Big Era One: Panorama Unit

Why This Unit?

Have humans always been here on earth? Will we always be here? These are questions of central and enduring interest and importance. Human history is set on the stage of Planet Earth. We cannot understand our own history as a species during the time that we have been on earth without understanding the long-term physical and natural setting in which human history has taken place. It is a setting that all people share regardless of the differences between us that we so often emphasize.

Human evolution has occurred over a huge span of time when compared to the lifetime of any individual. Yet the time it has taken us to evolve into Homo sapiens, a species distinct from our predecessors and from other animals, is only the blink of an eye compared to the scale of astronomical and geological change. Understanding the vast scales of time within which Homo sapiens arose is critical to appreciating how little time it has taken us to develop into the most influential species in our planet’s history. Big Eras Two through Nine encompass the entire history of Homo sapiens – yet, together those eras cover only 1/6500 of 1% of the time span of Big Era One, the period before our species appeared on earth!

The lessons in this panorama unit highlight three issues that establish the context in which human history has taken place:

• Lesson 1 explores the scales of time in which the evolution of our universe, the earth within that universe, and humans on that earth has occurred. Through kinesthetic exercises, students compare the scale of such changes with scales of time to which they can relate from their own experiences. The purpose of the lesson is to develop students’ “chronological literacy.”
• Lesson Two examines how humans fit into the biological realm by distinguishing the physical characteristics that make us different from any other organism.
• Lesson Three further establishes our distinctive nature in terms of the cultural characteristics, notably language, that define us as uniquely human. This lesson sets the stage for Big Era Two, in which students explore how humans development of symbolic language led to the immense cultural changes that make up our history.