Lesson video

Hello, I'm Mister Hutchinson and welcome to History.

We're learning all about Prehistoric Britain.

We're learning about the world a long, long time ago and I think it is fascinating, there's so much to find out and in today's lesson, we're going to be learning about the different periods in the Stone Age.

So Prehistoric Britain, we're going to be, we're looking a lot at the Stone Age when people use stone tools but the Stone Age has actually made them a few different periods and that's what we're going to look at today.

I can't wait to get started.

Our lesson will look something like this.

First we will learn that there were three Stone Ages, not one Stone Age but three Stone Ages.

And their names are The Palaeolithic Era, the Mesolithic Era and the Neolithic Era.

And we'll think a little bit about each of those eras.

What defines them, why we have separate eras why we call these periods of time different names? And so we'll have a look at each of those in a little bit more depth, including what was similar and what was different between them.

So first of all, there are three Stone Ages.

How many Stone Ages are they? Say to me how many Stone Ages? Three Stone Ages, well done.

There are three Stone Ages.

So let's go back to our timeline and pop that onto our timeline.

So we already know if we go back a billion years So that's not all of time.

If we go back a billion years and look at the last billion years of history that the Cambrian explosion was about 650 million years ago.

Can you remember what happened during the Cambrian explosion? It wasn't a real explosion like a bomb exploding.

What was it? What happened at that time? Great work, it was when most of the animals that are alive today and that have always been and that have ever been alive suddenly started to evolve and develop.

And that was about 540 million years ago.

Much later we get the first dinosaurs about 240 million years ago and they go extinct about 65 million years ago so within the last a hundred million years the dinosaurs go extinct.

Let's zoom in to the last hundred million years now.

And so the dinosaurs go extinct about 65 million years ago and we get the age of the mammals.

So if there's 65, the last 65 million years the mammals have been in charge, been roaming the earth.

So it's not as long as the dinosaurs were around for and the dinosaurs were around for about 160 million years but it's about that the mammals have been around for about the last 65 million years.

About two and a half million years ago we get our first humans.

Let's zoom into that period.

So now we're just looking at the last 10 million years.

The first humans don't appear until about two and a half million years ago and our species, Homo sapiens appear about 300,000 years ago.

And this period is often known as the Stone Age.

Now in our last lesson we learned that this period is known as the Pleistocene Epoch.

Pleistocene means that it's referring to the climate.

What was the weather like? What was the climate like during the Pleistocene Epoch? Say it to your screen, it was an ice age, well done.

It was also, it's also known as the Stone Age and it's known as the Stone Age because those first humans started to use stone tools.

They started to use tools made out of stone.

They used some other materials as well that we'll get to but they started using stone tools and so we call it the Stone Age.

However, that Stone Age is not just one age we usually split it up into three different periods, The Palaeolithic Era, The Mesolithic Era and The Neolithic Era.

The Palaeolithic Era is sometimes called the Old Stone Age.

So if we zoomed into the Stone Age, the earliest period, the oldest period is the Palaeolithic Era.

The Mesolithic Era is the Middle Stone Age and remember that M M nice and easy to remember Mesolithic, Middle Stone Age and then Neolithic Era is the New Stone Age.

Again N, N New, Neo.

Neo actually means new so the New Stone Age.

So those are our three periods, the Old Stone Age, the Middle Stone Age and the New Stone Age but they're not, they look equal here but they're not equal in terms of the time that they occupied.

So if we look at the last 3 million years, the first humans arrive about two and a half million years ago.

Homo sapiens arrived about 300,000 years ago and the Palaeolithic Era, the Old Stone Age is most of that time.

And the Old Stone Age is when humans were using tools but they weren't particularly sophisticated tools they weren't very complex and there wasn't a lot of development during that time.

Humans didn't develop very much, didn't make many breakthroughs for millions of years.

And really did things differently for much of that time.

But then the Mesolithic Era we start to see some big changes partially because that's the end of the Pleistocene Epoch, the Ice Age ends and the Mesolithic Era comes in and humans start to behave a little bit differently.

Finally, the New Stone Age the Neolithic Era, that was a very small amount of time compared to all of the rest of the stone age but it's where humans started to really, really develop and we'll find out how.

