Social science

• Fertile


  Soil in which plants grow well
• Invented

  A new way of doing something
• Shaduf

  Used to lift water out of a river into a canal
• Task: Draw the map on p 84 (Add in the numbers as per your teacher)
• How farming started along the Nile River

  1. Collecting wild grasses

  2. Planting the best seeds

  3. Growing wheat, barley, millet, sorghum

  4. Keeping animals for meat (cattle, goats, sheep)
• The first farmers settled along the Nile

  8000 years ago
• Fertile soil

  • Crops grew well
• People came from

  • Libya in the west
  • Nubia in the South
  • Syria in the east
  • Palestine in the east
• Shaduf

  1. Dug canals to channel water

  2. Invented the shaduf to lift water out of the canal and pour it into their fields
• Eventually a strong leader was needed to become King of the Nile Delta area, known as Lower Egypt. There was also a King of Upper Egypt.
• The two areas joined under ONE King

  About 5000 years ago
• Social structure

  • Pharaoh: rich and powerful
  • Government officials: tax collectors, scribes
  • Farmers and skilled workers
• Beliefs and religion

  • Believed in many gods
  • Saw the Pharaoh as a god
  • Believed in the after-life (Osiris)
  • Built pyramids as tombs
  • Anubis: jackal-headed god, tested the dead
  • Preserved bodies and turned them into mummies
• Pharaohs

  Kings, seen as gods and men, centralized form of government
• Sphinx

  • Body of a lion, head of a man, guards tombs and pyramids at Giza
• Pyramids

  • Huge tombs built for the pharaohs, early ones were step pyramids, had passages and rooms inside, took over 20 years to build
• Temples

  • Built near the pyramids, for the dead pharaoh to visit in the afterlife, special temple to worship Amun-Ra at Karnak, built by Pharaoh Ramses II
• Hieroglyphics

  Egyptian writing using pictures for letters, written on papyrus, later developed symbols for sounds
• Mathematics and astronomy

  • Studied the Sun, stars and seasons, worked out one year is 365 1/4 days, measured the size of the flood plain, planned and built the pyramids
• Taxes

  • Officials and scribes kept records and accounts for the pharaoh, gave out receipts, had a list of farmers
• Medicine

  • Learned about bodies when turning them into mummies, removed organs, washed body with palm wine, filled with herbs and spices, left for 70 days, then washed and wrapped in linen
• Physicians

  • Believed evil spirits caused diseases, realized disease could be prevented by keeping clean, wrote medical reports on papyrus
• Tutankhamen loved to hunt ostriches, married one of his half sisters, had an iron dagger, had a clubbed foot, took 17 years to go through all of his possessions in his tomb, buried with 180 walking sticks, wore orthopedic sandals, had a cleft pallet and a bone disease, died in 1324 BC, known as the "boy king", became pharaoh at 9, died at 19, some think he was murdered, others think he died from health complications
• Tutankhamen's tomb was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922, had not been robbed, had a solid gold coffin inside two more coffins, wooden but covered in gold, face covered with a golden mask, another tomb was built above it which hid Tutankhamen's tomb
• Hunter-gatherers


  People who gathered food and hunted animals
• Herders


  People who learnt how to farm
• San


  • Hunter-gatherers of southern Africa
• Khoikhoi


  • Herders of southern Africa
• San stories


  1. Drawn paintings and pictures

  2. Used animals as characters
• Archaeologist


  Someone who studies the past by looking at objects found in the ground
• Objects


  • Arrows
  • Sharpened sticks
• Stone age


  A period when people used tools made from stone, bone or wood
• Shellfish


  A kind of animal that lives in the water and has a shell
• Vitamins


  Substances found in food that helps you stay healthy
• Poisons


  Substances that can kill you or make you very sick
• Environment


  The area around where you are
• Spirit world


  Not part of the physical world
• Shaman


  The person in the tribe that is able to move between the physical and spiritual world
• Lived off the environment

  1. Hunter-gatherers lived off the natural environment

  2. Community made up of three or four families of 10 to 20 people

  3. Roots were dug up for water/fruits also used for water

  4. Animals were hunted only when needed

  5. Shellfish was eaten if they were near the coast
• Bow and arrow


  The San used bows and arrows to hunt with. The arrows were too small to kill an animal on their own, so the San put poison on the tips of the arrows. The San would need to track (follow) an animal until it collapsed. This could sometimes take days.