Cultural innovations
In the field of the thought, a conceptual jump is accomplished with the creation of images. Contrary to the man of the paleolithic means, which selected fossils or minerals, that of the paleolithic superior produced an art on wall or mobile support, mixing topics the figurative, men or animals, and nonfigurative. Artistic creations and techniques show, beyond common evolution, a set of regional traditions. Those come into contact by exchanges, as circulation indicates it, sometimes on long distances, particular materials (flint of quality, amber pearls).

Habitats

During the 25 ' 000 years that the paleolithic superior lasts, the men lived caves and rock shelters. When the natural cavities were lacking, in particular in the plains of the Central Europe or, in France, in the Paris basin, they built dwellings in the open air, light or solid.  

Natural cavities
Installations of caves and rock shelters are rare and summary. The natural cavity constitutes already a protection. One can imagine bulk-headings of branches and skins being pressed on the rock face, but this device leaves few detectable traces at the time of the excavations. In Cueva Morin (Spain), an intense occupation and of long life delivered a rectangular artificial depression corresponding to a probable establishment of huts.  

Dwellings in the open air
The establishments of outdoor have a greater diversity. They are built by taking account of the constraints or the advantages related to the environment. One distinguishes three main categories from them.  

Large lengthened shelters with multiple hearths
Laid out on line, these “houses” covered with skins supported by piles could delimit a very wide surface. In Kostenki (on the Gift), the dwelling recovered a 36 m length zone on 18 m broad; it was bordered of large pits from where the ground was extracted forming a protective pad at the base from the system of cover. These pits, furnished with large bones, were used thereafter like reserves of grease intended to supply the hearths.  

Simple huts of round plan
Of a diameter from 4 to 6 m, the huts meet in Malta (Siberia) and Pavlov (Slovakia), where 13 grouped dwellings are counted. In Mezine (Ukraine) or Vine-Brown (the Loire), the ground is dug out of basin, girdled of an accumulation of materials maintaining a cover made of skins, barks and lumps of earth. On the site of Mézerich, old men of 15 ' 000 years, 25 skulls and 95 mandibles of mammoths constituted the circular reinforcement. In Mezine, the circular dwelling was delimited by a series of 15 skulls of mammoths laid out vertically. The many defenses, associated with wood of reindeer and branches, found in the center, probably took part in the structure of a frame in the shape of cupola.  

Tents
Lighter, the tents could shelter a group for short periods. They probably consisted of a system of poles assembled in beam, occupying a surface of a few square meters. The walls were delimited by blocks of stone. In front of the entry a hearth was. Most activities were held outside, on sites marked well by clusters of glares of flint or bone. Such structures were found as well in Hungary as in Germany or France, as in Pincevent, in the Paris basin.  

The organization of the groups
The diversity of the habitat gives an account of the capacity of adaptation of the human groups to living conditions different and sometimes very difficult.  

The increase amongst sites with the paleolithic superior does not translate only one better conservation of the vestiges, but also corresponds to a population growth.  

The stereotype of the randomly gathered wandering prehistoric men of bands traversing without end the cold steppe in search of food must be replaced by the image of organized groups managing the resources of their territory of hunting not only to nourish themselves or dress themselves, but also to build relatively permanent dwellings or mobile campings moved according to the season towards zones more favourable with hunting.  
 
Modes of food

The information sources on hunting, fishing and the gathering are limited by the conditions of conservation of the vestiges.  

The gathering and fishing
For the gathering of plants, one is tiny room to assumptions, and the comparisons with the people current hunters-gatherers. Thus, at Bochimans of Botswana, the gathering, surer and more regular than hunting, provides the essence of the food. Moreover, there exists a sexual division of work: the women practice the gathering, the men go to hunting. Of course, the prehistoric excavations of sites do not provide explicit traces making it possible to allot to the prehistoric men the same organization. The indices concerning fishing are limited to the vertebrae, the teeth and the bones of the hearing of fish. At the end of the paleolithic superior, fishing (salmon and trout) was more intensive.  

Hunting  
It is by the study of the fossil remainders of mammals which can be apprehended the linked activities with hunting: strategies implemented, techniques coal-getting and cutting, division of game. However, even when the sediments allow it, the bones do not preserve all; the teeth in general are preserved better than the bones. In addition, the predatory ones as the hyena corrode the bones, and the shot down animals were not always transported whole in the habitat. Sometimes the cutting-up took place on the site of demolition, and only a few pieces of carcass were brought to the camping.  

The prehistoric men completely exploited the products of their huntings. After use of the skin, meat and tendons, the bones could be used as fuel and supports to manufacture weapons and tools. When food was not very abundant, they were fractured to extract from it marrow and, after cooking, grease.  

