Were I still teaching, I would do the following. I would place this skull (Kodiak Ursus replica) and this figurine of a woman (archeologists call these Venus figures: a bullshit and absolutely misleading term) on a table at the front of the room.
I would turn out the lights, save for a dim lantern next to the skull and figurine. I would have background audio of slowly, quietly dripping water.
Thus would I replicate several fundamental features of Chauvet, Hohle Fels, and Geissenklösterle (adjacent to Hohle Fels)—European caves frequented by our ancestors 35,000 years ago.
I would then invite the students into the room. In darkness. No talking.
After maybe 10 minutes of silence I would say something like, “What are you going to do about this?” As in, “How are you going to process this?” For, process it you must if you hope to understand human consciousness.
I would tell them that this scene existed in these caves for thousands of years: the skull, the naked torso of a woman, in a karst-formation cave. (It seems to have existed more or less in other Aurignacian and Gravettian caves, as well. Yes, from at least 35,000 BC to shortly before the end of the Pleistocene.)