Early Humans and Beginning of Civilisation – NCERT Solutions Class 9 Social Science (New)

Early Humans and Beginning of Civilisation – NCERT Solutions Class 9 Social Science (New) Understanding Society includes all the questions with solutions given in the NCERT Class 9 Social Science Book Understanding Society textbook.

NCERT Solutions Class 9

English Kaveri Hindi Ganga Sanskrit Sharada Maths Ganita Manjari Science Exploration Social Understanding Society

Early Humans and Beginning of Civilisation – NCERT Solutions

Q.1: How did humans live on Earth before the beginning of civilisation?

Solution: Before the beginning of civilisation, humans lived as hunter-gatherers. They hunted animals, caught fish, and collected fruits, nuts, roots, and plants for food. They moved from one place to another in search of food, water, and shelter. They used simple tools made of stone, wood, and bones for hunting and daily activities.

Q.2: How did humans communicate before writing was invented?

Solution: Before writing was invented, humans communicated through spoken language, gestures, and signs. They also used cave paintings, symbols, and drawings to express their ideas, experiences, and information. These methods helped them share knowledge and communicate with others.

Q.3: How is archaeology helpful in understanding our past?

Solution: Archaeology helps us understand our past by studying artifacts, tools, buildings, coins, pottery, and other remains left behind by ancient people. It provides information about their lifestyle, culture, occupations, trade, and social practices. Archaeological evidence helps us learn about societies that existed before written records and fills gaps in our knowledge of history.

Q.4: How did early civilisations interact with each other?

Solution: Early civilizations interacted mainly through trade, warfare, and diplomacy. Because most ancient societies were separated by distance or physical barriers like mountains and oceans, they used these core methods to exchange both goods and ideas.

Q.5: Why do you think early humans left Africa to migrate to other regions?

Solution: Early humans left Africa and migrated to other regions mainly in search of food, water, and better living conditions. As hunter-gatherers, they followed animal herds and moved to areas with abundant resources. Changes in climate, population growth, and the need to explore new places encouraged them to spread across different parts of the world.

Q.6: Why do you think the shift to farming during the Neolithic period is called a revolution rather than a simple change? Discuss with your classmates.

Solution: The shift to farming is called a revolution because it radically and permanently transformed human life, rather than simply changing how people ate. It forced nomadic hunter-gatherers to settle down, which led to population growth, the creation of permanent villages, and the start of modern civilization.

To discuss this with your classmates, you can compare the two major ways of life:

• Before Farming: Humans lived as nomadic foragers. They moved constantly following animal herds and seasonal plants. Everyone focused entirely on finding enough food to survive each day.
• After Farming: Humans learned to grow crops and tame animals. This allowed them to produce a steady food surplus (extra food).

Because there was extra food, not everyone had to farm anymore. People could specialize in other jobs, becoming potters, weavers, builders, or traders. This led directly to organized societies and new technologies.

However, this revolution was a double-edged sword. While it created modern society, it also brought new problems. Early farmers had more diseases because they lived close together, and it led to social inequality where some people accumulated more wealth and land than others.

Q.7: Why were rivers important in the growth of early civilisations?

Solution: Rivers were the lifeblood of early civilizations because they provided a reliable water source, enabled large-scale agriculture through predictable flooding, and served as natural highways for trade. This continuous food surplus and economic connectivity allowed nomadic groups to settle, paving the way for complex urban societies, governments, and specialized labor.

Q.8: Can you find out which countries constitute West Asia in present times?

Solution: West Asia, also commonly referred to as the Middle East, is the westernmost subregion of Asia. According to the United Nations geoscheme, it officially consists of 18 sovereign states and territories.

Q.9: Do you find any similarities between the temples in India and those of the Sumerian civilisation as centres of socio-cultural and economic activity?

Solution: Yes, there are striking parallels between the socio-cultural and economic roles of ancient Sumerian temples (ziggurats) and historic temples in India. Both served as monumental focal points that drove the civilization’s growth beyond just religious worship.

