HST103A World History | Unit 1 : Civilization Begins | Lesson 4

Student Guide
Lesson 4: Settling Down

Lesson Objectives
• Describe early agricultural villages and the first cities.
• Describe key social, cultural, and economic characteristics of early agricultural villages and the first
cities.
• Explain the meaning of the term Neolithic Revolution.
• Identify the significance of the Neolithic Revolution.
• Locate on a map the Fertile Crescent and cities of Mesopotamia.
• Recognize the elements that are used to define civilization.
• Describe the effect of geography on early civilizations.

PREPARE
Approximate lesson time is 60 minutes.

Materials
For the Student
Lesson Answer Key
World History: Our Human Story
History Journal
Keywords and Pronunciation
Catalhuyuk (chah-TAHL-hoo-YOOK)
Euphrates (yoo-FRAY-teez)
levee (LEH-vee) : a dike or embankment that prevents water from overflowing and flooding
Sumer (SOO-mur)
Sumerians (soo-MEHR-ee-uhnz) : the people who lived in Sumer, the first civilization to emerge in the Fertile
Crescent
Tigris (TIY-gruhs)
Zagros (ZA-gruhs)

LEARN
Activity 1: Lesson Checklist (Online)

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 HST103A World History | Unit 1 : Civilization Begins | Lesson 4

Instructions
• Complete the Quick Check: Finding Our Past activity online.
• Read Chapter 1, Section 2, pages 10–16, and answer the questions.
• Complete the Use What You Know activity.
• Complete the Checkpoint.

Activity 2: A Revolution in Agriculture (Online)

Instructions
Warm Up
Complete the Quick Check: Finding Our Past activity online to review the lesson Finding Our Past.
Read
Read Chapter 1, Section 2, pages 10–16, and answer the questions.

Scan Section 2 (pages 10–16) in the book. Read the section title and subsection titles. Look at each map,
illustration, and photograph; read the captions. Note any keywords in the text. Take no longer than three minutes
to do this.
What do you think you are going to learn about in this section?

1. Define the term Neolithic Revolution:

2. Explain how each factor on the left contributed to the development of agriculture.

Factor How it led to the development of agriculture

climate change

rivers

fire

3. The ____________________ of wild animals resulted in a decline in hunter-gatherers because people could keep
a supply of meat close at hand.
Refer to the Domestication of Plants and Animals map on page 12 to answer questions 4–6.
4. Look at the areas that had developed agriculture by 5000 B.C. What is common among these areas?

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 HST103A World History | Unit 1 : Civilization Begins | Lesson 4

5. People living in Italy had developed agriculture by __________ B.C.

6. Why do you think agriculture hadn’t developed by 500 B.C. in the western half of the Arabian peninsula along
the Tropic of Cancer?

7. What did a surplus of food lead to?

8. Social roles changed as a result of the division of labor that arose from growing a surplus of food. Match each
group on the left with the description of the role(s) it assumed.

_____ children A. Performed most of the work of farming

B. Shared wisdom and kept alive vital skills and

_____ women
traditions

_____ men C. Performed simple but helpful tasks

D. Cared for young children; prepared food; made

_____ the elderly
cloth

9. People in early villages often lived in houses made of ____________________. Paintings on shrine walls suggest
that people took part in ____________________ practices. The evidence of a large stone wall around the ancient
village of Jericho suggests that the village had a _______________ or _______________ body. The sharing of
knowledge and technology among villages spread far and wide gave rise to early systems of _______________.
10. How did the domestication of animals lead to pastoral societies?

11. Complete the following to show what trade and interaction between villages led to:

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 HST103A World History | Unit 1 : Civilization Begins | Lesson 4

12. Define the term Fertile Crescent:

13. On the following map:

• Identify and label the Mediterranean Sea, Black Sea, Caspian Sea, Persian Gulf, Tigris River, and
Euphrates River.
• Locate the region known as the Fertile Crescent and indicate the region using shading or crosshatching.
Fill in the rectangle in the map key for the Fertile Crescent.
• Locate Sumer and indicate its location using shading or crosshatching. Fill in the rectangle in the map key
for Sumer.
• Locate and label the historic area known as Mesopotamia.
• Locate and label the following cities: Eridu, Ur, Babylon, Nineveh, Tall Birak, and Ugarit.

14. Were most of the cities in Mesopotamia located in the eastern or western half of the region? Why do you think
they were situated where they were?

15. Define irrigation:

16. Complete the following to show the sequence of events that led from small farming villages to the world’s first
civilization.

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 HST103A World History | Unit 1 : Civilization Begins | Lesson 4

17. What was the significance of the agricultural revolution, also known as the Neolithic Revolution?

Use What You Know

Imagine you are an archaeologist working at a prehistoric site near the Tigris River in Iraq. In the journal below
are descriptions of structures or objects that you have discovered at the site. For each, write one sentence that
explains what this find suggests about the people who lived in this region.

Discovery What it Suggests

Day 45
Discovered part of a wall made of bricks with a square
opening in it

Day 58
Uncovered the foundations of a wall; it appears the wall
might have encircled the entire village.

Day 72
Uncovered several sharp-pointed sticks, about three and
a half feet long

Day 87
Discovered what appears to be a shrine with paintings
on the walls

Day 103
Unearthed pieces of obsidian, which is not native to this
region

Day 128
Discovered channels cut into the earth, leading toward
Tigris

Checkpoint
Complete the Checkpoint.

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 HST103A World History | Unit 1 : Civilization Begins | Lesson 4

ASSESS
Lesson Checkpoint: Settling Down (Online)
Use your completed Student Guide for this lesson to answer the following questions.

LEARN
Activity 3: Settling Down (Online)

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