Rhinoceros: From
Chauvet caves , France
Video: The Mind’s Big Bang - PBS Evolving Ideas
Watch the first 30 minutes of the video and answer the questions. Afterwards compare and exchange answers so that everyone has the same information
Part 1
Watch this segment: Introduction to the Mind's Big Bang and answer the questions.
1.Where is Randy White?
2.What is like to be inside the caves?
3.Randy White has found images painted on rock walls up to 2 kilometers underground. What is his reflection on this?
Part 2
1. How old was the tool making site that Rick Potts is exploring in East Africa? 2. What kinds of creatures lived there?
3.What kinds of tools did they make and what were they used for?
4.What does Rick Potts find remarkable about the stone hand axe?
Part 3
Complete the evolutionary time sequence
6 mya (million years ago): split from common ancestor with chimpanzees
4 mya:
2.5 mya: modified hands enable them to create stone tools, possessed a larger brain
2 mya:
60,000 yrs ago truly modern humans left Africa – hunter gatherers
Comparison of two skulls – say how they differed
1) From Israel dated at 100,000 years
2) From Africa dated 40,000 years
Where did they go?
Part 4
Describe the research of Steve Kuhn and Mary Stiner of Arizona University.
According to Randy White how did people living in the South of France manufacture beads?
What was the function of the beads?
Part 5
The Encounter between Neanderthal and Humans
Describe the physical appearance of Neanderthals completing the information gaps below.
Approximate weight:
Skull shape:
Nose:
Brain size:
Treatment of their dead:
Describe how early humans treated their dead
Research of John Shay
Complete the table
________________________
Comparison of Spears for Neanderthal and Upper Paleolithic Humans
Materials:
Method of use:
Distance thrown:
Teaching of spear
making techniques :
___________________
Comparison of social groups
Society:
____________________
Part 6
What went on in the caves and what was the overall purpose of the paintings?
What is spit painting?
Part 7
According to Richard Klein and Steven Pinker how did the mind’s big bang take place?
Part 8
Speculate
Look at the painting above from the Chauvet caves in the Ardèche river valley in France. They are around 30,000 years old and were discovered in 1994. What is peculiar about them is that the images are repeated. There are many instances where there may be generations between the drawings? Why do you think the images were drawn and redrawn in this manner?
Homework:
Group 1
Read pages 251-254 from Edward Wilson's book Consilience in which he gives an explanation for the paintings in the Chauvet caves. Present this information to the class in a clear and coherent manner next week.
Group 2
Listen to the following radio program on consciousness presented by Dr.Meredith Small – professor of anthropology at Cornell University.
Click on this link: All Things Considered: Consciousness and scroll down the page until you find the heading 'Consciousness'. Listen once then try to answer the questions:
1. What is the anthropological definition of ‘consciousness’?
2. Explain the experiment involving chimpanzees and red paint.
3.How do children and adults deal with self-consciousness?
Communicate the answers to your classmates in the next lesson.
Group 3
Hamlet Act III Scene 1
In this exercise you will read with a commentary the famous To be or not to be speech from Shakespeare's Hamlet. I would like you to explain to the class three notable lines from the speech, which are incidentally part of the English vernacular, that express much of the human condition.
1. ...to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,..
2. When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
3. The undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns
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Nature, Art & Language
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