Class 9 Social Science Chapter 4: Early Humans and Beginning of Civilisation Notes in English

1Before Writing Began

Humans have lived on Earth for millions of years, but writing, that is, putting words down so someone else can read them later, is only about 5000 years old. For everything before that, there are no books, letters or records to read. Historians and archaeologists (people who study old objects and sites) have to read clues instead: broken tools, old bones, cave paintings and buried buildings.

Writing began at roughly the same time in three places, and only two of the three scripts can be read today.

Script	Who used it	Can we read it?
Harappan script (Sindhu lipi)	Sindhu-Sarasvati civilisation, on seals and pottery; picture-based	No. Still undeciphered
Cuneiform	Sumerians of Mesopotamia	Yes
Hieroglyphics	Ancient Egyptians	Yes
Brahmi	From about 400 BCE in southern India and the Ganga valley; standardised by Ashoka in the 3rd century BCE	Yes

The scripts that can be read mark the start of the historical period, about 5000 years ago.

	Before writing	After writing
Share of human history	More than 99% (from about 3 million years ago to 5000 years ago)	Less than 1% (the last 5000 years, including today)
Main source used	Tools and other objects made by humans (artefacts)	Both artefacts and written documents
Lives of the people	Hard to know what people actually thought and believed	Literature gives names, events, and social and political life
Measuring time	Only approximate dating of cultures and events	Fairly accurate, since documents mention exact dates (coronations, wars, etc.)

So why study a past this hard to reconstruct? Because it explains two things happening together: how humans changed physically, and how they changed the way they lived.

2Human Ancestors and Their Journey Out of Africa

Archaeologists dig up early human sites looking for tools, bones and other objects. To understand these clues better, they even make and use copies of the same tools themselves, this is called experimental archaeology, and it shows exactly how early humans might have used these objects every day.

Ancestor	Lived where	Lived when	Known for
Homo habilis (“handy man”)	Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania and Kenya (Africa)	About 2.4-1.4 million years ago	Made the earliest chopper stone tools
Homo erectus	Eastern African Rift Valley, then Asia and Europe	About 2 million years ago	First hominin to migrate out of Africa; made handaxes and cleavers
Homo neanderthalensis	Europe and southwest Asia	Until about 40,000 years ago	Made Middle Palaeolithic flake tools
Homo sapiens (us)	Evolved in Africa, now everywhere	From about 300,000 years ago	The only human species living today; developed the most complex technology

3Stone Age Tool Cultures

Early human history is divided into stages based on how tools and lifestyle changed over time. The word palaeo means “old” and lithic means “stone”, so the Palaeolithic period is also called the Old Stone Age.

3.1 Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers

In the Indian subcontinent, the oldest human settlement dates back to about 2 million years ago. Attirampakkam in Tamil Nadu is dated to about 1.5-1.7 million years ago, and Isampur in Karnataka to about 1.2 million years ago. Both sites have yielded animal fossils along with large cutting tools such as handaxes and cleavers, plus stone scrapers and choppers made of quartzite and limestone. These tools chopped animal meat, dug out tubers (root vegetables), scraped animal skin and cleaved bones to get at the protein-rich marrow inside.

Later in the Palaeolithic, two things changed together: the tools and the first signs of symbolic thinking.

• Smaller, sharper tools: scrapers, borers and points, used to tip spears and darts
• The bow and arrow, plus parallel-sided blades and microblades of glassy rock, for hunting small game
• Cave and rock-shelter paintings, and bodies coloured with pigments
• The first beads, made of stone, bone and shell
• The burin (engraver), used to carve symbolic patterns on bone, shell and ostrich eggs

All of this belongs to our own species, Homo sapiens, who spread across the world, reaching Australia and the Americas between about 50,000 and 12,000 years ago.

3.2 Mesolithic hunter-gatherers

Around 12,000 years ago, Earth’s climate grew warmer. Forests and grasslands spread into areas that ice sheets had covered earlier, bringing a much wider range of resources such as small game, fish and edible wild grains. This triggered the first-ever population explosion in human history. Tiny microlithic tools let people gather both marine and freshwater food, and fishing became a mainstay of survival. Art also flourished, and people occupied caves and rock shelters more often.

