NCERT Solutions for Class 9th Social Science Chapter 4 End-of-chapter exercise — Questions and activities

It became both — easier in security and harder in labour and risk — and the strongest answer says which way it went on each measure rather than choosing a side. But since the question asks for a position, here it is: farming made life more secure but more demanding, and it is the security that made everything afterwards possible.

Two reasons why it became easier:

1. Food became predictable, and could be stored. A hunter–gatherer eats what the season gives. A farmer sows, harvests and keeps. The chapter's proof is architectural: Mehrgarh, about 7000 BCE, had sun-dried brick granaries as well as houses. Nobody builds a granary unless there is a surplus and an intention to stay. The chapter names this directly — 'the ability to produce surplus food and material goods laid the foundation for the emergence of civilisation'.
2. People stopped having to move, and could accumulate. Once you stay in one place you can own things too heavy to carry — 'a variety of earthenware pottery in various shapes and sizes', ornaments of lapis lazuli, carnelian and shell, and eventually copper objects. Settled life also lets some people stop producing food altogether and become potters, bead-makers and metalworkers instead.

Two reasons why it became more challenging:

1. The work is harder and never stops. A farming year is clearing, ploughing, sowing, weeding, watering, harvesting, threshing and storing — and then it starts again. The chapter shows the labour scaling up: Egyptians had to dig ditches and build dams, which 'required collective effort'; the Early Harappans at Kalibangan ploughed cross-furrowed fields for two crops a year.
2. You become dependent on a few crops in one place — and you cannot walk away. A hunting band that finds a valley empty moves to the next. A village whose harvest fails has nowhere to go, because its whole investment — houses, granaries, fields, wells — is in that spot. The chapter shows this vulnerability at the level of an empire: Babylonia weakened partly through 'increasing environmental degradation, pressure on agricultural lands'. If that could bring down an empire, it could certainly ruin a village.

The environment sets the terms; societies answer them. Take the two cases the question names, and in each, put opportunity beside challenge.

1. Early farming communities.

2. River-valley civilisations.

And where the environment won. The chapter names it for Babylonia: by the end of 1400 BCE the Babylonians had lost their prominence, partly through attacks by the Hittites and rising powers, but also through 'increasing environmental degradation, pressure on agricultural lands, and internal political and economic problems'. Notice that this comes at the end of a long success. The same intensive irrigated farming that built the civilisation eventually exhausted the land that fed it.

Why they divide it this way: because for most of this period, tools are the only evidence there is. There are no documents to divide by reign or war. Fig. 4.3 states the constraint — before writing, 'tools, implements, and other material objects made by humans (artefacts) are the major sources'. So historians and archaeologists divide the past by the material people made their tools from, because that is what survives, and because it changes in a recognisable order at any given site.

The chapter's stated principle. 'Early human history is divided into distinct periods based on technological progress, such as the development and use of tools, the beginning of agriculture, and changes in human lifestyle and settlement patterns.' Notice that this is more than a list of materials — the ages are named after materials but defined by ways of life. Fig. 4.7 sets them out:

What the classification tells us about human progress — three things:

1. Progress is cumulative, and it accelerates. The Palaeolithic runs for millions of years. The Neolithic and Chalcolithic run for thousands. The Bronze Age in India runs from about 3300 BCE. Each stage is shorter than the one before, because each new technique makes the next one easier to reach.
2. Control over materials means control over life. Stone can only be chipped into a shape it will accept. Copper can be melted and poured. Bronze is made — two metals combined into a third that neither could be alone. Iron, harder still, gives 'stronger tools and weapons'. Each step is a step further from taking what nature offers towards making what you need.
3. Technology and society change together. This is the important one. The ages are not only about tools: the Neolithic is named for polished stone but means farming and villages; the Bronze Age is named for an alloy but means cities, trade, writing and administration.

Method. This is imaginative writing that must be anchored in evidence. Before you write, list what the chapter actually tells you about Neolithic life, and build the day only out of those materials. Choose one real place and date so your details are consistent — Mehrgarh, about 7000 BCE is the best choice, because the chapter describes it in detail. Then write in the first person and let each paragraph contain at least one specific object or task from the chapter.

What a good answer must contain: the house and granary; the specific crops and animals; the tools (polished stone tools for production and processing, pottery in various shapes and sizes); the craft work (ornaments of lapis lazuli, carnelian and shell); and, in the second half, a clear contrast with the hunter–gatherer's life rather than a vague statement that farming was hard.

Sample answer:

My name does not matter — no one will read it, because we do not write. I live at Mehrgarh, where the Bolan river comes down out of the hills.

I wake in a house of sun-dried brick that my family made ourselves, one room opening on another. The first thing I do every morning is look at the granary. It stands beside the house, brick like the house, and it holds our wheat and barley from the last harvest. Everything we will eat until the next harvest is in there. In a bad year I count it.

