We know that for ages, people all over the world have observed me, and there have been lots of ideas about what I am. We know that people have lived on the Earth for thousands of years. They have lived in small and large communities, each with its own ways of doing things. We know this by the things these communities leave behind, sometimes hundreds of years after the people who lived there are gone. These things are often called artifacts .
Artifacts come in all sizes.
Some are as small as a weaving tool and can fit easily into your hand. Some artifacts weigh many tons. Some communities have left enormous artifacts, like the Native American Anasazi people who created a great city now in ruins. As people have investigated these artifacts, we now understand how advanced these people were. A community s artifacts can show us their art, their tools for daily life, their homes, and their belief systems.