Early Humans and Beginning of Civilisation — RBSE Class 9 (Social Science · NCF)

For most of human history there were no houses, no farms, no writing — just small bands of people following animals and gathering plants. Then, over a few thousand years, humans learned to make fire, grow food, build villages and, finally, cities. This theme tells the astonishing story of how our ancestors went from wandering hunters to the builders of the first civilisations — including one of the greatest, right here in the Indian subcontinent.

1. Early humans — the hunter-gatherers

The earliest humans lived by hunting animals and gathering wild fruits, roots and nuts. They were nomads — always on the move — because they followed animal herds and ripening plants, and they lived in caves or temporary shelters. They made and used stone tools, which is why this long period is called the Stone Age, divided into three phases:

• Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age) — rough stone tools; hunting and gathering; cave paintings (India: Bhimbetka).
• Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) — smaller, finer tools (microliths); began taming animals.
• Neolithic (New Stone Age) — polished tools; the beginnings of farming and settled life.

Two great early discoveries

• Fire — used for warmth, protection from animals, and cooking food (which made it easier to digest).
• The wheel — later, revolutionised transport and pottery-making.

2. The Neolithic Revolution — learning to farm

The single biggest change in human history was the Neolithic Revolution: humans learned to grow crops (agriculture) and domesticate animals (cattle, sheep, goats). Its effects were enormous:

• People no longer had to wander for food, so they built permanent settlements and became settled/sedentary.
• A dependable food supply meant surplus food, which could be stored — allowing populations to grow.
• With surplus, not everyone had to farm: people took up crafts (pottery, weaving, tool-making) and trade — the beginnings of a division of labour.

In the Indian subcontinent, early farming settlements such as Mehrgarh (in present-day Pakistan) show this transition to village life.

3. What makes a 'civilisation'?

As settlements grew larger and more organised, some became civilisations. A civilisation usually shows these features:

• Cities and planned settlements;
• Organised government / administration;
• a writing system and record-keeping;
• specialised crafts, arts and trade;
• social organisation (different groups and roles); and
• shared religion, culture and monuments.

The first civilisations arose beside rivers — the Indus (Harappan), the Nile (Egypt), the Tigris–Euphrates (Mesopotamia) and the Huang He / Yellow River (China) — because rivers gave water, fertile soil and transport.

4. The Harappan (Indus Valley) Civilisation

The Harappan Civilisation (about 2600–1900 BCE), also called the Indus Valley Civilisation, was one of the world's earliest urban civilisations, spread across the Indus region and beyond. Its remarkable features:

• Excellent town planning — cities like Harappa, Mohenjodaro, Dholavira and Kalibangan (in Rajasthan) had streets in a grid pattern, houses of baked brick, and a citadel (raised area) and a lower town.
• An advanced drainage system — covered drains along the streets, a sign of civic care for hygiene rarely matched in the ancient world.
• The Great Bath (Mohenjodaro), granaries, wells and public buildings.
• Crafts and trade — fine pottery, beads, seals (with a still-undeciphered script), and trade with distant lands like Mesopotamia.
• Standardised weights and measures — evidence of organised trade and administration.

Its decline (around 1900 BCE) is debated — possible causes include climate change, drying rivers, floods or the decline of trade.

5. Closing thought

The arc of this theme is the making of settled human life. Wandering hunter-gatherers, armed with stone tools and fire, slowly learned — in the Neolithic Revolution — to farm and settle. Settlement produced surplus, surplus produced crafts, trade and specialised roles, and out of organised settlements grew the first civilisations — river-valley cultures whose greatest Indian example, the Harappan Civilisation, still amazes us with its planned cities and drains.

For the RBSE board (new NCF Class 9 SST), master the Stone Age phases and the role of fire and farming, the Neolithic Revolution and its effects, the features of a civilisation, and — most importantly — the town planning, drainage and crafts of the Harappan Civilisation (with the Rajasthan site Kalibangan). These are the theme's highest-yield questions.