Core Similarities

• Economic Powerhouses:
  In both traditions, temples functioned as massive economic entities. Sumerian ziggurats owned vast agricultural lands, acted as central storehouses for grains, and controlled trade and taxation. Similarly, historical Indian temples (such as those in the Chola Empire) received vast land grants from kings, accumulated gold, and even acted as banks that lent money to local merchants and farmers.
• Employment and Craft Hubs:
  Sumerian temple complexes employed armies of scribes, weavers, and agricultural workers. Similarly, Indian temples directly provided livelihoods to thousands, including priests, sculptors, dancers, musicians, weavers, and cooks. They often evolved into centers of craft production, most famously seen in the casting of bronze icons in South India.
• Social and Cultural Centers:
  Both institutions were the heart of community life. In Sumer, religious festivals brought the community together and involved the redistribution of food. In India, temples hosted grand festivals, supported the performing arts (like dance and music), and served as educational hubs (gurukulams) where philosophy and sciences were taught.
• Urban Development:
  Cities in both civilizations often organically sprouted and grew around the temple premises, which acted as the central anchor for the local settlement.

Key Differences

While their socio-economic functions overlap, there are clear distinctions:

• Degree of State Control: Sumerian temples were the earliest known seats of government, with the head priest often serving as the absolute political ruler (a theocratic system). In India, temples and kingship were generally separate entities, with the king serving as the patron and protector of the temple, rather than the temple controlling the state.
• Nature of the Economy: Sumerian temples operated heavily as the central administrators of the entire city-state’s production and rations. In contrast, Indian temples operated as wealthy landlords, banks, and administrative nodes within a broader, pre-existing commercial and agricultural economy.

Q.10: Can you locate the River Nile on the given map? Why do you think the northern part is called Lower Egypt and the southern part Upper Egypt?

Solution: The River Nile is the lifeblood of Egypt, stretching from the southern border northward to empty into the Mediterranean Sea.

The Nile flows from south to north, meaning its source in the high elevations of Central Africa is “upstream” and its terminus in the north is “downstream”. Because water flows downhill, ancient Egyptians identified the higher-elevation southern region as Upper Egypt and the lower-elevation northern delta as Lower Egypt.

Q.11: Do you think life became easier or more challenging after humans started farming? Give two reasons for your answer.

Solution: Life after farming became both easier and more challenging. It provided a reliable, surplus food supply, ending constant nomadic wandering. However, it also introduced intense labor, as humans were now tied to the land and constantly threatened by unpredictable weather and crop failures.

Two Reasons for This Shift:

1. A more reliable food supply made life easier: Unlike hunter-gatherers, early farmers could grow and store surplus food. This steady food source enabled people to settle in one location, build permanent homes, and establish villages instead of constantly moving.
2. Heavy dependence on nature made life more challenging: Farmers faced the exhausting daily labor of plowing, sowing, watering, and harvesting. Furthermore, communities became highly vulnerable to natural disasters like floods, droughts, or crop failures, which could result in mass starvation.

Q.12: The environment offers human societies both opportunities as well as challenges. Explain with reference to early farming communities and river-valley civilisations.

Solution: The environment provided the fertile conditions necessary for agriculture and settlement but also presented severe survival challenges. Adapting to these dynamics spurred human innovation, driving the transition from nomadic bands to complex, organized civilisations.

Opportunities (The Environmental Benefits)

• Fertile Alluvial Soil: Rivers provided a steady supply of fresh water and deposited nutrient-rich silt during annual floods. For example, the predictable flooding of the Nile River in Egypt naturally fertilized the land, requiring minimal tilling and yielding high surpluses that sustained population growth.
• Resource Abundance: Early farming communities in the Indus-Sarasvatī, Tigris-Euphrates, and Huang He (Yellow River) valleys found it highly advantageous to settle along floodplains. These areas offered abundant wildlife, timber, and reed resources.
• Facilitated Trade and Transportation: Rivers acted as natural highways, enabling the transportation of heavy agricultural goods and fostering early trade networks between communities.

Challenges (The Environmental Demands)

• Unpredictable Disasters: While rivers sustained life, their volatility was dangerous. In Mesopotamia, unpredictable flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates destroyed homes and crops, requiring constant vigilance and labor to survive.
• Technological and Labor Requirements: To harness erratic environments, societies had to cooperate to build extensive infrastructure. Surviving droughts and seasonal changes required constructing dams, dykes, and complex irrigation networks. For instance, Harappan sites like Dholavira and Lothal showcase sophisticated water-management and reservoir systems built to withstand variable monsoons.
• Complex Social Organization: The necessity for flood control and irrigation coordination gave rise to early forms of government, bureaucracy, and specialized labor. It also advanced skills such as surveying and mathematics.

