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Class 9 Early Humans and Beginning of Civilisation: cheat sheet
CBSE Social Science. How early humans evolved and spread, how stone tools and farming developed, and the early river civilisations of the Harappans, Mesopotamia, Egypt and China.
Key ideas
- Homo erectus was the first to leave Africa, about 2 million years ago; Homo sapiens, the only human species today, spread across the world later.
- Tools grew from choppers and handaxes to blades and tiny microliths, and later the bow and arrow.
- The Neolithic Revolution brought farming, herding, pottery and the first villages; Mehrgarh, on the Bolan River, is the earliest farming village of the subcontinent.
- Bhimbetka in Madhya Pradesh is known for its rock-shelter paintings.
- Harappan towns were planned and used standard weights; their script, on seals and pottery, has not been deciphered.
- Mesopotamia wrote in wedge-shaped cuneiform on clay and counted in sixties, which gives us the 60-minute hour and the 360-degree circle.
- Egypt wrote in hieroglyphs and used a 365-day calendar; early China grew on the Huang He and cast bronze.
Remember
| Stages | Palaeolithic → Mesolithic → Neolithic → Chalcolithic → Bronze Age → Iron Age |
| River civilisations | Harappan: Sindhu and Sarasvati; Mesopotamian: Tigris and Euphrates; Egyptian: Nile; Chinese: Huang He |
| Harappan sites | Lothal: dockyard; Kalibangan: ploughed field; Dholavira: reservoirs |
| Harappan weights | small ones double (1, 2, 4, 8, 16); large ones go up in tens |
| Egyptian calendar | 12 months of 30 days + 5 days = 365 days |
| Bronze | copper + tin |
Watch out
- Saying the Harappan script has been read: it has not been deciphered.
- Mixing up cuneiform (Mesopotamia, clay tablets) and hieroglyphs (Egypt).
- Reading BCE dates the wrong way: 7000 BCE is earlier than 3000 BCE.
Worked example
Mesopotamians counted in sixties. How many minutes are in 3 hours, and how many degrees are in 10 full circles?
Working: 60 × 3; 360 × 10
Answer: 180 minutes; 3,600 degrees
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