Teaching sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

5 minutes – The story so far...
15 minutes – Tune in: What makes humans different from other species?
20 minutes – Find out: Archaeology and Neanderthals
15 minutes – Take action: Human evolution
5 minutes – Reflection

Presentation slides

We strongly encourage you to use the Presentation Slides as a guide for yourself and your students through this lesson.

The story so far...

Step 1.

Revisit the story so far, using the Threshold Cards as a guide to retell the story of the history of the universe. Students should be involved in the retelling - you might nominate different students each lesson to be responsible for a different threshold. Prompt them to explain what ingredients were present in the universe at the time, what goldilocks conditions existed to enable a change, and the new complexity it resulted in.

Remember, students' explanations can't be wrong, but you might supplement them with the information below.

In the beginning, we weren't sure there was anything in the universe. If there was, we don't know what it was. We also don't know what the conditions were like. However, something happened, which we know as the Big Bang. This caused the universe to change so much that we recognise it as a new complexity - almost a totally new place. After that, we had space, time, matter (hydrogen and helium), and energy (gravity and electromagnetism).
These were perfect Goldilocks Conditions for something to happen. First, gravity pulled matter together. Inside these fusions, it was more than 10 million degrees Celsius. Suddenly, stars lit up. Galaxies, clusters, and superclusters were formed.
The stars started to age and die. They were running out of hydrogen and helium. Giant stars collapsed, fusing to create more complex elements in the billion-degree temperatures. After a time, 92 elements were present in the universe, making our universe a far more complex place.
Now gravity started to have an impact on these new elements. They underwent accretion. Random collisions started to happen, where elements gathered together and combined. Eventually, these clusters grew big enough to create comets, asteroids, and - most exciting of all - planets. Much more complex structures, including our Solar System, developed in the universe.
Now there was just the right amount of energy for many different chemical reactions to take place. And, importantly, there was liquid water, which made it easier for matter to combine and recombine. So that's exactly what it did! Complex chemicals, including DNA, came together to form new life that could maintain and refuel (feed) itself, adapt to changes around itself over time, and copy itself (reproduce).

The universe had changed once again.

Tune in: What makes humans different from other species?

You can also use the Presentation Slides to guide you through these steps.

Step 1.

Start with this question:

What makes humans different from other species? What can we do that other species can’t? What do we do that animals can't or don't?

Step 2.

Step 2. Go to the human evolution interactive timeline (humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-evolution-interactive-timeline).

Explore this resource as a class. Anthropologists have identified six important 'mini-thresholds' that humans have crossed to become what we are today. These are represented with a symbol and a vertical purple line.

Before hovering over each symbol, see if students can guess what the symbol might be hinting towards.

Step 3.

Explore each of the mini-thresholds, reading out their descriptions to students.

Were students able to come up with any of these on their own?

One thing of note: we have done a lot of rapid development in the past million years, compared to the slow growth across the previous six million.

Find out: Archaeology and Neanderthals

Step 1.

Independently, students read What is Archaeology? (www.amnh.org/explore/ology/archaeology/what-is-archaeology).

Students should record notes using a dot-point format.

Step 2.

Then, students can test their knowledge on the interactive quiz What do you know about Archaeology? (www.amnh.org/explore/ology/archaeology/what-do-you-know-about-archaeology2)

Provisions for Learning Extension: Students who are strong independent readers could also explore What is Anthropology? (www.amnh.org/explore/ology/anthropology/what-is-anthropology)

How do students think this science may be relevant to early humans too?

Provisions for Learning Extension: Students who are strong independent readers could also explore What is Anthropology? (https://www.amnh.org/explore/ology/anthropology/what-is-anthropology)

How do students think this science may be relevant to early humans too?

Step 3.

Watch:

Human Origins 101 | National Geographic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehV-MmuvVMU)

Note: This might be a more complex video than is appropriate for your class, so please preview it before class. If you decide to show the video to the class, remind them that there are technical words they will hear (e.g. different groups of hominins). There is still some valuable information to give them an overall view of early humans).

Step 4.

Watch:

Neanderthals 101 | National Geographic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMc81qpCQ3g)

Step 5.

Discuss any new vocabulary and the meaning of any unknown words that came up in these videos.

If you are keeping a word wall across the course of this unit, update it with new terms and definitions.

Take action: Human evolution

Step 1.

Opposable thumbs were a huge step forward in human evolution. They give us a huge advantage over other animals.

Let's demonstrate why.

Step 2.

Split students into pairs.

Give each group a bottle and a straw.

Step 3.

One student tapes the thumbs of their partner to the side of their partner's hand. By side, we mean next to the forefinger, not across the palm. Students should be able to lay their hands flat on the table and still be able to see their thumb.

Explain to students you don't need to waste a huge amount of tape or bind the thumbs tightly. The tape is more of a guide to keep our thumbs out of use.

Step 4.

Students use their taped hands to do some simple tasks. Can they pick up the straw from the table? Can they put it in the bottle? Can they pick up the bottle? Can they take the straw out and screw the cap onto the bottle?

Step 5.

Now take it a bit further. Can students write their names with a pencil? Can they eat a sandwich (if they have one in their lunchbox)? Can they even open their lunchbox?

Step 6.

Students switch roles. Make sure you're keeping an eye on the clock for when to switch over. It should occur after about 7 minutes.

Reflection

Explain to students that our opposable thumbs let us grasp and manipulate objects. When you taped down your thumb, you got a sense of how hard it would be to do many things if our hands were shaped differently. Even a simple task like placing a straw in a bottle becomes difficult!

Many millions of years ago, the ancestor to all living primates developed an opposable digit on its hands and feet. Originally, this was for clinging to branches in the trees where it lived. This trait became beneficial to survival, and was passed to all the descendants of that ancestor species, just like we learnt in Lesson 8.

Our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, have hands that are similar to ours. Their hands allow them to use some simple tools, like using a stick to get ants out of anthills. But they don’t have a brain like ours, so they can’t plan out complex tools to produce, and they don’t improve on the design of their tools over time.

Humans have a thumb on our hands, but we no longer have an opposable big toe. Why do students think that is? It could be because we needed our feet to be better for walking as we became bipedal, rather than for grabbing stuff.

Big History - Human Development - Evolution

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