	Palaeolithic	Mesolithic	Neolithic
Tools	Large stone tools: handaxes, cleavers, scrapers, choppers	Tiny microlithic tools, bow and arrow	Polished stone tools for farming and food processing
Subsistence	Hunting large animals and gathering wild plants	Hunting small game, fishing, gathering wild grains	Farming and animal domestication (food production)
Settlement	Caves and open camps; no fixed home	Caves and rock shelters, occupied more often	First permanent village settlements
Art and other traits	Cave paintings begin; first beads of stone, bone, shell	Cave art flourishes (e.g. Bhimbetka)	Pottery-making, weaving, domestication of plants and animals

4The Neolithic Revolution

What changed with Neolithic farmers:

• Tools now produced and processed food instead of only procuring it
• Pottery was made in many shapes and sizes
• The first permanent village settlements appeared, the foundation of later cities

The shift did not happen everywhere at once. Each region reached farming, pottery and settled life (sedentism) on its own timeline, starting with different crops:

Region	Domesticated first
West Asia	Wheat and barley
India and the Ganga plains	Millets and rice
North China	Millets
South China	Rice

4.1 The Neolithic period in the Indian subcontinent

Mehrgarh, on the Bolan river in present-day Pakistan, is the oldest Neolithic site and the earliest known agricultural village in the subcontinent, dating to about 7000 BCE.

• Housing: sun-dried mud-brick houses and granaries
• Burial: the dead were buried in graves
• Ornaments: made from shells and semi-precious stones such as lapis lazuli and carnelian
• Crops: wheat and barley
• Animals: sheep, goats and the humped zebu cattle
• Metal: the first in the region to make copper objects, so Chalcolithic by about 4000 BCE

This laid the foundation for the Bronze Age Sindhu-Sarasvati civilisation around 3500 BCE. By 2500 BCE most of the subcontinent held Neolithic farming communities herding cattle, sheep and goats and growing cereals, millets and pulses, sometimes beside Chalcolithic neighbours.

5Sindhu-Sarasvati: The Early Stages

The Neolithic farming way of life that began at Mehrgarh spread into the middle and upper Indus valley and further east. Some of these settlements learned to extract copper from ore around 4000 BCE, becoming the earliest Chalcolithic sites in the subcontinent and marking the start of the Bronze Age here.

Large-scale pottery production, in many regional styles, is visible from 4000 BCE in Baluchistan and the Indus and Ghaggar-Sarasvati basins. Radiocarbon dates from Bhirrana and Kunal, in the dried-up Sarasvati belt, push a Pre-Harappan phase back to 7000-5500 BCE.

By about 2500 BCE those regional styles had become shared features of one civilisation. This stage is called Early Harappan, and the continuity shows in:

• Shared pottery traditions
• Semi-precious stone beads and shell bangles
• Terracotta objects and copper working
• Perimeter walls around settlements
• The use of seals, and probably the beginnings of the Harappan script

The Harappans were not farmers alone. Their crafts were already developing steadily:

• Pottery: the major craft, with distinct shapes and painted designs in each region
• Copper work and shell work: gradual, steady development
• Semi-precious stone beads: bead-making evidence at Harappa (Pakistan), Kunal (Haryana) and Datrana (Gujarat)
• Graffiti and early seals: simple geometric and animal motifs at Harappa, Rehman Dheri and Kunal, thought to be forerunners of the Harappan script

It was this combination of technological progress and economic integration in the Early Harappan period that gave rise to the great Harappan cities.

