Early Humans and Beginning of Civilisation

Introduction and guiding questions

**A human past older than kingdoms** The history of human beings begins long before the kingdoms, empires and cities familiar from earlier lessons. Studying this longer past means asking where our ancestors lived, how they obtained food, how their ways of life changed and how different communities eventually developed into civilisations. The chapter's four guiding questions connect these changes with communication before writing, archaeological investigation and contacts between early civilisations. They establish an enquiry, rather than supplying a single explanation for every society. **Evidence before readable records** Writing did not appear everywhere at the same moment. For periods without written records, archaeological evidence is therefore especially important. Physical objects survive even when the people who made them left no account that we can read. Such evidence allows historians to investigate the past, but it also sets limits on what can be concluded. The absence of readable writing does not mean that a community had no history or knowledge. It means that our questions must be investigated through the evidence available. **The Harappan script and other early writing systems** The Sindhu–Sarasvatī civilisation is also called the Indus Valley or Harappan civilisation. Signs appear on objects such as its seals and pottery. The textbook describes this writing as pictographic and also calls it Sindhu lipi. Its signs have not been satisfactorily deciphered, so observing them is different from knowing what their messages say. A picture of a seal cannot, by itself, supply a translation or establish the language behind its signs. Cuneiform, associated here with the Sumerians of Mesopotamia, and the hieroglyphic writing of ancient Egypt provide a useful comparison. These scripts have been deciphered, making written evidence available alongside material remains. The contrast explains why the emergence and readability of writing matter to historians. It should not be turned into one universal starting date for the historical period in every region. **Reading the two source examples** Figure 4.1 presents a Harappan seal for careful observation. The accompanying activity asks students to investigate attempts at decipherment; it does not provide a proven explanation for every difficulty. Figure 4.2 shows a Brahmi inscription on a railing around the stūpa at Sanchi in Madhya Pradesh. The chapter introduces Brahmi as a later Indian script and connects its use with the period of Aśhoka in the third century BCE. Together, the figures show different material settings for writing and encourage a distinction between visible marks, a readable script and a historical interpretation.

• Human history extends far beyond the history of kingdoms and cities.
• Writing emerged at different times in different regions; archaeological evidence remains essential.
• The Harappan script occurs on seals and pottery but has not been satisfactorily deciphered.
• Deciphered cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs provide written evidence as well as material evidence.
• The Sanchi railing inscription is the source example of Brahmi; it is not a Harappan inscription.

Writing, evidence and the long human past

**Writing changes the evidence available to historians** The textbook compares the long span before writing with the much shorter period for which written records exist. Its broad framework places more than 99 per cent of the early human story before the last five thousand years. The point is the large difference in duration, not that human activities began only when people wrote about them. Tools and other material evidence are essential for studying the earlier periods. **Compare sources rather than replacing one with another** Before written records, artefacts such as tools and implements provide major clues to ways of life, although people's thoughts are harder to recover. After writing appears, documents may add names, accounts of events and information about social or political life. Material remains still matter. Written dates can make some chronologies more precise, but a written source must also be interpreted in context; its existence does not make every statement in it automatically accurate. **Biological change and cultural adaptation** Biological evolution concerns physical and genetic change in human ancestors. Cultural evolution concerns changes in ways of life, knowledge, tools and practices through which people responded to their surroundings. The source discusses adaptation during the Quaternary Period, covering approximately the last 26 lakh years. These two processes are connected but are not interchangeable: learning to make a tool is a cultural development, not by itself a new biological species. **Read the dispersal map chronologically** Figure 4.4 presents early movement of Homo erectus out of Africa around two million years ago. Evidence of tools in Asia and Europe helps researchers investigate dispersal beyond Africa over a long period. The text separately describes a later movement associated with early Homo sapiens around 125,000 years ago, and places the evolution of Homo sapiens in Africa around 300,000 years ago. These dates describe different events and must not be substituted for one another. **How archaeology builds an explanation** Archaeologists examine sites, tools, bones and other remains to reconstruct past activities. They may also make and use comparable tools experimentally to investigate how they worked. A tool's form, material and context provide evidence; conclusions should be linked to those observations. Figure 4.5 illustrates excavation, a process of investigating remains rather than simply collecting attractive objects. **From subsistence to later civilisations** Over time, some communities moved from hunting and gathering towards agriculture and food production. Surplus food and material goods helped create conditions for later civilisations. This was a long development, not one event that happened everywhere simultaneously. For the migration discussion, consider changing environments and resource needs as possible factors, while distinguishing an evidence-supported explanation from a guess about every group.

• Writing adds evidence; it does not replace archaeology.
• Biological evolution and cultural adaptation describe different processes.
• Keep the Homo erectus and Homo sapiens dispersal dates distinct.
• Use tools, sites and experimental work to explain archaeological conclusions.
• Farming and later civilisation emerged through extended, uneven developments.