So first of all, can you remember the names and can you get the correct spellings of the three different Stone Ages? We've learned that there was a big, long, Old Stone Age then there was a Middle Stone Age, it was quite short and New Stone Age it was even shorter.

What the names of them? Can you pause the video and write down the names of those different Stone Ages now.

Let's see if you were correct Hope you've had time to write all of them down.

Let's see if they're correct and make sure you've got the spelling correct as well so edit the spelling if you've got that wrong.

So the first was the Palaeolithic Era, and it's got this quite tricky vowel sound here which is where it's A E to make an E sound.

That's quite an old letter that used to be squished together.

So it's Palaeolithic, Palaeolithic but we spell that E sound with an A E, Palaeolithic.

Edit it if you've got it wrong, it's fine if you didn't.

What was the middle Stone Age called? What's its scientific name? The Mesolithic Era, excellent.

Meso just means middle, the Mesolithic Era.

Well done if you've got that right.

And lastly the New Stone Age was known as the Neolithic Era.

Well done, so they all end in lithic.

We have Paleo for Old Stone Age, Meso for Middle Stone Age and Neo for New Stone Age, well done.

Let's see if you can remember what each of these ages refer to.

So the Palaeolithic Era, the Mesolithic Era and the Neolithic Era, when is the New Stone Age, When is the Old Stone Age and what is the Middle Stone Age? Can you pause the video and match those up.

You might want to write them out and do the matching exercise yourself or you might just want to use your finger.

Can you match up those Stone Ages with their descriptions? Pause the video and have a go at that now.

Let's see if you're right.

The Palaeolithic Era, that's the Old Stone Age.

The Mesolithic Era, What was that? Well done, the Middle Stone Age which means that the Neolithic Era is the New Stone Age.

Well done, excellent work.

So let's look at each of those Stone Ages in a little bit more detail, why do we say that there are different Stone Ages? Why not just say, look, there's just one big Stone Age that was, that was the period of time.

Why we decided that we're going to chunk them into these different eras? Well it's because humans were behaving a little bit differently in each of these eras.

So in the Palaeolithic Era, for example and this lasted from two and a half million years ago to about 12,000 years ago.

In the Palaeolithic Era humans were just learning to use tools.

So they start to move out of Africa, Homo sapiens but they're still hunter gatherers.

They're still moving around looking for animals to kill and looking for fruits or plants or nuts to eat.

And they have to constantly be moving because as soon as they eat all the food and one area or they hunt the animals they have to move somewhere else.

And it's quite dangerous 'cause then if they can't find an animal to kill or they can't find any fruit or nuts, then they can starve.

But for the most of human history we were hunter gatherers.

During this period you can see here that humans starting in the Palaeolithic Era humans did start to use fire, they learned how to make fire.

And because they were moving around all the time they would be sleeping in temporary shelters.

So that could be caves and that's why you sometimes hear about Stone Age people being Cave Men, it could be caves but it often it was also animal skin.

So after they killed an animal they take the skin and they'd sort of make a kind of like a tent with that and it could quickly be taken down and rolled up so that they can carry it with them, but they didn't want to be carrying very much with them because they were always on the move.

They started to make very basic tools and these were usually made out of wood or stone or bone from the animals that they killed.

So they might hunt an animal and if the animal has a horn then they could take that horn and that horn could be used as a tool.

But the tools were still quite basic for most of this period in the Palaeolithic Era.

And during this, during this time, humans language probably didn't develop very much.

They were probably still giving like grunts and cries to sort of show their emotions but then they wouldn't have been creating lots of words or speaking in full sentences.

And their toolmaking didn't really improve that much during this period.

So if that was life in the Palaeolithic Era how is that different to life today? How was life different for those earliest humans living in the Palaeolithic Era? What they did, how they moved around.

How about go write your response to this.

I've got a sentence starter here for you.

One way the Palaeolithic Era was different to my life is that during the Palaeolithic Era, people would.

However nowadays we.

Life has changed for people since the Palaeolithic Era.

For example, now we.

So that will help you to make those comparisons.

You can borrow those sentence starters.

If you'd like pause the video and write out all of your sentences now.

Awesome work, I'm going to show you an answer that I wrote and you can compare yours to mine and you might want to add some ideas in or you might feel proud of yourself cause you wrote some things that I didn't write.

