Science

One of the big unsolved questions of science today is “How did life begin?” There are a surprising number of theories. Make a list. Which do you think is the most likely? (For a start, see 7 Theories on the Origin of Life.)

Lucy – an example of Australopithecus afarensis – is one of the most famous fossils in the world. Find out more about Lucy and her discovery. (See The Lucy Man: The Scientist Who Found the Most Famous Fossil Ever by CAP Saucier (Prometheus, 2011).)

Is Lucy still the oldest human ancestor skeleton ever found? Maybe not. Read about Ardi, who may be even older.

Fossilized footprints tell scientists a lot about who made them. Try making your own fossil footprint. You’ll need a cardboard box, damp sand, and plaster of Paris.

Research the cooking hypothesis. What are some of the ways in which cooking may have changed the human species? (See Scientific American’s Cooking Up Bigger Brains.)

One of the oldest known hominin-made tools is a stone chopper now in the British Museum. This came from the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania and is somewhere between 1.8 and 2 million years old. Check out these images and descriptions of Stone Age tools from the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

Math

            It’s not how big your brain is that makes you smart; it’s your brain to body weight ratio – though even that might not be a sure thing. Read about brain size, brain to body weight ratio, and intelligence here.

            See  "What does brain size have to do with intelligence?".

            Use this Animal Brain Chart to calculate brain to body weight ratios for several different animals.

Language Arts/Creative Writing

            How did hominins communicate before the development of spoken language? Come up with some ideas. Without words, how would you tell your friends “There’s some yummy fruit down by the river” or “Run! There’s a bear behind that tree!”

            What was life like in the Stone Age? Do some research – and try writing your own Diary of a Stone Age Kid. See resources at Early Humans and the Stone Age.

            Some scientists suggest that the world’s oldest stories may have survived in geomythology – tales originating in ancient oral traditions that tell the stories of geologic phenomena, perhaps passed down for thousands of years. The story of Atlantis may be an example, based on the catastrophic eruption of a volcano on the Greek island of Santorini. See how many other examples you can find. Read about it here.

The Arts

The famous Lucy fossil got her name from the Beatles’ song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” that paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson and company played during their African expedition. Listen to it here.

Art dates back at least 45,500 years – which is the age of the oldest known cave painting of an animal, a life-sized picture of a wild pig found in a cave in Indonesia. Or maybe even older: some cave paintings in Spain are thought to be about 64,000 years old and were probably the work of Neanderthals. Research the history of cave art. (See Cave Art History.)

The first cartoons? Overlapping images on cave walls may have appeared to move when viewed by firelight. Read about it here.

 Make your own Paleolithic cave painting.

See Werner Herzog’s 2010 film Cave of Forgotten Dreams, (G), filmed inside the Chauvet caves of southern France.