1.1 Hunter-gatherers - T -

• History
• Middelbare school
• vwo
• Leerjaar 1

1. The Age of Hunters and Farmers

1.1 Hunter-gatherers

theory

- T -

In this lesson :

1. Lucy: the oldest human in history?
2. Evolution or creation narrative? What do you believe?
3. What is an archeologist?
4. The famous cave paintings of Lascaux (France).
5. Prehistory: the time before history. 
6. How do we know about Prehistoric people?: sources.
7. How did hunter-gatherers live?
8. Why were hunter-gatherers nomads?
9. A timeline is a useful tool to study history.

Introduction

Wherever you live on earth, we are all humans. But where do we come from? And

how did our ancestors live? We will start our study of the past by learning something

about the origins of mankind.

Check out this prezi.

https://prezi.com/view/KCffCBeaTSrlsfDYehk3/

Lucy

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. 

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!

The female human skeleton that was found was named Lucy. She got this name from the song 'Lucy in the sky with diamonds'. This song was played during the discovery and was a popular song by The Beatles in the seventies.

The bones of Lucy that were found in Ethiopia (c. 3.2 million years old).

 This is probably how Lucy looked, when she was still alive. Why was this one of the most important discoveries in the history of mankind? (present-day drawing).

A skull of a Australopithecus afarensis, like Lucy was (c. 3.2 million years old).

Where do humans come from?

For thousands of years, people answered this question by explaining that a god or a number of gods created humans. A well-known example of this is the story of Adam and Eve. These first man and woman were made by God and lived in paradise until they ate from the forbidden tree. A story like this is an example of a creation narrative.

But scientists have another explanation about the origin of humans. They studied the bones of Lucy and learned that the first humans lived in Africa and that they looked completely different from how we look today. Still, these scientists say that they were our ancestors because they walked on two legs. So they must have changed if they had become like us. How is that possible?

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden by Wenzel Peter, 19th century, Vatican Museum

Theory of evolution

This was also the most important question that the biologist Charles Darwin asked himself around 1850. On his travels he discovered that species change over time. They adapt themselves to their environment in order to survive. A polar bear is white because it lives in the snow and a giraffe has a long neck to eat leaves on high trees. This process of adaption can take millions of years.

Darwin’s idea is called the theory of evolution. He also wrote that humans and apes have the same ancestors. It took three million years for these first humans to change into the people that we are today. In the family tree below you can see the different human-like ancestors that used to be alive.

Charles Darwin, 1809 - 1882

This is the human family tree, with the different species of early humans.

The Latin word Homo means ‘man’. When we talk about humans we use this word. For example: Homo habilis was ‘the tool using man’ and Homo erectus ‘the upright man’. We modern humans are Homo sapiens sapiens which means ‘very wise man’.

Archeology

 

Imagine you are playing outside and you find something old in the ground. Maybe an old coin, or a broken piece of a plate. Archeology is like being a detective, but for very old things. It's the study of human history and prehistory through things people left behind.

Think about it: people lived thousands and thousands of years ago. They didn't have phones or computers. They didn't write down everything they did. So, how do we know how they lived? We look at the things they used and left behind!

These things can be:

• Tools: Like a stone axe for cutting wood.
• Pottery: Broken pieces of old pots and cups.
• Buildings: The foundations of old houses or temples.
• Bones: Animal bones from what they ate, or even human bones.

So, archeology is the science of finding and studying these old objects to understand the past. It's like putting together a giant puzzle from many, many years ago.

Several objects from the past that were found in the ground. These are archeological finds. They give us information about people who lived a long time ago.

Archeologists

 

An archeologist is a person who does archeology. They are the detectives! They are special scientists who:

• Find places: They look for places where old things might be hidden, maybe under the ground, or even under the sea!
• Dig carefully: They don't just dig a big hole. They dig very, very slowly and carefully, often with small tools like brushes and trowels, so they don't break anything.
• Clean and study: When they find something, they clean it carefully and try to understand what it is, how old it is, and what it tells us about the people who used it.
• Write about it: They write down everything they find so other people can learn too.

So, an archeologist is the person who searches for, digs up, and studies the things that people in the past left behind. They help us understand what life was like long, long ago.

Archeologists working on a dig in the Netherlands (present-day picture).

Hunter-Gatherers

Did you bring your bow and arrow? Did you hunt wild horses today to get lunch? Probably not. But 15,000 years ago this was the normal way to live. In prehistoric times, people lived as hunter-gatherers and had to survive in nature. Let us see what life was like in Prehistory.

The cave paintings of Lascaux

In 1940, two French students made a very important discovery.

They found evidence of Prehistoric people who had lived in the caves in Lascaux, more than 18,000 years ago.

You can learn more about this amazing discovery here:

Prehistoric cave paintings from Lascaux (10,000 - 17,500 years old).

The cave paintings of Lascaux were discovered by two boys on Sept 12, 1940. Modern time illustration.

Marcel Ravidat, second from left, at the Lascaux cave entrance in 1940

Discovering the cave

Prehistory

The paintings in the cave of Lascaux can teach us a lot about the way of life in prehistoric times. When we talk about prehistory we mean the time before people were able to write. Everything we know about prehistory comes from findings discovered by archeologists. We call these findings sources. Sources give us information about a certain time.

There are two different kinds of sources that historians use to gather information about the past. These are written and physical (or non-written) sources.

We don’t have written sources from prehistoric times. The hunters gatherers communicated by talking and by making drawings, not by writing. But they did leave us flint tools and remains of houses and bones. Our knowledge depends on the sources that archeologists are able to find. A lot has got lost over time, but there are still many objects hidden in the ground.

Written sources are text sources. The information that a historian gets from the source is written (in any language or on any material).

