Questions Answer Chapter 4 Class 9 Social Science CBSE Board

Early Humans and Beginning of Civilisation

Questions and activities

1. Do you think life became easier or more challenging after humans started farming? Give two reasons for your answer. Life became easier in some ways but also more challenging in others.
Answer:- Easier: Farming allowed humans to produce surplus food and material goods, which laid the foundation for the emergence of civilisation, instead of constantly searching for food like hunter-gatherers.
Challenging: Farmers had to take up new tasks like digging ditches, building dams for irrigation, and working collectively, which required more organised effort compared to hunting and gathering.

2. The environment offers human societies both opportunities as well as challenges. Explain with reference to early farming communities and river-valley civilisations.
Answer:- Opportunity: Rivers like the Nile, the Euphrates-Tigris, the Huang He and Yangtze, and the Sindhu-Sarasvatī provided fertile soil and water, which supported agriculture and allowed farming communities to settle permanently, produce surplus food, and grow into cities.
Challenge: Early societies had to develop tools, techniques, and technology to survive changing climatic conditions and make use of natural resources. For example, digging ditches and constructing dams to control river water required collective effort, which led to the growth of local government and administrative classes.

3. Why do historians divide early human history into different ages such as Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age? What does this classification tell us about human progress?
Answer :- Historians divide early human history into different periods based on technological progress, such as the development and use of tools, the beginning of agriculture, and changes in human lifestyle and settlement patterns. This classification (Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze Age, and Iron Age) shows that human progress moved step by step — from using simple stone tools for hunting-gathering, to making polished stone tools and adopting agriculture, to discovering metals like copper and bronze, and finally to widespread use of iron for stronger tools and weapons, leading to more advanced societies.

4. Imagine you are a Neolithic farmer. Describe one day of your life. What challenges would you face that a hunter-gatherer would not?
Answer:- As a Neolithic farmer, my day would involve tasks like tending to domesticated animals such as cattle, sheep, and goats, cultivating crops like wheat, barley, or millets, making tools for food production and processing, and shaping earthenware pottery for storing grain. I would also help build and maintain my house made of sun-dried bricks in a permanent village settlement.
Challenges I would face that a hunter-gatherer would not include: depending on the success of a single harvest instead of a variety of food sources, needing to store and protect surplus food and grain, and having to cooperate with others in the village for tasks like irrigation, which hunter-gatherers moving from place to place did not need to worry about.

5. Imagine that the Harappan script gets deciphered tomorrow. What new types of information do you think historians might learn?
Answer:-  If the Harappan script is deciphered, historians could move from the “Before Writing” stage to the “After Writing” stage of understanding this civilisation. They could learn about the thoughts and ideas of the Harappan people, which are currently difficult to understand. Written documents could provide information about names, events, and the social, political, and cultural life of the Harappans. It could also allow for more accurate dating of events and cultures, since written records mention specific dates of events such as coronations and wars, unlike the approximate dating used now based only on artefacts.

6. Prepare a table with three columns—Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic—and fill in their distinctive features: tools, settlements, art, and subsistence.

Answer:- 

7. “Bronze Age civilisations developed independently but shared common features.” Examine this statement with reference to the civilisations given in the chapter.
Answer:-  The four early world civilisations — the Harappan civilisation along the Sindhu and Sarasvatī rivers, the Mesopotamian civilisation around the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, the Egyptian civilisation along the Nile River, and the Chinese civilisation in the Huang He basin — emerged independently in fertile river plains. Despite developing separately, they shared common features: all harnessed agricultural productivity and incorporated new resources for economic growth, leading to the emergence of urban cities. They developed social and administrative systems to ensure and enhance economic growth, and their development of writing systems enabled them to record economic transactions and social activities, eventually leading to literary and creative texts.

8. Although rivers provided many benefits, they also created challenges for early societies. Discuss both the advantages and disadvantages of settling near rivers.
Answer:- 
(a) Advantages: Rivers watered the land along their banks, and their annual floods left behind rich, fertile mud excellent for growing crops (as with the Nile’s “kemet”). This fertility supported the fertile crescent in Mesopotamia and allowed farming communities to produce surplus food, leading to the growth of cities and civilisations.
(b) Disadvantages: Managing river water required significant collective effort, such as digging ditches, building dams, and constructing canals for irrigation and water storage. This need for cooperation led to the growth of local government and an administrative class to organise such large-scale work.

