The end of the Last Glacial Period and the increasingly sedentary way of life that began in the epi-Palaeolithic and Pre-Pottery Neolithic periods profoundly changed the human experience. Although many cultural elements coming to the fore in the new ages were undoubtedly noticed, and perhaps even occasionally used, during the Palaeolithic periods, they could flourish only when people began to live in fixed abodes. All aspects of human life — from technology to religious concepts and profound changes in social structure, such as the growing distinctions in social status and the deteriorating role of women — began to form an inextricable and apparently seamless net leading the majority of the human race towards complexity and eventually into civilization, leaving only a few marginal groups of hunters and gatherers.