The community of hunters was, as it were, a single body in which people of different sex and age are the cells of the body, unable to act in isolation and strong precisely because they all belong to this body. The exception was sorcerers, who, by the way, were sometimes painted. But there was another group of human beings who were considered necessary to portray - women. These mysterious creatures gave birth and fed children. Some are easy, others, not strong enough, could not cope with these difficult duties. Their illnesses and weaknesses threatened the very existence of the collective. Wives were taken not in their own community, where everyone was relatives, but in another, neighboring one, with which they established good relations. Often wives were kidnapped. Wives were perceived as belonging not to their own, but to someone else's world, from where they came.
Women are the first members of the human race to be portrayed. Several of these drawings have been preserved in the caves. More often they were preferred to be depicted in the form of sculptures. These were small figurines made of mammoth tusk, bone, stone, and specially prepared clay mass that fit in the palm of your hand. Usually women were depicted as full and naked, mothers who had many children. But there are also figures of slender, graceful women, as if they have not yet experienced the hardships and joys of motherhood. They are young huntresses, as agile as the men, though not as strong.
In all likelihood, the figurines of women were used in rituals and worn as amulets. They were supposed to have a magical effect, to bring well-being not only to women and children, but to the entire community. After all, only with an abundance of food and a quiet life could women give birth to future strong hunters.
Many generations of people changed, until the glacier finally receded to the north. The boundary of the eternal ice became what it is now, which meant that warming had come. Animals adapted to cold climates died out, as happened with the mammoth or the woolly rhinoceros. Probably, people who increasingly successfully hunted them also played some role in the disappearance of these animals.
With the retreat of the glacier (this happened at the end of the 10th - 9th millennium BC), as geologists say, the modern era began. The movement of the glacier to the north occurred gradually, and the southern regions of Europe and Asia, earlier than others, became favorable for a new leap in the development of human culture. People realized that it is not necessary to look for a large piece of good stone to make a dagger or a spearhead. It is much more economical to break off small plates from small nuclei or to divide large knife-like plates into small ones. The resulting small pieces can be inserted into a bone or wooden base by making a groove in it. So from small plates, reinforced with resin in bone or a wooden stick, you can get a large tool - a spearhead, a knife, a saw; these plates were easily fixed in the shaft of the arrow. This method of making tools made it possible to save time and use small pieces of such minerals as, for example, semi-precious chalcedony or agate.
