History · Unit 1
Prehistory and Early Humans
From the Stone Age to the first farmers
Almost all of human history happened before anyone wrote anything down, which means this unit is built from a different kind of evidence: bones, tools, hearths and paint on cave walls. There are no names and no dates you can quote, only patterns.
The turning point it builds towards is farming. Once people could grow food rather than follow it, they could stay put, store a surplus and support people who did something other than find food - and every later unit in this subject rests on that change.
This unit breaks down into 20 short steps and 120 questions, starting at difficulty 1 and building to 3. Below you can see exactly what it covers, how the path is structured, and worked examples with explanations.
- Steps
- 20
- Questions
- 120
- Difficulty
- 1-3
What this unit covers
- The Stone Age
- Tools and Fire
- Cave Art and Beliefs
- The First Farmers
- Early Humans
Where this fits
The start of the History track, and the direct set-up for The First Civilizations.
Where people slip
The Stone Age was not a short prelude. It covers well over ninety-five per cent of the human story, and the periods with writing are the recent exception rather than the norm.
How the unit is structured
Prehistory and Early Humans runs as 20 short steps that unlock in order. 15 are practice rounds and 5 are challenge rounds that pull together everything before them. Questions start at difficulty 1 and climb to 3 as you progress.
Challenge rounds
Example questions
30 real questions from this unit, with the answer and the reason behind it, grouped by what they practise. There are 120 in the unit altogether.
Cave Art and Beliefs
- Picture questionLevel 1
1. 🐂 Prehistoric people covered cave walls with pictures like this. What did they paint most often?
- Wild animalscorrect
- Cars and roads
- Tall castles
- Written words
Most cave paintings show wild animals such as horses, bison, deer and mammoths, which mattered to hunters.
- Choose all that applyLevel 2
2. Which of these were commonly shown in prehistoric cave paintings? (Select all that apply.)
- Horsescorrect
- Bisoncorrect
- Deercorrect
- Smartphones
Cave artists painted the wild animals they knew, such as horses, bison and deer, long before writing existed.
- Fill the blankLevel 2
3. Stonehenge is built from huge standing stones. A large stone monument like this is called a ____.
- megalithcorrect
- pyramid
- castle
- temple
A megalith is a very large stone used to build a monument, and Stonehenge is one of the most famous examples.
- Multiple choiceLevel 2
4. The famous Palaeolithic cave paintings of Lascaux and Chauvet, dominated by images of animals, are found in which modern country?
- Francecorrect
- Spain
- Germany
- Italy
Lascaux and Chauvet in France hold some of the best-preserved Ice Age cave art, mostly depicting large animals such as horses and aurochs.
- Spell itLevel 2
5. Spell the name of the cave in northern Spain that is famous for its painted bison.
Answer: Altamira
The Altamira cave in Spain is well known for its colourful Stone Age paintings of bison.
- Guess the numberLevel 3
6. The great sarsen stone circle at Stonehenge was raised in roughly which year? (use a negative number for BCE)
Answer: -2500 BCE
The large sarsen trilithons at Stonehenge were erected around 2500 BCE, as the Neolithic gave way to the Bronze Age.
Early Humans
- Match the pairsLevel 2
7. Match each early human species to what it is known for.
Answer: Homo habilis = Made the first stone tools; Homo erectus = First to control fire; Neanderthals = Lived in Ice Age Europe; Homo sapiens = Modern humans today
Each of these human species is remembered for a key step, from the first tools to modern humans.
- Multiple choiceLevel 2
8. Which early human species is credited with making the first simple stone tools?
- Homo habiliscorrect
- Homo sapiens
- Neanderthals
- Homo erectus
Homo habilis, whose name means 'handy man', is linked to the earliest known chipped stone tools.
- Fact or fibLevel 3
9. Most people whose ancestry lies outside Africa carry a small percentage of Neanderthal DNA.
Answer: True
Interbreeding left roughly 1 to 2 percent Neanderthal DNA in the genomes of many present-day non-African populations.
