Do you learn anything about the period in school? Such as the stone tools, where they are found, when they were used, etc.
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For example in Korea, we learn about the distribution of specific stone tools, where are the largest stone tool archaeological sites in the Korean peninsula, the difference between “lithic reduction” (rough stones) and “ground stones”,
plus the difference between neolithic (agriculture) and paleolithic period (hunger and gatherer, shell mounds, etc)
* the fact that some pre-historic people used shell money
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plus the fact that “People inhabited the Korean peninsula for more than xxx,000 years” (with a slightly nationalistic vibe in it)
etc.
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Is it similar in other countries, such as the US?
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What do you remember about your history class in this regard? What did you learn at which school level (grade school, middle school, high school, university etc)?
25 comments
In my experience (I’m 22) we learned very little. Most of our history instruction starts around the First Agricultural Revolution
Fairly little, my first world history classes pretty much picked up at the 4 main river valley civilizations. We only covered the late neolithic era as a means of setting up the bronze age.
I learned most of that in elementary school with a little bit in middle school. It wasn’t a major topic but definitely remember some lessons on it. Usually in my early science courses actually as we would make those tools and learn how they lived.
What I recall learning in middle and high school was mostly the origin of man, migration patterns, what led to settlements and eventually to civilizations.
College got much more specific, that’s what college is for.
almost nothing, we did all of that stuff in science classes. History classes for us started with the early civilizations — paleolithic and neolithic were in environmental science classes.
we did a little “prehistory” — stuff like the use of fire, use of tools, evolution of homo sapiens, but very cursory.
Very little. If you were to go by what we were exposed to growing up, the human world started with Rome and then really began after the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. We did learn about dinosaurs though, everybody loves dinosaurs.
who needs [**school learnin’**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eIY4r2LHpA)?
My school had Ancient Civilization as a history course. Got to learn about all that kind of stuff
This is more anthropology and paleontology than history since those societies didn’t leave any written records, just artifacts.
Absolutely nothing. This would have been covered in Life Science or Biology instead, with the evolution of man.
History class would start with ancient civilizations, like the Babylonians or Egyptians.
Not much of a nationalistic vibe when talking about indigenous people here, considering the USA’s treatment of them. Plus humans only crossed into North America 15k-30k years ago, so the history is shorter.
Very little. Specifics usually starts in bronze age
I just want to interject and say that those periods are not really in the domain of “history” since history is typically the study of recorded history. The study of these periods really belongs in some kind of anthropology class.
We did (science, social science) but not as part of history class for the most part as anything before recorded history would be considered pre-history.
It wasn’t uncommon to touch upon things like trade, nomadic societies, stone tools, burial rituals, cave art, etc as *part* of other courses though.
I do remember learning about mound builders in Ohio, where I grew up. We have some spectacular mounds there.
I don’t remember anything about the Paleolithic vs. Neolithic periods in Ohio, perhaps because the archeological evidence from the Neolithic period was sparse. I do remember learning about the agricultural revolution in the Middle East as part of the history of Western Civilization. I didn’t learn much if anything about similar agricultural revolutions in other parts of the world.
In my 6th grade history class, our teacher covered ancient/prehistoric humans pretty substantially. Tools, lifestyles, and society were covered to some extent, and we even had a group assignment where we had to draw a picture of a specific prehistoric human species, such as Homo Erectus, Homo Habilis, and Neanderthal.
In a college history of architecture class I took, the first chapter was about Paleolithic and Neolithic structures, such as Stonehenge and Newgrange.
Before college, we at least got the basics. Not *all* the details, but enough to be informed.
I ended up getting a history degree in college, so it’s a little difficult to separate the details I learned in high school from the details I learned in college. But at least I learned the general ideas in high school.
Enough that not much surprised me when I got to college, anyway. I wasn’t taught *all* the details (gotta protect the children from unpleasant facts!) but the rough outline of that history was pretty well explained.
I don’t think most people can recall 80% of the specifics they learned in school.
They made stone tools and hunted wooly mammoths. We also learned they came over on a land bridge from Asia. That’s about it really
It’s going to vary wildly from state to state and even school to school because of the structure of our education system. Personally, I learned very surface level stuff about origins of humanity and humans migrating across Beringia and some of the early civilizations in the Americas
My school actually had a pretty in-depth study of neolithic peoples when I was in elementary school. I don’t remember too much of it, seeing as this was almost 20 years ago, but I remember learning about the Clovis and pre-Clovis peoples in North America, Skara Brae in Scotland, and we took a field trip to Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Washington County, PA. It’s supposedly the oldest site of human habitation in the New World.
We didn’t touch on it too much after fifth grade, though.
*very* little. In world history we do a tiny bit of it, but it’s in like the first two weeks of high school and nothing after that. Maybe it differs from place to place but that was my experience. I remember I liked it because I liked the illustrations of early tools and such but there wasn’t much of it
We studied it a ton. Though I remember very little of it (I could not be less interested in early human development). I would say it wasnt the majority of study but was one of the largest parts
Fairly little in middle school or high school (though my memory sucks so that doesn’t mean much). However, I studied archaeology in college and got my Bachelors in Anthropology so I studied for a good 2-3 years on this very topic plus various Native American tribes.
For the most part
Do you mean the time period when Jesus rode on dinosaurs before the flood a few thousand years ago?
Really we learned a little bit in science class in middle school mostly. By the time we were in high school science classes were more specific like biology and chemistry and history classes were more focused on closer dates.