900-8
7.
Palmquist, A. (2020).
Cooperative Lactation and the Mother-Infant Nexus.
Kapitola z knihy: Gowland, R., Halcrow, S. (editors): The Mother-Infant Nexus in Anthropology. Bioarchaeology and Social Theory, 2020
Springer International Publishing, Cham, Švýcarsko
8.
Chivers M.L., Seto M.C., Blanchard R.:
Gender and sexual orientation differences in sexual response to sexual activities versus gender of actors in sexual films.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. December 2007; Vol. 93(6), pages.1108-21.
doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.93.6.1108. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5775304_Gender_and_Sexual_Orientation_Differences_in_Sexual_Response_to_Sexual_Activities_Versus_Gender_of_Actors_in_Sexual_Films
9.
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy:
On Why It Takes a Village. Cooperative Breeders, Infant Needs, and the Future.
Kapitola ( na str. 167 – 188) z knihy Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Development, Second Edition, Editors Robert L. Burgess and Kevin MacDonald, Sage Publications, Inc, Thousand Oaks, California, London, UK and New Delhi, India,2005.
10.
Steven Fearing:
It Takes A Village – Alloparenting and Female Sexual Fluidity.
September 27,2021
https://www.matingstraighttalk.com/it-takes-a-village-alloparenting-and-female-sexual-fluidity/
11.
Jose C. Yong and Norman P.Li:
Elucidating evolutionary principles with the traditional Mosuo: Adaptive benefits and origins of matriliny and "walking marriages"
Culture and Evolution, Volume 19, Issue 1, pages 22-40, 2022
DOI https://doi.org/10.1556/2055.2022.00017
https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2055/19/1/article-p22.xml
12.
Christopher Mogielnicki, Katherine Pearl:
Hominid sexual nature.
Theory in Biosciences. 2020 Jun;139(2):191-207.
doi: 10.1007/s12064-020-00312-8.
Epub 2020 Mar 13. PMID: 32170558; PMCID: PMC7244608.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12064-020-00312-8
13
Michael Gurven and Hillard Kaplan:
Longevity Among Hunter‐ Gatherers: A Cross‐Cultural Examination
Population and Development Review, 2007, Vol. 33, Issue 2, 321-365
14.
Kilili, H., Padilla-Morales, B., Castillo-Morales, A. et al.:
Maximum lifespan and brain size in mammals are associated with gene family size expansion related to immune system functions.
Scientific Reports 15, 15087 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-98786-3
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-98786-3
14
Hervey C. Peoples, Pavel Duda P, Frank W. Marlowe:
Hunter-Gatherers and the Origins of Religion.
Human Nature. 2016 September 27(3):261-82. doi: 10.1007/s12110-016-9260-0.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007
15
Janusz Piontek and Václav Vančata: Transition to Agriculture in Central Europe: Body Size and Body Shape among the First Farmers. Interdisciplinaria Archaeologica Natural Sciences in Archaeology. Vol. 3, pages 23-42. 2012, DOI: 10.24916/iansa.2012.1.2.