For our second day of class, we visited the Natural History Museum to take a look at an exhibit on human evolution. This exhibit included skulls of different species of humans as well as full body wax models of what these species would have looked like. It was very interesting to see the artist’s depiction of the entire face of a Homo heidelbergen since nothing is known about their nose or ear shapes. There were also various tools on display such as a wooden digging stick, Acheulean hand axes, and flakes. The differences in species can be very clearly seen by looking at each skull. The skull of a Homk floresiensis woman was very small compared to a Paranthropus boisei skull which had very large teeth and thick, long skull. Another very interesting thing was the long history of tattooing and how humans have used it has a a form of cultural expression and body decoration for thousands of years. I recognized the same tattoo pattern done on men in New Zealand on the body of a prehistoric human. This exhibit allowed me to see exactly how archaeologists determine where to draw the line between different species and the overall organization of human evolution. This exhibit was incredibly informative and gave me my first scholarly look into tools made by prehistoric humans. 

     We also looked at the dinosaur exhibit at the museum which was very interesting and included many skeletons and was looked like a full size mechanical Tyrannosaurus Rex. There were a few smaller dinosaur skeletons still in the dirt they were found in which gave us a a snapshot of the perspective of an archaeologist.