Timeline and Sources of History

This page covers fees104.pdf, Chapter 4 of NCERT's new Class 6 textbook Exploring Society: India and Beyond (first edition 2024, NCF-SE 2023). It opens Theme B, Tapestry of the Past. The PDF has 16 pages, book pp. 59–74, matching the catalogue and the contents page. Its three Big Questions: how do we measure historical time; how do sources help us understand history; how did early humans live. Every ‘Think about it’, ‘Let's explore’ and ‘Don't miss out’ box and every figure is read below. A short chapter, so six concept sections. Every date span is computed in the file and asserted. Dating methods such as radiocarbon are not taught by the book; they appear only in clearly marked Beyond NCERT (†) blocks. Where the book takes a position on a contested date or name — the Buddha's birth, ‘Indus-Sarasvatī’, the Rani of Jhansi's birth year, the earliest writing — we set it beside attributed views, with no verdict.

• How this relates to UPSC, honestly: GS1 ancient history begins with sources — what each type tells us (Harappan culture from excavation, 1979; the early Vedic age from the Rigveda, 1980), how to convert eras (Saka to Vikrama, 1997) and how calendars work (Gregorian and Islamic, 2004); Mains asks how inscriptions (2026) and travellers' accounts (2018) rebuild history, and about prehistoric rock art (2015).
• Before this: fees101–fees103 (Theme A, land and people). Next: fees105 (India, That Is Bharat) and fees106 (The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation), which the book says this chapter prepares for.
• Senior chapters: gess101 (Class 7 — sources for 700–1750, manuscripts, archives); iest101 and iest104 (Class 9 — social science methods; early humans and the beginning of civilisation); kehs101 (Writing and City Life — Mesopotamia, c. 3200 BCE); lehs101 (Harappan archaeology); lehs102 (inscriptions, coins, the Saka era); lehs201 (travellers' accounts); kefa101 (prehistoric rock art).
• UPSC from this chapter: four Prelims and three Mains questions (1979–2026). List at the end, with key notes.

• History = the study of the human past; humans occupy a ‘tiny part’ of Earth's history (Earth ≈ 4.54 billion years; Homo sapiens ≈ 300,000).
• Specialists: geologists (Earth's features), palaeontologists (fossils), anthropologists (societies and cultures), archaeologists (digging up remains), epigraphists (inscriptions).
• Gregorian calendar: 365 days, a leap year every 4 years, century years only if divisible by 400. CE (was AD) counts forward, BCE (was BC) backward; no year zero.
• BCE → CE span = add, then subtract 1: 2 BCE → 2 CE = 3; Buddha ≈ 560 BCE → 2024 CE = 2,583 years. Century = 100 years (21st = 2001–2100); millennium = 1,000 (3rd = 2001–3000).
• Sources: archaeological (inscriptions, structures, excavations), literary (Indian literature, foreign accounts), oral (genealogies, folklore), artistic; plus climate, chemistry and genetics; newspapers for recent history.
• Early humans: hunter-gatherers in bands; fire, stone tools, rock paintings, beads. Last Ice Age ≈ 100,000 to 12,000 years ago; then crops, animals, villages, pottery, copper first, iron later.

A ‘Think about it’ box asks for your earliest memory and how understanding the past helps us understand the present. The Earth has a very long history, of which humans occupy only a tiny, most recent part. Fig. 4.1 lays out stages in the evolution of life: the Earth (4.54 billion years ago), oxygen in the atmosphere (2.33 billion), first cells and bacteria, sponges, fungi and corals, fish and vertebrates, insects and amphibians, sharks, reptiles and dinosaurs, birds and mammals, flowers and bees — and in its last sliver primates, fire, Homo sapiens (300,000 years) and writing (6,500 years). Many people study the Earth's history and ours (Fig. 4.2): geologists study its physical features — soil, stones, hills, rivers, seas; palaeontologists study the remains of plants, animals and humans from millions of years ago as fossils; anthropologists study human societies and cultures from the oldest times to now; archaeologists dig up what people, plants and animals left behind — tools, pots, beads, figurines, toys, bones and teeth, burnt grains, parts of houses and bricks.

