When students think about technology, they may envision images of computers, robots, and mini music players. However, technology also includes simple tools such as the digging sticks used by farmers in the Neolithic era and methods such as irrigation, the making of fire, and writing. By this definition technology includes any device and technique that increases human control and understanding of our human and physical environments. In this unit, students will consider how the earliest known advances in technology got started.

What Primary Sources Can Tell Us about Early Humans 
In addition to fossils and layers of soil, archaeologists depend on primary sources to help them learn about the time long ago that historians have classified as prehistoric; that is, a time before written records appeared. 

• Physical artifacts – Human and animal bones along with plant, animal, and marine fossils offer clues about what Earth and its inhabitants looked like millions of years ago. These, along with scraps of clothing; early tools such as hammer-stones, spear points, bone needles, and pieces of pottery, provide insight into what early peoples ate, wore, and used for tools.
• Images – Petroglyphs, rock paintings, and murals in early dwellings also help scholars learn about what mattered to early people, how they lived, and what they believed.  

 Primary Sources 

Ancient Rock Art

Saharan Rock Art

Paleolithic Art from the Cave of Lascaux, France

Prehistoric cave paintings, Ennedi Plateau, Tschad

In February 2005, Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations, called on Africa’s leaders to help protect and save Africa’s ancient rock art. “The rock art of Africa makes up one of the oldest and most extensive records on Earth of human thought,” he said. “It shows the very emergence of the human imagination. It is a priceless treasure. And it is irreplaceable.”

Experts agree that Africa contains the largest and most diverse collection of rock art on the planet. Across the continent, they estimate, there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of images painted or engraved on unprotected rocks, in cliff shelters, and below shallow overhangs. Many of these images, all thousands of years old, have not even been registered by scientists. Yet they are in danger of disappearing. In part these petroglyphs and pictures are subject to erosion by the elements. Changes in weather and temperature can fracture the surface of the rocks, fade the images on them, or cause those images to flake off. Yet this is only part of the problem. Another is that vandals, thieves, and tourists scratch their initials into prehistoric friezes, tear away big chunks of the rocks, or even throw soft drinks at the paintings. Dams, roads, power lines, railways, mines, and quarries, built too close to these international treasures, also pose a danger.

In 1991 African Rock Art, Paintings and Engravings on Stone—the first comprehensive illustrated book on African rock art—was published. Compiled by the Trust for African Rock Art (TARA), the book contains 400 color photographs and line drawings, many taken from sites that had never before been seen or documented. As a result of the preservation and education efforts by the United Nations and organizations like TARA, historians and archaeologists hope to make these valuable artifacts available for people to enjoy and study not just now, but for many millennia to come.

Map of Africa

 

 Background Information 

Examining Ancient Times through Ancient Art  

Until recently an excavation site in southern Namibia, known as Apollo 11, was believed to hold the oldest rock art in Africa. (The site was named by archaeologist Wolfgang Erich Wendt. He was excavating there in 1969 while he listened to news of the moon landing on the radio.) Stone slabs found at Apollo 11 are estimated to be between 26,000 and 28,000 years old. Since then archaeologists have found examples of rock art that are more than 30,000 years old. This means that rock art spanning the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic eras exist. Through these paintings and drawings, experts can see the transition from a time when people were armed with clubs, throwing sticks and arrows, hunting and fighting for survival, to a more civilized age in which people started to settle down in permanent farming villages.  

 

 Classroom Activity 

Create Your Own Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic “Rock Paintings”

1. Share with students one or more examples of rock paintings from the Cave of Lascaux. Referring to the chart on page 96 of their textbook, ask students which era the painting they are looking at comes from (Paleolithic). Encourage students to focus on what they know about that particular era to help them determine whether the images confirm or contradict what they have learned. For example, scenes from the Paleolithic Era often show animals roaming free or people hunting them rather than domesticated animals or people farming.

2. Distribute to each child a copy of the rock painting found on page 32 of your Primary Sources Handbook.Again referring to page 96 of their textbook, ask students which era (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, or Neolithic) this image comes from (Neolithic). Ask students how the image on this page compares with the earlier picture(s) that they looked at from Lascaux. Have students compare and contrast the art work, taking into consideration what they know about these two time periods.   

3. Organize students into three teams and assign each a different era from the chart on page 96 of their textbook. Suggest that subgroups within their teams should focus on one of the three categories in the chart (arts and crafts, obtaining food, and adapting to surroundings). Distribute art supplies (crayons, markers, and drawing paper to the class. Then direct students to create drawings in “rock art” style that illustrate their topic and time period. Encourage team members to use their section of the chart, relevant pages of their textbook, and other reference sources to complete their drawings.  

4. Suggest that students share their drawings with classmates. Then help them create a bulletin board display of the three eras studied, with a separate section for each era. Have students compare the eras and discuss with them the distinctions they see in the various categories.