Loading...
Hello there, and welcome to today's history lesson.
I'm Mr. Moss.
I'm really passionate about history, and I'm also really looking forward to teaching you.
With you today, you need to bring your looking eyes, your listening ears, and your thinking brains.
As well as that, having something to write with and write on and someone or something to talk to would also be really helpful.
All right then, let's get straight into today's history lesson.
In today's history lesson, we're going to be looking at early explorers and their boats.
The outcome is, I can explain what an explorer is and how early explorers travelled.
We're specifically going to be looking at how early explorers used boats.
Here are our key words for today's lesson.
My turn, your turn.
Explorer.
Brilliant.
Hollow, canoe.
Excellent.
Thank you for saying those back to me.
Keep an eye and an ear out for those key words as they're really important in today's learning.
Let's have a think about what these words mean then.
An explorer is a person who travels to a place they have never been before.
So they go somewhere new or unfamiliar to them.
I wonder if you've ever explored somewhere before.
Hollow, early boats were hollow because they had an empty space inside them.
And we are going to be looking at some early human boats today that are like hollowed-out tree trunks that have had a hollow and empty space cut out from the inside of them.
And finally, a canoe.
A canoe is a narrow boat that is used with a paddle.
It means that humans can travel on water.
So today, we are going to be looking at how early humans explored, and we are going to consider one of the ways in which they explored using a canoe.
So we are looking at early explorers and their boats, specifically that type of boat called a canoe.
We are going to begin by looking at what an explorer is, and then we're going to consider how early explorers travelled, how they got to where they needed to get to.
So let's look at what an explorer is then.
Explorers are people who travel to places they have never been before, so they are people who are going to new and unfamiliar places.
That's right, anybody can be an explorer.
I love to discover new places.
I wonder if you have discovered any new places or been an explorer before.
Ever since history began, human beings have always moved around and explored new places, and we are going to be looking at some of the reasons why humans have needed to become explorers.
I wonder why humans have always moved around? Hmm, a good question.
Why did early explorers, so the earliest human explorers, want to explore new places? Hmm.
So let's ponder these two questions for a moment.
I wonder why humans have always moved around, and why did early explorers want to explore new places? Perhaps they needed to.
I wonder if you have some ideas to answer these questions already.
Have some thinking time.
Brilliant.
So let's see if we can answer this question.
Explorers are people who travel to places that they know well, that they have never been to before, or that they know a little bit.
Complete that sentence for me now.
Off you go.
Great job.
If you picked B, you would have been correct.
Let's complete the sentence then.
Explorers are people who travel to places that they have never been to before, not that they know well or not that they even know a little bit.
This is new and unfamiliar territory for these explorers.
All humans need food, water, shelter, and places to be safe.
Early humans moved around mostly to find the things they needed to survive.
And we can see here on our left an image, an illustration of an early human hunting.
The earliest humans needed food, water, shelter, and places to be safe.
The places that they lived in might not always have been able to provide these things, so that is why they had to move around and become explorers.
It helped them to survive.
So they hunted for food, looked for water, and found wood to make fires or build shelters with.
And this might have meant exploring to find these things like food, water, and wood for fire and shelters.
They might not have found these things in the places they were currently living, so they would have had to go to new and unfamiliar places and become explorers.
Sometimes humans were also forced to move, not because they were looking for things, but because they had to escape from dangers such as wild animal attacks.
So we've looked at a number of reasons here as to why humans became explorers, to look for things like food and water or because they were forced to move to keep themselves out of danger.
Can you choose three reasons why early humans moved around? Let's read the reasons now.
To hunt for food, to find wood for fires, to go on holiday, and to look for water.
Choose the three reasons why early humans moved around now from the learning that we have done in this lesson so far.
Off you go.
Excellent job, team.
You've clearly been listening really, really well.
So our three reasons here are to hunt for food, to find wood for fires to keep them warm, not to go on holiday, that is not why early humans became explorers, but to look for water.
These are those necessary things for survival, and this is why humans had to move around and become explorers.
So for our practise task now, I'd like us to choose one of the human needs below to draw.
Those human needs are water, shelter, food, and safety.
Can your learning partner guess which one you have drawn? Take some time now to choose your human need, draw it, and then see if your partner can get it.
Off you go.
Brilliant job.
Can you show me what you've drawn now? Excellent.
I can see some people that have drawn some water.
I can see some people that have drawn some little huts and caves like shelter.
I can see people that have drawn different types of food.
And I can also see people that have tried to draw humans huddled together for safety.
Remember, these are four necessary things that humans need to survive and are those needs that led to humans, early humans, having to move around and become explorers.
Great job.
You could always have a go at drawing another one and sharing with your partner as well if you'd like, but let's move on to part two of our practise task now.
I'd like you to discuss these questions with your partner.
Which need, from water, shelter, food, and safety, do you think is the most important? And why do you think it is most important? You could use the sentence scaffold, "I think (hums) is most important because it (hums)." So make sure you're giving a nice expanded sentence with that "because" to give a reason.
Talk to your partner now.
Which of these do you think is the most important, and why? Off you go.
Excellent.
I'm incredibly impressed with lots of our reasoning and full sentences there.
So we were asked to discuss these questions.
Which of those needs do we think is most important, and why we think it's most important? Here are some examples that I'd heard.
"I think food is the most important because we need to eat every day to be healthy." So someone drew an apple.
This person here says, "True, but in the past I think shelter was important too.
People didn't have houses like we have today." So to stay out of the elements and weather, they would have needed shelter.
I love these children's reasoning.
They've chosen their answer, and they've backed it up with their thoughts, something that's really important for us to do, particularly as historians.
