Earliest Societies, First Farmers & Harappa | CTET SST P2

Hunter-Gatherer Societies

The earliest human communities in the subcontinent were hunter-gatherers — small bands who lived by hunting wild animals, fishing, and gathering fruits, roots, nuts and honey. NCERT's 'Our Pasts I' (Chapter 2) opens with these people, who lived from the Old Stone Age (Palaeolithic) roughly 2 million years ago down to around 12,000 years ago.

Key features of hunter-gatherer life:

• Movement — they moved from place to place in search of food, water and herds. They did not live in permanent houses.
• Tools — early tools were made of stone, wood and bone. Stone tools were chipped from a core to make hand-axes, scrapers, blades and microliths.
• Shelter — they lived in caves and rock shelters. Bhimbetka (Madhya Pradesh) is the most famous Indian site, with paintings of animals, hunts and dances on its cave walls.
• Other sites — Hunsgi (Karnataka), Kurnool caves (Andhra Pradesh) and the Belan valley (UP) are also mentioned in NCERT.
• Fire — was used for warmth, cooking and protection from animals. Traces of ash have been found at Kurnool.

About 12,000 years ago the climate shifted to warmer conditions. Grasslands expanded, and animals like deer, antelope, sheep, goat and cattle multiplied — this directly enabled the next stage of human history. The cool stone-age way of life slowly gave way to the Mesolithic, marked by tiny stone tools (microliths) often hafted onto wooden shafts.

For a teacher, the lesson is that hunter-gatherer life was not 'primitive' — it required deep knowledge of plants, animals and seasons. NCERT uses Bhimbetka paintings as a primary source pupils can read directly.

Beginnings of Farming and Herding

Around 8000 BCE, somewhere along the long arc from West Asia through Iran into the north-west of the subcontinent, people began to grow their own food and tame animals. This was one of the great turning points of human history.

NCERT highlights Mehrgarh, in the Bolan valley of Balochistan (Pakistan), as one of the earliest farming villages in the subcontinent. Excavations show:

• Cultivation of wheat and barley from about 8000 BCE.
• Domestication of sheep, goat and cattle.
• Small mud-brick houses with several rooms — clear evidence of permanent settlement.
• Burials with grave-goods (beads, stone tools, sometimes a goat) — suggesting beliefs about the afterlife.

Other early farming sites mentioned in NCERT include Burzahom and Gufkral (Kashmir — pit dwellings), Daojali Hading (Assam), Chirand (Bihar), Mahagara and Koldihwa (UP, with the earliest rice remains), Hallur and Paiyampalli (south India), and Inamgaon (Maharashtra, later Chalcolithic).

The shift to farming brought enormous change. People could now store food, support larger families, and stay in one place. Pottery was invented to store grain; stone tools became polished (Neolithic) for cutting wood and working soil. The quern (grinding stone) appears at every Neolithic site as evidence of grain-grinding.

NCERT does not present this as a sudden 'revolution' but as a long, slow change spread over centuries — and pupils should see it as such.

Neolithic Revolution and Settled Life

The change from foraging to farming and herding is called the Neolithic Revolution (often dated 10,000–4,000 BCE in different parts of the world). 'Neolithic' means 'New Stone Age', because tools were now polished rather than just chipped.

Key features of Neolithic life — as described in NCERT 'Our Pasts I':

• Permanent settlements — villages of mud-brick or wattle-and-daub houses.
• Agriculture — wheat, barley, rice, millet; later cotton and pulses.
• Domesticated animals — sheep, goat, cattle, buffalo, pig.
• Pottery — handmade and later wheel-made, for storage and cooking.
• Polished stone tools — celts and axes for clearing forest.
• Weaving — cotton and flax were spun on spindles; cloth was woven on simple looms. Spindle whorls of clay and stone are found at most sites.
• Beginnings of inequality — burials with rich and poor grave-goods hint at social differences.

The famous Neolithic site of Burzahom in Kashmir shows pit-houses — circular pits dug into the ground, lined with stones and covered with a roof, well-suited to cold winters. A grave from Burzahom even has the bones of a dog buried with its owner.

Some Neolithic sites continued into the Chalcolithic (Copper-Stone) age, when copper tools appeared alongside stone. Inamgaon on the Ghod river is the model NCERT site: rectangular houses, copper tools, pottery, evidence of seasonal flooding, and a 'chief's house' larger than others — early signs of village hierarchy.

The Neolithic Revolution is the foundation on which the Harappan cities would later rise.

Harappan Civilization — Discovery and Sites

By around 2600 BCE, in the valleys of the Indus and the Saraswati-Ghaggar-Hakra, the world's first urban civilisation in India had taken shape. It is called the Harappan or Indus Valley Civilisation.

Discovery — the existence of these cities was unknown until the 1920s, when Daya Ram Sahni excavated Harappa (1921) and R.D. Banerji excavated Mohenjodaro (1922). The find of identical seals at both sites told them they had stumbled on a single great civilisation.

Extent — Harappan sites stretch from Sutkagendor on the Makran coast in the west to Alamgirpur in Uttar Pradesh in the east; from Manda in Jammu in the north to Daimabad in Maharashtra in the south. About a thousand sites are now known.

Date — the civilisation flourished roughly 2600–1900 BCE, with earlier 'pre-Harappan' phases going back to about 3300 BCE. This makes the Harappans contemporaries of the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilisations.

Distinctive features known from NCERT:

• Planned cities with a citadel and a lower town.
• Standardised baked-brick houses, drains and wells.
• A still-undeciphered script of about 400 signs.
• Long-distance trade with Mesopotamia.
• Beautiful crafts — beads, seals, pottery, weights.

