Why Did People Build Pyramids? And Other Questions From Long Before Us

Some questions aren't really about how something works — they're about a world that simply isn't here anymore. Dinosaurs that vanished. Pyramids built by people who had none of our tools. A time before clocks even existed, when no one could simply glance at a wrist to know what hour it was. These questions ask a child to imagine a version of Earth entirely unlike their own, which might be why they're some of the hardest to actually sit with.

Here are three of them, with real answers waiting inside.

• Why did dinosaurs disappear?
• Why did people build pyramids?
• How did people measure time before clocks?

It's a strange thing to realise as a kid — that the world kept turning long before you arrived, full of people solving enormous problems with almost none of what we take for granted today. That realisation, more than any single fact, might be the real beginning of a sense of history.