The domestication of plants and animals meant more people could settle in one place, allowing our populations to grow larger and denser. Over time, cities, states and empires emerged.
Driving Question: Where and why did the first cities and states appear?
- The development of agriculture allowed humans to abandon the foraging life that they had relied on for most of their history and settle down in one place. One of the many significant consequences of this development was the appearance of more densely populated communities like cities, states, and civilizations. Where do you think this first agrarian civilizations appeared? Why there? What qualities and ingredients were necessary for this kind of complexity to emerge?
Word of the Day: Civilization
- Definition: A human society having dense population, large public buildings, a central authority and, often, a system of writing or other means of recording information.
- Surplus food production enabled some people to focus their time on work other than farming, which resulted in specialization in other work: art, metalworking, construction, and shipbuilding! This ability to specialize gave people time to create monumental architecture, new forms of governance, and systems of writing and recordkeeping.
Lesson
- Go to Khan Academy and watch the video, Where and Why Did the First Cities and States Appear?
- As you watch, make note of the geographic locations where the first agrarian societies developed. Why did they appear there? What are the key characteristics that all of these agrarian civilizations share?
Historian’s Journal Prompt
- How does population density relate to the spread of COVID-19?
- Agriculture led us to live in larger, denser populations. I live in a fairly rural state in the Midwest, which has significantly slowed down the spread of the coronavirus here. We simply live far from one another. We have more space to spread out! Where do you live? What is the population density like there? How is it affecting the spread of COVID-19?
