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6th grade · Social Studies · Unit 2 of 12

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.

Arizona Academic Standards learning standard: 6.H1.1; 6.SP1.3 · the first farming societies and the change from hunting and gathering

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. Before farming, people hunted, fished and gathered wild plants.
  2. Order: stone tools, controlling fire, modern humans, cave paintings, then farming (about 10,000 years ago).
  3. Farming led to villages. Maize was first grown in Mesoamerica. Archaeologists study artifacts left behind.

Example: Before farming, how did people get food? They did not plant crops. They found food in the wild. Answer: by hunting, fishing and gathering

First Farmers in Arizona

In the Arizona Academic Standards, this is unit 2 of 12 in 6th grade Social Studies, after World Maps & Globes 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: Arizona Department of Education

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 paint animals on cave walls

  2. Question 2

    Before farming began, how did people get their food?

    🦌
    • By hunting, fishing and gathering wild plants
    • By trading with cities
    • By buying it at markets
    • By growing wheat in large fields

  3. Question 3

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

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

  4. Question 4

    Why is the change to farming sometimes called the Agricultural (or Neolithic) Revolution?

    • It completely changed how people lived, leading to villages, towns and new jobs
    • It happened in a single year
    • It was a war between farmers and hunters
    • It ended the use of stone tools overnight

  5. Question 5

    What does it mean to 'domesticate' a plant or animal?

    • To tame and breed it over generations for human use
    • To move it to a new continent
    • To hunt it in the wild
    • To draw it on a cave wall

  6. Question 6

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

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

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

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