Worksheet

From Cave Camp to Village: A Journey Across the Valley of Oaxaca

Grade 6 history: follow a guide's map across Mexico's Valley of Oaxaca to see how foragers became farmers and how farming led to a permanent village.

Grade 6Social StudiesInteractive · Printable

Aligned toHIS.6.1

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1 C3 Framework standard
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11 questions
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Format: Interactive · Printable
Grade: Grade 6
Subject: Social Studies
Question types: Fill in the blank, Multiple choice, Matching, Circle the answer, Sorting, Short answer

About this worksheet

What students practice

Students use a described map and dated finds to trace the change from foraging to farming in the Valley of Oaxaca.
Students explain why farming led to a permanent village only after crops grew more productive.
Students use archaeological evidence to tell a foragers' camp from a farming village.

How to use

Have students sketch the guide's map from the description before reading the talk, then trace the bus route as they answer.

Curriculum

C3 Framework standard covered

HIS.6.1

Describe how early humans moved from hunting and gathering to farming and how farming led to permanent villages.

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From Cave Camp to Village: A Journey Across the Valley of Oaxaca

Follow a described map from a foragers' cave to an early farming village in Mexico.

The guide's map

A tour guide gives each visitor this map description before the bus leaves. Read it, then answer the questions.

Map of the Valley of Oaxaca, southern Mexico
1. Oaxaca City lies near the middle of the valley floor. The tour starts here.
2. The Atoyac River flows from north to south through the valley, just west of Oaxaca City.
3. San José Mogote lies about 9 miles northwest of Oaxaca City, on flat land near the river.
4. The town of Mitla lies about 25 miles southeast of Oaxaca City.
5. Guilá Naquitz, a small cave, sits high in the dry, rocky hills a few miles northwest of Mitla.

The bus leaves Oaxaca City for the first stop, Guilá Naquitz cave. In which general direction does it travel?

A. Southeast
B. Northeast
C. Northwest
D. Southwest

The guide's talk

Read what the guide says at each stop. Use the talk, the map and the timeline card.

Guide Marisol Vásquez: Two Stops, Ten Thousand Years

1"Welcome to Guilá Naquitz. About 10,000 years ago, a small band of foragers, perhaps one or two families, camped in this rock shelter in the late summer and fall. Archaeologists who dug here found what they ate: acorns, piñon nuts, mesquite pods, wild beans, cactus fruit, and the bones of deer and rabbits. The cave is so dry that even seeds and bits of plants survived."

2"The diggers also found squash seeds larger than those of wild squash, from about 8000 BCE. They are among the oldest signs of farming in the Americas. Still, the people who left them kept moving from camp to camp with the seasons, and they got most of their food from wild plants and animals."

3"This cave also held some of the oldest known maize cobs, from about 4300 BCE. Maize, or corn, came from a wild grass called teosinte, which has only a handful of hard-shelled seeds on each small spike. Over thousands of years, farmers saved seeds from plants with bigger cobs and softer kernels. The cobs found here are tiny, far smaller than an ear of corn today."

4"Our next stop is San José Mogote, on the flat valley floor. By about 1500 BCE, families lived here all year in houses with walls of woven sticks covered in mud, set among fields of maize, beans and squash. Archaeologists found storage pits beside the houses and grinding stones for making maize dough. Some families made ornaments from shells brought from the ocean coasts, far beyond the mountains. The village later grew into the largest settlement in the valley."

5"Why did so many thousands of years pass between the first squash seeds and the first village? Many archaeologists think early crops gave too little food for people to live on them alone. Only when maize cobs grew larger, and beans and squash were grown along with maize, could a family's fields feed it through the whole year in one place."

Guide's Timeline Card (archaeologists' estimates)
Date	Place	Find
About 8000 BCE	Guilá Naquitz	Early farmed squash seeds
About 4300 BCE	Guilá Naquitz	Some of the oldest known maize cobs
About 1500 BCE	San José Mogote	Year-round village of farmers

After the cave, the bus drives to San José Mogote. Which describes this part of the trip?

A. Back across the valley to the northwest, past Oaxaca City
B. Due south, following the Atoyac River downstream
C. Farther southeast, deeper into the hills beyond Mitla
D. A short walk downhill to a village near Mitla

How does each site's place on the map fit the way people lived there?

A. The village is high in the hills, where wild nuts were easy to find.
B. Both sites are on the flat valley floor, close to the same fields.
C. The cave is beside the river, so foragers could fish there in winter.
D. The cave is near wild hill foods; the village is on flat land for fields.

Using the timeline card, about how many years passed between the early farmed squash at Guilá Naquitz and the year-round village at San José Mogote? years

Why do archaeologists count the squash seeds from Guilá Naquitz as evidence of farming, not only gathering?

A. They were found in a dry cave, where seeds can last a long time.
B. They were larger than wild seeds, a sign people chose and planted them.
C. They came from the same layer as the oldest maize cobs.
D. They were found next to grinding stones and storage pits.

Circle the sentence from paragraph 2 that shows the people of Guilá Naquitz still lived mainly as foragers after they began to plant squash.

The diggers also found squash seeds larger than those of wild squash, from about 8000 BCE.They are among the oldest signs of farming in the Americas.Still, the people who left them kept moving from camp to camp with the seasons, and they got most of their food from wild plants and animals.

Draw a line from each find to what it suggests about how people lived.

Storage pits beside houses
Grinding stones
Houses of woven sticks and mud
Shells from the ocean coasts
Tiny maize cobs in the cave

A. Families built homes to stay for years.
B. Families kept food for months.
C. Maize was made into dough.
D. Early maize gave only a little food.
E. People got goods from distant places.

Think like an archaeologist

Use the talk, the map and the timeline card.

In another valley, archaeologists dig in a rock shelter. They find deer bones, acorn shells, a few squash seeds and the ashes of small campfires, but no house walls and no storage pits. What was the site most likely?

A. A year-round village of maize farmers
B. A storehouse where villagers kept their harvest
C. A seasonal camp of foragers who planted a little
D. A workshop where shells were made into ornaments

Sort each activity. Is it part of foraging, or a step toward farming?

Gathering acorns and piñon nuts in the hillsPlanting squash seeds near a campHunting deer and rabbitsSaving seeds from maize with bigger cobsPicking wild cactus fruitGrowing beans in the same fields as maize

Foraging	A step toward farming

10.

Based on paragraph 5, which change did the most to let a family stay in one place all year?

A. More kinds of wild nuts to gather in the fall
B. Larger maize grown together with beans and squash
C. A drier cave where the family could store its seeds
D. More deer living in the hills around the valley

11.

Claim: In the Valley of Oaxaca, farming did not lead to a permanent village right away. Do you agree? Use at least two pieces of evidence from the talk, the map or the timeline card, and explain what finally made a year-round village possible.