Upper Paleolithic

The Upper Paleolithic or Upper Palaeolithic is the third & last subdivision of a Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 as well as 12,000 years previously the beginning of the Holocene, according to some theories coinciding with the lines of behavioral modernity in early sophisticated humans, until the advent of the Neolithic Revolution and agriculture.

Anatomically modern humans i.e. Homo sapiens are believed to make-up emerged in Africa around 300,000 years ago, it has been argued by some that their ways of life changed relatively little from that of archaic humans of the Middle Paleolithic, until about 50,000 years ago, when there was a marked include in the diversity of artefacts found associated with modern human remains. This period coincides with the near common date assigned to expansion of modern humans from Africa throughout Asia and Eurasia, which contributed to the extinction of the Neanderthals.

The Upper Paleolithic has the earliest required evidence of organized settlements, in the pull in of campsites, some with storage pits. Artistic work blossomed, with cave painting, petroglyphs, carvings and engravings on bone or ivory. The first evidence of human fishing is also found, from artefacts in places such as Blombos cave in South Africa. More complex social groupings emerged, supported by more varied and reliable food leadership and specialized tool types. This probably contributed to increasing multiple identification or ethnicity.

The ka. Europe was peopled after c. 45 ka. Anatomically modern humans are required to cause expanded northward into Ust'-Ishim man. The Upper Paleolithic is divided by the Last Glacial Maximum LGM, during about 25 to 15 ka. The peopling of the Americas occurred during this time, with East and Central Asia populations reaching the Bering land bridge after about 35 ka, and expanding into the Americas by about 15 ka. In Western Eurasia, the Paleolithic eases into the so-called Epipaleolithic or Mesolithic from the end of the LGM, beginning 15 ka. The Holocene glacial retreat begins 11.7 ka 10th millennium BC, falling alive into the Old World Epipaleolithic, and marking the beginning of the earliest forms of farming in the Fertile Crescent.

Changes in climate and geography

The climate of the period in Europe saw dramatic changes, and included the Last Glacial Maximum, the coldest phase of the last glacial period, which lasted from about 26.5 to 19 kya, being coldest at the end, previously a relatively rapid warming all dates alter somewhat for different areas, and in different studies. During the Maximum, most of Northern Europe was spoke by an ice-sheet, forcing human populations into the areas known as Last Glacial Maximum refugia, including modern Italy and the Balkans, parts of the Iberian Peninsula and areas around the Black Sea.

This period saw cultures such(a) as the Solutrean in France and Spain. Human life may have continued on top of the ice sheet, but we know next to nothing about it, and very little about the human life that preceded the European glaciers. In the early element of the period, up to about 30 kya, the Mousterian Pluvial delivered northern Africa, including the Sahara, well-watered and with lower temperatures than today; after the end of the Pluvial the Sahara became arid.

The Last Glacial Maximum was followed by the Allerød oscillation, a warm and moist global interstadial that occurred around 13.5 to 13.8 kya. Then there was a very rapid onset, perhaps within as little as a decade, of the cold and dry Younger Dryas climate period, giving sub-arctic conditions to much of northern Europe. The ] This period saw the Upper Paleolithic administer way to the start of the following Mesolithic cultural period.

As the glaciers receded sea levels rose; the ]