The game
They are the herbivorous mammals of average and big size which were most largely driven out by the prehistoric man. The mammoth and the rhinoceros woolly, more powerful and more dangerous, were driven out only in exceptional circumstances: young or sick individuals, wounded or taken in natural traps. These two species are well-known thanks to the artistic representations and with the skins found at the beginning of the XX E century in the ices of Siberia and Alaska. It was thought that the mammoths, like the woolly rhinoceroses, had died out at the end of the last glaciation (- 10 ' 000). However, one discovered recently in the island of Vrangel (sea of Eastern Siberia) of the dwarf shapes of mammoths which disappeared only 4 ' 000 years front J. - C.  

Remainders of carnivores also appear in the sites: wolf, fox, bear, glutton, hyena, lion. These animals, often dangerous, were seldom driven out. Their fur was recovered, like their teeth and their claws, like elements of ornament. The rodents - beaver, mutters and the lagomorphs (rabbit, hare) - were driven out for their flesh and their skin.

Strategies
Collective hunting represented certainly very early an important demonstration of the social life, requiring the collaboration of the various members of a group to cut down game and supposing methods of division of the shot down animal. The paleolithic superior devoted the practice of the hunting specialized in one or two species. The reduction and the diversification of the animal and mineral matter tools made it possible to improve the effectiveness of hunting. In addition, the collective strategies were refined: the specialized hunting of the reindeer, at the end of the period, required a perfect knowledge of the ecoethology of this animal, probably acquired while following the herds.  

The passage to a saving in production
The passage of a saving in predation (drives out, fishing) to a saving in production (breeding) is related to a set of factors. The postglacial warming and the replacement of the large steppes by the forests appear among the causes of the progressive reduction in the importance of the large herds of herbivores. But the limit is fuzzy between the regular follow-up of the large herds by the hunters-gatherers, knowing the practices of reproduction and food of their preferred animals, and the breeding of herds framed by guards.

Tools

One generally opposes the tools on glares of the paleolithic means to those manufactured on blades to the paleolithic superior. However there is not true discontinuity: certain sites dating from the man of Neandertal, like Seclin (northern of France), contain definitely laminar industries. The abundant tools with the paleolithic superior, like the scrapers and the gravers, existed already during the previous period, but in less proportion.  

Innovations
The change lies in the acceleration of the inventions. The types of tools will follow one another at very fast intervals during 25 ' 000 years. The innovations relate to also the technology of cutting up of flint. The technique Levallois, so fertile with the paleolithic means, completely abandoned and is replaced by a systematic cutting up of blades, made possible by a volumetric new approach of the block to be cut. The regularity and the lengthening of the glares (blades), manufactured starting from blocks of raw material, often flint, characterize technology. Series of final improvements modify the blade according to the desired tool. The size is carried out using hard strikers (out of stone) or tender (in bone or wood).  

For this lithic technology it is necessary to add an osseous technology founded on complex manufactoring processes (slotting, sawing, scraping, scraping and polishing) leading to the realization of weapons and domestic tools, as the needle with eye.  

Weapons
The tools manufactured starting from animal matter (bone, wood of deer tribe) progress spectacularly. Assagais, harpoons, hooks, darts with birds, all these weapons were often fixed in vegetable wood.   The engines with hooks out of wooden of deer tribe, intended to increase the initial speed of the projectile, are among the most beautiful objects of the paleolithic superior. They very often carry a carved decoration.   The date of the invention of the arc is discussed by the prehistorians. This weapon is attested with the Mesolithic era (during the warming which followed the last glaciation), but certain researchers do not exclude his existence as of the paleolithic superior.  
 
Burials

The burial of deaths belongs to the field of immaterial and translated a particular attitude vis-a-vis the life and with its finality.  

Types of burials
The absence of burial should not however not be regarded as a sign of indifference. The man of Neandertal buried already his deaths. With the paleolithic superior, the funerary practices diversify. Structures are built, in the form of blocks of stone laid out close to the head or on the skeleton. Some are more elaborate, like the box of flagstones with Saint-Germain-the-River (the Dordogne) or the funerary room in bones of mammoth with Kostenki (flat Russian). The collective burials are rare. As for the cremation, it was never highlighted.  

Ornaments
The ornaments associated with the burial are often very rich: perforated shells, bored teeth, ivory pendants. One also finds on the skeleton or beside him of funerary furniture: bored sticks, knives, remainders of game.

Treatment of the bodies
The buried bodies are placed in bent side position or dorsal position, the wide lower extremities. The use of the red blood stone spreads. The body or the head alone is powdered with it. It is possible that this ocher has a value symbolic system (blood), but one cannot dismiss the assumption that its action disinfectant encouraged the prehistoric men to use it at prophylactic ends. The act, deliberated, to give to late burial does not make it possible however him to only affirm with certainty the existence of religious beliefs.