9. With the help of your teacher, find out more about the Code of Hammurabi. Why was it important? Do you think it was fair to all sections of society? Give reasons for your answer.
Answer:-  The Code of Hammurabi was a compilation of rules and regulations for civil and social conduct throughout the Babylonian empire, created during the reign of Hammurabi (who came to power in 1792 BCE). It was important because it served as a foundational model for many future legal systems. (For fairness to all sections of society, please research further with your teacher, as the document does not provide details on this aspect.)

10. If you had to choose one major innovation from early civilisations that changed the world permanently, what would it be and why?
Answer:-  This is a reflective question for you to answer based on the chapter. You could consider innovations mentioned in the document such as: the invention of writing (cuneiform, hieroglyphics, or the Harappan script), the Neolithic Revolution (domestication of plants and animals), standardised systems of weights and measures used by the Harappans, or metallurgy (copper and bronze tools). Explain your choice using details from the chapter about how it changed human life and society.

11. Compare the social hierarchy and daily life of people in the Egyptian civilisation with those in Mesopotamia or China. What  similarities and differences do you notice?
Answer:- In Egypt, the social hierarchy pyramid had the Pharaoh at the top, followed by government officials, nobles, and priests, then free landholders, artisans, and merchants, and finally serfs and slaves at the bottom. Egyptian women enjoyed more rights than their Greek or Roman counterparts, as they could own property and run businesses.
In Mesopotamia, entry to the sacred temple was restricted to high priests and priestesses, who were probably part of the ruling class, reflecting a clear division of social hierarchy; kings lived in grand palaces while people lived in small brick houses, and professions included merchants, traders, metalworkers, potters, and weavers.
In China, by 1500 BCE, society was highly stratified with the ruling class, nobles, and aristocrats at the top, followed by farmers and labourers; public officials were chosen carefully after being examined in archery, horsemanship, calculations, writing, and music.
A similarity across all three civilisations is a clear social hierarchy with rulers/priests at the top and farmers/labourers at the bottom.

The Big Questions (Page 61)

1. How did humans live on Earth before the beginning of civilisation?
Answer:- Before the beginning of civilisation, humans lived as hunter-gatherers using simple stone tools during the Palaeolithic period. They made tools like choppers, handaxes, and cleavers to chop meat, dig tubers, scrape skins, and extract marrow. Later, they developed smaller tools like scrapers, borers, points, microliths, blades, and microblades, and invented the bow and arrow. They hunted animals, gathered wild food, and lived in caves and rock shelters. They also created cave paintings, used pigments, made beads, and developed symbolic communication. Around 12,000 years ago, during the Mesolithic, warmer climate led to more resources, population growth, and reliance on microlithic tools for fishing and gathering. Gradually, they transitioned to the Neolithic period with agriculture, domestication of animals and plants, settled villages, pottery, and polished stone tools.

2. How did humans communicate before writing was invented?
Answer:- Before writing was invented, humans communicated through symbolic means. They developed symbolic communication, decorated cave and rock shelter walls with paintings, used pigments to decorate their bodies, and produced beads of stone, bone, and shell. They also used tools like burins to engrave symbolic features on bones and shells such as ostrich eggs.

3. How is archaeology helpful in understanding our past?
Answer:- Archaeology helps in understanding our past by exploring early human sites to uncover tools, bones, fossils, and other material objects (artefacts). These provide major sources for reconstructing people’s ways of living before writing. Archaeologists experiment by making and using similar tools to learn how early humans created and used them. Discoveries of tools and fossils help build a picture of how ancestors lived, their biological and cultural evolution, and changes in lifestyle from hunting-gathering to agriculture.

4. How did early civilisations interact with each other?
Answer:- Early civilisations interacted through trade and contacts. The Harappan (Sindhu-Sarasvatī) civilisation had strong trade contacts with the Mesopotamian civilisation, exchanging semiprecious stone beads, ivory, timber, gold dust, and probably copper. Mesopotamia traded with regions identified as Meluhha (Harappan), Dilmun, and Magan. Geographical proximity between Mesopotamia and the Indus-Ghaggar-Sarasvatī valleys facilitated these interactions. However, there is little evidence of direct contact between the Egyptian or Chinese civilisations and the Sindhu-Sarasvatī civilisation.