The Narrabeen Man

The mystery of the Narrabeen Man is very interesting. It is an investigation of an ancient Australian burial, and gives us some evidence about what happened to people thousands of years ago. Together as a class, we will watch this episode of 'Catalyst' about the Narrabeen Man to give you an idea about what happened:

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/2278381.htm

Class brainstorm:

• What did we learn about the Narrabeen Man? 
  
  
• How do we think he died?
  
  
• What is some of the evidence for how he died?

 

Your challenge is to find out evidence that tells us how the Narrabeen Man died, to answer these questions:

1. Where was Narrabeen Man found?

2. How long ago did Narrabeen Man die?

3. What did archaeologists find?

4. What did experts say?

5. What do you think happened to the Narrabeen Man?

You will answer these questions in groups of 2 or 3 on The Narrabeen Man Wiki page.

Part 1. Where was Narrabeen Man found?

Narrabeen Man was found next to a bus stop in Sydney. Use Google Maps to find a picture of what the place looks like now. Search for ‘Octavia Street and Ocean Street Narrabeen’ in Google Maps: https://www.google.com.au/maps. 

Copy one picture of the street view and one picture of the birds eye (above) view to show where the Narrabeen Man was found, and paste them into a Microsoft Word document. Then email the document to Kim, at this email address: kimberley.louwrens@ntschools.net.

This is how you copy pictures on the screen:

Step 1: 

Step 2: 

Step 3: 

Step 4: 

Part 2. How long ago did the Narrabeen Man die?

Kim will give you a worksheet for this part.

Create a timeline using the following events to show when in the past the Narrabeen Man died. You can make your timeline on a worksheet, but you will need to use the computer to research when each event happened.

The pictures for the timeline look like this:

Part 3. What did archaeologists find?

Kim will give you a worksheet for this part.

This is a photo of how archaeologists found the Narrabeen Man's skull:

This is a drawing of the bones after they were taken out of the ground. 

You need to colour in a picture of the Narrabeen Man's bones using this picture and this colour chart to help you:

Now you need to colour in the same bones on a normal human skeleton. Colour them in the same colour as the Narrabeen Man's. 

Part 4. What did experts say?

Watch these three videos of experts on the Forensic Catalyst website, then answer the test questions about them on this website.

 

Part 5. What do you think happened to the Narrabeen Man?

Record a video of yourself saying what you think happened to the Narrabeen Man, and why you think that. We will show the class later!