Foragers and Village Networks
Driving Question: How did early villages depend on other villages, foragers, and pastoralists?
Early farming villages may have been small, but they were far from isolated. Discover how these communities connected through networks—and how they interacted with outsiders such as foragers, herders, and nomads.
Learning Objectives:
- Understand how village networks expanded into new forms of communities.
- Evaluate how villages interacted with each other and with groups like foragers, pastoralists, and nomads.
- Use claim-testing skills to evaluate evidence about early village networks.
Vocab Terms:
As you prepare to learn about how different types of ancient communities interacted, use this activity to think about how they might react to different types of pressures.
Did you ever think that you putting a poster of donuts on a wall would help you teach claim testing? Neither did we, until our artists got hungry at work. Click here for some new wall art.
Before cities and large states, there were small villages. What can life in those small communities tell us about who we are now? Practice evaluating the evidence with the activity, then put those skills to use as you read the article.
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Guiding Questions
Before you complete this lesson be sure that your students don't walk away thinking that all foragers disappeared as farming swept across the world. Many communities refused agriculture or blended foraging, farming, and pastoralism. And lots of ancient farming societies remained reliant on their pastoralist and foraging neighbors for trade. A few foraging societies remain in our world today, including the Hadzabe in Tanzania and the Batek in Malasia.
Not everyone took up farming immediately. For thousands of years, nomads, pastoralists, farmers, and foragers all lived alongside each other, connecting, fighting, and trading.
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Guiding Questions
Reading primary sources can help you deepen your understanding of how different forms of communities interacted during this period.
Providing solid evidence and analyzing it is crucial for building a strong written argument. Look for these elements in a sample student essay.
