Because Ice Age people sustained themselves by following the herds and the seasons to gather food, their possessions tended to be portable and practical. But they made not only tools but also non-utilitarian ritual objects. Using tools of flint and bone, they created sculptures and ornaments of ivory, bone, or clay, and they painted and engraved pictures and abstract signs on the walls, ceilings, and floors of the stone ledges and caves where they sought shelter from the glacial cold.

"Man had begun to interpret the real world around him through his images, and he also began marking the real world symbolically…." --Alexander Marshack