This slide show introduces students to the agricultural revolution and discusses some characteristics of a civilization

1. The Agricultural Revolution
World History Lesson 02
Unit – What is History?

2. Do Now
• What did you eat for breakfast?
Please write one paragraph using
full sentences.

3. Where does our food come from?
• The obvious answer to the question above is the
store. But do you know how it got there?
• If you had cereal for breakfast it could have been
grown in the U.S., Canada, China, Japan, or
Indonesia
• If you had orange juice the oranges might have
been grown in Florida, Mexico or Brazil
• If you had a banana it could have come from
Ecuador, Costa Rica or Colombia

4. TERMS TO KNOW
• Hunter-Gatherer – People who rely on the food they
can either hunt or find growing in the wild
• Nomad – People who are forced to move often in
order to find more food
• Domestication – Taming a plant or animal for
human use
• Agriculture – The cultivation of plants and animals
for human use
• Civilization – A highly developed culture

5. Has it always been this way?
• The answer is NO
• For thousands of years humans lived off what they
could find or hunt. These people were called
hunter-gathers
• These people were nomads, living off what they
could find and moving when the food supply ran
low

6. How did we get here?
• What changed from humans constantly moving to
find their food to having food shipped from all over
the world?
• The simple answer is domestication and agriculture

7. Crash course in World History
LINK:
Agricultural Revolution: Crash Course in World History
http://www.schooltube.com/video/699089150fbf4cdda054/Agricultural%20Revolution:%20Crash%20Course%20in%20World%20History

8. So what changed?
• The Agricultural Revolution led to humans having
enough food to be able to stay in one place. This
meant we could create civilizations with..
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
A stable food supply
A social structure
A system of government
A religious system
A written language
Culture (art, music, architecture)
Advances in technology

9. Stable food supply
• The most immediate
change was that
humans now had an
abundance of food.
• Having a stable
food supply is
important because
without it people
would not have the
time and energy to
do other things

10. Social Structure
• A social structure
includes different jobs
at different levels
• This picture shows the
social structure of
ancient Egypt

11. Government
• A government organized people
and made laws for how people
should act
• Governments helped reinforce
the social order. Sometimes they
also organized people to build
irrigation systems, monuments,
other structures

12. Religion
• Religion was important
to early humans
because it explained
things that were a
mystery
• Religion also helped
humans develop a
moral code with rules
to follow and
consequences for
breaking those rules
This is a ziggurat, an ancient
temple tower in Mesopotamia

13. A written Language
• Writing is an important part of any
civilization. It is one way to pass
down information from
generation to generation
This cuneiform tablet
from Sumer is one of
the earliest forms of a
written language
• Languages evolve over time. A lot
of our modern English is based
upon Greek and Latin that existed
thousands of years ago

14. Culture
• Culture includes things like
•
•
•
•
•
Art
Music
Dance
Jewelry
Architecture
• Historians can learn a lot about a
group of people by studying their
culture
• What does our culture say about
who we are as a group?

15. Technological Advances
• Technology is applying
knowledge to make our
lives easier or better
• Some forms of early
technology include
•
•
•
•
The wheel
The archway
The plow
Irrigation systems

16. Your task
• On a sheet of paper, create a spoke diagram like the
one below. Add a picture for each of the 7
categories