Starting at the Beginning
We will look at very early history, or “prehistory” as history used to be called before a written record. First, we need to understand where humans came from. Watch the videos below introducing evolution.
Pull out the book “When We Became Humans” and look through pages 4-41. These pages are mostly pictures, so it isn’t as much information as it seems. Answer the questions below and put them in your Ancient Civilizations Journal. I have noted what pages each of the answers are on.
- Homo sapiens is the scientific name for modern humans, but what does it mean? (page 5)
- Why is it important that humans eat fruit and who do we share this feature with? (page 7)
- How can we tell how big a brain was inside a fossilized skull? (page 10)
- Where did “Ardi” live? (page 13)
- Pages 14-17 talk about the first tools. What were these tools made from?
- Fire was an important discovery in cooking food. But what other benefit did fire give our ancestors? (page 19)
- What does it tell us that homo erectus has been found worldwide in places like East Africa, Georgia, Spain, China, and Indonesia? (page 20)
- What did the Neanderthals in northwest Spain eat? (page 25)
- Why do some people today have Neanderthal DNA? (page 27)
- Why do some scientists think that humans are the only surviving hominins? (page 29)
- Humans arrived in North America how long ago? (page 30)
- What was the first map carved into? (page 32)
- A cave in Mozambique had stone tools that contained what? (page 36)
- What is the oldest cultivated grain and where was it grown? (page 39)
- Taming animals allowed humans easy access to meat and what else? (page 41)