A Day in the Life of Homo Sapiens

Roughly 200,000 years into the evolution of us and 50,000 years ago a much unexpected thing happened. A large hole appeared in the fabric of the universe and through it came an average twelve year old boy with blond hair and green eyes. He was called Adam and he flew through the hole at roughly 20 kilometres an hour and landed in a patch of grass in England. Not just any patch of grass though, a path of grass a fifth fifty thousand years ago. The particular place that he landed was in the middle of a group of a family group of three Homo sapiens. Leader was called Hulu. He lived with his wife Lara and his son Frelek.

When Adam landed in the middle of the family group he looked up in shock at the people. They Lara’s mouth open wide in wordless shock. The boy Frelek asked in perfect English, “Where are you from?” Adam just looked at him for a long ten seconds and then answered, “London.” Hulu asked “where is this, London?” Adam realized that this was never going to work so he decided to lie to earn their trust. “London is the name we gave to a place just north of here.”  “You must have been imagining the portal I came through too”

The Homo sapiens seemed to have accepted this fact and were now moving on to introduce themselves. The boy turned out to be called Frelek and seemed very nice. The man was called Hulu and his wife had a nice name of Lara. It turned out that they were walking to a place called Cheddar Gorge which is famous for having the oldest human remains in Europe. They offered me a drink of water from a carved ostrich egg and I took it, drank, it tasted old and unclean but I drank it anyway.

It turned out that the Homo sapiens were trying to find an abandoned cave where they could settle. But rumour had it that there were some creatures living in there that were stronger than any human, and could rip your throat out with its bare hands. Adam decided to ignore the stories and convince himself that they weren’t real. Soon after I was found we started walking in the direction of the cave. On the way there Lara stopped at a Ginkgo tree and took some seeds that we all cracked and ate. I found them quite hard and strong tasting, a bit like an un-roasted chestnut but I accepted a few happily.

Towards the end of the day they stopped to set up camp and sleep. Lara found us all some lovely soft leaves to sleep on whilst Frelek light a fire. The way Frelek lit a fire was amazing to watch. First he made a stone circle. Then he bundled some dry leaves and kindling and put them in a pile. After that he made a neat little pyramid out of sticks on top. Finally he took out two pieces of flint from his leather pouch and started rubbing them together. After some time sparks flew off and the fire went blazing up. Meanwhile Hulu set himself down to make a spear. First he carved out a shaft out of wood with his stone knife. Then he started knapping away at the flint.

After some time Hulu came up with a deadly sharp point, perfect for killing a deer or defending yourself from a wild cats. After a while we all lay down and fell asleep. In the morning Hulu was the first to wake up he patted each of us gently to wake up and pointed at a deer grazing in the distance. He told Lara and me that Frelek and himself would go hunting and kill that deer to eat. They approached it soundlessly but Frelek tripped and startled the deer. But Hulu was fast and speared the animal straight through the heart and lung area. The animal made a helpless shriek, gurgled and fell to the ground, dead.

Hulu and Frelek hauled back the animal; Hulu butchered the animal with a stone knife whilst Frelek light yet another fire. Lara set up a contraption made of wood which she hung the chunks of venison on to cook.  The smell of venison was overwhelming for Adam and he couldn’t help but watch the meat turning slowly and cooking.

Not long after they set off again on a long trek to the distant cave. This time it wasn’t as long though. Half way they stopped for a water break. Lara offered the water from the ostrich egg once again. Adam had grown used to it now and it tasted great. After roughly six hours of trekking they arrived at the cave. The entrance loomed over them, it looked huge. Slowly, one by one they entered the cave and were surrounded by huge cave paintings, they were enormous. There were pictures of deer and big cats and all kinds of other creatures.

On the way in they also found skulls and skeletons of people, except they had slightly bigger brains and large brows. Adam suddenly had a flash-back of a history class. Their teacher, Mr. Haggis, was telling them about the Stone Age in Britain. He had told them that there were Homo sapiens in Britain but until 30,000 years ago there were also a separate species of Homo called Neanderthals.

As they walked deeper into the cave they started to hear voices. But not the voices of Homo sapiens, they were deeper and they spoke a different language. And suddenly it struck him, they were Neanderthals! Neanderthals were around at the same time as Homo sapiens but they died out during the last ice age. They were very strong and had big bones, they had large brow ridges just like on the skeleton and they even had larger brains than humans. That made them a formidable opponent. Suddenly they heard a scream and Lara was gone.

They were being attacked by Neanderthals! Adam remembered something else too they were also supposed to be cannibals, which ate other humans and even in some case their own kind. They were coming in from all sides now, cutting off the escape routes. They were trapped. The Neanderthals kept coming. Hulu and Frelek took out there weapons. The Neanderthals stopped advancing, looked at them, and then ATTACKED.

