1.1 the First Humans

• History
• Middelbare school
• havo, vwo
• Leerjaar 1

1. The Age of Hunters and Farmers

1.1 The first humans

Which Age are we studying in this Unit?

Start of the Lesson task:
work in groups (2 or 3) (1 answer per group)

Who was the first human and how do we know that?

take your notebook and write this down:

History is the study of important people, events and developments in the __________.

History is important because if you study the past you can better understand the __________.

Who lived the longest time ago?

1. Napoleon Bonaparte
2. Christopher Columbus
3. William of Orange
4. Julius Caesar

Why do we know the names of many historical people, like Columbus and Alexander the Great, but we don't know the names of Prehistoric people (and we probably never will...)
Can you explain this?

What you will learn in 

this lesson

• the definition of the evolution theory
• what the "Out of Africa" theory means
• how to read the family tree of modern humans
• explain what palaeontologists and archaeologists do

Create the correct story of the video by dragging the texts to the correct place.

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Europe suffered from an Ice Age while Africa became hot and dry.

Neanderthals became extinct.

1 million years ago Heidelbergensis lived 

in Europe and Africa

30,000 years ago Homo Sapiens migrated from Africa 

to Europe

The climate changed:

Homo Sapiens is the only remaining species of humans.

Heidelbergensis could not use imagination as we can

European Heidelbergensis evolved into Neanderthals and African Heidelbergensis into Homo Sapiens

Our historical trip starts near the small village of Hadar in Ethiopia. 

.On a very hot day in 1974, two men were looking for fossils.

Fossils are remains of plants or animals that are preserved in stone.

Many fossils can be found in Ethiopia and throughout the rest of the Great Rift Valley in Africa.

The men were scientists and particularly interested in remains of early humans.

 Their search was a success, because they discovered some old and very special bone fragments.

The fossilised bones were part of a skeleton that was 3.2 million years old! 

At first, the scientists thought that the skeleton was just like a small female chimpanzee. 

But when they looked closer, the scientists found out that this animal had been able to walk on two legs.

The scientists were incredibly happy because they had just discovered the oldest skeleton of an early human in the world!