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Course: Big History Project > Unit 6
Lesson 1: How Our Ancestors Evolved | 6.0- ACTIVITY: Vocab Tracking
- WATCH: Unit 6 Overview
- ACTIVITY: Early Ancestors
- ACTIVITY: Threshold Card — Threshold 6 Collective Learning
- WATCH: Threshold 6 — Humans and Collective Learning
- WATCH: Human Evolution
- READ: Lucy and the Leakeys
- READ: Jane Goodall
- READ: Gallery — Human Ancestors
- Quiz: How Our Ancestors Evolved
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ACTIVITY: Early Ancestors
Purpose
This activity provides you with a chance to start thinking about the evolutionary process of our early ancestors.
Process
Download the Early Ancestors Image Sort Worksheet. Take a few minutes to figure out what order you think the images on the sheet should be in. Use your intuition, logic, and anything you’ve learned before to arrange the images in order, from our earliest ancestors to our own species, Homo sapiens. You’re not expected to have a lot of knowledge about this topic but do your best to try and figure it out.
After you’ve arranged the images, jot down everything you can that differentiates humans from our ancestors. Then, compare your answers to those on the answer key and see how you did!
Want to join the conversation?
Who is a Homo sapiens sapiens? Somewhere I read people born after the year 2000 are called homo sapiens sapiens. Is it true or just a hoax. If true whats the difference between homo sapiens sapiens?(6 votes)
Homo sapiens sapiens is us, modern man. It is used to differentiate between Homo sapiens idaltu, our ancestor species, and possibly Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, or Neanderthals, which as we learn more about them, may not be an entirely separate species. Hence the third name to differentiate between subspecies.(7 votes)
which country did lucy's skeleton founds today?(4 votes)
did we have any other animal ancestors?(3 votes)
Yes! Our closest ancestors are from the genus Homo, but we are related to many other species. We are closely related to apes, as you can likely tell when you see how apes look and act. We are also related to mice. We are actually, if you go back far enough, related to every organism on Earth, even bacteria.(2 votes)
what was life like for our early ancestors?(3 votes)
Homo sapiens sapiens is us evolved the have left over DNA that caused them to evolve to us and modern monkeys have similar traits like us in modern time.Scientists think that monkeys might become us humans in a couple of years and to mention that they re overpopulating India and other countries around the world.(1 vote)- why are our ancestors monkeys?(1 vote)
Our ancestors weren't exactly monkeys. More like apes.(1 vote)
Who was that monkey thing?(1 vote)- That "monkey thing," as you call it, was one of your first ancestors. It is Homo Habilis, one of the first humans to be able to utilize tools. Think of it as a handyman. Handyman, habilis.(1 vote)
What is this! are you sure that is our early ancestors? Not a super monkey!(0 votes)- No, that is not our early ancestors. Our early ancestors were bacteria, but yes, apes are very closely related to us, and no, no super monkey, sorry. We have just evolved for many many years and we becam more intelligent over time. If you line up all ancestors to us in the genus Homo, you can see that the brain became much larger over time.(2 votes)