The end, or is it?

On Our Own Two Feet by Stephen Whitt

Many famous anthropologists debate about the reason we walk on our two feet. Some of them believe it was the climate change and the switch between tropical and dry and others believe it was for reproduction or getting a mate. But they all do agree that we did become bipedal roughly seven million years ago. Although humans are quite similar to apes there are some quite significant differences for example, an apes snout protrudes from it's face and it has relatively no forehead. It has a very large brow and a much smaller brain case even though it's brain is still very big for it's size. Whereas humans have large foreheads with virtually no protruding brow. In Homo Sapiens, because we stand up straight whilst walking, the hole where our spinal cord enters the skull ( the Foranum Magnum) is at the bottom. Whereas for our ape-like ancestors, the oldest of them walked on all fours. Because of that their walking habits their Foranum Magnum is more to the back of the skull, to make it easier for them to see whilst walking on all fours.

MLA Citation: Whitt, Stephen. "On Our Own Two Feet." Odyssey: Adventures in Science Oct. 2009: 26-28. Print.

Who's Who Among The Early Hominins

Most people that I know only think that there are two kinds of homonids, Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals. Actually there are way more. There are at least eight types of early hominmids dating back at least eight million years. We are the final product of millions of years of evolution, from primitive small brained quadrupeds with long, protruding snouts and large canines for eating meat. We on the other hand are large brained bipeds with a relatively flat face and smaller canines. The oldest relatively complete skeleton is called Orrorin Tugenensis the oldest remains found of this hominid date back to roughly six and a half million years ago. The biggest leap after that is the Homo Habilis who started using stone tools that it had actually created. Homo habilis lived around 2 and a halfmillion years ago. And later on came us, the infamous Homo Sapiens the latests step in the evolution of hominids.

MLA Citation: Susman, Randall. "Who's Who Among the Early Hominins?" Odyssey 1 Oct. 2009. Print.

Why We Study Human Origins by Randall Susman Calliope: Exploring World History

This is quite an inspiring article that we read during and outside humanities class. It was written by an author called Randal Susman for the magazine Calliope in September 1999. This article tells you all about why we study human origins and what are the developments and achievements. Since writing began people have been wondering the same things over and over again. Things such as how were we created. The Christians came up with a pretty good answer, Adam and Eve the two first humant who where both magically dropped from the sky.

But scientists and historians such as Charles Darwin thought otherwise. They believed in evolution which of course contradicted everything the Christian church said. As a result  Nineteenth century scientists and religious people got into long rows about who was right but obviously in the mid- Nineteen hundreds there was no fossil evidence of our Ape like ancestors. Well not until Henry Huxley came along and foumd the first complete skeleton of our ancestors. Huxley also made some other important discoveries like as the author states “Huxley believed that anatomically, African apes and humans were similar, more similar in fact than apes were to monkeys.” I think this blog post proves that there were apes before us and we didn't simply fall out of the sky.

Stonehenge Theories

Stonehenge has many theories on the reason of its existence some slightly mad to some others that may be plausible.v Here are some examples. Some of the crazy ones are: Stonehenge is in the shape of female genitalia and represents fertility, it was created by the famous magician Merlin who transported stones made by giants others state that it was an ancient Roman temple or a alien landing site. Some of the more plausible theories are it was an ancient observatory, it was the burial place of the dead or it was a place to worship the gods. In my opinion most of these theories are completely barmy and the answer is still out there.

Huge Gladiator School Found Buried in Austria

A huge gladiator training school has been discovered in Austria using new technology to detect underground objects and produce 3D images. This gladiator school is even bigger than two wallmarts, even larger than the training grounds outside the colloseum. They have found gladiator graves completely changing the perspective on a gladiators life. It was probably built in A.D 150 during the rule of Marcus Aurelius. The school contains a moch arena bleacher, dormatries a courtyard and cages where wild animals would be kept. The arena covers 19,000 square meters. But will probably never be excavated.

Human Ancestor May Put Twist in Origin Story

Hey people! This is another post that we had to do for  homework in humanities class. We are currently learnin why people study archaeology, its techniques and the basics. Enjoy! A group of archaeologists recently discovered two two million year old primate that has been proved to have be related to humans.  There is one roughly thirty year old female and another teenage male. It seems they both fell into an ancient chasm which was also responsible for countless other animals, as was proven by the countless animal bones littered around the chasm. Unlike other skeletons found from our ancestors these ones have a presision grip wich means that the thumb is longer than usual which means that they would be able to use tools. Another human trait found on these skeletons was the pelvis and the feet suggest that they would have been able to walk but they would also climb trees. At 1.2 meters tall they are also quite short. So as you can see thanks to this discovery we now know a lot more about our ancestors.