- Fill the blankLevel 3
10. Known mainly from DNA recovered in a Siberian cave, the ____ were an archaic human group related to Neanderthals.
- Denisovanscorrect
- Australopithecines
- Cro-Magnons
- Homo habilis
The Denisovans were identified largely from genetic material found at Denisova Cave and interbred with the ancestors of some modern populations.
- Guess the numberLevel 3
11. Roughly how many years ago did Homo sapiens, our own species, first appear?
Answer: 300000 years ago
The earliest known Homo sapiens fossils are about 300000 years old, found in Africa.
- Odd one outLevel 3
12. Three of these were large Ice Age animals that died out as the world warmed. Which is the odd one out because it still lives today?
- Reindeercorrect
- Woolly rhinoceros
- Cave bear
- Giant deer (Irish elk)
The woolly rhinoceros, cave bear and giant deer all went extinct around the end of the Ice Age, whereas reindeer still live in the far north.
The First Farmers
- Fact or fibLevel 2
13. Because wood was scarce on Orkney, the houses at Skara Brae contain furniture such as beds and dressers made from stone.
Answer: True
With few trees available, the villagers built shelves, beds and box-like dressers from flat stone slabs, which still survive today.
- Fill the blankLevel 2
14. The change from hunting and gathering to farming is known as the Neolithic ____.
- Revolutioncorrect
- Renaissance
- Reformation
- Migration
The shift to farming in the New Stone Age was so transformative that historians call it the Neolithic Revolution.
- Guess the numberLevel 2
15. Roughly how many years ago did people first begin farming?
Answer: 12000 years ago
Farming began around 10000 BCE, about 12000 years ago, in a region of the Middle East called the Fertile Crescent.
- Match the pairsLevel 2
16. Match each thing early farmers raised or grew to what it gave them.
Answer: Sheep = Wool; Cattle = Milk; Dog = Hunting help; Wheat = Bread
Early farmers kept animals and grew crops to provide food, clothing and help with work.
- Build the sentenceLevel 3
17. Build the sentence explaining a key social effect of farming.
Answer: food surpluses allowed some people to specialise
Because farmers could grow more food than they needed, some people could specialise as potters, priests or leaders instead of producing food.
- Choose all that applyLevel 3
18. Select the changes that the shift to farming brought to human societies.
- Storable food surplusescorrect
- Larger, permanent settlements
- Greater social inequality and private propertycorrect
- A more mobile, nomadic way of life
Farming produced storable surpluses that supported permanent villages, growing populations and new social hierarchies, replacing mobile foraging.
The Stone Age
- Build the sentenceLevel 1
19. Put the words in order to describe how hunter-gatherers lived.
Answer: Hunter gatherers moved around to find food
Hunter-gatherers moved from place to place to follow animals and find wild plants to eat.
- Fill the blankLevel 2
20. The middle period of the Stone Age is called the ____.
- Mesolithiccorrect
- Palaeolithic
- Neolithic
- Iron Age
The Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age, came between the Palaeolithic and the Neolithic.
- Multiple choiceLevel 2
21. The Stone Age is divided into three periods. Which one is the oldest?
- Palaeolithiccorrect
- Mesolithic
- Neolithic
- Bronze Age
The Palaeolithic, or Old Stone Age, is the earliest and by far the longest part of the Stone Age.
- Put in orderLevel 2
22. Order these subdivisions of the Stone Age from earliest to latest.
Answer: Palaeolithic -> Mesolithic -> Neolithic
The Stone Age runs from the long Palaeolithic, through the transitional Mesolithic, to the farming Neolithic.
- Guess the numberLevel 3
23. Roughly in which year was Gobekli Tepe first built? (use a negative number for BCE)
Answer: -9500 BCE
Construction at Gobekli Tepe began around 9500 BCE, thousands of years before Stonehenge or the Egyptian pyramids.
