Prehistory

1
Prehistory

• What are we doing? We are studying the first
  developments of humankind
• Why are we doing it? It is important to
  understand the foundations of communication and
  human life to understand how the world got to the
  way it is today

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Learning Targets

• Define Prehistory and the time span it covers
• Analyze how the use of simple tools advanced
  humankind beyond all other mammals
• Interpret early forms of communication
• Understand the early developments that lead to
  civilization

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What is Prehistory?

• What do you consider history?
• Why do you call it history?
• How do you know about it?

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Historical Record

• Our historical record starts when human beings
  began using language and started writing things
  down

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Sooooo..

• Prehistory is The period of time between the
  dawn of man and the first known uses of written
  communication

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The Prehistoric period

• Major accomplishments
• Tool manufacture and use
• Communication
• Verbal
• Written?
• Domestication of animals
• And plants?
• Finally agriculture
• The First Wave

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The Paleolithic period

• old stone age
• c. 500,000 BCE - c. 6000 BCE
• Basic features
• Hunting and gathering
• Remarkable art (and religion?)
• Simple tools of chipped stone
• Simple shelters
• Fire
• c. 150,000 BCE?
• Language

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The Neolithic period

• Began in Middle East around 6000 BCE
• to c. 3700 BCE
• Basic features
• Food production
• Polished stone tools
• and weapons?
• More settled, less nomadic lifestyles
• permanent villages
• Population increases
• Development of a more complex (and satisfying?)
  social order

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Timeline Events

• Harnessing the power of fire
• The first use of stone tools
• Building of simple shelters
• The use of complex tools
• Language
• The first settled communities
• Building of permanent shelters
• Domesticated animals
• Domesticated plants
• Agriculture

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Human evolution
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Homo erectus
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The mysterious Neanderthal

• The subject of one of prehistorys most
  intriguing questions

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Cromagnon

• First man who really resembles us
• Lived at the same time as Neanderthal

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The peripatetic (nomadic) life
c
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Homo faber

• Early stone tools
• A. Homo habilis
• B. Homo erectus
• C. Neanderthal

C.
A.
B.
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Eating

• What was the more productive?
• The hunter?
• Or the gatherer?

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Lets find out for ourselves!

• Phase 1
• Read Hunter-Gathers to Farmers
• Phase 2
• Play Hunter or Gatherer?
• Phase 3
• Watch Stone Age

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Extraordinary art!
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Cave art (cont.)

• What general theme is evident here?

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Cave artists
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Paleolithic religion?
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Farming

• Agricultural Revolution
• Lets read about the types of crops
  and animals that w were farmed!

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Settling down

• Prerequisite to civilization

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Jericho

• Jordan River valley
• c. 8000 BCE

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Catal Hüyük

• Modern Turkey
• c. 6500 BCE

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Catal Hüyük (cont.)
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• Jig-Saw
• Comparing Early Farming Civilizations

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The first writing?
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Neolithic religious life

• Webquest