The ways of life Upper Paleolithic people are known through the remains of meals scattered around their hearths, together with many tools and weapons and the debris left over from their making. The people were hunter-gathers who lived exclusively from what they could find in nature without practicing either agriculture or herding. They hunted the bigger herbivores, while berries, leaves, roots, wild fruit and mushrooms probably played a major role in their diet. Their hunting was indiscriminate; perhaps because so many animals were about they did not need to spare pregnant females or the young. In the cave of Enlene, for example, many bones of reindeer and bison fetuses were found. Apparently, upper Paleolithic people hunted like other predators and killed the weakest prey first. They did, however, sometimes concentrate on salmon suns and migrating herds of reindeer. Contrary to popular beliefs about cave man, upper Paleolithic people did not live deep inside caves. They rather close the foot of cliffs, especially when an overhang provided good shelter. On the plains and in the valleys, they used tents made from hides of the animals they killed. At time, on the great Russian plains, they built huts with huge bones and tusks collected from skeletons of mammals.

Men hunted mostly with spears, the bow and arrow were probably not invented until the Magdalenian period that came at the end of the Upper Paleolithic.