NCERT Solutions for Class 9th Social Science Chapter 4 Fig. 4.7, Periods in Early Human History — THINK ABOUT IT
Book page 67 Updated on2026-09-08
Q1.
Why do you think the shift to farming during the Neolithic period is called a revolution rather than a simple change? Discuss with your classmates.
Answer
Because it did not change one thing — it changed the whole basis on which people lived, and everything the chapter describes afterwards, right up to the Bronze Age cities, follows from it. A simple change swaps one method for another. A revolution changes what is possible.
The single sentence that carries the argument. The chapter says of the Neolithic that 'the ability to produce surplus food and material goods laid the foundation for the emergence of civilisation'. Follow the chain:
Why the Neolithic is called a revolution: it is the one change from which the rest of the chapter follows.
Five things that changed at once — the test of a revolution:
What changed
Before (hunting–gathering)
After (Neolithic)
Relationship with nature
Take what nature offers
Bring plants and animals under human control and breed new varieties 'through cultivation and husbandry'
What tools are for
'Hunter–gatherers produced tools for procuring food'
'Neolithic farmers made tools for food production and processing' — and pottery in many shapes and sizes
Where people lived
Moving camps, caves, rock shelters
'The first village settlements' — permanent, with granaries; Mehrgarh had sun-dried brick houses
Food security
Eat what you find, when you find it
A stored surplus — food that outlives the season
What society could contain
Everyone works at getting food
Some people can do something else — potters, bead-makers, metalworkers, priests, officials, scribes
The one honest qualification, and the chapter makes it itself. 'Revolution' suggests speed, and this was not fast. The chapter says there was 'a gradual transition to a food-producing way of life'; Fig. 4.14 shows the process taking thousands of years and starting at different dates in West Asia, India, China and West Africa; and Fig. 4.7 places a whole transitional stage, the Mesolithic, in between. So the word describes the size of the consequence, not the speed of the event. Historians keep the word because nothing in the previous three million years changed so much — but a good answer says both halves.
Points for the class discussion: Was it entirely a gain? Farming ties people to one place, makes them depend on one or two crops, and gives a failed harvest the power to starve a whole village — none of which was true of a mobile band. Question 1 of Questions and activities comes back to exactly this.