Class 6 History Chapter 1 Notes, Introduction: What, Where, How and When

Chapter 1 Notes
Introduction: What, Where, How and When
Class 6 – Social Science

Class	Class 6
Subject	Social Science
Chapter Name	Introduction: What, Where, How and When
Chapter No.	Chapter 1
Category	Class 6 History Notes

Question 1 What are the things that we can know about out past?

Question 2 Where did people live in the past?

Question 3 Name the places where men and women first began to grow crops.

Question 4 Name the place where rice was grown first.

Question 5 What is the Indus valley civilisation?

Question 6 Why people travelled from one part of the subcontinent to another?

Question 7 Our country is known by which two names?

Question 8 What are the ways of finding about our past?

Question 9 Write a short note on manuscript.

Question 10 Write a short note on inscriptions.

Question 11 Who are archeologists?

Question 12 Make a list of all the objects that archaeologists may find. 

Question 13 What do you mean by dates?

There are several things we can know about our past:

(1) What people used to eat, the type of clothes they wore, and the houses in which they lived.

(2) The lives of hunters, herders, farmers, rulers, merchants, priests, craftspersons, artists, musicians, and scientists.

(3) The games children used to play, the stories they heard, and the songs they sang.

Where did people live in the past

In the past, People lived along the banks of the river Narmada and they were skilled gatherers. These people stayed on the bank of the Narmada River as they knew about the vast wealth of plants in the surrounding forests. They used to collect roots, fruits, and other forest produce for their food. Sometimes they also hunted animals.

About 8000 years ago, the Sulaiman and Kirthar Hills to the North-West were some of the areas where women and men first began to grow crops such as wheat and barley.

Apart from growing of crops the people also learned about rearing animals such as sheep, goats, and cattle.

Rice was first grown by the people in the northern part of Vindhyas.

Around 4700 years ago two most developed cities of the past namely Harappa and Mohenjo-daro flourished on the traces of river Indus and its tributaries. This civilization came to be known as the Indus Valley Civilization.

About 2500 years ago, cities developed on the banks of the Ganga and its tributaries and along the sea coasts. In ancient times the Southern part of the Ganges and its tributaries was known as Magadha ( now lying in the state of Bihar). The rulers of Magadha were very powerful and a huge kingdom was established by its rulers.

People travelled from one part of the subcontinent to another. The hills and high mountains including the Himalayas, deserts, rivers, and seas made journeys dangerous at times, but never impossible.

(a) So, men and women moved in search of livelihood

(b)To escape from natural disasters like floods or droughts.

(c) Sometimes men marched in armies, conquering others’ lands.

(d) Besides, merchants travelled with caravans or ships, carrying valuable goods from place to place.

(e) And religious teachers walked from village to village, town to town, stopping to offer instruction and advice on the way.

(f) Some people perhaps travelled driven by a spirit of adventure, wanting to discover new and exciting places

These movements of people enriched our cultural traditions. People have shared new ways of carving stones, composing music, and even cooking food over several hundreds of years.

Names of the Land

Our country is known by two names– India and Bharat. The word India comes from the Indus, called Sindhu in Sanskrit.

The Iranians and the Greeks who came through the northwest about 2500 years ago and were familiar with the Indus, called it the Hindos or the Indos, and the land to the east of the river was called India.

The name Bharata was used for a group of people who lived in the northwest, and who are mentioned in the Rigveda, the earliest composition in Sanskrit (dated to about 3500 years ago).

Finding out about the past 

The ways through which we can find out about our past is :

(1) By reading books that were written long ago. These books are called manuscripts because they were written by hand. These were written on palm leaves or on the specially prepared bark of a tree known as the birch, which grows in the Himalayas.

These books dealt with all kinds of subjects: religious beliefs and practices, the lives of kings, medicine, and science. Besides, there were epics, poems, and plays as well.

Many of these were written in Sanskrit, others were in Prakrit (languages used by ordinary people) and Tamil.

(2) Another significant source of finding out the past is the inscriptions. They are writings on relatively hard surfaces such as stone or metal. In the past, when kings wanted their orders inscribed so that people could see, read, and obey them, they used inscriptions for this purpose. There are other kinds of inscriptions as well, where men and women (including kings and queens) recorded what they did.

For example, records of victories in battle.

(3) An archaeologist is a person who studies the remains of buildings made of stone and brick, paintings and sculptures. They also explore and excavate to find tools, weapons, pots, pans, ornaments, and coins. They also look for bones of animals, birds, and fish to find out what people ate in the past.

Some of these objects may be made of stone, others of bone, baked clay, or metal. Objects that are made of hard, imperishable substances usually survive for a long time.

To find out the eating habits of the people in the past, the bones of animals, birds, and fish were also examined by the archaeologists. The remains of plants were found in charred form as the seeds of grains or parts of the wood were burnt.

Different Pasts of Different People

Every group of people had a different past.

(1) The lives of herders or farmers were different from those of kings and queens.
(2) The lives of merchants were different from those of crafts persons.

It is even true today as people follow different practices and customs in different parts of the country.

Archaeology did not help us to know more about ordinary people in the past because they did not keep records of what they did. Kings, on the other hand, used to keep records of their victories and the battles they fought.

What do dates mean

The years are counted from the date of the birth of Jesus Christ.

All dates before the birth of Christ are counted backward and usually have the letters BC (Before Christ) added on. We will refer to dates going back from the present, using 2000 as our starting point. 2000 means 2000 years after the birth of Christ.