As a man in my 30s, what would my normal day look like 150,000 years ago?

by UnitedStatesSenate
anthropology_nerd

This question is way beyond the time scope of /r/AskHistorians, and more in the preview of /r/AskAnthropology.

To give you an answer, though, we don't really know for sure but base our interpretation of the past on modern populations.

150,000 years ago would be the Middle Paleolithic, still the early days of the emergence of anatomically modern humans and the start of behavioral modernity. Anthropologists look at modern human foragers to understand life in small-scale communities like those of our ancestors. Based on those groups, a thirty year old man would be entering his most productive food procurement period. After three decades of learning, and refining his skills, the amount of food he brings back to camp has been gradually increasing over his late 20s and will peak in his 30s and 40s.

Cultures vary so much, and our guy could really spend his day doing anything and everything. By his 30s we would expect him to have several live children (with a few who never made it past five years of age). Social mores dictate the amount of time he would spend with the family, helping with childcare and teaching the children what he has learned, assisting his mate with cooking and foraging, and other fun activities. He could do everything from leaving for the day at dawn to go hunt smaller prey with 2-3 other males (or a huge group if they were going to drive prey or hunt something massive), or stay near home all day to watch the kids/socialize/repair tools if food reserves allowed for the off day.

He would maintain his tools, repair damage or make new ones as the need arose. If he was out of a raw material, like the proper stone to make a biface point, he would need to either trade with others or procure those materials.

The fun thing about the Middle Paleolithic is the first glimpses of the emergence of behavioral modernity. We can only guess, but the thinking of modern humans during this period seems to have changed. The first intentional burial of the dead shows up ~100,000 years ago, as does the first forms of artistic expression. At Blombos Cave we find the use of engraved and processed ochre, as well as shell beads. What was the ochre for? We don't know, and nothing suggests they were wearing it as we commonly associate with later ritual use. Maybe our guy was one of the first to start thinking about the concept of life after death, or the first to engrave geometric patterns, or make beads. We don't know what he was thinking, but part of his day may have been spent in the abstract world that was just beginning to emerge.