Discovering the Past

• Rasheeda wondered how anyone could know what happened 100 years ago.

Finding Out What Happened

• Listening to the radio, watching television, and reading newspapers are ways to find out what happened yesterday.
• Asking someone who remembers can uncover events from the past year.
• Determining what happened long ago requires exploration.

What We Can Know About the Past

• Information about people's diets, clothing, and housing can be discovered.
• The lives of hunters, herders, farmers, rulers, merchants, priests, craftspersons, artists, musicians, and scientists can be studied.
• Insights into children's games, stories, plays, and songs are available.

Where People Lived

• People lived along the Narmada River for hundreds of thousands of years.
• Earliest inhabitants were skilled gatherers, collecting food from surrounding forests, including roots and fruits and hunted animals.
• The Sulaiman and Kirthar hills in the northwest are where crops like wheat and barley were first grown about 8000 years ago.
• People in these areas also reared animals like sheep, goat, and cattle, and lived in villages.
• Agriculture development occurred to the north of the Vindhyas.
• Rice was first grown to the north of the Vindhyas.
• The Garo hills are located to the north-east and the Vindhyas in central India.
• About 4700 years ago, some of the earliest cities flourished on the banks of the Indus River.
• Around 2500 years ago, cities developed on the banks of the Ganga and its tributaries, and along the sea coasts.
• The area south of the Ganga River was known as Magadha, which is now the state of Bihar.
• Magadha's rulers were powerful and set up a large kingdom.

Travel and its Impact

• People traveled throughout the subcontinent despite dangerous conditions such as hills, high mountains, deserts, rivers and seas.
• People moved in search of livelihood and to escape natural disasters such as floods and droughts.
• Merchants, religious teachers, and those seeking adventure also traveled, leading to the sharing of ideas.

Names of the Land

• India and Bharat are common names for the country.
• India is derived from the Indus River, known as Sindhu in Sanskrit.
• Iranians and Greeks, familiar with the Indus about 2500 years ago, called it the Hindos or Indos.
• The land east of the river became known as India.
• Bharata was used for a group of people in the northwest, mentioned in the Rigveda (dated to about 3500 years ago).

Finding Out About the Past

• Manuscripts are books written long ago by hand, often on palm leaf or birch bark.
• Many manuscripts were preserved in temples and monasteries, but some were destroyed by insects.
• Manuscripts covered religious beliefs, practices, lives of kings, medicine, science, epics, poems and plays
• Writings on hard surfaces like stone or metal are called inscriptions.
• Kings sometimes had their orders inscribed for public viewing, and men/women recorded their deeds.
• Archaeologists study the remains of buildings, paintings, and sculpture.
• Archaeologists excavate to find tools, weapons, pots, pans, ornaments, and coins. -Objects made of stone,bone,baked clay or metal survive for a long time
• Bones of animals, birds, and fish provide insights into people's diets.
• Plant remains indicate what people ate, especially if burned.
• Historians use the word "source" to refer to information from manuscripts, inscriptions, and archaeology
• Historians and archaeologists reconstruct the past by analyzing these sources.

One Past or Many?

• The word "pasts" is used because the past was different for various groups of people.
• The lives of herders/farmers differed from kings/queens, and merchants' lives differed from those of craftspersons.
• Customs/practices varied across regions.
• Today, Andaman Islanders get their food by fishing, hunting, and collecting forest produce, unlike city dwellers who depend on the food of others.
• Records about kings/battles exist but ordinary people's lives remain unknown..

What Dates Mean

• Years are counted from the birth of Jesus Christ.
• Years before Christ's birth are labeled BC (Before Christ).
• AD (Anno Domini) means "in the year of the Lord."
• CE (Common Era) and BCE (Before Common Era) are sometimes used instead of AD and BC.
• BP (Before Present) is also used.