I’ve just published my first ‘real’ article since pre-COVID times! It’s another piece for Rob Nelson’s StoneAgeMan, and it’s about – appropriately – the Stone Age.
Of course, the Stone Age is an immense span of time that covers millions of years. To make things easier for myself and more relevant to readers, my latest article focuses on a small portion of the Stone Age: the Upper Paleolithic period.
The Upper Paleolithic roughly spans from 45,000 – 10,000 years ago, although every source seems to list slightly different dates. It’s the time period in which our species, Home sapiens sapiens, left Africa in large numbers and settled most of the world. The Upper Paleolithic also saw an immense amount of change – climatic, technological, and cultural – making it a vital period for understanding how we came to be “us.”
In the StoneAgeMan article, I explain these changes using the best sources I could find. What this means is that I had to read about 50,000 peer-reviewed articles and then stitch together what life was like in the Upper Paleolithic based on tidbits of information I found in each one.
Without further ado, here’s the link to the article. I’ve also posted the first subsection below:
Life in the Stone Age: The Upper Paleolithic
The Stone Age is a period that modern people frequently mythologize, and in polarized ways.
On the one hand, the Stone Age is characterized as a time of hardship, when early humans struggled to survive in a hostile environment.
Conversely, some modern people view the Stone Age as a time when our species lived closest to its evolutionary roots. This belief contributes to fads like paleo diets; and, in a more positive sense, to the desire to better understand the lives of our ancestors.
Since the vast majority of human life has been spent in the Stone Age, researching this time period could indeed provide valuable clues as to how to live healthier, happier lives.
The rest of this article, then, will explore what science has to say about a crucial portion of the Stone Age: the Upper Paleolithic. Examining this change-filled era demonstrates the importance of social networks to the survival of our species.
Read more on StoneAgeMan.com!
The Jaguar 
What an interesting piece! We have some cave art in the driftless area of Wisconsin, which fortunately was photographed before it fully weathered away. Congrats :)
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Thanks Jess! What you said about the cave art in Wisconsin is super interesting; I’ll have to look more into it at some point.
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A very well-written, informative article. It must have been quite a challenge to decide what to include and what to leave out.
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Thank you! Yes, that’s the hardest part of these articles: there’s so much to cover, but internet writing should be kept as short as possible. When dealing with the Stone Age, there’s also a lot of poor sources or sources who don’t say where they got their evidence from, which makes it hard to find the most credible information.
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Congratulations Josh! Fascinating and what an accomplishment!. I have no idea at all why WP unfollowed you from me.
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Thank you! I’m not sure why WordPress unfollwed us either, but it’s good to be connected again!
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Josh, congratulations, and thank you for this excellent piece!
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Thank you! I’m not sure how many more articles I’ll be able to do, so it’s always a treat to work on one.
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I love to read blogs that cover subjects like this and those with historical data. Thanks for sharing this post.
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Thank you! It’s always good to connect with other people who are interested in history; or, in this case, prehistory :)
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[What this means is that I had to read about 50,000 peer-reviewed articles and then stitch together what life was like in the Upper Paleolithic]…Josh, I’m in awe of you , sir! :-)
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Haha, well the 50,000 figure was a little exaggerated, but it was still a long process!
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