As part of our Scavengers and Settlers topic, this week we have been learning the difference between Primary and Secondary historical sources and the way these sources are used to understand how people lived long ago.

Ask me for some examples of primary and secondary sources?

Later in the week, we used some historical evidence ourselves to help us investigate the past!

In groups we each looked at the skeleton and some artefacts from the oldest mummy ever found, a Prehistoric hunter, known as Otzi the Iceman. Our task was to use the evidence to piece together how he lived and how he might have died.

Each group looked at the photos of the artefacts and came up with ideas about Otzi's life. We then opened an envelope and revealed details that proved or disproved our theories. In this way, we experienced the difficulties that scientists and historians face when presented with artefacts and the challenges of discovering how people lived in the past.

Otzi and his possessions had been well preserved. We could tell he was a hunter because he wore animal skins and the fact that he carried a flint stone suggested he could make fire. We even discovered the remains of his last meal- bread, meat and herbs, as they had been preserved in his stomach!

Otzi's skeleton showed an arrow wound to the shoulder and a crack in the skull. Various ideas about the cause of his death were explored. Did the arrow cause him to fall, crack his skull and die? Of course, as we were not there at the time, we will never know the real truth, and this helped us to understand why there are sometimes several different versions of what happened long ago.