This simulation is meant to show the relationship between the availability of naturally occurring resources and the likelihood of successful existence as a hunter-forager. You’ll immediately grasp the potential difficulties of a hunting-foraging way of life. Looking ahead, this will also give you some helpful background to discuss the transition from foraging to agriculture.

Today you will attempt to forage enough resources to survive. Your teacher will tell you the boundaries of the search area as well as the “resources” you will be looking for. You must find a total of three resources to “survive” the round. Of those three, you need to have at least one of each resource. After you have found these resources, you may keep looking or do what you like with the remaining time.

Observe any difficulties you had finding resources. For example, what might account for differences in the amount of resources you and your classmates collected?

During the second round, you will have less time to find at least as many resources as you did in the first round.

Observe how the second round compared to the first. What factors made finding water and food more difficult the second time?

In your wrap-up discussion with your class, your teacher will ask you to consider question like these:

• How might this simulation help you explain why some humans made the transition to agriculture?
• How long could you survive in one spot only relying on foraging natural resources?
• How does the number of people relying on the resources impact foraging?
• What are the possible responses to increased pressure on natural resources?

Before farming and writing developed, humans were predominately foragers. They hunted and gathered the resources they needed to survive while roaming in small family units. There were benefits and challenges to the foraging way of life. Despite the gradual and significant rise of farming, there are still foraging communities that exist to this day.

This article will help you define what it means to be a forager. By reviewing the pros and cons of the hunter gatherer lifestyle and paying close attention to the networks frame in particular, you will be better prepared to answer the Era Problem: What caused some humans to shift from foraging to farming and what were the consequences of this change?

Preview—Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads Worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas—Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. What is foraging?
2. Examine the chart showing population growth rate data. How does the data presented support the author’s claim that foraging communities kept their populations intentionally small?
3. What were some benefits enjoyed by early foraging groups?
4. What were some challenges foragers faced?
5. Why did humans begin to transition from foraging to a more settled way of life?

Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following question:

1. Did this article support, extend, or challenge your understanding of the communities and networks frames?

Foraging communities in the Paleolithic era were composed mainly of small family groups. But these groups interacted in larger networks, usually based on shared geographic locations and common beliefs. Human cultures were created based on the challenges that these foraging communities faced. While the challenges were somewhat similar across large geographic areas, the responses to these challenges depended on a number of factors.

This article will help you learn about early foraging communities, how these communities came together to form networks, and how similar cultures were developed to meet challenges these communities faced.

Preview—Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads Worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas—Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. According to the author, why do humans group together to form communities and how is this similar to how other species interact?
2. Why did early foraging communities come together and why might these communities come together to form networks?
3. What’s the difference between the stereotypical ideas about Paleolithic foraging practices and family relationships compared to what new evidence suggests about these tasks and relationships?
4. Why was language an important tool for foraging communities and how might different communities form language networks?
5. How did the formation of communities and language networks lead to the creation of distinct but similar human cultures?

Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:

1. The author makes many claims about the creation of culture in her article but what evidence does she use to back up these claims, and how can we trust that she is a reliable source?
2. In the article “Art of the Paleolithic” you read about the Venus of Willendorf and similar figurines found from this time period. This image shows up again in this article. How might these figures represent the shared culture of early humans while also showing how human cultures varied?

What were the first networks that connected human communities, tying together bands of foragers in trade and relationships? These networks were probably based on a shared language that allowed them to communicate with each other. In fact, it turns out that language is very important to forming and shaping connections between people, both historically and today. In this video, three historians help us to understand how these kinds of networks formed and worked.

This video will help you to explore the lives of foragers through the idea of language networks. The arguments that three historians make in this video are evidence to help you to evaluate the narrative you were given for the network frame, both in this era and beyond.

Preview—Skimming for Gist

Before you watch the video, open and skim the transcript. Additionally, you should always read the questions below before you watch the video (a good habit to use in reading, too!). These pre-viewing strategies will help you know what to look and listen for as you watch the video. If there is time, your teacher may have you watch the video one time without stopping, and then give you time to watch again to pause and find the answers.

Key Ideas—Understanding Content

Think about the following questions as you watch this video:

1. What is a language network?
2. What personal evidence does Sharika Crawford give that language shapes the way she experiences the world?
3. How, according to Crawford and the map you are shown, did the geography, climate, and history of Latin America shape how communities and networks formed around language?
4. Bob Bain tells a story about the Yiddish language. What does this story tell us about the ways languages can expand and decline in use?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. What language networks are you a member of, and how does language connect members of those networks?

Language is one of the things that sets humans apart from other animals. Our ability to communicate through symbolic language is a necessity for collective learning to take place. This short activity shows you how flexible our language is and how difficult collective learning would have been for our non-sapiens ancestors.

This is a short, fun, three-step activity.

Step 1: As a class, choose 200 random words.

Step 2: Respond to the questions and prompts on the worksheet, using only the words listed. Be prepared to share your answers with the class.

Step 3: Think about what life would be like for humans if we did not have language for communication, and discuss this with your class.