If there was a common religion among all members of this band, symbols would lack a practical use as an identification marker. This lack of utility would likely provide more than enough reason for the paleolithic people, who probably spent most of their time working on providing their basic needs, not to expend the energy in their creation.
This makes perfect sense – while symbolic thinking worked wonders for early humans in terms of problem solving, art is to some extent a 'luxury' in terms of survival value. While it's not that creating systems of more abstract symbols would be “too much work” for paleolithic humans, the way of life that they led seems to make that unnecessary. The Guthrie book continually references how the paleolithic art incorporates intricate details of the animals portrayed, that is evidence of the very close-contact relationship these people had with them. Maybe this alone – focusing on specific details when portraying the animals that framed their lives – led more abstract symbols (or 'background' subjects like trees and flowers and celestial objects and weather) to not occur to Paleolithic painters.
Another aspect of Paleolithic life that would make abstract religious symbolism “unnecessary” depends on the hypothetical extent to which religion was complicated, and visible, and what role it played in everyday life. Perhaps if religion informed (for example) the method by which a leader was chosen, then “dogmatic” differences between groups might be obvious. But if (what I think is more likely) religion existed more fuzzily, and more integrated into daily life without harshly enforced specifics, individuals could move between groups (by inter-'marriage' perhaps) without there being a noticeable difference in religious life. There would be no need to call members of Clan A Religion one thing, and Clan B Religion another thing, because the distinction wouldn't exist.
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