Video-Enhanced Lesson

A media-enhanced lesson plan using selected segments from the THE HUMAN SPARK to teach how archeologists discover and examine artifacts and use them to formulate theories explaining how humans were able to advance beyond our now-extinct cousins the Neanderthals. (Grades 9-12)

These selected segments from THE HUMAN SPARK may used in the classroom alone or in conjunction with the lesson plan, Digging Up the Truth, to teach how archeologists discover and examine artifacts and use them to formulate theories explaining how humans were able to advance beyond our now-extinct cousins the Neanderthals.

Was the area that is now the coast of South Africa once an important site of innovation for early humans?

Take a look at the excavations at Scladina, a deep cave only recently discovered outside Liege, Belgium, where Neanderthals lived 100,000 years ago.

In this video, archaeologist Michel Toussaint describes how the first discovery of a Neanderthal skull in 1829 was ahead of its time.

When an ancient collapsed roof was found at the archaeological site Abri Castanet, Randall White was happy to try to pick up the pieces.

Veronica Waweru describes some of her game-changing research on ancient hunting and what it was like to work with our television crew.

Have you ever wondered about how archaeologists keep track of the tiny shards of bone or ancient tools they uncover at their dig sites?

Alan Alda learns that what had been believed to be a purposeful burial of a Neanderthal child now isn’t looking like such solid proof of ritualistic behavior.

Alan Alda vists the rock shelter of Abri Castanet in Southwest France where he is shocked to learn about some of our ancestors’ early behaviors.