Hall of the First Farmers: From Foraging to Villages

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Hall of the First Farmers: From Foraging to Villages

Study a museum gallery's labels to trace how farming led to permanent villages.

Gallery welcome

The museum hall is made up for this worksheet, but the artifacts and facts are real. Read the welcome panel. Then answer the questions.

Welcome to Hall 2: The First Farmers

1For most of the time humans have existed, people got their food by hunting animals, fishing and gathering wild plants. Archaeologists call these people hunter-gatherers, or foragers. Many lived in small bands of a few dozen people, often relatives.

2Foragers knew their land in great detail. They learned when nuts ripened in the hills in autumn, when fish swam upriver in spring and where herds of wild animals grazed in summer. Most bands moved their camps several times a year, and they owned only what they could carry.

3About 10,000 BCE, people in the Fertile Crescent, an arc of hills and river valleys in Southwest Asia, began to plant wild wheat and barley on purpose. Over many generations they saved seeds from the plants they liked best. They also began to tame and breed sheep and goats. The panel in Case 8 shows some other early farming regions.

4Planted fields had to be weeded, guarded from animals and harvested at the right time. Grain could be dried and stored for months. Families built houses of mud brick or stone near their fields, and some villages grew to hold hundreds or even thousands of people. Jericho had a stone wall and tower by about 8000 BCE, and Çatalhöyük, in what is now Turkey, may have held several thousand people around 7000 BCE.

5Farming brought costs as well as benefits. Many archaeologists think that early farmers worked longer hours and ate a less varied diet than foragers. Their skeletons often show more tooth decay, and crowded villages with stored food drew mice and helped diseases spread. Yet a farming family could grow far more food on a small piece of land than it could gather there, and that extra food let some people spend their time making pots, trading or leading.

1.

Based on paragraph 2, why did most forager bands move their camps several times a year?

A. They had not yet learned how to build shelters.B. Foods were found in different places at different seasons.C. Other bands forced them off their land each season.D. Their leaders ordered them to explore new lands each season.

2.

Which chain best shows how farming led to permanent villages, according to paragraphs 3 and 4?

A. Herds move away → bands follow them → villages are left emptyB. Houses built → stored grain spoils → people go back to foragingC. Crops planted → fields need steady care → families build houses nearbyD. Villages built → people tame sheep → wild wheat appears

3.

Circle the sentence from paragraph 5 that a person who thinks farming improved life would most likely use as evidence.

Walk the gallery

Read the case labels and the panel. Then answer the questions.

Case 1. Flint spear point and bone needle, about 15,000 BCE. Hunters chipped flint into sharp points for spears. A needle with an eye let people sew close-fitting clothes from animal skins.
Case 2. Wild and farmed einkorn wheat, about 8000 BCE. When wild wheat ripens, its seed head breaks apart and the seeds fall to the ground. In many farmed plants, the seeds stay on the stalk until people cut them.
Case 3. Sickle with flint blades, about 8000 BCE. Small flint blades were set in a curved handle. A shiny polish forms on blades that have cut many grain stalks.
Case 4. Grinding stone and hand stone, about 7500 BCE. Grain was rubbed between the two stones to make flour.
Case 5. Clay storage jar, about 6500 BCE. Jars like this held grain and seeds for the months between harvests.
Case 6. Obsidian mirror from Çatalhöyük, about 6000 BCE. Obsidian is a black volcanic glass. Çatalhöyük's obsidian came from volcanoes more than 100 miles away.
Case 7. Model of a Çatalhöyük house, about 7000 BCE. Houses were packed wall to wall with no streets between them; people climbed in through the roof. Families buried relatives beneath the floors and rebuilt their houses on the same spot, layer upon layer, for generations.

Case 8. Panel: Where Farming Began

Early Farming Regions (archaeologists' estimates)
Region	Early crops and animals	Farming began about
Fertile Crescent, SW Asia	wheat, barley, sheep, goats	10,000 BCE
Southern Mexico	squash, later maize (corn)	8000 BCE
China	millet, rice, pigs	7000 BCE

4.

Draw a line from each artifact to what it shows about how people lived.

5.

Case 2 compares wild and farmed wheat. Why is the farmed wheat good evidence that people were farming, not only gathering?

A. Farmed wheat grows in places where wild wheat cannot grow.B. Seeds kept on the stalk suggest people saved and replanted them.C. Wild wheat has no seeds, so people had to invent a new plant.D. Seeds that fall to the ground suggest people planted them by hand.

6.

Sort each activity: does it belong more to a hunter-gatherer way of life or to a farming village?

7.

What does Case 7 best show about the people of Çatalhöyük?

A. Families stayed tied to the same place for many generations.B. They lived mostly by following wild herds.C. They moved their village to a new place each spring.D. Each family lived far from its neighbors.

8.

Which conclusion does the Case 8 panel best support?

A. Farming began in several regions, with different crops, at different times.B. Farmers from the Fertile Crescent carried farming to Mexico and China.C. People in China were the first to grow wheat and barley.D. Farming began in these three regions within the same century.

9.

Archaeologists dig at a new site. They find grinding stones, storage pits, mud-brick walls rebuilt in the same place several times and bones of sheep that were mostly killed young. What kind of site is it most likely?

A. A place where hunters made flint spear pointsB. A short-term hunting camp used for one seasonC. A forager band's stop on its yearly routeD. A farming village where people stayed for many years

Make a claim

Use the welcome panel and the case labels.

10.

Claim: The change to farming made life better for early people. Do you agree, disagree or partly agree? Give at least two pieces of evidence from the welcome panel or the cases, and explain your reasoning.