Middle Paleolithic humans buried their dead and traded ochre
From about 300,000 years ago, Middle Paleolithic and African Middle Stone Age societies show early behavioral modernity—burials, pigments, beads, and long-distance exchange—while anatomically modern humans began leaving Africa around 125,000 years ago to replace other Homo species.
The Middle Paleolithic is the Old Stone Age's second subdivision in Europe, Africa, and Asia; Africa often says Middle Stone Age instead. It broadly spans from 300,000 years ago until Upper Paleolithic transitions. Recent African origin theory places anatomically modern humans migrating out around 125,000 years ago, eventually replacing Neanderthals and late Homo erectus. Earliest hints of behavioral modernity appear here, though undisputed abundance waits for the Upper Paleolithic period that followed.
Burials at Krapina in Croatia about 130,000 years ago and Qafzeh and Es Skhul in Israel about 100,000 years ago lead some, including Philip Lieberman, to infer developing religious ideology. Claims that Homo heidelbergensis at Atapuerca buried even earlier in the late Lower Paleolithic remain widely questioned. Blombos Cave yields bracelets, beads, engraved rock, and ochre body paint among the earliest undisputed Paleolithic art signals. Inter-group trade in ochre and raw materials appears by about 120,000 years ago, possibly buffering famine and drought between bands.
Bands were small and relatively egalitarian, akin to some modern foragers such as the !Kung and Mbuti; both Neanderthals and sapiens cared for elders. Kuhn and Stiner argue strict sex-based division of labor may postdate the Upper Paleolithic. Diets added seafood; Congolese Middle Stone Age groups smoked and dried meat. Tim D. White and others read abundant butchered human bones as common cannibalism before the Upper Paleolithic, whether from hunger or ritual. The period is when culture starts looking recognizably human—while still fiercely debated.
Source: Middle Paleolithic
