The First of Everything

Nury Vittachi, Step Cheung

• Publisher: WS EDUCATION
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9789813274518
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Early Childhood Education

Sam Jam sat in a school library and challenged the school community to ask him about the origin of anything at all — and pledged to use library resources to answer within 60 minutes. Children and adults delivered clever, funny, unexpected questions: Who owned the first pet dog? Who invented toilets? What was the first song? Were the first newspapers really made of rock? And who was the first human, anyway?

Seeking answers, he and his young assistants discovered remarkable true tales:

• The tamer of wolves
• The tape measure that reached the moon
• The first instant message
• The man who took a picture of a sound
• The first newspaper — which actually WAS made of rock!

And dozens more remarkable true stories.

The result is a fun story collection about the origins of a huge range of things — which also introduces young readers to the art and science of academic research. In these times of fake news, information overload, and too much homework, the ability to conduct fast, accurate research is one of the best skills any student can have — and you can learn it in these pages.

Contents:

• The Library Lunch Challenge
• Six Tales of Prehistoric People
• Eight Tales from the Dawn of History
• Seven Stories from a Seriously Long Time Ago
• Seven Stories from the Mediterranean's Golden Age
• Seven Tales from the New Calendar
• Seven Stories from a Modernizing World
• Seven Tales from Practically Yesterday
• The Art and Science of Research

Readership: Children 6–12 years old.
Key Features:

• One of the very few books on the "first of everything"
• Stories are presented in a fun and child-friendly format
• Makes the themes of research and history more accessible to children

Chapter

1

STORY 2

The First Humans

‘Who was the first person?’

Sally, 11

Wow, that’s a challenging question to tackle so early in this project.

With my scientist-philosopher hat on, I would say the answer
might be what some people call “The Universe” or “God” or the
“spirit of evolution” or what a famous scientist named Max Planck
called “The Matrix Mind” (which are probably all terms for the
same thing). Who knows for sure? We could argue that nature itself
should count as a sentient being, since it is organic and alive and
parts of it think moderately well, especially after a morning coffee!

But given her age, I think it’s likely that Sally wants to
know about the first person who was just like ourselves — so
let’s make that our focus.

To the library bookshelves!

To the library computers!

We find huge numbers of reports about “early humans” in
books, science magazines and on the web. (We’re looking up
“prehistory” and “anthropology”). They show pictures of hairy
creatures that don’t look like people at all, to be honest. To

10 The First of Everything

ordinary folk like you and me, they look more like varieties of apes.

So are the experts right? Or ordinary people?

Further reading and a discussion with teachers and other
members of the team reveals that the answer is both.

Specialists use the word “human” for many creatures
physically related to us. These beings may look ape-like, but
there are subtle signs in the shapes of their heads and other
parts of their bodies that show them evolving to become more
like us, so the experts are not wrong.

But most folk use the word “human” for people exactly
like us, which is also not an unreasonable point of view —
and probably what Sally meant.

So who were the first folk exactly like us? We found that
information easily too, both in books and on the Internet.

People who physically looked like us have been around
for at least 180,000 years. People who looked like us AND
thought and behaved and acted like us are much more
recent. (If you want to read about them, the first
group is called “anatomically modern humans,” and the
second group is called “behaviorally modern humans”).

The second group, the folk just like us, were
definitely widespread and active 40,000 years ago.
When did they first appear? Many specialists say it
was about 50,000 years ago, while others say there

Six Tales of Prehistoric People 11

are signs of sporadic appearances even before that.

We found some write-ups discussing the first individuals
who thought like us and had our story ready for the end of
the library lunch break.

The girl who saw what wasn’t there...

Her name was Seer. And she was a misfit. People thought
she was very odd, but they also found her intriguing.

In those days, people had labels rather than names. It’s
likely that Seer would have been called Seer or something similar,
because she would have seen things that other people didn’t.

Now this story would have happened about 50,000 years
ago, so we don’t have many details. All we know is that there
is plenty of evidence that a dramatic “cognitive development”
(that means an advancement in the way our brains processed
ideas) became widespread at that time. It moved through
members of a two-legged creature called Homo sapiens,
which is a scientific name for people like us.

Scientists think it would likely first have been noticed
in a child or a group of children.

What had Seer developed?

An imagination! Until then, if the people wanted to talk
about a buffalo, they would find one and point to it.

Seer, however, could sit at home and see one clearly in her
head. She could make a sound that signified “buffalo” and could
scratch lines into the ground that formed a picture of a buffalo.

12 The First of Everything

Scientists call this symbolic thinking,
because a sound or a picture or a gesture
symbolizes something which is not actually there.

As part of this development, Seer could also ponder
abstract ideas. Abstract concepts are things that are very real
and often very important, but you can’t pick them up and put
them in your pocket. Happiness is an example, and so are love
and friendship and loneliness and freedom and sorrow and hope.
Seer may have expressed these abstract ideas by using complex
language, or even by singing or dancing or painting.

When people died, others saw a still body. Seer saw a
missing soul. Her people started to have regular burial rituals.

She and others like her who came along would have had to
develop complex language to describe what was in their heads.
Seer likely grew up to become a shaman, which is an early
community’s person of wisdom. They often have the qu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: The Library Lunch Challenge
• Chapter 1: Six Tales of Prehistoric People
• Chapter 2: Eight Tales From the Dawn of History
• Chapter 3: Seven Stories From a Seriously Long Time Ago
• Chapter 4: Seven Stories From the Mediterranean’s Golden Age
• Chapter 5: Seven Tales From the New Calendar
• Chapter 6: Seven Stories From a Modernizing World
• Chapter 7: Seven Tales From Practically Yesterday
• Chapter 8: The Art and Science of Research