Great job.
So we've considered what an explorer is and why the earliest humans had to become explorers.
Now we're going to look at how these early explorers travelled.
Early explorers travelled great distances across land.
And the way in which they travelled was mainly by walking, and they walked together in family groups for protection.
Here on the left, we have an illustration of early humans walking, perhaps in their family group, walking a long distance, exploring to look for those things we considered in the last learning cycle, food, water, shelter.
It was very tiring, and they had to walk great distances often to find these things and to explore for them.
Can you imagine having to walk such great distances? They didn't have cars and other forms of transport like we have today.
This would have been extremely exhausting and difficult.
We are now going to look at a form of early transport that explorers would have used.
Look carefully at this image.
This is a reconstructed, my turn, your turn, canoe.
This is a modern picture of the type of canoe that early humans may have used.
This canoe is made from a tree trunk.
Early explorers learned how to hollow, hollow tree trunks to make canoes so they could travel on water to explore and not just have to be on land.
When you hollow something out, you cut out the inside of it to leave a space.
Humans, early humans, would have used tools made of rock like flint or animal bones in order to hollow out and carve out these tree trunks.
This here is a modern recreation of what one of those canoes would have looked like, and it allowed the early human explorers to travel on water.
So true or false? True or false.
Early explorers learned to travel on water.
True or false? Off you go.
Brilliant.
This is absolutely true.
I wonder if we can now pick a justification for our answer.
Just like we justified our answers earlier, we now need to justify why we said true or false.
They used plastic to make canoes, or they used tree trunks to make canoes? Pause the video now and select the correct justification.
Off you go.
Brilliant job.
Did they use plastic? Absolutely not.
The earliest humans didn't have access to plastic.
They would have used tree trunks to make their canoes, just like the modern recreation of an ancient canoe that we saw in the previous slide.
And remember, they would have hollowed out, cut out a space in these tree trunks, using stone tools like flint or animal bones, tools made from animal bones or antlers.
So this is the Pesse canoe.
It is over 10,000 years old.
This is from the prehistoric age.
Look at the photo of it.
This is what was called a dug-out canoe.
The reason it was called a dug-out canoe is because it is made from a tree trunk that has been dug out and hollowed out so that a human could stand or sit and paddle along in it so an early explorer could use it to travel on water.
This canoe was found in the Netherlands, and it shows us, as archaeologists and historians, how early humans would have travelled on water.
You can see that this canoe still looks like a hollow tree trunk, and this is what archaeologists and historians believe that it is.
It is made of Scotch pine, so the tree that was cut down is a Scotch pine, and it was then hollowed out.
This is an image of the canoe.
The canoe itself is almost three metres long and about 40 centimetres wide.
The reason why this 10,000-year-old canoe was so well preserved was because it was found in a peat bog.
As I said, it was found in the Netherlands when they were digging up an area to create a new motorway.
You can actually go and see it today in a museum, and it's been very well preserved.
This is one of the oldest recorded canoes found in the world.
It is an artefact or source that we can use to tell how ancient people would have explored on water.
Can you see that it looks like a hollowed-out tree trunk? So which two of these types of transport were used by the earliest explorers, these people that were going to new and unfamiliar places? Did they use walking, bicycles, or canoes? Which of these two were types of transport used by early explorers? Select the correct ones now.
Off you go.
Good job, historians.
Well, we've looked at two in today's lesson to show how earliest explorers travelled.
They would walk great distances in their family groups, which would have been incredibly tiring.
We also have evidence of them using canoes.
We have the Pesse canoe, that 10,000-year-old canoe which is beautifully preserved, that hollowed-out tree trunk that a person could have used to explore and travel on water.
However, we have no evidence of early explorers using bicycles.
This is a far more modern invention and creation, and the earliest explorers would not have been able to use bicycles to explore and go to new and unfamiliar places.
So our two ways or two types of transport used by the earliest explorers are walking long distances and also canoeing, using that paddle and that canoe to travel on water.
Wow, we've learned so much in both of our learning cycles today.
In this learning cycle, we've been in particular thinking about how the earliest explorers travelled.
I now want you to show me what you've learned in this lesson.
Can you match the keywords from this lesson to the correct definitions? Our keywords are, my turn, your turn, explorer, canoe, hollow.
And our definitions are, something that has a large empty space inside of it, a narrow boat that is used with a paddle, and a person who travels to a place they have never been before, somewhere new and unfamiliar.
Could you match our keywords now to their definitions? Show you know what they mean.
Off you go, team.
Brilliant job.
Excellent.
Let's see how you've done then.
So an explorer is a person who travels to a place they have never been before.
And remember, since the beginning of history, humans have been exploring.
They've had to move from place to place to find the things that they need to survive or to escape dangers, so they've had to move to new places.
A canoe is a narrow boat that is used with a paddle.
And remember, we have that evidence of the Pesse canoe, one of the oldest canoes in the world, about 10,000 years old, that is made from a hollowed-out tree trunk.
And finally, hollow, something that has a large empty space inside of it, like that Pesse canoe that was that hollowed-out tree trunk that had that space carved out of it.
So we know that explorers would have used hollowed-out canoes.
The earliest explorers would have used these to go and find new places.
So today, we've been looking at early explorers and their boats.
An explorer is a person who travels to a place they have never been before.
Early human explorers needed to move around to find food, water, shelter, and also safety from dangers.
The earliest explorers travelled by walking long distances or sometimes in boats called canoes.
The Pesse canoe is an early example of a canoe made from a hollow tree trunk, so it's had that space carved out of it.
Keep up the great history learning, and I'll see you again soon.