Early Humans and Beginning of Civilisation

This is Chapter 4 of the new integrated Grade 9 book: 34 pages (61–94) built round four ‘Big Questions’ — how humans lived before civilisation, how they communicated before writing, how archaeology helps us understand the past, and how early civilisations interacted. It moves from early writing (the undeciphered Harappan script, Brahmi) to human evolution and dispersal out of Africa; the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic, with Indian sites; the Early Harappan roots of the Sindhu–Sarasvatī civilisation (the book's name — see the naming box below); and the contemporary Bronze Age civilisations of Mesopotamia, Egypt and China. It has 38 figures (photographs of seals, tools, sites and objects; six maps; four timelines; a chart of the spread of farming; and diagrams), many boxes (Let's Explore, Think About It, Don't Miss Out, Let's Recall, Let's Map), a Before we move on summary and 13 questions and activities. We use eight concept sections. Every number is recomputed; our additions are marked †.

• Earlier in this book: iest101 (Understanding Social Science — sources, archaeology and how the book names and dates the past) and iest102 (Shaping of the Earth's Surface — the river plains on which these civilisations rose).
• Matching live chapters (for depth): kehs101 (Class 11 Themes in World History: From the Beginning of Time — human evolution, the Stone Age) and kehs102 (Writing and City Life — Mesopotamia) ; lehs101 (Class 12 Themes in Indian History I: Bricks, Beads and Bones — the Harappan civilisation in depth); kefa102 (Indian art: the Harappan seals and sculpture).
• UPSC, honestly: prehistory and the Harappan civilisation are steady but small Prelims topics, asked at the depth of lehs101 and kehs101; Mesopotamia, Egypt and China are almost never asked directly (the GS1 world-history syllabus starts in the 18th century). This chapter gives the frame. We link 9 questions whose core it genuinely teaches (all also sit on a Class 11 or 12 chapter): the first metal (1979), the Neolithic (1980, 1988), the Harappans' contacts with Mesopotamia (1980), Lothal (1980, 1982), the undeciphered script (1982), Dholavira's water system (2021) and Mains on the Harappan civilisation vs its contemporaries (2015).

• Before vs after writing (Fig. 4.3): > 99% of the human story is before writing (≈ 3 million → 5,000 years ago), known through artefacts and fossils; written records date events more exactly.
• Ancestors: stone tools by ≈ 3.3 million years ago; Homo habilis (Olduvai); Homo erectus (handaxes, cleavers) first out of Africa ≈ 2 million years ago; Homo sapiens in Africa ≈ 300,000 years ago; Neanderthals to ≈ 40,000.
• Stone Age in India: Attirampakkam 1.5–1.7 Ma, Isampur 1.2 Ma (handaxes, cleavers); Middle Palaeolithic flakes; blades, beads, art; Mesolithic from ≈ 12,000 years ago — microliths, fishing, Bhimbetka.
• Neolithic revolution: domestication of plants and animals, polished tools, pottery, villages — at different times in different regions (Fig. 4.14). Mehrgarh ≈ 7000 BCE: wheat, barley, sheep, goats, zebu.
• Towards the cities: Chalcolithic copper → Early Harappan (pottery styles, beads, walls, early seals and signs; Kalibangan ploughed field; gabarbands) → Mature Harappan ≈ 2600–1900 BCE (Fig. 4.18). Script undeciphered.
• Contemporaries: Mesopotamia — Sumer (ziggurats, cuneiform ≈ 3200 BCE, base 60), Akkad (Sargon, 2334 BCE; trade with Meluhha), Babylon (Hammurabi, 1792 BCE). Egypt — Nile, pharaohs, mastaba → pyramid, papyrus, Rosetta Stone (1799; deciphered 1822). China — Shang (1600–1046), Zhou (1046–256), oracle bones, jade, silk, Great Wall.

