Early Human Artifacts

Archaeologists study artifacts from early humans to find out more about their lives.  We can also see what their lives were like by looking at some of these artifacts.

A clay sculpture was one of the artifacts discovered.  This cracked clay sculpture was in he shape of buffalo and was most likely made in a cave.  We learn that the buffalo was most likely used as a status symbol.  We also learned that the cave was used for ceremonies of that group, maybe in a ceremony to show that a child became an adult.

The second artifact was a cave painting of animals.  The animals look like horses, some black and some brown.  There are eleven horses at different levels on the ground and a bull in the center.  We learn that the painting was used to honor spirits.  Some groups try to capture the magical power of certain animals.

The third artifact we looked at was cave art tools.  The rocks have the same sharp ends.  Brown circles look like food or mud balls, two big rocks one white the other black. We learned that grinding the brown circles make paint and that they mixed powder with animal fat or vegetable oil to make various colors.  The early humans painted with the top of their finger tips.  The mud balls may have been used to the color the space around their hand shapes.  From these artifacts, we can see that communication was important to early humans and they communicated through their cave art using these tools.

Artifacts can tell us many things about the lives of early humans.  We can see how these people lived.  We can look into their day to day lives and see what and how they hunted, communicated, what they did in their ceremonies, and what they did for fun.