A day in the life of a Stone Age person

Good morning! It's a beautiful day in the Stone Age. You might be waking up in a cave. Or maybe in a simple hut that you and your tribe built – as far from wild animals as you could.

Look around you. Unlike in The Flintstones, there are no pet dinosaurs, cars, petrol stations or cinemas. But if you're unlucky, you might see a sabre-toothed tiger or woolly mammoth roaming around.

The Ice Age is just a distant memory, with greenery proliferating all around you. The landscape is full of the nuts, berries and fruits you need to survive.

You're not alone. Stone Age people would gather in groups of 20 to 50 to work together and maximise their chances of survival. 

Sadly, there are no fluffy slippers for you to get into. But Stone Age footwear could be surprisingly sophisticated. The earliest were sandal-like and made out of straw. They would protect your feet against the uncultivated terrain. But later on, there were leather shoes not dissimilar from moccasins.

So you slip on your shoes and wander down to the pool to check out your bedhead. How do you look? What you see looking back at you isn't that much different from your present-day self. You're just a little shorter and you have a jaw that's been toughened up by all the chewing you have to do.

Time to get dressed. Whatever the season, you'll probably be wearing a loincloth made from animal hides. If you're a fashionista in the present day, we're sorry to say that there were minimal options for layering back then.

Breakfast time

Your stomach rumbles. If 21st century you has jumped on the Paleo diet bandwagon, you'll feel right at home. You might start the day with some eggs or grains, or some fruits and berries you foraged from the woods. Later on, there's meat and maybe some fish – all hunted with your simple-but-effective flint tools.

In the mood for a nice bit of gruel? OK, but it's going to take a little elbow grease. Your camp has a handmade pestle and mortar which you use to separate the grains and the husks.

As you hammer away at the grains, a fellow caveperson is bringing water to boil on the campfire. There are stone objects everywhere – not just your pestle and mortar, but the kettle and even the flint you use to light the fire in the morning. You'll have to wait a few thousand years before bronze arrives on the scene.

The water's ready. Mix it with your ground grains and – hey presto! – a filling bowl of gruel. Perhaps you can mix it with some fruits or berries from the forest.

You'll need this hearty breakfast to set you up for a day of hunting and fishing. Your tribe needs you. If you don't pull your weight, it means less food and clothing for you and your folks.

Hunting

This is the most important part of your day. You need to be fighting fit for a day's hunt. Everything you've used today has come from hunting – from the sandals on your leathery feet to the shelter you slept under.

In the early Stone Age, you would have been armed just with a long, sharpened stick or the biggest rock you could find. But as the millennia passed, you've learnt to craft tools out of flint.

Flint is flaky – a property that makes it especially good for craftsmanship. You can use it to make axeheads and arrowheads, both of which can be attached to wooden handles.

There's no blacksmith to help you, so get ready for round two of Man vs Rock. Just as you smashed your grain to smithereens, so you have to split your flint into pieces with – that's right – another rock.

It takes time, but these flint tools are indispensable to your way of life. Your axes provide you with timber and your arrows can bring down animals for food and clothing.

There are many Stone Age animals you can hunt. There are horses, deer, reindeer, woolly mammoths, bears and more.

Of course, you have to catch them first. One technique is to dig a ditch near your prey's watering hole and wait for them to tumble in.

Another requires an equal amount of sweat and teamwork. A group of you chase the animal into mud or water where it's at your mercy.

You can also go fishing with a flint hook – but as far as we know, there were no fishing nets until the early Bronze Age, when people began making them out of grass and bark.

After the hunt

Tired yet? It's time to relax around the campfire with your buddies.

What will do you for entertainment? There are no books to read, no box sets to binge and no virtual worlds to explore.

But we do know that Stone Age people kept themselves entertained with music. They would fashion flutes from bones or ivory and tootle a tune.

They also drew on the walls of caves. In the Cave of Altamira in Spain, for instance, there are paintings of bison, horses and deer daubed on the walls with charcoal and ochre.

The downsides

Life wasn't easy in the Stone Age. Life expectancy was 33 – and three-quarters of all deaths were caused by infection.

There was no modern medicine, only herbal remedies. So infection usually led to dehydration and starvation.

And when the sun went down, you had to hide from deadly beasts. You couldn't forage or hunt at night, so you and your people would retreat into caves where possible.

Even so, who wouldn't hop in a time machine and see what it was all about?

At Stump Cross Caverns in North Yorkshire, we have a magical network of underground caverns. Want to learn more about Stone Age life? Try our fun Key Stage 2 activities.