The book's frame (Fig. 4.3): before writing — more than 99% of human history, from about 3 million to 5,000 years ago — is reconstructed mainly from artefacts; people's thoughts are hard to recover; dates are approximate. After writing — less than 1%, the last 5,000 years — both material remains and written documents are used; literature gives names, events and social, political and cultural life; dates become more exact (coronations, wars). The Harappan script (on seals and pottery) is pictographic and undeciphered. Brahmi, in the book's account, was used from about 400 BCE in parts of southern India and the Ganga valley, and was later formalised by Aśoka (3rd century BCE) and by contemporary Iron Age people across southern India. Studying early human history shows our biological evolution (from australopithecines to Homo sapiens) and cultural evolution — how people adapted with tools and techniques to changing climates in the Quaternary (the last 26 lakh years), moving from hunting and gathering to farming, whose surplus laid the foundation of civilisation.

The book's account: it is generally agreed that our earliest ancestors evolved and lived in Africa. Around 3.3 million years ago one of several co-existing ancestors made the earliest stone tools — the start of distinctly ‘human’ behaviour; tools were ‘extra-corporeal limbs’. Different human ancestors co-existed in the Old World. Homo habilis (‘handy man’) lived in Africa, especially around Olduvai Gorge. Homo erectus, maker of handaxes and cleavers, was the first hominin to leave Africa, around 2 million years ago; its tools are found across Asia and Europe from about 2 to 0.5 million years ago. Another major movement out of Africa, around 125,000 years ago, is linked with Homo sapiens, which evolved in Africa about 300,000 years ago and is now spread over the earth. Neanderthals lived in Europe and South-west Asia until about 40,000 years ago. Archaeologists dig for tools, bones and other clues; they experiment by making and using similar tools; bones of ancestors buried for very long periods became fossils.

The Stone Age is divided into Palaeolithic (palaeo = old, lithic = stone), Mesolithic and Neolithic. In the subcontinent the oldest human settlement goes back about 2 million years. Attirampakkam (Tamil Nadu) is dated to about 1.5–1.7 million years and Isampur (Karnataka) to about 1.2 million; both have animal fossils and large cutting tools — handaxes and cleavers — with scrapers and choppers of quartzite and limestone, used to chop meat, dig tubers, scrape skins and split bones for marrow. Later, smaller tools — scrapers, borers and points — show more efficient hunting with pointed projectiles. Later still came the bow and arrow, parallel-sided blades and microblades of glassy stone, small-game hunting, symbolic communication, cave and rock-shelter paintings, body pigments and the first beads of stone, bone and shell; burins engraved bone and ostrich-egg shell; microblades were hafted. These are linked with Homo sapiens, who spread across the world, including Australia and the Americas, between about 50,000 and 12,000 years ago. Around 12,000 years ago the climate warmed; forests and grasslands spread; small game, fish and wild grains became plentiful and, the book says, the world saw its first population explosion. Mesolithic people used microliths, fished in sea and fresh water, made art and used caves and rock shelters — Bhimbetka (Madhya Pradesh), a World Heritage Site, has hundreds of painted shelters with Mesolithic and earlier occupation.

As hunter–gatherers came to know the seasons and food sources well, they slowly moved to producing food — the Neolithic revolution. Its hallmark was the domestication of selected animals and plants and the breeding of new varieties. Neolithic farmers made tools for producing and processing food (Fig. 4.13), many kinds of pottery, and the first village settlements, laying the foundation for the urban revolution. The change came at different times in different regions (Fig. 4.14). In the subcontinent, Mehrgarh on the Bolan river (Baluchistan, Pakistan) is the oldest Neolithic site and earliest farming village, dated by the book to about 7000 BCE: houses of hand-made sun-dried bricks, granaries, burials, ornaments of lapis lazuli, carnelian and shell; wheat and barley; sheep, goats and humped zebu cattle. The book adds that its people were the first to make copper objects, becoming Chalcolithic by about 4000 BCE and laying the base for the Bronze Age civilisation. By about 2500 BCE most of the subcontinent had Neolithic farming communities — cattle, sheep and goat herding with cereals, millets and pulses — sometimes interacting with Chalcolithic neighbours (Sanganakallu, Fig. 4.15).

