this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2025
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I think the idea that early humans lived mostly in caves comes likely from the fact that caves are very stable environments where you can find remains of a fireplace or the like hundreds of thousands of years later.
But what if most early humans lived in wooden huts like people in the Amazon or Papua-New Guinea do today, or in igloos like the people north of the polar circle? You would not find the remains of an igloo cause it would have been a wet spot in the next spring.
So, the notion that many humans lived in caves might just be survivorship bias.
It's more common to find that stone age humans lived under rock outcroppings than caves proper as it happens, partly because it is much more common to find an outcropping than a sufficiently large cave. They also simply didn't have many permanent settlements until the development of agriculture so either way the groups wouldn't stay long
More common than both is indeed wooden and leather shelters, but you don't find surviving paintings on leather from 50,000 BC
Yeah that's my brain is trying to get to. Like im sure some humans did but no way this was ultra common. Id imagine its the equivalent like living in a castle.