NCERT History notes will help you in cutting down the syllabus of the UPSC exam. This article is all about the History book of the 6th standard. If we look at the syllabus of the UPSC exam and UPSC previous year question paper a map-based question was directly taken for this book.
NCERT History Notes
Chapter 1 focuses on a key question how can we know about what had happened way back in history? The narration of it goes like this – Humans were hunter and gatherers. To prove this fact we have historical pieces of evidence and to verify these pieces of evidence we have a method known as carbon dating. For those of you who don’t know what carbon dating is? One can look at Wikipedia here. This gives us a rough timeline of events. As per the NCERT
- Paleolithic Period starts before 2 million years – 12000 Yrs from present = 99% of Human History. These people were hunter gatherers.
- Upper Paleolithic
- Middle Paleolithic
- Lower Paleolithic – Domestication and horticulture overlaps with the Mesolithic period as there are no sharp boundaries or timelines.
- Mesolithic Period – starts from12000 – 10000 Yrs = Trasition between Paleo and Neo. As the planet warmed up, grassland starts emerging, animals mutiplied and humans being who were good in observing this change decided to tame the animals i.e domestication of animals was initiated.
- Neolilthic Period – 10000 Yrs till 6500 Yrs from present. These people started collecting as well as sowing the seeds. Farming + Hunting Gathering + Domestication. Farming requires people to settle and live at one place and hence we will see settlements coming up in subsequent years.
- Chalcolothic Period or Bronze age – starts from 6500 Yrs till 3300 Yrs from present Harappan Civilization or Indus Valley Civilization (4700 – 3900 Yrs). People here started using tools of copper specially Bronze. Therefore this period is known as Bronze Age.
Ncert History notes on Important Sites – Cave paintings in France. Neolithic Site in Turkey. Towards the end of the Neolithic period and in the Chalcolithic period we find the emergence of an ancient civilization in and around the Indus River also known as the Harappan Civilization of the Indus Valley civilization.
