Resources collected from around the web for teaching human evolution

Whether you’re tackling human evolution from a science perspective or as part of a Stone Age Britain topic, here are some resources collected from around the web that might be of use.

Making your own footprint casts

The Fossils and Dinosaurs topic from the Hamilton Trust is free to download and there is a block of work of five sessions specifically on human evolution that I wrote, from creating a family tree of the hominids, tracing human dispersal around the world and particularly exploring what it would be like for modern humans and Neanderthals to meet. There is also one lesson plan (session 5) and resources in a block on fossilised footprints that looks at human footprints at Laetoli in Tanzania, Happisburgh in Norfolk and Pehuen-Co in Argentina.

I also wrote the file for this handaxe found at Happisburgh for the Teaching History in 100 Objects website by the British Museum. Handaxes are some of the earliest tools created by ancient humans, and this one dates to around 850,000 years ago, the same time that early humans (probably Homo antecessor) left footprints in the mud. The file also includes links and images of other handaxes and gives you some teaching ideas on how to use these images to explore the capabilities of ancient humans.

Make your own modroc hominid skull

I wrote more in depth resources for the Coping with Climate project run by the Universities of Reading and Brighton. These include image banks, timelines, fact-sheets and instructions for doing practical activities to explore what kind of tasks ancient humans were able to do, focusing on Homo heidelbergensis in southern England and on Neanderthals and the first modern humans into Europe. They are free to download.

One area I haven’t worked in is creating 3D scans of images, but many other people have! This site at the Smithsonian Museum’s website has a fantastic collection of scans of tools, art objects and fossil hominids which can be searched by species name. There are lots of skulls so you can see how this changes over time.

The Smithsonian have also just created some new video resources called Snapshots in Time that introduce pupils to Swartkrans in South Africa, Olorgasailie in Kenya and Shanidar cave in Iraq. Each site and what was found there is introduced bit by bit in a series of videos that allow pauses for discussion of the significance and meaning of the finds, before the narrative is woven together in the final video.

Sketchfab 3D fossils

New scans of material related to human evolution are uploaded to Sketchfab all the time. There are 3D scans of tools, art objects, pendants, sub-fossil bones, caves, excavations and more. Just go to Sketchfab and search for human evolution or Palaeolithic.

Finally, for another great list of resources for teaching human evolution, but aimed at older students, go to Caitlin Schrein’s list on her website.

If you have any other suggestions for human evolution resources you like to use, let me know!

Coping with Climate: the legacy of Homo heidelbergensis

Handaxe from Boxgrove, West Sussex, made by Homo heidelbergensis. By Midnightblueowl – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16466144

In a project led by Dr Rob Hosfield of the University of Reading and Dr James Cole of the University of Brighton on understanding how the early human species Homo heidelbergensis coped with climate changes during the Pleistocene era we have contributed some teaching resources linked to both the history topic, Stone Age to Iron Age Britain and the science topic of evolution.

Homo heidelbergensis was a fore-runner of Neanderthals and lived around 500,000 years ago. At one of the most iconic sites for this species in Britain, Boxgrove in West Sussex, H. heidelbergensis seems to have lived in a relatively warm climate and either hunted or scavenged rhinoceros among other animals.

The resources also take in a number of other hominin species and start to ask the question what makes us human? Were other hominin species human? Did earlier species wear clothes, make fire, make art, have language? The resources also explore how archaeologists, palaeogeneticists and other scientists try to work out the answers to these questions.

There are lesson plans and supporting resources available as PDFs, Word documents, and PowerPoint presentations including image banks, guides for running practical activities and experiments, and fact sheets on these ancient human species. They’re all free to download, so take a look, use them and send us feedback!

People in prehistory were not stupid

Hi, this is Kim Biddulph here, Schools Prehistory Director. It has been my life’s goal to prove to children and adults alike who visit museums, historic houses and archaeological sites that I have worked at that people in the past were not stupid. I consider it a triumph if someone I have talked with has the spark of revelation that people in the past were just like us.

