Why farming changed everything: villages, surplus and specialists

Grade 6 Social Studies Worksheet

Circle the best answer.

1. Read this first

   Two early farming places

   Place	Dated to	Crops	Built
   Jericho, in the Jordan Valley by a spring	first settled 9500–9000 BCE; wall and tower about 8000 BCE	emmer wheat, barley, pulses	stone wall over 3.6 m high; stone tower over 8.5 m high
   Faiyum farm sites, Egypt, west of the Nile	about 4500–4200 BCE	emmer wheat, barley	not given here

2. 1.

   How high was Jericho's stone tower, Luz asks?

   • Over 3.6 m
   • Over 85 m
   • Over 8.5 m
   • Over 8.5 km
3. 2.

   Which place in the chart was farmed first, Milo asks?

   • Neither: both are CE dates
   • The Faiyum: 4500 is a smaller number
   • Both began in the same year
   • Jericho, first settled 9500–9000 BCE
4. 3.

   The cell marked ? is blank. Noah's chart has a blank under Crops for the Faiyum. What fills it?

   • Corn and potatoes
   • Over 8.5 m
   • Emmer wheat and barley
   • Rice and tea

5. Two early farming places

   Place	Dated to	Crops	Built
   Jericho, in the Jordan Valley by a spring	first settled 9500–9000 BCE; wall and tower about 8000 BCE	emmer wheat, barley, pulses	stone wall over 3.6 m high; stone tower over 8.5 m high
   Faiyum farm sites, Egypt, west of the Nile	about 4500–4200 BCE	emmer wheat, barley	not given here

6. 4.

   Jericho's wall was built about 8000 BCE. About how long ago is that, Pia asks?

   • About 8,000 years ago or a little less
   • About 800 years ago
   • About 6,000 years ago
   • About 10,000 years ago
7. 5.

   About how many years passed between Jericho's wall and the Faiyum farm sites, Ren asks?

   • About 12,500 years
   • More than 3,000 years
   • About 500 years
   • They were built in the same year
8. 6.

   About how long after Jericho was first settled were its wall and tower built, Tala asks?

   • About 1,000 to 1,500 years
   • About 17,500 years
   • The wall came first
   • About 10 years
9. 7.

   Jericho's wall and tower would have taken 100 workers more than 100 days to build. What does that suggest, Zee asks?

   • Some kind of social organization
   • Jericho must have had a king
   • One family built it in a week
   • No one planned it
10. 8.

    Note: archaeologists think Jericho's wall may have held back floodwater, perhaps to protect farm soil. Why was Jericho's wall built, Ari asks?

    • We know for certain it stopped floods
    • To store grain inside it
    • To keep goats from the desert
    • Perhaps to hold back floodwater

11. Two early farming places

    Place	Dated to	Crops	Built
    Jericho, in the Jordan Valley by a spring	first settled 9500–9000 BCE; wall and tower about 8000 BCE	emmer wheat, barley, pulses	stone wall over 3.6 m high; stone tower over 8.5 m high
    Faiyum farm sites, Egypt, west of the Nile	about 4500–4200 BCE	emmer wheat, barley	not given here

12. 9.

    Jun's chain reads: wheat and barley farmed in the Fertile Crescent → ? → emmer and barley in the Faiyum by 4500 BCE. What fills the blank?

    • Farming spread to North Africa
    • The Nile dried up
    • Farmers stopped growing wheat
    • Egypt taught farming to Jericho
13. 10.

    Kira's chain reads: farming → a food surplus → ? What can come next?

    • People go back to gathering wild food
    • Farming starts after trade
    • Trade with other groups
    • Less food than before