Early Humans

Roughly 300,000 years ago, anatomically modern humans emerged in Africa and gradually displaced the other remaining members of the genus Homo. Guide your students through a timeline of early humans and shine a light on the most mysterious epoch in our history, an era that holds the keys to understanding human nature.

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How Our Ancestors Evolved
Lesson 6.0
Big History Project
Early Humans
How Our Ancestors Evolved
Our complex, large-brained, culturally rich species evolved from a single-celled organism and the road to that transformation has some twists and turns. How did Homo sapiens come to be?
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Ways of Knowing Early Humans
Lesson 6.1
Big History Project
Early Humans
Ways of Knowing: Early Humans
What we know about early humans comes to us from scholars across just about every discipline. Archaeologists, anthropologists, chemists, computer scientists—all have contributed to the body of knowledge about our distant relatives.
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How Did the First Humans Live
Lesson 6.3
Big History Project
Early Humans
How Did the First Humans Live?
Early humans had one job— survival. Collective learning increased their chances of survival, but the lives of our hunter-gatherer ancestors were still hard. Did their ways of life have advantages over our own, though?
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Humans as a Divergence
Lesson 2.1
Origins to Present
Early Humans
Humans as a Divergence
Humans are unique in our ability to record and store knowledge and in our ability to understand time. Writing made it possible for us to document knowledge and record events, which lent tremendous power to collective learning.
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Was Farming a Good Idea
Lesson 2.4
Origins to Present
Early Humans
Was Farming a Good Idea?
The shift from foraging to farming is among the most significant events in human history. Farming led to many new occupations and enabled bigger societies and states. But it also led to poorer diets, more disease, and longer working hours.
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