• When you tape down your thumb, you’ll get a sense of how hard it would be to do many things if our hands were shaped differently. Even a simple task like placing a straw in a bottle becomes difficult!

Ask An Anthropologist

Ask An Anthropologist is an educational resource for students, teachers, parents, and life-long learners. We encourage anyone interested in anthropology to make use of its content.

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Becoming human brings together interactive multimedia, research and scholarship to promote greater understanding of the course of human evolution.

Two hands holding a straw without using thier thumbs

Thumbs Up

When you tape down your thumb, you’ll get a sense of how hard it would be to do many things if our hands were shaped differently. Even a simple task like placing a straw in a bottle becomes difficult!
Link Tools in the Stone Age

Chipping Away: Tools in the Stone Age

Since long ago, the survival of our ancestors has depended in part on technology. Even today, the shoes you put on and the car you drive are both built on previous discoveries. We can trace human technological developments way back to over three million years ago.
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A Brief History of History

What does it mean to be human? Take a look at the story of how we became…well…us. The search for our first ancestors who looked and acted like people today is the search for what it means to be human.
A crow perched on a rock looks over a pile of small tools

Tool test

humans have evolved a whole suite of specialized skills to help us survive. Perhaps the most important of these skills was our ability to make and use tools. Did you know that crows use tools, too?