Ultimately, the environment’s challenges forced early farming communities to develop administrative and technological solutions, directly paving the way for the emergence of organized river-valley civilisations.

Q.13: Imagine you are a Neolithic farmer. Describe one day of your life. What challenges would you face that a hunter-gatherer would not?

Solution: My day begins at dawn, tending to bleating sheep and checking the nearby irrigation channels. I then spend hours under the hot sun, breaking tough soil with a polished stone hoe and harvesting wheat with a flint sickle before returning to our mud-brick settlement to cook, weave, and repair clay storage pots.

Unlike a nomadic hunter-gatherer, my life is tied to one piece of land. My unique challenges include:

• Catastrophic Famine: If a drought or pest destroys our one harvest, my community faces starvation, whereas hunter-gatherers could simply move to a new area.
• Disease Outbreaks: Living in close, permanent quarters alongside our livestock breeds and spreads infectious diseases that nomadic groups easily avoid.
• Relentless Labor: While hunter-gatherers forage on the go, I am bound to demanding daily routines of weeding, watering, and protecting our stored food from thieves and rodents.

Q.14: Imagine that the Harappan script gets deciphered tomorrow. What new types of information do you think historians might learn?

Solution: Deciphering the Harappan script would provide the key to a missing chapter of ancient history. Historians could finally unlock the true language family, uncover the names of specific rulers and deities, trace exact trade contracts with Mesopotamia, and understand the social laws governing this massive Bronze Age civilization.

Q.15: Prepare a table with three columns-Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic-and fill in their distinctive features: tools, settlements, art, and subsistence.

Solution: The three major Stone Age periods-Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic-mark the evolution of early human societies from nomadic hunter-gatherers to settled agricultural communities. This development is reflected in their changing technologies, lifestyles, artistic expressions, and methods of survival.

The three major Stone Age periods-Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic-mark the evolution of early human societies from nomadic hunter-gatherers to settled agricultural communities. This development is reflected in their changing technologies, lifestyles, artistic expressions, and methods of survival.

Feature	Palaeolithic	Mesolithic	Neolithic
Tools	Unpolished, rough stones such as handaxes, choppers, scrapers, and blades. Later periods saw the introduction of bone tools and specialized flakes.	Microliths; tiny, sharp, and highly refined stone tools used to make composite tools like arrows and sickles.	Polished and ground stone tools like celts (axes), chisels, and pestles for farming and processing food.
Settlements	Nomadic; no permanent shelters. Humans lived in the open air, river valleys, and rock shelters.	Semi-sedentary; temporary camps, seasonal settlements, and early pit dwellings in certain regions.	Permanent village settlements with houses made of sun-dried mud, wattle-and-daub, or stone.
Art	Cave paintings depicting large animals, and body decorations using natural pigments, shell, and bone.	Evolving rock art featuring more complex, stylized hunting and geometric scenes, plus beads and pendants.	Craft production with early decorated pottery, as well as terracotta figurines and semi-precious beadwork.
Subsistence	Hunting and gathering; eating wild fruits, nuts, and scavenged/hunted animals.	Intensive hunting and gathering alongside fishing, bird-catching, and the initial, early stages of animal domestication.	Agriculture and domestication; cultivating crops like wheat and rice, and rearing livestock (sheep, goats, cattle).

Q.16: “Bronze Age civilisations developed independently but shared common features.” Examine this statement with reference to the civilisations given in the chapter (Early Humans and Beginning of Civilisation).

Solution: Bronze Age civilisations like Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley, and China developed independently in fertile river valleys. However, they shared common features such as agriculture, settled life, planned cities, trade, use of bronze tools, and development of writing systems. Rivers provided water and fertile soil, helping these civilisations grow. Their similar needs for farming, organisation, and protection led to the development of similar social and cultural features.

Q.17: 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.

Solution: The Code of Hammurabi was a Babylonian legal text comprising 282 laws, carved onto a large stone stele around 1750 BCE. It is important because it is one of the earliest and most complete written legal codes, establishing the principle of “lex talionis” (retributive justice) and the presumption of innocence.

