The La Brea Tar Pits (now located within the boundaries of the city of Los Angeles).  The pits preserve the remains of plants and animals such as horses, woolly mammoths and mastodons, bison and sabre-toothed cats from about 40,000 to 8,000 years ago; preserving intact a remnant of the pre-historic past.  We don't study that far back in this course!

• Read chapter 1 in the textbook. Remember in this unit 1 of the course, we are focusing on pre-history (that means before urban civilization developed).
• Read my Pre-History Notes.
• Study the Questions to Consider and the Key Terms for the Unit.
• Post (or respond) your thoughts/ideas about this unit's reading and assignment in the Blackboard online discussion forum. Do not post your assignment there.
• Submit the Required Pre-History paragraph.

• Read Professor Campbell's notes on The Origins of Religion.
• Read Mark Kane's information about prehistoric Stone Circles.
• Listen to some further information for this unit as a mp3 file.  You can also read the information as a txt file.

• The Human Family Tree - Naked Science - National Geographic Channel
• NATURE | Dogs That Changed the World
• And Man Created Dog: A National Geographic Presentation
• Neanderthal 1/2 - Discovery Channel 2012 (Full)
• Guns, Germs, and Steel, Part One:
• The Agricultural Revolution: Crash Course World History #1
• Stories From the Stone Age - 1 - Daily Bread
• Stories From the Stone Age - 2 - Urban Dream
• Stories From the Stone Age - 3 - Waves of Change
• Cosmological Time Scale 1
• It's not really a video, but Civilisations is a kind of interactive timeline of world empires.
• For extra credit please suggest to your instructor a relevant video for this unit of the course. Send the title of the video, the url and a brief explanation of why you find the video interesting and applicable to the material that is being studied in this unit.

• Take the short 5-point quiz for chapter 1. Log into Blackboard and look under "Chapter Quizzes." You have five minutes to complete each quiz (multiple-choice questions).
• For 50 points maximum extra credit, write a one-page paper, How did the work of Mary Leakey contribute to our knowledge of early hominids and an understanding of human evolution?
• For extra credit, please suggest a relevant website for this unit of the course.  Send the title of the site, the url and a brief explanation why you find the information interesting and applicable to the material being studied this unit.