The faces of the people who spoke them are partially recoverable, with appropriate uncertainty.

Their words are not.

Reconstructing the Social World

Beyond the individual — beyond the face, the genome, the skull — lies the social world that Zlatý kůň inhabited, and that is worth trying to sketch even if the details remain irrecoverable.

Human societies in the Upper Paleolithic were fundamentally social.

The ecological challenges of ice-age Europe — severe cold, unpredictable resources, megafaunal prey that could be dangerous — required cooperation and coordination that no individual could achieve alone.

Groups of related and non-related individuals lived, moved, and hunted together, sharing resources and risk.