Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

5 minutes – Activating Prior Knowledge: The story so far...
15 minutes – Tune In: Compare the Pair - Hunter-gatherer and farmer
15 minutes – Find Out: Agriculture - An Important Threshold in the development of human civilisation
20 minutes – Take Action: Comparing Diets
5 minutes – Reflection

Presentation Slides

We strongly encourage you to use the Presentation Slides as a guide for yourself and your students through this lesson.

The story so far...

Step 1. Revisit the story so far, using the Threshold Cards as a guide to retell the story of the history of the universe. Students should be involved in the retelling - you might nominate different students each lesson to be responsible for a different threshold. Prompt them to explain what ingredients were present in the universe at the time, what golidlocks conditions existed to enable a change, and the new complexity it resulted in.

Remember, students' explanations can't be wrong, but you might supplement them with the information below.

In the beginning, we weren't sure there was anything in the universe. If there was, we don't know what it was. We also don't know what conditions were like. However, something happened, which we know as the Big Bang. This caused the universe to change so much that we recognise it as a new complexity - almost a totally new place. After that, we had space, time, matter (hydrogen and helium), energy (gravity and electromagnetism).
These were the ingredients and perfect Goldilocks Conditions needed for something else to happen: Gravity pulled the hydrogen and helium matter together. Inside of these fusions, it was more than 10 million degrees Celcius. Suddenly, stars lit up. Galaxies, clusters, and superclusters were formed.
The stars started to age and die. They were running out of hydrogen and helium. Giant stars collapsed, fusing to create more complex elements in the billion-degree temperatures. After a time, 92 elements were present in the universe, making our universe a far more complex place.
Now gravity started to have an impact on these new elements. They underwent accretion. Random collisions started to happen, where elements gathered together and combined. Eventually, these clusters grew big enough to create comets, asteroids, and - most exciting of all - planets. Much more complex structures, including our solar system, developed in the universe.
Now there was just the right amount of energy for many different chemical reactions to take place. And, importantly, there was liquid water, which made it easier for matter to combine and recombine. So that's exactly what it did! Complex chemicals, including DNA, came together to form new life that could maintain and refuel (feed) itself, adapt to changes around them over time, and copy itself (reproduce).
That life soon evolved into human life. But the early humans still had a long way to go. With big, powerful brains and the ability to share learning using precise language and symbols meant there were perfect conditions for humans to transfer and store information across individuals and communities as they interacted. This led to a new species of humans: homosapiens.

The universe had changed once again.

Tune In: Critical Thinking - Compare the Pair: Hunter-gatherer and farmer

You can also use the Presentation Slides to guide you through these steps.

Step 1. Ask students to compare the two pictures.

Try to look beyond the physical appearance.

As you go, develop a T-Chart with the differences between these two groups.

Important and potentially unfamiliar vocabulary words are underlined below.

Ask prompting questions to lead them towards the deeper insight that this lesson will cover:

What is the person on the left doing? They appear to be a traditional hunter.
What is the person on the right doing? They appear to be a more modern shepherd.
What is their main source of food? Meat for both. The hunter would probably be tracking something like an antelope or maybe a kangaroo in Australia. The shepherd slaughters one of their herd when they require some food.
Who has the more reliable source of food? Or, who do we think is more likely to go hungry? It's the hunter, but not because they don't eat as much as the shepherd. The problem is, if they don't catch some prey that day, they don't eat. The shepherd always has a meal right there in front of him. The shepherd's food is more reliable.
What is the difference between the animals these two people are dealing with? Or, do you know the difference between a sheep and a cow compared to an antelope or maybe a tiger? We want students to understand that the hunters are chasing wild animals, while the shepherd has domesticated the herd of sheep. This means they are comfortable living with humans, and mostly rely on humans to look after them.
Who do you think is more likely to have stayed in the same place and built a more permanent house? Why? The farmer has probably built a permanent house on the land where their sheep graze. The hunter would have to keep moving around to stay with migration patterns of the animals they hunt.

Step 2. Continue in the same way, comparing a second set of pictures.

What is the person on the left doing? They appear to be a traditional gatherer. It's a little hard to tell but they seem to be digging up roots or maybe picking berries. They are gathering food that naturally occurs in the wild.
What is the person on the right doing? They appear to be a more modern crop farmer.
What is their main source of food? Both are eating plants.
Who has the more reliable source of food? Or, who do we think is more likely to go hungry? It's again the gatherer. If they can't find any food, they can't eat. Although the farmer might also be bad at growing crops and having nothing to eat. But hopefully they're a decent enough farmer.
What is the difference between the food source these two people are dealing with? Or, do you know the difference between berries, roots and apple trees compared to fields of corn, wheat, or beans? We want students to understand that the gatherers are relying on food that grows in the wild animals, while the farmer has cultivated their crops. They are responsible for growing their crops in a way that wouldn't occur naturally.
Who do you think is more likely to have stayed in the same place and built a more permanent house? Why? The farmer has probably built a permanent house so they can be close to where their crops are growing. The gatherer would have to keep moving around depending on where their food was growing naturally.

