Paleolithic Period

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The Venus of Willendorf, a small Upper Paleolithic limestone figurine with exaggerated female features and textured head, displayed against a black background.

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A timeline chart showing the evolution of hominins over the past 4 million years, with colored bars representing different Australopithecus and Homo species diverging over time, ending with Homo sapiens at present.

Venus of Věstonice

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The Venus of Willendorf, a small Upper Paleolithic limestone figurine with exaggerated female features and textured head, displayed against a black background. — Venus of Willendorf The Venus of Willendorf, a Upper Paleolithic limestone figurine originally colored with red ochre, 30,000–25,000 bce, found at Willendorf, Lower Austria; in the Natural History Museum, Vienna.

Paleolithic Period

anthropology

Also known as: Early Stone Age, Old Stone Age, Palaeolithic Period(Show More)

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Sep. 19, 2026 •History

Paleolithic Period, ancient cultural stage, or level, of human development, characterized by the use of rudimentary chipped stone tools. The popular Paleo diet, or Stone Age diet, is based on foods humans presumably would have consumed during the Paleolithic Period. (See also Stone Age.) The onset of the Paleolithic Period has traditionally coincided with the first evidence of tool construction and use by Homo some 2.58 million years ago, near the beginning of the Pleistocene...

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