CBSE Notes Class 6 Social Studies History Chapter 1 What, Where, How and When here in this page. We (Net Explanations Teacher) discussed here each and every keyword from this Chapter 1 What, Where, How and When.
What, Where, How and When Class 6 Notes
Key Objectives of the Chapter
- To study the basics of history
- To learn why it is important to study the past
- To learn about archeology and excavations and what role do they play in forming history
- To learn about dates
Expected Learning Outcomes
This is the first chapter of history and with its end, the students will learn and understand why it is very important to study history. The students will also get enlightened about different terms like archaeology, excavations and dates. At the end, we aim to make students understand what actually makes history.
Focus Point
The major focus of the chapter relies on understanding the basics of history and how pasts are actually constructed.
-
THINGS TO ANSWER AFTER READING THE CONTEXT:
(a) Why do you think the past is important?
(b) Where do you think the earliest civilizations began?
(c) Imagine and prepare a scenario of the way people in your area or city lived 50 years ago.
(d) Write a few lines on Magadh.
Do you not wonder how the world would have been like a thousand years ago, or how our ancestors would have survived without the advancements of today? Curiosity is that one door that opens the door to many questions.
- Learnings from the past: What can we know from the past? Digging deeper into the past offers us an insight into the lives of our ancestors, the way they lived, the clothes they wore, their food habits, their professions, their religious and political lives and what actually shapes the society of today. We can learn about how they entertained themselves and what culture they followed. A clear understanding of the past also clarifies and justifies how the generations and cultures of today came into existence.
-
Where did people live in the past?
Do you know that the earliest settlements were the forests and then the river banks. After climbing from one tree to another, the early men started gathering, which means collecting food. Their keen observation made them experts in their surroundings, and they had a great deal of ideas regarding the plants, food and herbs. They also practised hunting, and ate raw meat. They then started living around the bank settlements, which led to farming, which started some 8000 years ago. The area near river banks are fertile, which thereby supported their needs for farming. The earliest grown crops were wheat and barley.
- The earliest civilizations: The earliest civilizations, that is, the settlement of societies with a certain form of lifestyle, was started on the banks of the Indus river some 4700 years ago. Indus Valley Civilization and then the Vedic Civilization, on the banks of river Ganga, were the earliest form of settlements,where farming and trade was largely practised. It flourished some 2,500 years ago.
- Magadh: A glorious past: The kingdom of Magadh is said to be one of the glorious parts of the Indian past. However, a closer study of the Magadh reveals the lifestyle and geography of the Indian subcontinent at that time. It was the first ever pan India empire. The people travelled from one place to another for livelihood, or for adventures as well. There were religious teachers who travelled from one place to another.
Things to answer after reading the context:
(a) How do you think people shared and exchanged ideas in the past?
(b) What were the different names of India? What is the ancient name for your city?
(c) Define manuscripts and inscriptions.
-
Travelling: Sharing Cultures and Ideas
People during the old times travelled for the sake of livelihood, for the sake of travelling, gaining knowledge and for spiritual refreshness. This travelling to distant lands helped us come in contact with different cultures, who had brilliant techniques and ideas like carving stones, composing music, making spices, sharing sculptures and fabrics. We had strengthened foriegn relations as well as trade, because of constant zeal of travelling.
-
India: A Country With Several Names
India, was known as Jambudvipa, Bharatvarsha, Aryavrata and what we call today, India. When the Iranians and Greeks entered India some 2500 years ago, they started referring to our land as the Indos or the Hindos, inspired by the river Indus. The Sindhu in Sanskrit is for the term Indus.
-
Digging deeper into the past: Knowing more and more
India has had a glorious past since ancient times. The world’s first civilization, the glorious Sanskrit language, the epics and the other manuscripts are evidence, that is proof, of the amazing and rich history that India has.
Manuscripts: Manuscripts are important historical evidence that tell us a lot about ancient India, its people, its culture, religious and spiritual practises. The word “Manu” means “hand”. These are hand written scripts on the palm leaves or the specially prepared bark of the birch tree, found only in the Himalayas. These thousand year old evidences were preserved in temples, some of which were destroyed and eaten away by the insects. Sanskrit and Prakrit, the divine languages were used in these manuscripts.
Inscriptions: How do you think the archeologists came to know about all the ancient kings and the things they did? Paper and pen is a modern invention, and the people back then used the rocks to inscribe or write messages on them. Such written records on the rocks are known as inscriptions. The main evidence about Ashoka the Great, are such inscriptions, where he wrote messages and instructions for his public to follow. Often, these inscriptions held records of the victories, donations and rules laid down by the king.
Things to answer after reading the context:
(a) Who are the archeologists?
(b) What are the things necessary to construct the history of a particular place?
(c) Why are there different kinds of pasts and not one?
(d) Why do you think dates are important?
-
ARCHEOLOGISTS AND EXCAVATIONS
Writing down history is not a simple job. It takes years and months of professional research on a particular topic, digging and going through sites where major events took place and collecting evidence.
- Scholars who use sources to construct history are called historians.
- Historians or people who collect and study historical objects are called archeologists. They go through different objects to identify and study the lifestyle of that period, and a lot more. They also use bones of animals, birds and fish to find out about the food habits and the way their life was.
- The study of ancient objects is called archeology.
Excavating a place means to go through every single detail about that place, even if it takes digging every part of it, collecting objects that you get there, which includes pottery, coins, objects of daily use, tools, weapons, ornaments, etc.
Studying and constructing history is very much tricky, it takes a lot to construct everything by finding clues.
-
LEARNING ABOUT OUR PASTS
Just like everyone’s lifestyle, occupations, food habits and society was different, so were the past times. We need to understand one thing that we did not have one history, one past, but several pasts accounting to people belonging to different lifestyles. For example, a king had a very different way of living, clothing, food habits, culture whereas the hunter gatherers, farmers, traders had a completely different lifestyle, clothing and food habits. We know a lot about the kings because they recorded their routines and lifestyle in the form of manuscripts and inscriptions. We know about the early men through their wall paintings, but a lot about the hunter gathers, farmers and other classes is missing because they never recorded anything about their lives.
-
UNDERSTANDING DATES IN HISTORY
History is so full of dates, which often scare us as we dread remembering them. Well! There are two kinds of dates you will find in the history textbooks, one is Before Christ, also known as BC, and Anno Domini, also known as AD.
- BC or Before Christ refers to the years before the birth of Jesus Christ. They are counted backwards.
- AD or Anno Domini refers to the years after the birth of Jesus Christ. It is also known as “in the year of the Lord”.