Our early ancestors grew and changed tremendously over time. In fact, at one point in early human years, our ancestors behaved more like non-human animals rather than the humans we are today. Three examples of our drastic change from monkey like creatures to the animals we now call humans are neolithic warfare, use of fire, and cave paintings. Cave paintings have shown how our ancestors evolved over time. The earliest cave paintings discovered are about 40 thousand years old. At first, our ancestors simply drew what they saw and what they observed. However, as time went on, our later ancestors became more creative and abstract, combining animals, creating religious figures, using pigments for color, and utilizing the bumps in the cave to help display the image. Pigments used in cave paintings were sourced and found locally, most from mineral sources found in the earth like charcoal, clay, and manganese dioxide. The most common animals painted by the prehistoric people were predators and animals they hunted, these animals include lions, panthers, hyenas, and bears. Those are some of the ways cave paintings shown how our ancestors changed over time. In addition, our ancient ancestors used arrowheads, bow and …show more content…
After fire was invented, people could sleep safely at night instead of sleeping in the trees hiding from predators on the ground because the animals were afraid of the fire. The homoerectus gradually became taller because their posture became better since they didn’t need to sleep up in the trees. Cooked meat also provided more proteins for our ancestors which also made them grow more. Fire made our jaws smaller because they no longer needed them to chew meat for hours which gave our ancestors much more time to do other activities in the day. Fire also caused the homoerectus to become more social and therefore a more civilized