The book traces the civilisation's roots: the Neolithic way of life from about 7000 BCE at Mehrgarh spread into the middle and upper Indus valley and further east; some settlements mastered copper extraction around 4000 BCE, becoming the earliest Chalcolithic sites. Copper tools in the fertile plains of the Indus and the Ghaggar–Sarasvatī raised productivity and prosperity; pottery was produced on a large scale in diverse regional styles from about 4000 BCE onwards. The book adds that ‘some radiocarbon dates suggest’ a Pre-Harappan phase at Bhirrana and Kunal between 7000 and 5500 BCE. Regional styles became standard features of the civilisation by about 2500 BCE. Because the sites show cultural continuity, this stage is called Early Harappan: continuity in pottery, semi-precious stone beads, shell bangles, terracotta and copper work; perimeter walls, seals and perhaps the script began then. Early Harappan bead-making is found at Harappa, Kunal and Datrana; graffiti on pots and a few seals with geometric and animal motifs (Harappa, Rehman Dheri, Kunal) foreshadow the script. Early farmers at Kalibangan ploughed fields; the Harappans used standard weights; in Baluchistan gabarbands (check dams) aided irrigation, and the mature-phase Dholavira diverted two streams into deep tanks, while Lothal had a large burnt-brick ‘dockyard’. These advances led to the urban centres of the mature phase, about 2600–1900 BCE (Fig. 4.18).

Four early civilisations rose in river plains — the Harappan (Sindhu and Sarasvatī), the Mesopotamian (Euphrates and Tigris), the Egyptian (Nile) and the Chinese (Huang He). Mesopotamia and the Indus–Ghaggar valleys are close, which encouraged contact and trade; Egypt and China show little tangible direct contact with the Harappans. The earliest city-based civilisation arose in Mesopotamia (Greek, ‘land in between’ the rivers; today mainly Iraq and Kuwait with parts of Turkey and south-western Iran, in the book's list). The Fertile Crescent curves along the foothills of the Zagros and Taurus from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. Farming began there about 12,000 years ago; copper arrived about 4500 BCE. Over 2,000 years, cities became city-states. Sumerians (Ur and other cities in southern Iraq) built dams and canals, used mud and burnt bricks, worshipped many gods and built a ziggurat for each city's chief god, around which economic life was organised; priests and priestesses formed part of the ruling class; kings lived in palaces, most people in small brick houses, farming, with crafts and traders. They began writing about 3200 BCE in cuneiform, used across Mesopotamia by 3000 BCE for myths, hymns, law codes and records; they invented the wheeled cart and sailboat and counted in base 60. Akkad rose in 2334 BCE (Sargon): the same script for a different language, the ‘first dynastic empire’, literature such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, and trade with Dilmun (Bahrain), Magan (Oman) and Meluhha (generally identified with the Harappan civilisation) — beads, ivory, timber, gold dust and probably copper. The book then has Assur (Assyria) supplanting Akkad around 2154 BCE, and Babylon rising from 1900 BCE; Hammurabi (from 1792 BCE) built an empire and compiled the Code of Hammurabi; Babylon declined under Hittite and other attacks, environmental strain and internal problems.

Egypt is one of the earliest civilisations, with rich records: Greek writers such as Herodotus wrote about it in the 5th century BCE, and a 19th-century work, the Description de l'Égypte †, describes it. History is reconstructed from papyrus records — stories and practical texts; the Papyrus Ebers lists over 700 remedies and spells. Libraries from about 2000 BCE stored scrolls in labelled jars. The Rosetta Stone, found in 1799 by the French engineer Pierre Bouchard, carried the same text in three scripts including Greek; Jean-François Champollion deciphered hieroglyphs in 1822. The calendar had three seasons of four months — inundation, growing (peret) and harvest (shemu) — and a year of 12 × 30 + 5 = 365 days tied to the rising of Sirius, about a quarter-day short. City-states emerged around 3000 BCE; the Nile flooded each summer, leaving rich black mud (‘kemet’ — Egyptians called their land Kemet, ‘the black’). About 5,000 years ago farmers dug ditches and reservoirs; such collective work probably gave rise to local government and an administrative class. Pharaohs were buried under mastabas, stacked into pyramids such as the step pyramid at Saqqara, because each person's ka lived on if the body was preserved by mummification. Society was a pyramid — pharaoh; officials, nobles and priests; free landholders, artisans and merchants; serfs and slaves. People swam, canoed, played board games and enjoyed music; festivals honoured gods and pharaohs (the Sed festival marked a king's 30th year). Women could own property and run businesses; Cleopatra (69–30 BCE) became queen at eighteen.

