Lesson · Grade 7 · Social Studies
Where Humans Began: Out of Africa
- Grade 7
- Social Studies
- 1 min 31 s
- British Columbia
- BC7-SS-01
On one world map built from simple polygons, Africa lights up as the home of the oldest Homo sapiens fossils, dated about 300,000 years ago, with the clues shown as a fossil bone and a strand of DNA. Pink arrows with dates then trace how small groups left Africa about 60,000 years ago and spread to Australia by about 50,000, Europe about 45,000, and across a land bridge into the Americas by about 15,000 years ago, ending on the recap that humans began in Africa and spread worldwide.
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In one sentence
The question this lesson answers
Where on Earth did the first humans live?
Scientists look for clues in ancient bones and in the DNA of people living today.
Transcript
What the lesson says
Where on Earth did the first humans live?
Scientists look for clues in ancient bones and in the DNA of people living today.
The oldest fossils of modern humans have all been found in Africa.
They show that our species, Homo sapiens, began there about 300,000 years ago.
For most of that time, people lived only in Africa.
Then, about 60,000 years ago, small groups began to move out of Africa into Asia.
They moved slowly, over many generations, following animals, plants and fresh water.
Along the coasts of southern Asia, people reached Australia by about 50,000 years ago.
Others moved north and west, reaching Europe about 45,000 years ago.
Over thousands of years, people spread across Asia, all the way to its cold north-east.
So much water was frozen in ice back then that the sea was lower, and dry land joined Asia to the Americas.
People crossed that land bridge and spread through the Americas by about 15,000 years ago.
DNA shows that every person alive today has family roots that reach back to Africa.
Humans began in Africa about 300,000 years ago, then slowly spread across the whole world.
Curriculum
Where this fits
- British Columbia, Grade 7
Social Studies, Ancient world to the 7th century: anthropological origins of humansBC7-SS-01
The outcomes and strands follow the British Columbia curriculum.
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