Exhibition: Hackney 300,000 BC

Hackney Museum is inviting residents to step back in time with its new temporary exhibition ‘Hackney 300,000 BC: Meet the Neanderthal neighbours and curious creatures of the borough's Old Stone Age’.

The exhibition provides a rare glimpse into pre-historic Hackney when the borough resembled a south African savannah, with hippos, lions and mammoths roaming the landscape, and where a now extinct people, the Neanderthals, lived.

Stone artefacts displayed in the exhibition are so ancient, they predate the existence of modern humans (Homo sapiens) by a hundred thousand years.

With pre-history now a part of the school national curriculum for 7 to 9 years old, the exhibition was informed by input and feedback from teachers at schools across the borough.

Hackney is one of Britain's most important archaeological sites from the Old Stone Age (Palaeolithic) with over 3,000 ancient objects uncovered and preserved in the borough since the late 19th century. Visitors will find out more about Hackney in the Stone Age and handle some of the real artefacts.