Grade 7 · Social Studies · Unit 1 of 6
First Farmers
From hunting to farming villages
What your child practises
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.
NWT Curriculum learning standard: Human and environmental factors that shaped early civilizations: the shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture
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.
- 🏙️The first cities grow in Mesopotamia
- 🪨Early humans make the first stone tools
- 🧍Modern humans (Homo sapiens) appear in Africa
- 🔥Early humans learn to control fire
Early humans make the first stone tools → Early humans learn to control fire → Modern humans (Homo sapiens) appear in Africa → The first cities grow in Mesopotamia
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. Modern humans (Homo sapiens) appear in Africa: about 300,000 years ago. The first cities grow in Mesopotamia: about 5,500 years ago, or 3500 BCE.
Question 2
Which tool helped early farmers break up and turn the soil?
- the sundial
- the plough
- the compass
- the abacus
the plough
Hint: Ploughs, often pulled by oxen, made it possible to farm much larger fields.
Question 3
Early hunter-gatherers or a farming village? Sort each way of life.
Sort into: 🦌 early hunter-gatherers · 🌾 farming village
- 👣living in small, mobile groups
- 🐐raising sheep and goats
- 🧱building permanent mud-brick houses
- 🏺storing surplus grain in clay pots
- 🐗hunting wild animals
- 🧭moving with the seasons to follow food
- 🎒carrying only a few belongings
- 🏡living in one place all year
🦌 early hunter-gatherers: living in small, mobile groups, hunting wild animals, moving with the seasons to follow food, carrying only a few belongings · 🌾 farming village: raising sheep and goats, building permanent mud-brick houses, storing surplus grain in clay pots, 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.
Question 4
How do archaeologists learn about people who lived before writing existed?
- By watching old films
- By interviewing them
- By studying artifacts and remains they left behind
- By reading their diaries
By studying artifacts and remains they left behind
Hint: Tools, pottery, bones, seeds and the remains of homes are clues to how people lived.
Question 5
Historians use the word 'civilization' for a society with…
- no farming of any kind
- only a few families living together
- people who move every season
- cities, a government, specialized jobs and often writing
cities, a government, specialized jobs and often writing
Hint: Civilizations are complex societies. Cities, leaders, laws and record-keeping are signs of one.
Question 6
Before farming began, how did people get their food?
🦌- By hunting, fishing and gathering wild plants
- By trading with cities
- By growing wheat in large fields
- By buying it at markets
By hunting, fishing and gathering wild plants
Hint: For most of human history, people found their food in the wild.