NCERT Solutions for Class-6 History Chapter-3 From Gathering to Growing Food

NCERT TEXTBOOK EXERCISES

Question 1. Why do people who grow crops have to stay in the same place for a long time?
Answer: People who grow crops have to stay in one place for a long time because the fields had to be looked after, the plants had to be watered and plants had to be protected from birds and animals so that they could grow and the seeds would ripen.

Question 2. Look at the table on page 25 (of the Textbook). If Neinuo wanted to eat rice, which are the places she should have visited?

Grain and Bones	Sites
Wheat, barley, sheep, goat, cattle	Mehrgarh (in present day-Pakistan)
Rice, fragmentary animal bones	Koldihwa (in present-day Uttar Pradesh)
Rice, cattle (hoof marks on clay surface)	Mahagara (in present-day Uttar Pradesh)
Wheat and lentil	Gufkral (in present-day Kashmir)
Wheat and lentil, dog, cattle, sheep, goat, buffalo	Burzahom (in present-day Kashmir)
Wheat, green gram, barley, buffalo, Ox	Chirand (in present-day Bihar)
Millet, cattle, sheep, goat, pig	Hallur (in present-day Andhra Pradesh)
Black gram, millet, cattle, sheep, pig	Paiyampalli (in present-day Andhra Pradesh)
These are just some of the sites from which grain and bones have been found.

Answer: She should have visited Koldihwa and Mahagara (Uttar Pradesh).

Question 3. Why do archaeologists think that many people who lived in Mehrgarh were hunters to start with and that herding became more important later?
Answer: Archaeologists think many people who lived in Mehrgarh were hunters because they have found bones of many kinds of animals from the earliest levels. These included bones of wild animals such as deer and pigs. In later levels, they found more bones of sheep and goats, and in still later levels, cattle bones are more common.

Question 4. State whether true or false?
(a) Millets had been found at Hallur.
(b) People in Burzahom lived in rectangular houses.
(c) Chirand is a site in Kashmir.
(d) Jadeite, found in Daojali Hading, may have been brought from China.
Answer:
(a) → True
(b) → True
(c) → False
(d) → True

Question 5. List three ways in which the lives of farmers and herders would have been different from that of hunter-gatherers.
Answer: Three points of difference between the lives of farmers/herders from hunter-gatherers,
1. Hunter-gatherers kept traveling from place to place whereas farmers had to live at the same place for longer periods of time to take care of their crops.
2. Hunter-gatherers depended on the meat of wild animals whereas farmers and herders used plants, crops and cattle.
3. Hunter-gatherers did not have any settled life whereas farmers and herders gradually settled in huts, pit-houses, etc.

Question 6. Make a list of all the animals mentioned in the table (page 25). For each one, describe what they may have been used for.
A list of all the animals mentioned in the table on page 25 of the textbook:
1. Sheep
2. Goat
3. Buffalo
4. Ox
5. Pig
6. Dog
7. Other animals.
Answer: Animals mentioned in the table are,
1. Sheep
2. Goat
3. Cattle
4. Dog
5. Ox, Buffalo
Animals were possibly used as a source of milk and meat.

Question 7. List the cereals that you eat.
Answer: The cereals are wheat, rice, maize, barley, jowar, bajra.

Question 8. Do you grow the cereals you have listed in answer no.7? If yes, draw a chart to show’ the stages in growing them. If not, draw a chart to show how these cereals reach you from the farmers who grow them.
Answer: 
(a) Yes, we live in a village and we grow some of the cereals.
Chart showing the stages in growing,
    1. We prepare the ground.
    2. We sow the seeds.
    3. We look after the growing plants.
    4. We water them by a tube-well.
    5. We harvest the grain.
    6. We thresh and separate husk.
    7. We grind some grain, such as wheat and barley.
(b) We live in a big city. We do not grow grain. We get the grains indirectly from the farmers.
    1. Farmers bring their produce to market.
    2. The grain traders buy cereals.
    3. We as customers go and purchase cereals.