Each society has its own ways of measuring time; major events — the birth of an important person, the start of a reign — often begin a new era. Today the Gregorian calendar is used worldwide, while Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Chinese and other calendars are used side by side to fix festivals and auspicious events. The Gregorian calendar has 12 months and 365 days, with a leap year every four years — but century years are leap years only if divisible by 400: of 1800, 1900 and 2000, only 2000. In the West the conventional year of Jesus Christ's birth became the starting point. Years after it were marked AD (from a Latin phrase for the years after Jesus' birth) and are now called Common Era (CE): 1947 = 1947 AD = AD 1947 = 1947 CE. Years before it were BC (Before Christ), now Before Common Era (BCE), counted backward: 560 BCE is an approximate birth year of Gautama Buddha. A ‘Let's explore’ box sets the catch: there is no year zero — 1 CE follows 1 BCE directly — so from 2 BCE to 2 CE only 3 years pass; to find years between a BCE and a CE date, add them and subtract 1. With 2024 CE as ‘now’, the Buddha was born 560 + 2024 − 1 = 2,583 years ago. A ‘Don't miss out’ box adds that many Indian calendars use the positions of the sun and moon; a pañchānga is a book of tables listing each month's days with astronomical data — it predicts eclipses, sunrise and sunset, and often gives weather forecasts and festival dates; pañchāngas are still widely used.

A timeline is a convenient tool: it shows a sequence of dates and events for any period. Fig. 4.3 runs from 300,000 BCE to now with landmarks — the first rock art (about 40,000 BCE), the Ice Age, the end of the last ice age, first settlements and agriculture, pottery in the Indian subcontinent, the world's first cities in Mesopotamia, the beginning of copper metallurgy, the Indus-Sarasvatī civilisation, the Buddha, Aśhoka, the birth of Jesus and ‘we are here’. A dotted part marks a skipped period; drawn in full the timeline would be almost 3 metres long. A second drawing puts the Buddha (560 BCE), Jesus, 2000 CE and a question mark for the future on one line — showing the order without dates. A ‘Don't miss out’ box defines the decade (10 years), century (100 years) and millennium (1,000 years). Centuries are counted from 1 CE: we are in the 21st century CE, 2001–2100; BCE centuries count back from 1 BCE: the 3rd century BCE is 300–201 BCE. Millenniums likewise: we are in the 3rd millennium CE (2001–3000); the 1st millennium BCE is 1–1000 BCE. It asks you to mark the start of the 8th millennium BCE on Fig. 4.3 (8000 BCE). A ‘Let's explore’ asks for a family timeline from 1900 CE, marking where the 20th century begins and ends.

A ‘Let's explore’ asks you to build a family tree of three generations on both sides — names, occupations, places of birth — and to note the source of each fact (photographs, diaries, ID cards, relatives' memories). A source of history is a place, person, text or object from which we gather information about a past event or period. A ‘Think about it’ box asks what old coins, books, clothes, jewellery, utensils or houses can tell us. Every object or structure tells a story, like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle — and in history, quite a few pieces may be missing. A chart gathers the main sources: archaeological (inscriptions; structures such as monuments and mounds; excavations — remains, tools, figurines, pottery, toys, habitations and burials), literary (Indian literature — the Vedas and Itihasas, poems and plays, historical texts, stories, scientific texts; and foreign accounts — travelogues and chronicles), oral (genealogies, folklore) and artistic (paintings, sculptures, panels). Historians studying, say, a ruler of 1,500 years ago, a monument, a war or trade gather as many sources as they can. Sometimes sources confirm each other; sometimes they contradict, and historians must decide which to trust more. Contributors include historians, archaeologists, epigraphists, anthropologists and experts in literature and languages; in the last 50 years or so, scientific studies — of ancient climates, the chemistry of excavated materials and the genetics of ancient people — add fresh insights. For recent history (the last two or three centuries), newspapers, and for recent decades television and the internet, are sources too. A final ‘Let's explore’ shows three objects to interpret.

Modern humans (Homo sapiens) have walked the planet for about 300,000 (three lakh) years — long, but a tiny fraction of the Earth's history. A drawing shows early humans in a rock shelter, and a ‘Let's explore’ asks which activities you recognise. Early humans faced many challenges from nature and lived in bands or groups to help each other. Always seeking shelter and food, they were mainly hunters and gatherers, living by hunting and collecting edible plants and fruits. They had beliefs about natural elements and possibly some notion of an afterlife. They lived in temporary camps, rock shelters or caves; spoke languages now lost; used fire; and made objects that eased life — improved stone axes and blades, arrowheads and other tools. Their life is visible in rock paintings in hundreds of caves worldwide — some simple figures or symbols, others detailed scenes of animals and humans. In time they made ornaments — stone or shell beads, pendants of animal teeth — and sometimes exchanged them with other groups.

