Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots

by James Suzman

For a start, populations who settled, for instance, on the frosty steppes of Asia had to do more work than African foragers just to stay alive. They could not roam naked or sleep under the stars throughout the year. Enduring long winters demanded that they make elaborate clothing and sturdy footwear and gather far more fuel for their fires. They also needed to find or build shelters robust enough to withstand winter blizzards. Unsurprisingly, the oldest evidence for the construction of near-permanent structures and dwellings comes from some of the coldest places where humans settled during the frostiest years of the last glacial period—roughly between 29,000 and 14,000 years ago. They take the form of sturdy domes constructed from hundreds of heavy, dry mammoth bones that have been discovered at sites across Ukraine, Moravia, the Czech Republic, and southern Poland. When in use, these domes were likely shrouded with animal hides to make them windproof and watertight. The largest of them have diameters in excess of twenty feet, and the sheer effort involved in their construction suggests that their makers returned to them annually.