Most Harappans were not city-dwellers — they were farmers, herders and craft-workers living in villages around the cities. The cities depended on this rural network for food and raw materials. This is a point CTET pedagogy questions sometimes test against the idea that Harappa was 'only' an urban civilisation.

Urban Planning of Harappa

The most striking feature of Harappan civilisation is its town planning. NCERT 'Our Pasts I' devotes a chapter to it, and CTET regularly asks about it.

A typical Harappan city has two parts:

• The citadel — a raised, walled western area, possibly for rulers or public buildings.
• The lower town — a larger area to the east, where most people lived and worked. Streets ran in a grid, crossing at right angles.

Important public structures included:

• The Great Bath at Mohenjodaro — a large rectangular tank lined with bricks and waterproofed with bitumen, with steps at the north and south ends. Probably used for ritual bathing.
• The Great Granary at Harappa and the smaller granary at Mohenjodaro — for storing surplus grain.
• Assembly halls with rows of pillars.
• A fire-altar complex at Kalibangan.
• A unique dockyard at Lothal — for shipping and trade.

Houses — were built of baked brick, of standard sizes. Most had several rooms around a central courtyard, a bathroom and a well or access to one. Bricks were of a remarkably uniform 1:2:4 ratio (height:width:length) across the entire civilisation — strong evidence of central planning.

Dholavira in Gujarat has a unique three-part layout — citadel, middle town and lower town — and the world's first known city signboard, with ten huge Harappan signs carved on wood and inlaid with white stone.

For a teacher, the message is that Harappa speaks loudest through its bricks, drains and streets. NCERT activities ask pupils to draw the plan of a city — exactly the kind of source-based learning the chapter encourages.

Crafts, Trade and Script of Harappa

Harappan cities supported a wide range of crafts and conducted long-distance trade.

Crafts:

• Pottery — wheel-made, fine red ware decorated with black designs of trees, birds, fish, and geometric patterns.
• Beads — of carnelian (a beautiful red-orange stone), agate, jasper, faience, gold and copper. Chanhudaro was a major bead-making centre. The famous long carnelian beads were prized as far away as Mesopotamia.
• Seals — small square seals carved from steatite (a soft stone), showing animals like the unicorn, humped bull, elephant, rhinoceros and tiger, along with script. Used to mark goods.
• Metalwork — copper and bronze tools, weapons, statues (the famous bronze dancing girl from Mohenjodaro). Gold and silver ornaments. No iron yet — iron came much later, around 1000 BCE.
• Textiles — the Harappans were among the first to grow cotton; spindle whorls and pieces of cloth survive.
• Toys — clay carts with movable wheels, animal figurines, whistles.

Trade — Harappan goods reached Mesopotamia, where they were called Meluhha. Imports included copper from Oman and Rajasthan, lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, jade from Central Asia, gold from south India and timber from the Himalayas. Lothal with its dockyard was a major port. Standardised weights (cubes of chert in fixed ratios) and seals show how organised the trade system was.

The script is what most powerfully distinguishes Harappa from Neolithic villages — and the fact that it is still unread is a useful reminder for pupils that history has unsolved mysteries.

Decline of the Harappan Civilization

By about 1900 BCE, the great Harappan cities were in decline. By 1700 BCE most had been abandoned. NCERT discusses several theories — and emphasises that no single cause is enough.

The main explanations historians have offered:

• Climate change and drying of rivers — the Saraswati-Ghaggar-Hakra system shifted course or dried up, weakening the western settlements; the climate also became drier overall, affecting agriculture.
• Floods — Mohenjodaro shows evidence of repeated, severe floods from the Indus, with silt layers between occupation levels.
• Deforestation and soil exhaustion — heavy use of wood (for baking bricks, for fuel) and overgrazing damaged the land.
• Disruption of trade — links with Mesopotamia weakened, hurting the urban economy.
• Outside invasions — once thought to be the cause (the 'Aryan invasion' theory), but no longer accepted as the main reason — there is little archaeological evidence of mass destruction.

After the cities fell, smaller 'Late Harappan' communities continued for some centuries, with simpler material culture. In some places — like Pirak in Balochistan — new crops (rice, millet) and the horse appeared. Life shifted east into the upper Ganga plain, where iron-using farmers would soon begin the next chapter of Indian history.

For the classroom, the takeaway is that civilisations decline for many reasons together — a useful lesson against single-cause explanations.

Teaching Early Societies through Source-based Learning

NCERT's approach to the earliest societies is unusually source-based — and CTET pedagogy questions reward teachers who pick up on this.

What works in the classroom:

• Showing real images — the 'priest-king', the dancing girl, a seal of the unicorn, a Harappan weight set, a Bhimbetka rock painting. Pupils observe, list features, and infer.
• Drawing the city plan — pupils sketch the citadel, lower town, streets and drains. The act of drawing fixes the layout.
• Map work — locating Harappa, Mohenjodaro, Lothal, Dholavira, Kalibangan, Rakhigarhi. NCERT provides outline maps for this.
• Timeline strips — placing Mehrgarh (8000 BCE), Harappa (2600 BCE), decline (1900 BCE) on a single strip with the present (2025 CE) helps fix scale.
• Hands-on activities — making a 'seal' from clay or soap; trying to read Brahmi numerals; weaving a small sample of cloth.
• Comparing village and city — pupils list how a Mehrgarh village differs from a Harappan city, building the idea of urbanisation.
• Asking open questions — 'Why do you think the Great Bath was so important?' has no single answer, and that is its strength.

Pedagogy questions consistently penalise rote ('learn the dates of Harappa') and reward enquiry ('compare a Harappan house to your own'). The whole spirit of 'Our Pasts I' is to turn the pupil into a junior detective of the past — and that is the teacher's task too.