NCERT Solutions for Class 6th Social Science Chapter 4 The First Crops — LET'S EXPLORE
Book page 71 Updated on2026-09-19
Q1.
Observe the scene on the next page. It depicts an agricultural community from a few millenniums ago. List the main activities you can identify.
Background: a broad river; cattle stand at the water’s edge; low green hills and trees beyond; a line of birds in the sky.
Left half — the field: tall ripe cereal standing in the sun. A man holds a big bundle of cut stalks above his head; a woman bends into the crop cutting it; a child squats gathering the cut stalks; further off, another person walks carrying a bundle of stalks on the head.
Centre: a bearded man walks towards you with a long-handled tool over his shoulder and a cloth bundle tied to it. A dog walks at his side.
Right — the village: four huts with mud walls and thatched roofs. A man works with a tool at the corner of one hut; two small children play on the ground in front of the huts.
Right foreground: a large round clay pot standing over a wood fire; a woman kneels next to it over a shallow pan, with a bowl and red and yellow vegetables on the ground beside her.
Foreground: a flock of white sheep grazing on the grass; a thorny bush at the bottom right.
The picture at the top of page 72 — a modern artist’s painting of an early farming village; described here, see the textbook for the picture itself.
Answer
The scene on page 72 shows a settled farming village beside a river. The main activities are:
Activity
What is shown
What it tells us
Harvesting the crop
People bent over tall standing cereal, cutting it with hand tools
The community cultivates cereals and grains — the great change the chapter describes after the Ice Age
Carrying the harvest
Two figures walking with big bundles of cut stalks balanced on their heads
The crop is being brought in to be stored — people now have a surplus worth storing
Carrying tools
A man walks towards the village with a long-handled tool over his shoulder and a bundle tied to it
Farming needs made tools; later in the chapter these become metal — copper first, iron later
Building or repairing a hut
A man works with raised arms at the wall of a mud house with a thatched roof
People have settled down; permanent houses replace temporary camps and rock shelters
Cooking
A large round pot on an open hearth, with a fire burning under it
Pottery — one of the new technologies the chapter names — for cooking and storing food
Grinding grain and preparing food
A woman kneels at a flat grinding stone; a basket of vegetables and a bowl stand beside her
Grain must be processed before eating; grinding stones are among the commonest finds at early farming sites
Herding sheep and goats
A flock grazing in the foreground; cattle near the river behind
Domestication of animals — the chapter names cattle and goats — for milk, meat, wool and labour
Keeping a dog
A dog walks beside the man with the tool
The dog was the first animal to live with humans; here it guards the flock and the village
Children at play
Small children near the houses, away from the fields
A settled, safe village life — very different from the constantly moving band of the earlier picture
Living beside a river
The river runs across the background with trees and green banks
The chapter's own reason: people settled near rivers not only for water but because the soil is more fertile there, which makes growing crops easier
Compare the two pictures. In the rock-shelter scene (page 70) everything is temporary: no walls, no fields, no stored food. In this one there are houses, fences, fields, pots, flocks and children playing. That single change — from following food to growing it — is what allowed communities to grow in size and number, to develop chieftains, exchange and craft, and eventually to build the first towns.