Transcript WHCH_11 - Teacherpage

Five thousand years ago writing changed the
world
How?
Prehistory – time before writing
How do we know about this time?
Historians – scholars who study and write about
the historical past
What do they use to figure out what happened?
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Artifacts – objects made by humans in the
past – ex. Clothes, coins, art,
tombstones…written evidence
 Is what is written always reliable?
 What if it is written by someone who was there? A
witness to the occurrence?
 What bias might a person have?
 What is bias?
 Historians attempt to explain the past clearly and
unbiased
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Anthropology – the study of the origins and
development of people and society
 Focus on how humans acquired physical traits over
time – like what?
 Focus on the culture of a society / people
Culture – way of life of a society
-their beliefs, values and practices
-handed down from one generation to the next.
-How?
-what are some of our / your cultural
aspects?
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Archaeology – subfield of anthropology
 Study of past people and culture through the
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remains they left behind…to figure out how they
lived. Like what?
Tools, weapons, writings
Are they wrong? why or why not? New evidence?
Change?
How do they know how old artifacts are?
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Relative Dating – similar items are grouped
together and put in order according to their
style
 Lower levels to higher levels –
 Higher = newer
 Lower = older
 When the age of some items are known, items
around them can be approximately dated
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Absolute Dating – determine the age of an
artifact due to actual physical deterioration
 Bones lose chemicals at a certain rate – test them
 Wood grains – can tell how old a piece of wood is
 Carbon 14 decay in biological matter
 This way we can tell if items that are found next to
each other are the same age or not
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Technique – procedure or skill
 What is needed to find artifacts or archaeological dig
sites
 1800’s – early 1900’s – guessing game!
 Now … we use technology to help find spots to dig –
digitally map out areas, enter data and let the
computer decide the best spot to dig
 Also, communication with other professionals to help
determine the: age of rocks – Geologist. Plant and
animal identification – Zoologists and Botanists
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Pre-1950, we did not know much about
prehistory…which is what?
Mary and Louis Leakey – Anthropologists –
1930’s – Worked in East Africa – Canyon in
Tanzania called Olduvai Gorge
Explored layers of sediment in canyon dating
back to 1.7 -2.1 million years ago…
prehistory?
Found ancient tools made of stone – sign of
technology
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Technology – skills and tools people use to meet
their basic needs and wants
 Prehistoric tech vs. current tech.
As the Leakey’s explored the newer layers they found
advanced technology…smooth and polished tools
1959 – found skull of early hominid
Hominid – group that includes humans and close
relatives but must meet this requirement:
*must walk upright on two feet
*humans are the only hominids alive today
Legends of other Hominids?
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Donald Johanson – Anthropologist – 1974
Found pieces of single hominid – 3 million yrs.
how do you think this was dated? Relative or
absolute?
Named the partial skeleton “Lucy”. Why?
Australopithecus – earliest group of
hominids
“Lucy” was one of these
Lived in Africa around 7 million yrs. ago
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Homo Habilis – 2 million yrs. Ago
“Handy Man” – first hominids to make tools
Cutting, scraping, chopping, sawing
How did they make these tools?
Have discovered tools about 2.6 million years old.
Who made them?
Homo Erectus – 2 million years, fully upright
“Upright Man” – larger brains and bones – smaller
teeth than Homo Habilis –
First to use fire and hand axe
Found in Asia and Europe – first to migrate out of
Africa
 Disappeared 250,000 – 100,000 years ago
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Homo Sapiens – modern humans
Two theories theories
 1) developed in Africa and then dispersed from
there
 2) Homo Erectus evolved into homo sapiens at
about the same time around the world
 “multi-regional hypothesis” Modern humans bred
with archaic humans and overtook them
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Two Groups of Homo Sapiens:
Neanderthals and Modern Humans
Lived mostly in Europe and Asia
Spread all over the rest of the world
Around 50,000 – 60,000 years ago
Neanderthals died out
Why?
Who was left?
Row 1: Pliopithecus, Pronconsul, Dryopithecus, Oreopithecus, Ramapithecus
Row 2: Australopithecus, Paranthropus, Advanced Australopithecus, Homo Erectus, Early
Homo Sapiens, Solo Man, & Rhodesian Man
Row 3: Neanderthal Man, Cro-Magnon Man, Modern Man
Color Transparency 2: Locations of Hominid Finds in Africa
6 of 8
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Who?
Otzi the Iceman was 5'5" tall, weighing in at 84
pounds. He was aged 46 years at the time of his
death and hailed from the Copper Age, in
Neolithic times. He spent his childhood in an
Italian village called Velturno, to the north of
Bolzano. Otzi enjoyed long walks through the
hilly terrain of Italy, suggesting that he was
perhaps a mountain shepherd, since his level of
mobility is not common to most copper Age
Europeans. He had approximatley 57 tattoos of
simple dots and lines.
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Why?
So, why was the discovery of Otzi the Iceman so
monumental? It was because his corpse gave
scientists and archeologists an unrivaled view
into the lives of humans during the Copper Age,
which had previously been, for the most part, a
mystery. Understanding the Copper Age is
important because it was a time when advanced
metal working, like smelting, first emerged. Otzi
was also a pop culture phenomenon. There has
been countless books written about him and he
even stars in a play.