The written source in the picture is a clay tablet with cuneiform inscriptions. It is the oldest form of writing in history, dating back to 3200 BC.

human remains belong to the category of unwritten sources. 

Some words in Dutch and English are almost the same; like prehistory and ‘prehistorie’. That is because both languages use words from Latin. In this case, ‘pre’ which means before.

written sources

&

non-written sources

Sources are remains from the past that historians study to learn about that past.

So, a source = information.

For example: journalists use different sources to write their articles: documents, eye witness stories, photographs, video footage etc. These are all sources (of information).

There are different types of sources. For example:

Written Sources: every object from the past that has textual information: books, inscriptions, maps, coins.

Non-written Sources: every object from the past that has no textual information: bones, weapons, buildings, clothes.

Top:         three written sources. 

Bottom:  three non-written sources

Hunter-gatherers

When we look at the cave paintings we can see drawings of animals that lived in the Lascaux area in prehistoric times. Most scientists agree that these wild animals were hunted by men. The hunters killed the bulls and horses with spears or bows and arrows. They also fished in the rivers or at the coast. Women stayed near their small houses to take care of the children or they went out to gather berries, nuts, mushrooms and other things to eat. This way of living is called hunting-gathering.

Most scientists think that hunter-gatherers made the cave paintings to ask help from their gods. Many hunter-gatherers that live today have a shaman, or a medicine man. Those people believe that he or she can practice magic and have contact with the gods. In this way they can pray that the hunt went well.

The hunter-gatherers lived in groups of about 20 to 50 people that consisted of just a couple of families. These groups didn’t always stay in the same place. It simply wasn’t possible because they had to follow the animals they hunted. When there was nothing to eat, they picked up their tents and few belongings and moved to a different place to live. People who do not live in a fixed place are called nomads.

This is how a group of hunter-gatherers might have lived during prehistory (present-day drawing).

Even in our modern time, some people are still hunter-gatherers. For example, Indian tribes in the Amazon, the San in Africa and the aboriginals in Australia.

To travel with few belongings

Before the new Hanze railway in Overijssel was built, archaeologists excavated the area. They found traces of prehistoric campsites on several sites. The oldest were 6,000 years old. The hunter-gatherers who made the campsites left remains of it and these have now become a source of information. Hunter-gatherers didn’t have a lot of possessions. They couldn’t carry many belongings with them as this would have been just too heavy. Instead they used everything that they found in nature or took from animals and left behind what they didn’t need any more.

The objects that were found in Overijssel help us to understand how these people cut down trees or how they managed to kill animals. After animals were killed, the people used their hides to make blankets and clothing. They needed clothing because they had to adapt to the climate they travelled to. In cold areas, like in the Netherlands, the people wore thick clothes made of fur and hides. In warmer regions, like Africa or the Middle East, the hunter-gatherers wore fewer or almost no clothes.

These prehistoric objects are made from bone and antlers. Such organic tools are rarer than stone tools from prehistory (9000 - 3000 BC).

Flint tools found near Hattemerbroek. You can see how these tools were produced, some pieces still fit together (6000 - 2000 BC).

Timeline

When you study history, a timeline is a very useful tool. You can use it to understand the order in which certain events took place. A timeline is a long bar with labels on it to show in which year something happened.

A timeline can be divided in periods of ten years, in decades. It can also be in periods of hundred years, in centuries. Especially in this chapter, a timeline will cover a large period of time. Timelines can cover a period of a thousand years, hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. A thousand years is called a millennium. Also in this book, timelines are used to help you understand history better.

three examples of a timeline.

fill in the gaps to make a summary

Finished with the summary?
Now make a printscreen of the finished summary
and upload it here.

Word Duty

1. Ancestors: the people who lived before you, like your grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on.
2. Scientist: someone who studies a science, for instance history, physics or biology.
3. Fossils: remains of plants or animals that are preserved in stone.
4. Remains: what is left of something or somebody, especially after it has died or decayed.
5. Creation narrative: a story that says God created man and the rest of the world.
6. Theory of evolution: theory written by Charles Darwin to explain the way species changed over time.
7. Archeologist: someone who digs up remains to study human activity in the past.
8. Excavation: process by which you uncover something through digging away the earth that covers it.
9. Tool: an object held in one hand to do a task (for example: an axe).
10. Cave paintings: paintings made in caves by prehistoric humans.
11. Prehistory: time in history before people could read and write.
12. Sources: remains from the past.
13. Hunting-gathering: a way of living where people hunt animals and gather food like plants and berries to survive.
14. Nomads: people who do not live in a fixed place.
15. Timeline: a long bar with labels on it to show in which year or period something happened
16. Decade: a period of ten years
17. Century: a period of a hundred years
18. Millennium: a period of a thousand years

KEY WORDS

What you can do or explain after this lesson

• what a creation narrative is
• what the evolution theory is
• how both theories are used to explain where humans come from
• what the "Out of Africa" theory means
• how you can  read the family tree of   modern humans
• what paleontologists and archeologists do

TEST YOURSELF

What you can explain or do after this lesson:

1. who Lucy was and why she is called Lucy.
2. what a creation narrative is.
3. what the evolution theory is.
4. how both theories are used to explain where humans come from.
5. what archeologists are and what they do.
6. what hunter-gatherers are.
7. what the difference is between written and non-written sources (and give examples of both).
8. why sources, like the cave paintings of Lascaux, are important to learn about prehistoric people?
9. why hunter-gatherers lived in small groups?
10. why hunter-gatherers  only had few belongings?
11. why hunter-gatherers were nomads?
12. how to make a timeline with different periods.

The next slides show interesting videos you can watch to learn more about this subject.

This is not mandatory (niet verplicht) and you don't need to learn them.

Congratulations, you have finished this lesson.