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 Childhood in the Ice Age — What Was It Like?

Denyse O Leary

In Aeon late last winter, University of Victoria archaeologist April Nowell offered insights into the lives of children in the Paleolithic era, roughly 40,000 to 10,000 years ago. The surprising thing is how much we actually know about that.

Nowell, author of Growing Up in the Ice Age (Oxbow Books 2021) points out, in addition to Caves of Lascaux-level archeological finds that make world news, a wealth of additional information, put together, tells us more than we might have expected about Stone Age life.

For example, footprints embedded in soft earth or mud in and near a cave tell us that a family, burning bundles of pine sticks to light their way, crawled through a cave called Grotta della Bà̀sura 14,000 years ago. The footprints belonged to two adults, an 8-to-11-year-old, a 6-year-old, and a 3-year-old.

Having reached a point now known as the “Sala dei Misteri,” they left signatures of their time there: “While the adults make charcoal handprints on the ceiling, the youngsters dig clay from the floor and smear it on a stalagmite, tracing their fingers in the soft sediment. Each tracing corresponds to the age and height of the child who made it: the tiniest markings, made with a toddler’s fingers, are found closest to the ground.”

Then They Left

Their pine torches left charcoal traces on the walls. What were they doing? We will never know for sure but it seems like a ritual of some sort.

We know other things about the lives of children back then as well. One is that they had to learn the art of making stone tools (knapping). Examining the masses of struck-off fragments, archeologists can tell which ones were produced by novices who had not yet perfected the art.

But, says Nowell, we have evidence of children at play too:

Other studies of footprints, this time from 13,000-year-old sites in Italy and France, document children and teens running around playing tag, making ‘perfect’ footprints the way kids do today at the beach, and throwing clay balls at each other and at stalagmites — some of the pellets missed their targets and remain on the cave floor. Skills were honed through play in other ways: at Palaeolithic sites in Russia, researchers found 29 clay objects that, by analysing traces of fingerprints, were determined to be made by children between the ages of six and 10, and adolescents between 10 and 15. Ethnographically, we know that children often begin to learn ceramics by first playing with clay, making toy animals and serving bowls.

APRIL NOWELL, “CHILDREN OF THE ICE AGE,” AEON, 13 FEBRUARY 2023

And Sadder Evidence as Well

One young child from 10,000 years ago was buried in clothing with hundreds of beads lovingly sewn in.

When telling us of our ancestors, researchers often hold out the hope that the information they painstakingly accumulate will shed light on human development. From the fragments gathered so far, it seems we have no evidence for a history of the human mind, only the history of human technology.

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