Children of the Past: Archaeology and the Lives of Kids
INTRODUCTION Did you know that kids in the past were a lot like you They played made things and did tasks around the house In fact if you were to meet N one of these children from the past it probably wouldn t be long before you'd be playing together and sharing stories about your favorite activities But children in the past also were different For example a lot of your a learning happens in school In the past kids mostly learned at home See And kids back then played but they also worked from a young age They learned to draw pictures make stone tools chase birds away from crops create clay pots and more They learned what they needed to know to live in their times Their labor was important to their families and also to the larger group they belonged to So how do we get to know these kids from the past We have some written records but not very many In Jamestown the first successful English settlement in what later became the United States people didn t even bother recording the birth of the first baby there We have other clues though Archaeologists can find out about children by studying the stuff they left behind It's interesting to think about what these kids looked like or what they wore But it's even more exciting to learn what they did From children playing in prehistoric caves to hardworking teens in an early colony to courageous kids escaping slavery let's explore the lives of some children from the
Archaeologist Mary Anna Richardson carefully works to reveal an artifact in Jamestown Virginia NY Archaeologists found this piece of a bottle at the Fort Mose site near Saint Augustine Florida Thousands of years ago people in many parts of the world made projectile points and other tools out of stone These flint tools come from North Africa and were made between six thousand and nine thousand years ago A student archaeologist digs at an excavation site at Fort Mose near Saint Augustine
CHAPTER 1 CAVE ROAMING KIDS Western Europe Twenty Thousand Years Ago 18 000 BCE A handprint found in an ancient cave in Spain The paintings are some of the oldest ever found dating back to about thirty thousand years ago CHILDREN OF THE PAST
Approximate Landmass in 18 000 BCE Ancient landmass andma Your father swings you up onto his shoulder You Ocean laugh and hang on to his thick hair while you kick your feet on his chest Your kicking makes him laugh You look over at your mother who carries your baby brother Together you walk toward a cave near your family's campsite When you enter the cave you call out so the echo of your voice rolls back to you Giggling you slide down off your father s shoulders and run a little way ahead You know where you re going What you might not notice are the footprints you leave in soft clay on the cave floor When you reach your destination you reach up and touch a small handprint outlined on the rock It's yours put there when you were a baby Now it's Brother's turn Your father holds a small rock hollowed out in the middle to make a bowl It is filled with paint that you watched him make this morning It's a mixture of charcoal powdered red rock and water Your mother holds Brother s hand against the cave wall and nods at you to help her hold it still and steady Brother coos as he feels the cool stone Your father carefully sucks some of the paint into a hollow bird bone and then blows through the bone to spray the paint in an outline around the baby s hand You laugh as some red color lands on your hand too You climb back onto your father's shoulders giving a quick tug on his beard as you clamber up As you ride out of the cave you drag your fingers along the ceiling above you leaving long trails of lines in the soft clay there When your father notices what you're doing he starts weaving from side to side as he walks Your patterns become wavy What fun Cave Roaming Kids