So this is a good chance to improve your work, it's always good to go back and redraft work and improve it.

So I wrote, "one way the Palaeolithic Era "was different from my life is that humans "moved around a lot looking for animals to hunt "as well as plants and nuts to eat.

"During the Palaeolithic Era "people would make tools out of stone and animal bones.

"However, nowadays we have tools "made out of metal and plastic.

"Life has changed for people since the Palaeolithic Era, "for example, now we mostly live in permanent settlements." So you can see in making those comparisons between life today and life in the Palaeolithic Era I can show how things have changed over time.

Hopefully you made some of those comparisons as well.

Let's look at the Mesolithic Era now, the Middle Stone Age and that lasted for about 6,000 years.

It lasted from about 12,000 years ago to about 6,000 years ago.

So the first thing is the world looked a bit different as we've talked about in our last lesson during this period.

So here we can see Great Britain and you can see the ice sheets that we talked about.

So the ice sheets are covering a lot of Great Britain.

There's pack ice here and then there's glacial sheets covering much of Great Britain.

And you'll also notice that Great Britain is connected to Europe with a land bridge it's called Doggerland.

So early humans could have walked from Europe to Great Britain easily enough 'cause it was all above land.

A huge Tsunami took place just off the coast of Scandinavia though and it started to flood all of this area, all of Doggerland around here and started to flood it.

And the ice also started to melt because the world was warming and that started to flood this area as well so the seas started to rise.

And so eventually about 6,000 years about sorry, about 9,000 years ago Great Britain becomes cut off from the rest of Europe because you can see that the water has risen up here.

So Great Britain looks very different during the Mesolithic Era to the Palaeolithic Era.

The Palaeolithic Era covered in ice, very cold, connected to Europe in the Mesolithic Era, Great Britain becomes an Island and starts to become much warmer.

Now in, how do we know that there were people in Britain during these times before I ask you this question so pay close attention.

How do we know that there were people? Well, one of the ways that we know that there were people moving into Britain at this time is that there are human remains, fossilised remains and some human remains that have been found.

So a jawbone for example, from an early human has been found in Britain the scientists know it's about 40,000 years old.

And that was found in Britain so we know that at least 40,000 years ago.

So during the Palaeolithic Era at least 40,000 years ago there would have been early humans in Britain.

So now let's test you to see if you can remember exactly when early humans were in Britain.

The earliest evidence of Homo sapiens in Britain is a jawbone that is about how old? 4,000 years old, 40,000 years old, 400,000 years old or 4 million years old? Choose your correct answer, you might want to write it out or you might just want to point.

Pause the video and do that now.

Okay, let's see if you were correct.

When is that jawbone? When was that jawbone from, can you remember? It was 40,000 years old, so well done if you said that.

We know that 40,000 years ago there were already Homo sapiens in Britain.

We've got evidence for that.

Now some of the tools started to improve during the Mesolithic Era.

These are some of the Mesolithic Era tools and you can see that what Homo sapiens started to do is they've started to actually shape these tools so often made out of a stone called Flint, which is quite easy to, it's quite easy to chip away so you can shape it into the shape that you want and you can also get it very sharp which can be useful for all sorts of things, cutting, hunting, scraping.

And you can see here that these artefacts, these artefacts in the Mesolithic Era have been shaped.

You can see where they're chipped away here to give them nice sharp edges and get in the right shape to be able to hold in your hand.

Here are some more artefacts.

So these are some bones, some animal bones but again you can see that they've been shaped.

So in the Mesolithic Era humans got much better at shaping and creating much better tools for what they needed.

So pause the video I'd like you to take a close look at these different artefacts and tools and I'd like you to write down what you think they might be used for.

What could each of these tools be used for? Pause the video and write down your ideas now.

I'd love to hear your ideas.

So when I was looking closely at these different artefacts I was looking at some of these stones and I think that these stones might have been used after, for example, after hunting an animal they might have used these stones to help to break down the animals so to cut the different parts of the animal away.

If they wanted the skin of the animal they might've used these to cut into the skin and then scrape at the skin to stop it from rotting.

So say they would have learned, Mesolithic humans would have learned how to process those animal skins that they needed.

