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In Search of Human Origins, Part II

Classroom Activity

Objective
To look for trends in height data of North American boys from 1880 and 1960.

• copy of "Still Evolving After All These Years" student handout (PDF or HTML)

1. Although some students may think that human evolution has stopped, we are in fact still evolving. Humans today are significantly larger than even two generations ago.

2. To give students an opportunity to see for themselves how humans are evolving, copy and distribute the "Still Evolving After All These Years" student handout. Discuss the significance of the data in the charts.

Student answers will vary. Some reasons for humans to increase in size over the past 100 years include improvements in vitamins, nutrition, and health care. To confirm some of these data, we could look at the sizes of such everyday items as furniture, the height of doorways, clothing sizes, etc.