What You Will Learn!
- Introduction to our ancient ancestors
- How did we populate this planet so successfully?
Description
Series of 8 lectures totalling ca. 75 mins. on how H. sapiens has so successfully populated the earth.
The lectures commence on hominin origins and dispersals (migration) patterns in the late Pleistocene.
Lecture 4 deals solely with lithic tool technology and the lecturer demonstrates how stone tools were made in an outside location. Students are asked to endeavour to make a stone spearpoint.
The lectures explore how H. sapiens became the dominant hominin spp. on earth principally by the cognitive revolution. The lectures then move onto the Neolithic Revolution and the first agricultural settlements on earth.
We examine several prehistoric settlements in the Fertile Crescent and the first 'cities' in Anatolia and Canaan.
Once H. sapiens mastered the art of agriculture and the domestication of animals. he moved on to smelting copper. Lecture 9 examines the first copper smelters in Europe and the Near East and how the Egyptians used copper chisels to build the pyramids.
Lecture 10 asks 'Where to from here'. The earth's population of H. sapiens has increased eight fold to 7.8 billion in the last two hundred years. How much more population growth can the earth sustain? If every person on earth were to maintain a standard of living equal to that of people in the USA, we would need four more worlds full of resources.
Who Should Attend!
- High School/ College Students interested in archaeology/anthropology
