Long, Long Ago: How We Know What Happened Before Pictures

Nobody had a camera 20,000 years ago. Nobody could write a diary either — writing hadn't been invented yet! So how do we know that people back then hunted mammoths, painted on cave walls, and cooked around fires? Detectives called archaeologists dig up clues in the ground and piece the story together, like a giant puzzle.

- What 'history' and 'prehistory' mean - Who archaeologists are and what clues they look for - One amazing real clue: cave paintings in France that are over 30,000 years old - How to think like an archaeologist using everyday objects

History means the time after people started writing things down — so we can read what happened. Prehistory means the time BEFORE writing was invented, which was a very, very long time — writing is only about 5,000 years old, but people have been alive for hundreds of thousands of years! For most of human time on Earth, nobody was writing anything down at all. So how do we learn about prehistory? We use clues instead of words.

An archaeologist is a scientist who carefully digs in the ground to find old objects people left behind — bones, tools, pottery, and even old campfire ashes. They dig very slowly and carefully, a little bit like a dentist cleaning teeth, because breaking a clue by accident means losing information forever. Once they find something, they study it closely: how old is it? What was it used for? What does it tell us about how people lived?

A single old bone with cut marks on it can tell scientists that people used stone tools to cut meat. A pile of ash and burnt rocks tells us people made fires to cook and stay warm. A tiny bead made from a shell tells us people cared about decorating themselves, even tens of thousands of years ago. Each clue is like one puzzle piece — archaeologists collect thousands of pieces from all over the world to build our picture of what life was like long, long ago.