Worksheet

Hall of Dry Lands: Water in the Sahara, Iran and the Steppe

Grade 6 geography: tour a museum hall on the Sahara, the Iranian Plateau and the steppe and use rain, population and land-use data to compare them.

Grade 6Social StudiesInteractive · Printable

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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, Circle the answer, Sorting, Short answer

About this worksheet

What students practice

Students compare three dry regions using rainfall, population and land-use data.
Students explain how ancient peoples adapted to and changed dry environments, and what followed.

How to use

Read the welcome panel together, then let students visit the cases in pairs and use the wall chart. Ask them to mark each case 'adapt' or 'change' before the final claim.

Curriculum

C3 Framework standard covered

GEO.6.3

Use population, climate and land-use data to compare world regions and explain how people adapt to and change their environment.

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Hall of Dry Lands: Water in the Sahara, Iran and the Steppe

Tour a museum hall and use its wall chart to compare three dry regions.

The welcome panel

Read the panel at the entrance to the hall.

Hall 5: Living with Little Rain

1Much of Earth's land is dry. In deserts and dry grasslands, little rain falls, and water decides where people can live and how many people the land can support. This hall compares three dry regions of the ancient world: the central Sahara in North Africa, the Iranian Plateau in southwest Asia, and the steppe, a wide belt of grassland in central Asia.

2People in dry lands answered the problem of water in two main ways. Sometimes they adapted, fitting the way they lived to the land, for example by moving their herds with the seasons. Other times they changed the environment, reshaping the land or its water, for example by digging tunnels to carry water to fields. Many groups did some of both.

3As you walk through the hall, ask where each group's water came from. Some water is refilled every year by rain or melting snow. Other water collected underground thousands of years ago and is refilled very slowly, if at all.

Visit the cases

Read each case label and the wall chart. Then answer the questions.

Case 1. Copy of a rock painting, Tassili n'Ajjer, Algeria. Herders painted this scene on a cliff perhaps 6,000 years ago. It shows people with large herds of cattle. Today the area gets almost no rain and could not feed such herds. Scientists have found that for thousands of years before about 3500 BCE, the Sahara was much wetter, with lakes and grassland. As the rains failed, many herders moved toward the Nile Valley, to oases, or south toward wetter land.

Case 2. Model of a foggara, Fezzan, Libya. A foggara is a gently sloping tunnel that carries groundwater from under higher ground out to fields. Workers dug a line of shafts and joined them underground. Archaeologists estimate that the Garamantes, a people of the central Sahara, began digging foggaras about 500 BCE, and hundreds have been mapped. With this water the Garamantes grew wheat, barley and dates around their towns. Much of the groundwater had collected thousands of years earlier, in the Sahara's wetter times, and the little rain that fell added almost nothing. Many archaeologists think the foggaras dried up one by one as the water underground sank, and that this helped weaken the Garamantes after about 400 CE.

Case 3. Model of a qanat, Iranian Plateau. A qanat works much like a foggara. Qanats had spread across the Iranian Plateau by about 500 BCE, when the Persian Empire ruled it. Rain and snow fall on the mountains each winter and soak into the ground at their feet, where qanats collect the water. Because the water flows underground, little of it is lost to the summer heat. The Greek historian Polybius wrote that Persian kings let anyone who brought water to dry land farm that land for five generations. Thousands of qanats are still used in Iran today.

Case 4. Copies of a felt saddle cover and a gold plaque, Saka herders, steppe of Kazakhstan, about 400 BCE. The Saka were horse-riding herders related to the Scythians. On the steppe, rain is light and winters are very cold. Grass covers wide areas, but in one place it cannot feed a large herd for long. Saka families moved their horses, sheep and cattle between summer pastures and sheltered winter camps, and many lived in felt tents and wagons. Most Saka groups farmed little. More than 2,000 years later, in the 1950s, large parts of the northern Kazakh steppe were plowed up to grow wheat.

Wall Chart: The Three Regions Today (rounded figures)
Region	Rain per year	Main farm water	People per sq mile
Fezzan, Libya (Sahara)	less than 1 in	Deep wells into old groundwater	about 2
Yazd, Iran (plateau)	about 2 in	Qanats and deep wells	about 20
Akmola, Kazakhstan (steppe)	about 12 in	Rain	about 15

The painting in Case 1 shows large cattle herds where the land is now too dry for them. What does this evidence best show?

A. The Sahara has had about the same rain for 6,000 years.
B. The painters showed animals from a faraway land.
C. Cattle need less water than other farm animals.
D. The central Sahara's climate has changed since then.

About 3500 BCE, a herding family sees the lake near their camp shrink year after year. Based on Case 1, what would they most likely do?

A. Move their herds toward the Nile Valley or the south
B. Dig a tunnel to refill the lake from the mountains
C. Build felt tents to keep the cattle warm in winter
D. Stay and plow the dry lakebed to plant wheat

Underline the sentence from Case 2 that explains why the Garamantes' water underground was not refilled.

A foggara is a gently sloping tunnel that carries groundwater from under higher ground out to fields.With this water the Garamantes grew wheat, barley and dates around their towns.Much of the groundwater had collected thousands of years earlier, in the Sahara's wetter times, and the little rain that fell added almost nothing.Many archaeologists think the foggaras dried up one by one as the water underground sank, and that this helped weaken the Garamantes after about 400 CE.

Foggaras and qanats are both tunnels. Based on Cases 2 and 3, why are many qanats still flowing while the Garamantes' foggaras dried up?

A. Qanat water runs in open canals that catch the rain.
B. Persian farmers grew no crops, so they used little water.
C. Mountain rain and snow refill qanat water each year.
D. Qanats tap old water left from wet times long ago.

Polybius wrote that Persian kings let anyone who brought water to dry land farm it for five generations. What was this rule most likely meant to do?

A. Punish families who had wasted the empire's water
B. Stop people from farming near the mountains
C. Reward people for the hard work of digging qanats
D. Close each qanat after five generations of use

Which statement does the wall chart support?

A. The region with the most rain has the most people per square mile.
B. Yazd gets less rain than Akmola but has more people per square mile.
C. Fezzan has more people per square mile than Akmola has.
D. Farms in Yazd and Fezzan get most of their water from rain.

Use the wall chart and Case 3. What best explains why Yazd supports more people per square mile than the Akmola steppe, even though it gets less rain?

A. Most of its rain falls in summer, when crops grow.
B. Qanats and wells bring it water from underground.
C. Its people still move herds between pastures.
D. Its summers are cool, so crops need little water.

Use Case 2. Add the years before and after year 1.

From the first foggaras (about 500 BCE) to the time the Garamantes began to weaken (about 400 CE) is about years.

Compare and decide

Use the welcome panel, the cases and the wall chart.

Sort each water or food source. Is it refilled every year, or does it depend on water stored up long ago?

A Persian qanat fed by mountain snowA Garamantes foggara in the FezzanSaka pastures watered by the steppe's light rainDeep wells in the Fezzan todayWheat fields on the Akmola steppe todayRain-fed lakes in the Sahara before 3500 BCE

Refilled every year	Stored up long ago

10.

Use paragraph 2 of the welcome panel. Which of these is an example of changing the environment rather than adapting to it?

A. Farmers plowing up the northern steppe for wheat
B. Saka families living in felt tents and wagons
C. Herders leaving the drying Sahara for wetter land
D. Saka families moving herds to sheltered winter camps

11.

Claim: Changing the environment to get water is riskier over the long run than adapting to it. Do you agree, disagree or partly agree? Use at least two pieces of evidence from the cases or the wall chart, and explain your reasoning.