6th grade · Social Studies · Unit 2 of 15
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.
New York State Learning Standards learning standard: 6.2a; 6.2c · hunter-gatherers, the first farmers and the Neolithic Revolution
How we explain it
Children can open this short lesson before they practice.
- Before farming, people hunted, fished and gathered wild plants.
- Order: stone tools, controlling fire, modern humans, cave paintings, then farming (about 10,000 years ago).
- 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 New York
In the New York State Learning Standards, this is unit 2 of 15 in 6th grade Social Studies, after Time & Evidence and before Mesopotamia & Egypt.
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.
Sample questions
A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.
Question 1
Put these events from the human story in order, earliest first.
- 🔥Early humans learn to control fire
- 🌾People begin farming in Southwest Asia
- 🎨People paint animals on cave walls
- 🪨Early humans make the first stone tools
Early humans make the first stone tools → Early humans learn to control fire → People paint animals on cave walls → People begin farming in Southwest Asia
Hint: Early humans make the first stone tools: more than 2.5 million years ago. Early humans learn to control fire: at least 400,000 years ago. People paint animals on cave walls: more than 30,000 years ago. People begin farming in Southwest Asia: about 12,000 years ago, or 10,000 BCE.
Question 2
Which crop was one of the first to be farmed in Southwest Asia's Fertile Crescent?
🌾- maize (corn)
- cacao
- wheat
- potatoes
wheat
Hint: Early farmers there grew wheat and barley. Potatoes, maize and cacao were first farmed in the Americas.
Question 3
As farming villages grew, what new need arose?
- Ways to protect stored food, divide land and settle disputes
- Ways to move the village every week
- Ways to forget about property
- Ways to stop people from farming
Ways to protect stored food, divide land and settle disputes
Hint: More people, land and stored goods meant more disagreements, which led to leaders and laws.
Question 4
Which tool helped early farmers break up and turn the soil?
- the abacus
- the sundial
- the plow
- the compass
the plow
Hint: Plows, often pulled by oxen, made it possible to farm much larger fields.
Question 5
What does it mean to 'domesticate' a plant or animal?
- To hunt it in the wild
- To move it to a new continent
- To draw it on a cave wall
- To tame and breed it over generations for human use
To tame and breed it over generations for human use
Hint: Wild wolves became dogs, and wild grasses became wheat, through domestication.
Question 6
Early hunter-gatherers or a farming village? Sort each way of life.
Sort into: 🦌 early hunter-gatherers · 🌾 farming village
- 🌱planting and harvesting crops
- 🧭moving with the seasons to follow food
- 🐐raising sheep and goats
- 🧱building permanent mud-brick houses
- 🎒carrying only a few belongings
- 🫐gathering wild berries, nuts and roots
- 🏡living in one place all year
- 👣living in small, mobile groups
🦌 early hunter-gatherers: moving with the seasons to follow food, carrying only a few belongings, gathering wild berries, nuts and roots, living in small, mobile groups · 🌾 farming village: planting and harvesting crops, raising sheep and goats, building permanent mud-brick houses, living in one place all year
Hint: Most early hunter-gatherers moved to follow animals and wild plants, so they carried little. Farmers stayed in one place, built permanent homes, raised animals and stored extra food.