it depends on the time period, and there weren’t ever really “cave people” about two million years ago homo erectus (upright man) evolved from a close primate relative, early on like primates they lived in the jungles or plains of Africa, humans were persistence predators meaning we cant outpace a bison but we can follow it until it collapses from exhaustion, we also gathered nuts berries and insects. over time different species of humans emerged like: homo florensis, homo rudolfensis, and homo neanderthalensis, at some point about two hundred thousand years ago the earth was shared by nearly twenty human species who all showed tool usage and language. at the same time homo sapiens (shamelessly named “wise man”) split from homo neanderthalensis as homo sapiens spread across the globe the other human species began to disappear along with all megafauna (like the giant sloth, or the mammoth) sometime ten thousand years ago homo sapiens was the last species of human left on the planet, we had also recently developed agriculture. we domesticated dogs before we developed agriculture, so we had “pets” since around sixteen thousand years ago, and it wasn’t cavemen, it was hunter gatherers.