It was not fair to all sections of society. Reasons for this include:

• Class Inequality: Punishments varied drastically depending on a person’s social standing. The code divided Babylonians into three classes-the free elite, free commoners, and slaves. If a noble injured another noble, he faced the same injury, but if he injured a slave, he only had to pay a fine.
• Gender Disparity: Women had far fewer rights than men and were often treated as property under marriage and divorce laws.
• No Equality Before the Law: A person’s status, wealth, and power directly dictated how the law was applied, meaning justice was not blind or equal.

Q.18: If you had to choose one major innovation from early civilisations that changed the world permanently, what would it be and why?

Solution: If forced to choose just one, the development of writing (specifically the cuneiform script developed by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia around 3200 BC3200 BC)] is the ultimate choice. It permanently changed the world by transforming human knowledge from a fleeting, localized commodity into a permanent, cumulative, and scalable force.

Q.19: 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?

Solution: Ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Chinese civilizations all developed in fertile river valleys and relied heavily on rigid, agrarian-based social hierarchies and centralized bureaucracies to maintain order. While all three valued family and utilized slave labor, their differing religious views and philosophies shaped unique ways of life.

Similarities:
All three civilizations featured a pyramid-style social structure. The ruling monarch (Pharaoh in Egypt, King/Lugal in Mesopotamia, Emperor in China) held ultimate authority. Directly beneath them were priests, nobles, and government officials. The vast majority of the population were peasant farmers, followed by craftspeople, artisans, and eventually enslaved people at the very bottom.

Differences:

• Egyptians: Placed the Pharaoh at the top as an actual living god. Scribes held a highly privileged, respected middle-class status due to their literacy.
• Mesopotamians: The king was viewed as a mortal agent or steward of the gods rather than a deity himself.
• Chinese: Valued scholars and bureaucrats who often had to pass rigorous civil service-style exams, placing merchants near the bottom of society.

Q.20: Activity: Using maps, locate the major rivers and civilisations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and the Sindhu-Sarasvatī Valley. Mark the trade links between them.

Solution: To complete this map activity, trace or mark the ancient world to locate these four cradle civilizations, their corresponding river basins, and the primary overland and maritime routes that connected them.

1. Mesopotamia

• Rivers: Tigris and Euphrates.
• Location: The Fertile Crescent in modern-day Iraq and Syria.
• Major Sites: Ur, Babylon, Uruk, and Akkad.

2. Ancient Egypt

• River: The Nile.
• Location: Northeastern Africa (modern-day Egypt and Sudan).
• Major Sites: Memphis, Giza, Thebes, and Saqqara.

3. Sindhu-Sarasvatī Valley (Indus Valley)

• Rivers: The Indus River and the (now largely dry) Ghaggar-Hakra or ancient Sarasvatī.
• Location: Northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent.
• Major Sites: Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro, Lothal, and Dholavira.

4. Ancient China

• Rivers: The Huang He (Yellow River) and the Yangtze.
• Location: East Asia.
• Major Sites: Anyang and Erlitou.

Ancient Trade Links

Draw colored lines on your map to mark these historical exchange networks:

• Mesopotamia to Sindhu-Sarasvatī: Marks an extensive network. Trace maritime routes across the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea, stopping at trade depots like Dilmun (modern-day Bahrain) and Magan (Oman), eventually reaching ports like Lothal or Sutkagan-dor. Overland tracks connected Mesopotamia through the Iranian plateau to sites in Afghanistan (like Shortugai, used for lapis lazuli).
• Mesopotamia to Egypt: Trace routes across the Levantine coast (modern-day Israel/Lebanon) and through the Sinai Peninsula, or follow the Mediterranean Sea lanes to connect early Mesopotamian city-states with the Egyptian Nile.
• Routes to China: Trace the trans-Himalayan pathways and the early networks that would eventually mature into the Silk Road, which crossed Central Asia.

Q.21: Activity: Choose one early civilisation (Mesopotamia, Egypt, or China) and prepare a mini-scrapbook or a presentation showing their innovations in tools, writing, art, and architecture. Include pictures, brief descriptions, and explain their significance.

Solution: Ancient Egypt revolutionized human history with enduring innovations. Their mastery of architecture, writing systems, medical tools, and vibrant art shaped the ancient world. These contributions provided the foundational technologies that allowed their civilization to thrive along the Nile for thousands of years.

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