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7th grade · Social Studies · Unit 3 of 14

First Farmers

From hunting to farming villages

What your child practices

The long story of early humans, how farming began about 12,000 years ago, domestication, food surpluses, and how settling down led to specialized jobs and the first cities.

Alabama Course of Study content standard: 7.4; 7.5 · early humans, and the shift from hunting and gathering to farming villages

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. For most of human history, people hunted, fished and gathered wild plants, moving with the seasons.
  2. Farming began about 12,000 years ago. Farmers stayed in one place, built lasting homes and raised animals.
  3. Extra food (a surplus) let some people do other jobs, and villages grew into the first cities.

Example: Living in small groups that move with the seasons: hunter-gatherers or a farming village? Hunter-gatherers followed animals and wild plants. Farmers stayed put to tend their crops. Moving with the seasons fits hunter-gatherers. Answer: hunter-gatherers

First Farmers in Alabama

In the Alabama Course of Study, this is unit 3 of 14 in 7th grade Social Studies, after Time & Evidence and before Where Civilizations Grew.

Gradelings describes a child's practice on this unit as Beginning, Approaching, Meeting or Exceeding (Four practice steps). That reflects practice, not a report-card mark: the teacher decides the mark.

Source: Alabama State Department of Education (ALSDE)

Sample questions

A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.

  1. Question 1

    Put these events from the human story in order, earliest first.

    • 🧍Modern humans (Homo sapiens) appear in Africa
    • 🌾People begin farming in Southwest Asia
    • 🔥Early humans learn to control fire
    • 🎨People paint animals on cave walls

  2. Question 2

    Which animal was the first to be domesticated, at least 15,000 years ago?

    🐕
    • the chicken
    • the dog
    • the horse
    • the camel

  3. Question 3

    Why did early farming villages often grow near rivers or springs?

    • Crops and animals needed a steady supply of water
    • Rivers kept all wild animals away
    • Boats were needed to plant seeds
    • It never rained near rivers

  4. Question 4

    Which tool helped early farmers break up and turn the soil?

    • the abacus
    • the compass
    • the plow
    • the sundial

  5. Question 5

    Early hunter-gatherers or a farming village? Sort each way of life.

    Sort into: 🦌 early hunter-gatherers · 🌾 farming village

    • 🎒carrying only a few belongings
    • 🏡living in one place all year
    • 🐐raising sheep and goats
    • 🌱planting and harvesting crops
    • 🧭moving with the seasons to follow food
    • 🐗hunting wild animals
    • 🧱building permanent mud-brick houses
    • 👣living in small, mobile groups

  6. Question 6

    What was the Fertile Crescent?

    • An island in the Pacific Ocean
    • A mountain range in China
    • A curve of rich farmland in Southwest Asia, from Mesopotamia to the eastern Mediterranean
    • A desert in northern Africa

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