Foraging Societies
Teacher Resources
Driving Question: How did foragers build and maintain their communities?
For over 95 percent of humanity’s existence, most people were foragers. Foraging—sometimes called hunting and gathering—required a great deal of knowledge and skill, and foragers created communities and networks that helped them thrive for hundreds of thousands of years. Foraging may not differentiate humans from other animals, but culture and language set humans apart. Both culture and language are necessary to understand how humans have been able to be so successful at dominating the globe.
- Understand the characteristics of foraging communities, including gender relations, and how geography played a role in this way of life.
- Investigate how historians can develop understandings of early human cultures.
- Use close-reading skills to discover the many ways that scholars can learn about the past and how language influenced human communities and their interactions.
-
Guiding Questions
-
Note: For more detailed directions on completing the three close reads below, refer to the Three Close Reads – Introduction activity.
Skim
Before you read, you should quickly skim the article, by looking at the headings of each section and the charts. Read the questions below as well, so you know what to look for when you read!
Key Ideas
- What is foraging?
- 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?
- What were some benefits enjoyed by early foraging groups?
- What were some challenges foragers faced?
- Why did humans begin to transition from foraging to a more settled way of life?
Evaluate
- Did this article support, extend, or challenge your understanding of the communities and networks frames?
-
Guiding Questions
-
Note: For more detailed directions on completing the three close reads below, refer to the Three Close Reads – Introduction activity.
Skim
Before you read, you should quickly skim the article, by looking at the headings of each section and the charts. Read the questions below as well, so you know what to look for when you read!
Key Ideas
- Why do humans group together to form communities and how is this similar to how other species interact?
- Why did early foraging communities come together and why might these communities come together to form networks?
- 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?
- Why was language an important tool for foraging communities and how might different communities form language networks?
- How did the formation of communities and language networks lead to the creation of distinct but similar human cultures?
Evaluate
- 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?
- How might figures such as the Venus of Willendorf represent the shared culture of early humans while also showing how human cultures varied?
Language Networks and Social Life
Key Ideas
-
Guiding Questions
-
Before you watch
Before you watch the video, it’s a good idea to open and skim the video transcript. And always read the questions below so you know what to look and listen for as you watch!
While you watch
- What is a language network?
- What personal evidence does Sharika Crawford give that language shapes the way she experiences the world?
- 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?
- 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?
After you watch
- What language networks are you a member of, and how does language connect members of those networks?