穴居人、火、燧石和兒童巫師

Students will learn about primitive human usage of fire.  Many thousands of years of using fire without being able to actually make fire. Over time humans came to understand how to make fire, but in the beginning hunting and gathering clans left young children behind to collect wood and stoke the fires so that the fires would never go out. In the story I call "The World's First Hypothesis" such a child is fascinated by the different flame colors and guesses these are caused by the burning wood. He tries to carefully gather wood selectively to test his hypothesis. As is often the case in science he was wrong. BUT through persistence he discovers the actual mechanism at work. I have shared this mixture of archaeology, reasoning, speculation and story telling with young audiences in classroom in both New Jersey and Virginia. IT is an elementary school-age child favorite.