Site	Where	Why it matters
Mehrgarh	Bolan river, Pakistan	Oldest Neolithic and earliest agricultural village in the subcontinent
Bhirrana, Kunal	Dried Sarasvati river belt (Haryana)	Pre-Harappan phase (7000-5500 BCE); early bead-making
Kalibangan	Rajasthan	Ploughed field with double-crop (Rabi and Kharif) furrows, still practised today
Dholavira	Kachchh, Gujarat	Elaborate water harvesting system: dams, canals and deep tanks, some cut into bedrock
Lothal	Gujarat	A dockyard built entirely of burnt bricks
Harappa, Rehman Dheri	Pakistan	Early graffiti and simple seals, forerunners of the script

6Mesopotamia: Cities and Cuneiform Writing

Mesopotamia is a Greek word meaning “the land in between”, the land drained by the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in West Asia. Today, this region covers mainly Iraq and Kuwait, with parts of Turkey and southwestern Iran. The crescent-shaped foothills of the Zagros and Taurus mountains, stretching from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, are called the “Fertile Crescent” because of how good the land was for farming.

Farming began here about 12,000 years before the present, and copper tools arrived around 4500 BCE, boosting agriculture, craft production and trade. Over the next 2000 years, some large settlements grew into “city-states”. Four major ones flourished from 3500 BCE onwards: the Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian and Babylonian city-states.

6.1 The Sumerians

The Sumerian civilisation was the earliest to become city-based, at Ur and other cities of Sumer, in what is southern Iraq today. Sumerians were the first to build dams and canals for irrigation, and the first to build with mud bricks and burnt bricks, for houses, defensive walls and other structures. They worshipped many gods and built a grand temple called a ziggurat for each city’s chief god, around which the whole city grew.

Sumerian cities were large: kings lived in grand palaces, ordinary people lived in small brick houses. Most people farmed, but crafts such as metalworking, pottery and textiles were common too, and merchants and traders existed as a separate profession. All major economic activity, farming, trade and the transport of goods, was tied to the temple authority, and entry to the sacred temple was limited to high priests and priestesses, reflecting a clear social hierarchy.

The Sumerians started writing around 3200 BCE, and by 3000 BCE cuneiform was used all across Mesopotamia’s different city-states, even though they spoke different languages. Scribes had high social status, similar to priests. Cuneiform tablets tell us about Mesopotamian myths, epics, hymns, law codes, and records of farming and craft activity, especially of potters, seal-cutters, shipbuilders, carpenters and farm workers.

6.2 The Akkadians, Assyrians and Babylonians

In 2334 BCE, the Sumerians’ power was overtaken by a new city-state centred on Akkad, further north in Sumer. The Akkadians spoke a different language, Akkadian, but used the same cuneiform script. Their records describe the world’s first dynastic empire, and this period also saw creative literature grow, including the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the earliest written stories. Tablets of the Akkadian king Sargon mention trade with Dilmun (today’s Bahrain), Magan (Oman) and Meluhha, generally identified with the Sindhu-Sarasvati civilisation, trading semi-precious stone beads, ivory, timber, gold dust, and probably copper.

Around 2154 BCE, a new city-state, Assur in northern Mesopotamia, overtook the Akkadians. Assyrian dominance spread quickly across Mesopotamia and beyond, lasting until early 1700 BCE. From 1900 BCE, the city-state of Babylonia rose in central Mesopotamia, reaching its height under Hammurabi from 1792 BCE, who expanded it into a large empire. His most important contribution was the Code of Hammurabi, a compiled set of rules for civil and social conduct that became a model for many later legal systems. By 1400 BCE, repeated attacks by the Hittites and other rising powers, along with environmental strain, pressure on farmland and internal problems, had weakened Babylonian control for good.

7Egypt and China: Rivers, Rulers and Records

7.1 Egyptian civilisation

Egypt is one of the world’s earliest civilisations, and it was already known to the Greeks and Romans, the Greek writer Herodotus visited and wrote about it as early as the 5th century BCE. Much of what we know comes from papyrus records.

Egypt’s city-states emerged around 3000 BCE as population grew and resources increased. The river Nile watered the land, and every summer it flooded, leaving behind rich mud that Egyptians called “kemet” (“the black”), excellent for growing crops, so they called their own land Kemet too. About 5000 years ago, farmers learned to dig ditches to divert Nile water into their fields and store it in reservoirs, and by counting the days between floods, they developed a calendar. Organising such large digging and dam-building projects needed cooperation, which is thought to have led to the growth of local government and an administrative class, probably Egypt’s earliest form of local government.

