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7th grade · Social Studies · Unit 1 of 11

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.

Alaska content standards learning standard: SS.7.1.2.1; SS.7.1.2.2 · the Agricultural Revolution, and hunter-gatherer and early farming societies

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 Alaska

In the Alaska content standards, this is unit 1 of 11 in 7th grade Social Studies, 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: Alaska Department of Education and Early Development

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.

    • 🔥Early humans learn to control fire
    • 🧍Modern humans (Homo sapiens) appear in Africa
    • 🪨Early humans make the first stone tools
    • 🌾People begin farming in Southwest Asia

  2. Question 2

    Why could some people in farming villages become potters, weavers or toolmakers?

    • Nobody needed food anymore
    • Farming was against the law
    • The crops grew without any work
    • Food surpluses meant not everyone had to farm

  3. Question 3

    Which crop was one of the first to be farmed in Southwest Asia's Fertile Crescent?

    🌾
    • wheat
    • maize (corn)
    • cacao
    • potatoes

  4. Question 4

    Maize (corn) was first domesticated about 9,000 years ago in…

    🌽
    • Mesoamerica (present-day Mexico)
    • China
    • Greece
    • Egypt

  5. Question 5

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

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

    • 🏡living in one place all year
    • 🌱planting and harvesting crops
    • 🧱building permanent mud-brick houses
    • 🫐gathering wild berries, nuts and roots
    • 👣living in small, mobile groups
    • 🐗hunting wild animals
    • 🏺storing surplus grain in clay pots
    • 🎒carrying only a few belongings

  6. Question 6

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

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

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