Over long ages the Earth's climate changed; at times much of it was covered with ice — an Ice Age. When the climate warmed, the ice partly melted, swelling rivers that drained into the oceans. The last Ice Age lasted from over 100,000 years ago to around 12,000 years ago. Afterwards, in many parts of the world, people settled down, cultivated cereals and grains and domesticated animals such as cattle and goats. With more food, communities grew in size and number and often settled near rivers — for water and for more fertile soil. A ‘Let's explore’ shows an agricultural community from a few millenniums ago. A ‘Think about it’ box cautions that the roles the two scenes give men and women may look ‘natural’ but are not necessarily accurate — women may have prepared colours or painted, men may have cooked or minded children; with limited information, we should discuss rather than assume. As communities grew, so did social complexity: chieftains looked after the people's well-being; everyone worked for the community's welfare; the book says there was no sense of individual ownership and lands were sown and harvested collectively. Hamlets grew into sizeable villages exchanging food, clothing and tools; networks of exchange formed and some villages grew into small towns. New technologies appeared — pottery, and metal: copper first, iron later — for durable tools, everyday objects and ornaments. Chapter 6 will show how this stage led to ‘civilisation’; humanity faced great challenges and at critical times could almost have disappeared, as some earlier species did. ‘Before we move on’ sums up: ways to learn about the past; timelines; years, decades, centuries, millenniums; many sources; and early humans' growing societies.

Every ‘Think about it’ and ‘Let's explore’, in page order.

Five questions. Try first, then open.

Numbers

One-liners

• History is the study of the human past.
• Humans occupy only a tiny, recent part of the Earth's history.
• Palaeontologists study fossils; archaeologists dig up remains people left behind.
• The Gregorian calendar is used worldwide; CE counts forward and BCE backward.
• There is no year zero: 1 CE follows 1 BCE.
• Years between a BCE and a CE date = the two numbers added, minus one.
• The 21st century runs from 2001 to 2100.
• A timeline shows the order of events at a glance.
• Sources of history are archaeological, literary, oral and artistic.
• Sources may confirm or contradict each other, and some pieces are missing.
• Early humans were hunter-gatherers living in bands.
• After the last Ice Age people settled, farmed and kept animals; copper came before iron.

Traps to avoid

• There is no year zero, so 2 BCE to 2 CE is 3 years, not 4.
• The year 2000 belongs to the 20th century; the 21st began in 2001.
• The 3rd century BCE runs from 300 down to 201 BCE.
• 1900 was not a leap year; 2000 was.
• The 8th millennium BCE begins in 8000 BCE.
• Fig. 4.3's ice-age marker (12,000 BCE) is not the text's ‘12,000 years ago’.
• Fig. 4.1's ‘writing 6,500 years ago’ is earlier than the usual c. 3200 BCE.
• Foreign travellers' accounts are literary sources, not oral ones.
• The book does not teach radiocarbon dating; it mentions chemical studies only.
• The Buddha's 560 BCE is approximate; other chronologies differ.

Prelims — what UPSC asks

• From this chapter: which source lights up Harappan culture — excavation (1979); the early Vedic age from the Rigveda (1980); Śaka 465 in Vikrama Samvat (1997, flawed key); Islamic v Gregorian calendars (2004, disputed). Practise BCE/CE spans and century naming until automatic.
• Elsewhere: the Śaka era's start and founder (1980, 1982) and coins (1981, 1986) on lehs102; the eras' epochs (1995) and Chaitra 1 of the National Calendar (2014) need the † table above; carbon-14 dating (1983, 1993, also iest101) is Beyond NCERT; Neolithic food production (1980, 1988) sits on kehs101, lehs101 and iest104.

Mains — where it appears and how to answer

• From this chapter: GS1 2026 — Aśokan inscriptions in reconstructing Mauryan history (inscriptions as sources; build with lehs102); GS1 2018 — Chinese and Arab travellers' accounts (foreign accounts as literary sources; build with lehs201); GS1 2015 — prehistoric rock art (the book's rock paintings; build with kefa101).
• Method: name the source type, say what it can and cannot tell, and show where it is confirmed or contradicted by others — the book's jigsaw. Give contested dates with their holders.

Tap an option. NCERT's own exercise questions come first; the rest test the figures and common confusions.

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