Question

How did human beings start to live a settled life? Describe the evidence of early agriculture.

Answer 1

Instructions:

1. Describe how human beings started to stay at one place to take care of plants and animals.
2. Increase in harvest created a necessity to build storage and other objects
3. Remains of cultivation found at various places dated thousand of years ago.

Solution:

• Human beings began to cultivate their own food and herding animals.
• People started to stay at one place for a longer period of time to protect the plants and provide them water.
• As the people started to depend primarily on agriculture the amount of grains collected from the harvest increased.
• This generated a need to build storage and thus humans started to build huts that were made up of stone, wood, mud and dried grass.
• They needed vessels in order to store grains and dairy products and thus started making different kinds of pots.
• These pots and vessels were painted in order to decorate them.
• Grains were roasted in order to preserve them for a longer period of time.
• New types of tools were formed by grinding stones on rock to give it a sharp edge.
• These sharp edged stones were attached to a handle in order to form an axe-like tool.
• These tools were called ‘neoliths’ and were used for clearing the forest in order to practice agriculture.
• Early evidence of agriculture was in Baluchistan dated 9000 years ago. In India evidence is found in Kashmir from 5000 years ago and in Bihar from 4000 years ago.
• As evidence for domestication, large mounds of ashes are found from the border Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.
• It is believed that these ash mounds were formed from burning cow dung.
• Other evidence like neoliths, handmade pots, etc were also found in excavations.