- Odd one outLevel 3
24. Three of these give a numerical age. Which is the odd method out, telling us only the order of layers?
- Stratigraphycorrect
- Radiocarbon dating
- Dendrochronology
- Potassium-argon dating
Stratigraphy shows only which layers are older or younger, while the others provide absolute numerical ages.
Tools and Fire
- Multiple choiceLevel 1
25. Stone Age hand axes were mostly shaped from which material?
- Flint (a hard stone)correct
- Iron
- Plastic
- Gold
Early people chipped hard stones such as flint into sharp-edged hand axes for cutting and chopping.
- Build the sentenceLevel 2
26. Put the words in order to make a true sentence about fire.
Answer: Fire gave early humans warmth and light
Fire gave early humans warmth and light, and it also let them cook food and keep animals away.
- Fact or fibLevel 2
27. Homo erectus is thought to have been one of the first human species to control and use fire.
Answer: True
Evidence suggests Homo erectus used fire hundreds of thousands of years ago for warmth, cooking and protection.
- Fill the blankLevel 3
28. Extracting metal from its ore by heating it to high temperatures is called ____.
- smeltingcorrect
- polishing
- knapping
- tanning
Smelting uses heat to separate a metal such as copper or iron from the rock of its ore.
- Guess the numberLevel 3
29. Bronze working began in the Near East in roughly which year? (use a negative number for BCE)
Answer: -3300 BCE
Bronze metallurgy developed in the Near East around 3300 BCE, marking the start of the Bronze Age there.
- Match the pairsLevel 3
30. Match each prehistoric age to a material that characterises its tools.
Answer: Palaeolithic = Chipped flint; Neolithic = Polished stone; Bronze Age = Copper-tin alloy; Iron Age = Smelted iron
Toolmaking moved from chipped flint, to ground and polished stone, to cast bronze, and finally to smelted iron.
Where these questions come from. Each unit starts as a plan of the concepts it should cover and the difficulty it should span. Questions are written against that plan with AI assistance, then checked by a validator that rejects anything without a single defensible answer, an explanation, or plausible wrong options. How we write questions sets out the whole process, and corrections are fixed in the bank and reach the site and the app the same day.
How you practise
This unit mixes 17 different question formats, so you are recalling and applying rather than recognising the same layout every time.
- Build the sentence
- Choose all that apply
- Fact or fib
- Fill the blank
- Guess the number
- Listen and choose
- Match the pairs
- Multiple choice
- Odd one out
- Picture question
- Put in order
- Sequence recall
- Sort into groups
- Spell it
- Tap the pairs
- True or false
- Type the answer
Practise Prehistory and Early Humans
120 questions across 20 steps. Start with step one and crawl at your own pace.
Play this unitRead about Prehistory and Early Humans
Explainers from our blog on what this unit covers. Each one ends with real questions from the bank.
- What Is Stonehenge? Who Built It, How, and What It Might Have Been ForStonehenge is a circle of standing stones on Salisbury Plain, built and rebuilt over 1,500 years from about 3000 BC. Where the stones came from and why.September 15, 2026 · 5 min read
- Who Invented the Wheel? Pottery, Carts and Why the Americas Did WithoutThe wheel appeared in several places around 3500 BC, and the hard part was not the disc but the axle. Where the evidence points, and why the Americas had none.September 15, 2026 · 5 min read
More units in History
- The First CivilizationsCities, writing and the first states
- Ancient EgyptPharaohs, pyramids and the Nile
- Ancient GreeceCity-states, democracy and ideas
- Ancient RomeRepublic, empire and legions
- Ancient China and IndiaDynasties, inventions and empires of Asia
- The Ancient AmericasMaya, Aztec and Inca civilizations
- The Middle AgesCastles, knights and medieval life
- The Islamic Golden AgeTrade, science and great cities