Over time, powerful rulers called Pharaohs emerged. After a Pharaoh’s death, the body was buried deep underground under a rectangular structure called a mastaba. Later, mastabas were stacked one on top of another to form a pyramid, such as the Step Pyramid at Saqqara. Egyptians believed each person had a “ka” (a spiritual double) that lived on after death if the body was preserved through mummification.

The social hierarchy of ancient Egypt, from the ruler at the top to the largest and least powerful group at the base.

The Egyptian calendar had three seasons of four months each: Inundation (the Nile’s flood season), Peret (growing season) and Shemu (harvest season), based on the rising of the star Sirius. A year was counted as 365 days, twelve months of thirty days plus five extra days, close to accurate but slightly short of the real year, which is about a quarter-day longer.

7.2 Chinese civilisation

The Chinese civilisation grew along two rivers, the Huang He (Yellow River) and the Yangtze, both centres of Neolithic culture from around 7000 BCE. Around 2000 BCE, copper and bronze metallurgy brought many Yellow River settlements to the edge of the Bronze Age, but it was only around 1600 BCE that true urban centres appeared, along with growing farm output and better metalworking, giving rise to China’s first Bronze Age territorial empire.

China’s Iron Age generally dates from around 600 BCE, when iron use spread widely. Zhou rulers were considered both kings and priests, “appointees of heaven”, but could be removed if their people did not prosper. Public officials were chosen carefully, tested in archery, horsemanship, calculation, writing and music.

China’s earliest historical source is the oracle bones: symbols carved onto animal bones and tortoise shells, then heated until they cracked, with the crack patterns interpreted to foretell the future. These now tell us about the hopes, fears and beliefs of early China. Unlike alphabets, the Chinese script is logographic: each character stands for a whole word or meaningful unit, not just a sound.

• Jade: ritual and status objects, prized because jade had to be brought in from outside China
• Marble: carved into birds, animals and pillar bases
• Bronze: mastered for weapons, tools and ritual vessels
• The Great Wall: began as separate walls built from 680 BCE by the Zhou and later dynasties against nomadic raids, joined up over time, with work continuing to the 17th century CE
• Silk: known since the Neolithic (4000-3000 BCE); so important a trade item by the 2nd century BCE under the Han that the route itself became the “Silk Route”
• Social hierarchy: by 1500 BCE society was stratified, rulers, nobles and aristocrats above, farmers and labourers below
• Two firsts: China was the first country to introduce paper currency, and the first to select civil servants by public examination

8Four River-Valley Civilisations Compared

Four early world civilisations grew up independently in fertile river plains: the Harappan along the Sindhu (Indus) and Sarasvati, the Mesopotamian around the Euphrates and Tigris, the Egyptian along the Nile, and the Chinese in the Huang He basin. Mesopotamia and the Indus-Ghaggar-Sarasvati valleys are geographically close, which is why strong trade contact grew between the Harappans and Mesopotamians. Egypt and China, on the other hand, show little direct, tangible contact with the Sindhu-Sarasvati civilisation.

	Sindhu-Sarasvati	Mesopotamian	Egyptian	Chinese
River(s)	Indus and Sarasvati	Euphrates and Tigris	Nile	Huang He and Yangtze
Script	Harappan script (undeciphered)	Cuneiform (deciphered)	Hieroglyphic (deciphered)	Logographic characters
City life	Planned cities, standard weights	City-states around temples/ziggurats	City-states, Pharaoh’s rule	Territorial dynastic empire
Best-known achievement	Town planning and water management (Dholavira, Lothal)	World’s earliest writing (cuneiform); the Code of Hammurabi	Pyramids; a 365-day calendar	The Great Wall; the Silk Route; paper currency

The development of writing let early societies keep records of trade and social life, and over time this grew into literature. Many of the customs and ideas we live with today have roots that trace all the way back to these Bronze Age civilisations.