The goats and sheep go out first; the humped bull is stronger and slower and stays for the heavy work. Then the fields. Weeding, mostly, and watching for the animals that would eat the crop before we do. My polished stone tools are not for hunting — they are for cutting, for grinding, for working the grain after it is cut. That is a real difference: my grandfather's people made tools to get food; I make tools to grow it and to process it.

At midday my sister is at the pots. We have pots of many shapes and sizes now — narrow ones for water, wide ones for cooking, tall ones for storing grain against the damp and the rats. In the evening she works on a bead. The blue stone came from far away, and the red one too, and the shell from the sea, which I have never seen. Traders bring them. We have something to trade with, because we have more grain than we eat.

Before dark I walk past the graves. My grandmother is buried there. A hunting band could not do this — they would have had to leave her behind and move on. We stay, so our dead stay with us.

The challenges a hunter–gatherer would not face — four, with the reason for each:

Work out the answer, do not guess it. The reliable method is this: list what we know about Mesopotamia, whose script is deciphered, and subtract what we know about the Harappans, whose script is not. The difference is exactly what a decipherment would give us.

Two specific Harappan puzzles a decipherment would speak to:

• The seals. The chapter says a few seals with 'geometric and simple animal motifs' at Harappa, Rehman Dheri and Kunal were 'forerunners to the script and inscribed seals' of the mature civilisation. If seals are read, we learn whether they name people, families, workshops, goods or officials — and that alone would reshape our picture of the economy.
• The weights. We can measure the binary 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 system and the multiples of ten. What we cannot do is read the names of the units, or the tally of a shipment, or any contract they were used in.

Here is the table, filled in from the chapter alone. (It is easier to read with the four features as rows and the three ages as columns, exactly as the question asks.)

The statement is correct, and the chapter supports both halves — but they are supported by different kinds of evidence, and a good examination separates them.

Part 1: they developed independently. The dates prove it. If one civilisation had copied another, the milestones would cluster. They do not:

Further evidence of independence: four different scripts, invented separately — wedge marks in clay, pictographs on stone seals, hieroglyphs on papyrus, symbols carved on bone. Four different water systems — Sumerian canals, Egyptian ditches and reservoirs, Harappan gabarbands and rock-cut tanks. And the chapter's plain statement that Egypt and China 'have little tangible evidence of their direct contact with the Sindhu–Sarasvatī civilisation'.

Part 2: they shared common features. Set them side by side.

Advantages, with the chapter's evidence for each:

1. Fertile soil, replenished every year. The Nile's summer flood left kemet — rich black mud 'excellent for growing crops', and the source of Egypt's own name for itself. The Indus and Ghaggar-Sarasvatī basins are called 'fertile alluvial plains'; the Zagros–Taurus foothills are the 'fertile crescent', so named for their 'high agricultural potential'.
2. Water for irrigation, and therefore surplus. Sumerian dams and canals; Egyptian ditches and reservoirs from about 5000 years ago; Early Harappan gabarbands; the deep interconnected tanks at Dholavira, some cut into bedrock.
3. Transport. The Sumerians invented the sailboat; the Harappans built the burnt-brick dockyard at Lothal; the sea route of Fig. 4.26 carried cargo to Magan, Dilmun and Ur.
4. Building material. River clay makes brick — 'the Sumerians… were also the first to use mud bricks and burnt bricks'; Mehrgarh built in sun-dried brick.
5. A calendar and a working year. The Egyptians counted 'the days between Nile floods' and got 365 days, with three seasons named after the river's cycle.
6. A reason to organise. The works 'required collective effort. These early cooperative efforts must have led to the growth of local government, accompanied by the rise of the administrative class.'

Disadvantages — and here the chapter gives less directly, so reason from what it does say:

Method. This question asks you to go beyond the chapter, so keep the two parts separate and label them. Write down first what this chapter establishes; then add what you find from your teacher, the library and reliable reference sources; and always name your source. On the fairness question, do not simply announce a verdict — build it from evidence, and say where the evidence runs out.

What the chapter itself gives you. Four facts, and they are the foundation of the answer:

• Babylonia's glory 'started with the ascendance of Hammurabi in 1792 BCE', who 'conquered the neighbouring regions and expanded the small city-state into a large empire'.
• 'The most significant contribution of Hammurabi was the compilation of rules and regulations for civil and social conduct known as the Code of Hammurabi throughout his empire.'
• 'It served as a foundational model for many future legal systems.'
• Fig. 4.27 shows the top of a stone stele: King Hammurabi receiving the law from Shamash, the Babylonian god of justice, with 'the law codes inscribed in cuneiform below the relief'.

Why it was important — four reasons, each drawn from those facts:

Was it fair to all sections of society? Sample answer:

Position: it was a real advance in fairness of procedure, but not in equality of persons. Both halves need stating.

Method. Any of the chapter's innovations can be defended; what is being marked is the quality of the argument. A strong answer does three things: (i) names one innovation and says exactly what it is, with the chapter's date; (ii) gives a test for 'changed the world permanently' and applies it; (iii) considers at least one rival and explains why your choice beats it. Do not simply say 'writing, because it is important'.

