Content Objective: I will be able to identify characteristics of the Paleolithic Era
Language Objective: I will be able to read and respond to questions in writing.
Learning Targets:
SS.07.712.05.03: Describe the history, interactions and contribution of various peoples and cultures that have lived in or migrated to the Eastern Hemisphere.
Resources you will need:
+ Leveled text (high and low)
Procedure:
1) Warm-up: Create a circle map with the topic of “the stone age”
2) Ensure each student receives appropriate text level
3) Students will silent read the text and answer the questions given in paragraph form. a.
How did the use of tools impact the lives of people during the Paleolithic era? b.
Why do you think communities were small during the Paleolithic Era? c.
What roles did men and women have during the Paleolithic Era? How is this different from our lives today? d.
How did people leave clues of how they lived during their lives?
4) Come back as a group and make a new circle map with the topic of “the stone age”

The earliest people lived during the Old Stone Age. This period of time is also called the
Paleolithic Era. The Paleolithic Era began more than 2,000,000 years ago. During this time, people were hunters and gatherers. This means that in order to find food, the Paleolithic people often had to move from place to place, hunting and gathering. Because of the lack of food and the constant moving, Paleolithic communities were usually very small. Also, these people usually died at a very early age because of hunger, disease, or injury.
Since these early people lived such dangerous lives they became quite smart. They developed tools th at made life easier for them.
A computer or smart phone is an example of modern-day tools. They made simple tools but they were able to use stones, sticks, bones and other natural items to create weapons for hunting, building and defense. When the
Paleolithic people had a successful hunt, they would use every part of the animal they killed.
They would use the meat for food, the skins for clothing, and the bones for tools or weapons.
If they were unable to find the shelter of a cave, they might also use the bones and skins to make simple huts.
Although these people lived over two million years ago, they left cave paintings behind to give us clues on how they lived. These paintings have helped us understand their daily lives and religious beliefs. In order to communicate, Paleolithic man developed a very simple language that usually consisted of simple grunts or babbles. Today we would say that their language was similar to the early language of a baby because they did not link sounds together to make words like modern humans.

Scholars know little about the religious beliefs of early people. Archaeologist (someone who studies the past and what people have left behind) have found graves that included food and artifacts. Many scientists think these discoveries are proof that the first human religions developed during the Stone Age.
Because populations were small, both men and women were important in these early societies. It is believed that men were probably the leaders of these small communities. The eldest man would usually be in charge until his death. At that point, power would move to the next oldest male. Women, however, had the most important roles during this time period.
They had the important role of carrying on life and for the most part they were more successful in finding food by “gathering”. They found nuts and berries while the men hunted.
Men were often unsuccessful in finding food so what food the women found became very important.

The Old Stone Age (Paleolithic Era)
The Old Stone Age (Paleolithic Era) is the time from the beginning of human existence until around 12,000 years ago. Why do we call this time in history the Stone
Age? During this time humans used stone to make tools and stone was used many times as part of the actual tool. Tools are objects that make our lives easier. A computer or smart phone is an example of modern-day tools. Paleolithic is a word that comes from the two Greek words palaios, meaning old, and lithos, meaning stone.
The first stone tools were used to meet people's three basic needs of food, shelter, and clothing. These were difficult times; there were no stores to buy food, and people had to cooperate in small groups to make clothing and shelter. To hunt for food, early humans formed spears, first by sharpening the ends of sticks, but later by attaching a sharp stone spear-tip to wood. A tool made up of more than one material is called a composite tool.
Flaking was one of the first uses of technology. Technologies are tools and also skills that make our lives easier. Flaking is an example of a Stone Age technology skill. Flaking involves using a hammer stone to form sharp edges on an object stone by striking it on its sides. By flaking early humans could sharpen spear and arrow tips to hunt prey.
As far as we know today, people have only been writing about their experiences for about 7,000 years. When people write about their existence, we call that history. But what about the time before writing, how can we tell the age of an object?
There are three ways to determine the date of an artifact:

1.
Extraction: digging down through layers of earth, the deeper the object, the older it is.
2.
Typology: studying the type of object. If the object is more complex, it is usually more recent, simple tools are usually older.
3.
Carbon-14 Dating: this is the measure of the amount of a substance called carbon-14 present in an object. This only works for living objects. When a living organism dies, it begins to loose carbon-14 in a predictable way we can measure and then determine the time the object was alive. Objects with less carbon-14 lived longer ago. Eventually a once-living object loses all of its carbon-14, so very old objects cannot be dated using this method.
These three methods only offer a reasonable guess as to the date of very old artifacts.
These are the tools of an archaeologist, one who studies objects from the past.
Was the world different in the Old Stone Age from our modern world? The answer is yes.
The earth's climate was very different. The world was a much colder place to live on than our modern world. Wild herds of animals roamed the land in search of food, which was scarce at that time. In order for Stone Age people to survive, they had to move with these herds of animals.
Old Stone Age people were always on the move. A person who moves from place to place is called a nomad. Because of their nomadic lifestyle, Old Stone Age people build temporary homes, rather than permanent homes. People travelled in small groups, we think these groups could have been extended family groups. Old Stone Age people had two ways of obtaining food, by hunting (usually a male job) and gathering (usually a female job). Gathering is finding wild berries and other plants to eat. We sometimes call these people hunter-gatherers.
There were not many humans at this time, and they were spread out, rather than living close together. Experts think there were no more than one million humans living during any time of the Paleolithic Era. That might sound like a lot of people, but today there are about seven billion people, 7,000 times more people than in the Paleolithic Era.
Archaeological evidence points to humans beginning in the continent of Africa, and later migrating to other continents.