Me teaching a shadow puppet session at the Pitt Rivers Museum, drawing done by the head of education there, Andrew McLellan

Me teaching a shadow puppet session when I worked at the Pitt Rivers Museum, drawing done by the head of education there, Andrew McLellan

I am helping the Pitt Rivers Museum develop a Stone Age workshop at the moment and I count it particularly important to ensure that the philosophical approach to people in prehistory is the same as that museum’s approach towards the makers of many of the objects in the collections from around the world. It is both an archaeological and anthropological museum. Instead of grouping its anthropology collection into cultures the museum is famous for arranging its collections by type. The original impetus for this was General Pitt Rivers interest in the evolution of the sophistication of objects from ‘primitive’ societies to more ‘civilised’ societies. The museum now keeps the same arrangement but for a fundamentally different reason. The philosophy of the museum is to reject the idea that societies evolve from primitive to civilised and to emphasise the ingenuity of humankind across the globe to solve problems with the materials and technology they have to hand. We all face the same problems, how to house ourselves, feed ourselves, travel, keep warm with clothes and fires, play, adorn our bodies to look important or beautiful, but we all do it slightly differently.

I am concerned that the idea that prehistoric European societies were primitive and have evolved to our civilised state is being taught to children in our schools now. I have heard a teacher say that people invented farming once they learned how to use their brains. I have been told of an occasion when a museum workshop leader said that people invented metal-working once they became cleverer and found an alternative to mere stone. If we say that prehistoric people were stupider than us, it logically follows that we are also saying that our own contemporary societies with similar technology to our prehistoric ancestors are actually stupider than us.

Replica Neolithic pot

Replica Neolithic pot

Let’s approach prehistoric periods with more subtlety and appreciation of their ingenuity. Lets remember that inventions were probably realised following accidents or developed out of small scale changes in behaviour spurred by changing cultural practices. Farming was invented in the Near East and spread (as an idea) across Europe slowly, taking over 6000 years to reach Britain in 4000 BC. The invention of pottery vessels alongside farming was spurred on by the increasingly sedentary lives of farmers in the Near East and someone accidentally dropping clay into a fire, probably. The better control of fire to make better fired pots probably led to the discovery of metal, when a piece of copper ore was dropped into a fire. Imagine a similar scenario for iron, which has an even higher smelting temperature.

The people who took advantage of these new inventions and technologies were not stupid, in fact they were very intelligent, seeing the opportunities that these technologies gave them not only for easier access to food and better tools, but initially probably because the knowledge and practice of this technology gave them an opportunity to get one over on their neighbours.

Early copper and bronze tools were not better than flint. Until bronze-smiths learned how to make better bronze tools, flint was still sharper and stronger than bronze. Early iron was also not better than bronze straight away. Smiths now had to learn to add carbon to the cutting edge to make it stronger and less brittle in order for iron to displace bronze.

An old (white) and replica (black) handaxe handled at one of our training days

An old (white) and replica (black) handaxe handled at one of our training days

You only have to see photos of the amazing paintings at Chauvet Cave in France to know that the earliest anatomically modern humans in Europe were not stupid. But what to say about Neanderthals or other early species of human e.g. Homo heidelbergensis or Homo erectus? How do we talk about the mental capacity of different species of humans? I think, given that they were the ones who first controlled fire, who created beautifully flaked symmetrical handaxes, and may have been experimenting with art hundreds of thousands of years before Chauvet, that we shouldn’t underestimate them either.

 

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*UPDATE*

We visited the National Association for Primary Education‘s conference last Friday on 24th April 2015. We found a kindred spirit in a teacher who wanted to show his kids that people in the Stone Age were not stupid. You can imagine how we cried for joy! He recommended a video that showed how cave paintings were not just static portraits of animals but were painted in such a way that they were like animations, and would have moved in the flickering firelight. We didn’t have time to get details but the hive mind of Twitter, specifically Helen Hall @JellyheadNelly, found it for us. It was the work of archaeologist Marc Azema, and here it is.