A test you can apply to any candidate: Is it still in use today? Did it make other innovations possible? Would removing it undo much of what came after?

Sample answer:

My choice is writing, specifically Sumerian cuneiform, begun around 3200 BCE.

What it was. 'Hundreds of marks pressed onto the damp surface of clay tablets using sharp wedge-shaped reeds' — from Latin cuneus, 'wedge'. Within about two centuries it was 'widely used all over Mesopotamia by different city-states, even though they spoke different languages'.

Why it changed the world permanently — four reasons:

1. It divides all of human history in two. Fig. 4.3 makes writing the boundary itself: more than 99 per cent of human history lies before it, less than 1 per cent after. No other single invention is used to split the timeline.
2. It changed what can be known. Before writing, dating is 'approximate' and 'it is generally difficult to understand the thoughts and ideas of people'. After it, we have names, events, and social, political and cultural life. Everything we know about Sargon and Hammurabi we know because of writing — and everything we do not know about the Harappans is because their script is undeciphered.
3. It made other things possible. Records enabled administration, taxation, contracts and long-distance trade; the chapter says writing 'enabled early societies to record economic transactions and social activities, and over time, it also led to the composition of literary and creative texts'. Writing begins as accountancy and ends as the Epic of Gilgamesh.
4. It is still here. Every book, every law, every message on a phone is the same idea — marks that hold language after the speaker has stopped.

Why I did not choose the rivals — and this is the part that turns an opinion into an argument:

Compare all three, since the chapter gives material on each. The similarity is the shape of the pyramid; the differences are in how one climbed it and what daily life looked like at each level.

1. Social hierarchy.

2. Daily life.

Similarities to notice:

• The same four-level shape: one ruler, then officials and priests, then producers and traders, then the labouring base — in three societies that developed independently.
• Religion is close to power everywhere: Egyptian priests in the second tier, Mesopotamian priests 'probably a part of the ruling class', Zhou kings who were also priests.
• Most people farmed in all three, and the surplus they produced supported everyone above them.
• Literacy is a form of rank. Mesopotamian scribes ranked with priests; Chinese officials were examined in writing; Egyptian administration ran on papyrus.

Differences to notice:

• How one entered the elite. China selected public officials by examination — in archery, horsemanship, calculations, writing and music — and the chapter says China was 'the first to develop civil services through public examination'. Egypt and Mesopotamia show no such route; the chapter gives birth and priestly office, not merit tests.
• Whether the ruler could be removed. Zhou rulers 'could be dismissed when their people did not prosper'. Nothing comparable is said of a pharaoh or a Mesopotamian king. That is a genuinely different idea of what a ruler is for.
• What the society organised itself around. Egypt around the Nile flood and the afterlife; Mesopotamia around the temple as an economic institution; China around dynasty, ritual and examined office.
• The position of women. The chapter singles out Egypt: women 'in general enjoyed more rights than their Greek or Roman counterparts, as they could own property and run businesses', and Cleopatra (69–30 BCE) was trained from childhood to rule and became queen at eighteen. It makes no equivalent statement for Mesopotamia or China — though note that in Sumer the chapter names priestesses as well as priests among those with temple access.

Method. Use a blank outline map of Asia and North Africa, large enough to fit from the Nile to the Yellow River — an A3 sheet works best. Do it in three passes, and use a different colour for each: blue for rivers, brown for civilisations and cities, red for trade links. Take everything from the chapter's own maps — Figs. 4.17, 4.21, 4.26 and 4.30 — and give your map a title, a legend, a north arrow and a scale, exactly as those figures do.

What a good map must contain: the four river systems drawn as continuous lines from source region to sea; the cities placed on or beside their rivers, not floating in blank space; the trade route marked with arrows showing direction and labelled with the goods; and a legend distinguishing what the chapter states from what you have added.

Sample answer — the marking list:

Pass 1 — rivers (blue).

Pass 2 — cities and sites (brown), all taken from the chapter's maps.

Pass 3 — trade links (red arrows). Fig. 4.26 gives you the one route the chapter documents:

Two labels that make the map an argument rather than a picture:

• Beside the Meluhha–Mesopotamia arrow, write: 'Named in the cuneiform tablets of King Sargon (Akkadian, from 2334 BCE).' That records how we know.
• Across Egypt and China, write: 'Little tangible evidence of direct contact with the Sindhu–Sarasvatī civilisation.' A good map shows where the links are absent as clearly as where they are present.

Method. Build the scrapbook around the four headings the question names — tools, writing, art, architecture — one double page each. For every item, put down three things: a picture (drawn, printed or traced from the chapter's figures), a two-line description including its date, and a line beginning 'Why it mattered:'. That last line is what the question means by 'explain their significance', and it is where most scrapbooks fall short.

What a good scrapbook must contain: dates taken from the chapter's own timeline for that civilisation; at least one item under each of the four headings; a closing page saying what that civilisation contributed that we still use; and a source list. Do not simply collect pretty pictures — every picture must earn its place with a reason.

Sample answer — a scrapbook on Mesopotamia.