Here's a T-Chart we've done for easy reference:

	Hunter/Gatherer	Farmer
Food source:	Unreliable, found in the wild	More reliable, domesticated/cultivated
Lifestyle:	Migratory	More permanent

Important Teaching Point: It's really important to not perpetuate the myth that ancient cultures were 'savages' or 'uncivilised' due to the way they operated.

Hunter-gatherer is a very broad term to describe a particular way of living before the cultures began to settle and make the switch to agricultural farming practices. The change in lifestyle, particularly in the creation of more permanent dwellings and less migratory behaviours, had certain benefits for the development of human civilisation, particularly in western cultures, as we are going to see in this lesson.

However it was by no means any better or more developed than older ways of living.

Also, in particular in Australia, we know that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who have often been dismissed as simple hunter-gather groups actually always had quite advanced techniques and understanding for the cultivation of prey animals and land management for farming.

The images used in this lesson are staged, and aren't meant to represent any peoples or misvalue a way of life prevalent throughout cultures in human history.

Find Out: Explicit Learning - Agriculture: An Important Threshold in the development of human civilisation

Step 1. Watch:

Threshold 7: Agriculture | Big History Project (Public Embed) (https://youtu.be/HwJ3CoeUKnQ)

Step 2. Watch:

Why Agriculture Was So Important | Unit 7: Big History Project | OER Project (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hx6-m510hjU)

Step 3. Discuss any new vocabulary and the meaning of any unknown words that came up in these videos.

If you are keeping a word wall across the course of this unit, update it with new terms and definitions.

Take Action: Independent Activity - Comparing Diets

All of these instructions are also available on the Student Worksheet.

Step 1. Independently, students read through the Student Worksheet articles

As they go, students should highlight some of the changes that occurred in people's lives after the adoption of farming. Examples might include the building of more permanent structures, adopting a less nomadic lifestyle, increased food availability, the domestication of wild plants and animals, more leisure time for art and inventing.

Students then answer the questions on the Student Worksheet.

Step 2. Students are then going to explore the diets of early humans, how this changed after the widespread introduction of agriculture, and how it compares to our diets in the modern day.

(This activity has been adapted from the Big History Project by Marilyn Ahearn)

Students use the following sites to explore the variety of foods available to us in Australia today

Dietary guidelines for children today
Healthy eating plate poster
Guide to healthy daily food serve for children. See p.2

Students then fill out the table and answer the questions.

Reflection

As a class, discuss:

What changed when people switched from being hunter-gatherers to being farmers?
Do you think these changes were mostly positive or negative? Why?

These developments are viewed as mostly positive by anthropologists as they allowed society to evolve into the way we live today. Humans were less concerned with merely surviving and had more time to follow other pursuits.

Although, again, be sure to make the point to your students that many nomadic cultures were perfectly content with their way of life, possessed many inventions and advanced technologies for their needs, traded between themselves, and were engaged with art. These developments were not solely a result of the widespread adoption of agricultural practices.

Threshold Crossed

Finally, tell the next part of the history of the universe that we have just covered.

"Stable, permanent human communities grew larger and more common. They possessed knowledge about the environment collected through generations over many years.

The climate was warmer, allowing many plants and animals to flourish in different regions.

So humans domesticated these plants and animals. They innovated on ways to produce food more efficiently. Communities of farms became villages, and then cities. And there was a rapid acceleration of collective learning.

The universe had changed once again."

Stick your Threshold 7 Card up around the classroom somewhere as an indicator of a threshold being crossed!

Students fill in their Threshold Reflection Sheet.

Where to next?

Students' learning throughout Big History is leading them towards designing future cities. As Big Historians, we are travelling through 13.82 billion years of our universe’s history to find solutions to the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal #11: to make cities inclusive, safe and resilient.

Remind students that the Sustainable Development Goals are the world’s to-do list for people and planet. We all need to be a part of the tasks. 193 nations came together and agreed on one common list for all of us that helps make the planet and our communities stronger.

What will be our first touchdown threshold in our next lesson? Expansion and interconnection. What are the pros and cons of living in our globally connected society?

Big History Passport Check-in

After this lesson, students should have added to their Big History Passport:

Student Worksheet - From Early Farming to Sustainable Farming today
Threshold 7 Reflection Page of the Big History Journal

Differentiated Learning

Extension

Students view this infographic (https://cdn.kastatic.org/KA-share/BigHistory/KU7.1.1AGCIVInfographic.pdf) and prepare their own infograph from important information they learnt about early agriculture.
We have plenty more resources about sustainable farming including The Show - How Is Your Food Connected To Farming? - Years 3 & 4 - Cool .o r g
Drawing agricultural landscapes using one-point perspective

Big History - Human development - Agriculture and Civilisation

Go to

Summary

Lesson guides and printables

In this lesson