They might have also used these tools to slice into the animal skin to give them the right shape that they need.

For example, if they wanted to make some sorts of clothes.

These bones on the other hand, they look like they have, they look like they have different uses.

This, this bone here in the middle looks bobbed so they, I think that this might have been used for some hunting because if it's bobbed in that way it's got these bits sticking out of it.

It means that if you throw that at an animal and it sticks in, it's difficult for it to come out because those bobs help it to stick in the animal.

I'd love to hear your different ideas for what these tools are.

I'm sure that you've got some interesting ideas for how these were used.

So now let's move to the Neolithic Era, the New Stone Age.

And this lasted from about 6,000 years ago to about four and a half thousand years ago.

So this is one of the more this is the New Stone Age and it lasted for a relatively short amount of time but this is where humans really started to develop.

One of the ways was through their much better tool use but it's what they use the tools for, okay? That's what really started to make the difference.

Now that tool that I just showed you it's my favourite artefact from all of history and it's because it marks a huge change in how humans behave and what they do.

It's a real game changer.

This is a sickle, okay? What do you think that this is for? Now you might think that this is a kind of weapon.

It might've been used to attack the humans or even animals but that's not what it is.

A sickle is used to chop down wheat, long grasses that we can eat.

So the humans would hold that sickle and they grabbed the wheat and they cut away.

And with that cycle you could very quickly cut lots and lots of wheat down.

So this was important because this is where humans first in the Neolithic Era humans first start farming.

And we're going to talk more about why farming was so important in a later lesson.

But as humans in the Neolithic Era started to develop those tools that could help them to farm it changed everything for humans.

One of the reasons is that if you're always moving around looking for an animal if you can't find an animal, you'll starve.

But there are lots of grasses around.

And if you have one of those sickles, you can cut down, spend an hour cutting down that, all of those, that wheat.

That could give you enough food to last you for a month or more.

So previously in the Palaeolithic Era humans were spending all of their time just looking for food.

They didn't have time for anything else.

They slept, they looked for food, they ate, repeat, every day, moving around constantly.

If you cut down a load of wheat one day and you suddenly have enough wheat to last you for a month or two humans then had lots of spare time, so they can develop other things like language and like the tools that they have and like the bones that they have.

And they have enough food that they can grow into much bigger tribes because there's enough food to go around.

And so discovering this sickle and how to make this sickle and discovering how to use wheat for food was a real game changer.

The other thing is not many of the animals wanted to eat that wheat 'cause it's too tough.

What you have to do is you have to take the wheat off, you have to grind it into flour, you have to mix that flour with water, you have to bake it on a fire to turn it into bread and other animals weren't really doing that it was a too difficult process that meant we didn't have any competitors.

So we didn't, all of a sudden we didn't have to worry about going around hunting for other, hunting other animals.

We could just use this wheat that nobody else was really trying to get, big game changer.

So how did it change? How did this farming change the way that people lived in the Neolithic Era? And you might want to talk about homes and farming and socialisation but I'd like you to write a paragraph now on how farming and humans, once they've got that sickle and they've discovered wheat, how did farming change the way that people started to live during the Neolithic Era? So pause the video and write down a paragraph to that now.

Okay, great work, well done.

Let's, I'm going to show you my answer now and let's see if you had some similar ideas to me of what you're talking about in terms of the Neolithic Era.

So I wrote, "during the Neolithic Era "humans made tools that allowed them to start farming.

"This meant that they could quickly gather enough wheat "and barley to last them for a long time.

"Humans didn't need to move around so much anymore "and so they built more permanent homes.

"The work they did also allowed them to talk more "and develop better social skills." So that's some of the changes that happened in the Neolithic Era and once humans were settling down, and building more permanent homes we start to get the first settlements, the first more permanent settlements and they start to grow and eventually they'll grow into sort of like towns and so the Neolithic Era really is that changing point in history where humans go from hunter gatherers wandering around with basic tools to the sorts of civilizations, the sorts of societies that we see today.

You've done awesome work today and I'm really impressed with you.

In our next lesson we're going to be learning a little bit more about the prehistory, about the importance of prehistoric artefacts and learning all about prehistory and I can't wait to see you then, bye bye.