Chinese civilisation grew along the Huang He (Yellow River) and the Yangtze, centres of Neolithic cultures from about 7000 BCE. Copper and bronze metallurgy arrived about 2000 BCE; urban centres emerged about 1600 BCE as farming, metallurgy and crafts expanded. Dynasties: Shang (1600–1046 BCE) and Zhou (1046–256 BCE) in the Bronze Age; iron common by about 600 BCE; the Qin (221–206 BCE), first imperial dynasty, which probably gave ‘China’ its name; the Han (206 BCE–220 CE). Zhou rulers were kings and priests, ‘appointees of heaven’ who could be removed if the people did not prosper; officials were examined in archery, horsemanship, calculation, writing and music. The earliest written sources are oracle bones — bones and shells heated until they cracked, the cracks read as answers. The script is logographic. Craft items include jade (ritual and prestige objects; the book says jade was obtained from outside China), carved marble, and bronze weapons, tools and ritual vessels. The Great Wall was built over about 2,000 years — separate walls from 680 BCE, later joined, repaired until the 17th century CE. Silk was known from the Neolithic (4000–3000 BCE); under the Han (2nd century BCE) it became a great export, giving the ‘Silk Route’ its name. Society was stratified by 1500 BCE; metal money appeared under the Zhou, a money economy by the 5th century BCE; China was first with paper currency and civil-service examinations. The book's conclusion: the Bronze Age civilisations emerged independently in fertile river plains; surplus, new resources, cities, administration and writing — first for accounts, then literature — are their shared features.

Seven Let's Explore boxes, eight Think About It boxes, two Let's Recall/Let Us Recall boxes and one Let's Map. Outlines below.

Thirteen questions and activities after an eight-point Before we move on summary. Try first, then open.

Numbers

One-liners

• Prehistory is read from objects; history from readable writing.
• Out of Africa twice: erectus about 2 million years ago, sapiens much later.
• Big tools to tiny tools: handaxe → flake → blade → microlith.
• Neolithic = food production, polished stone, pots and villages.
• Copper first, then bronze; the Harappan cities grew from Early Harappan villages.
• Mature Harappan 2600–1900 BCE; the script is still unread.
• Mesopotamia: ziggurats, cuneiform, base 60, Hammurabi's laws, trade with Meluhha.
• Egypt: the Nile's black mud, pharaohs, pyramids, papyrus, the Rosetta Stone.
• China: Shang and Zhou, oracle bones, bronze, jade, silk and the Great Wall.
• Four civilisations, four rivers, mostly independent — but traders linked Harappa and Mesopotamia.

Traps to avoid

• Homo habilis lived about 2.4–1.4 million years ago, not 2–6 million.
• Olduvai Gorge is in Tanzania.
• Hominin means the human lineage, not ‘tool maker’; bipedalism predates Homo erectus.
• Fig. 4.9's ‘1–5 million years’ should read about 1.5 million years.
• Microliths are Mesolithic; polished stone is Neolithic; copper is Chalcolithic.
• After Akkad came Ur III, then Old Babylon and Old Assyria; Assyria lasted to 609 BCE.
• The Hittites sacked Babylon in 1595 BCE.
• The Kalibangan furrows may show mixed cropping, not double cropping — say both.
• Lothal's basin: dockyard (S.R. Rao) or reservoir — say both.
• UPSC 1980's ‘Mesopotamians’ vs ‘Sumerians’ — both true; the key is the broader one.

Prelims — what UPSC asks

• From this chapter: the first metal (1979), the Neolithic (1980, 1988), Harappan contacts with Mesopotamia (1980), Lothal (1980, 1982), the undeciphered script (1982), Dholavira's water system (2021). Learn site → feature pairs (Mehrgarh, Bhimbetka, Attirampakkam, Kalibangan, Dholavira, Lothal) and age → tool pairs.
• Old questions sometimes have two defensible options (Sumerians/Mesopotamians): choose the broader or more standard one, and know the positions on debated dates.

Mains — where it appears and how to answer

• GS1: how the Harappan civilisation differed from Egypt and Mesopotamia in its continuity (2015). Use the comparison table in section 8, add continuities the book names (ploughing, weights, crafts) and attribute debated claims.
• For any prehistory answer, give the evidence (site, object, date) and say which dates are debated.

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

Open any question to attempt it in the Question bank — your attempt is saved to your progress.