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Class 9 History: Early Humans and the Beginning of Civilisation, 8 practice questions with answers

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These are 8 practice questions on Early Humans and Beginning of Civilisation, the fourth chapter (Chapter 4) of the new NCERT Class 9 Social Science textbook, Understanding Society: India and Beyond (Part 1, first published June 2026). It is the book's first History chapter. Each question has a worked answer and the textbook page it comes from. They follow the chapter: a timeline of human prehistory, naming the archaeological age from what a site holds, our human ancestors, Harappan weights and farming, the four city-states of Mesopotamia, trade with Meluhha, the Egyptian calendar and the Rosetta Stone, and China's dynasties. Try each one on paper before you open the answer.

These questions are our own, drafted with AI help. Every fact was checked against the textbook page it cites, but no practising teacher has reviewed them yet. If you find a mistake, please tell us.

Searching for "Class 9 History Chapter 1"? The old Class 9 History book, India and the Contemporary World I, began with The French Revolution. That book is not the one for 2026-27. In the new single Social Science book, History starts at Chapter 4, this chapter, and continues with Chapter 5, State and Society up to 1000 CE.

How this chapter is examined

The CBSE Class IX Social Science curriculum for 2026-27 gives this chapter 9 teaching hours. Its learning outcomes ask you to describe how prehistoric time is divided, explain how people lived before writing, understand how settled life began with farming and the domestication of plants and animals, explore how cities developed, appreciate crafts and trade, and describe the social, political and religious set-up of Egypt and Mesopotamia (curriculum, page 9). CBSE has not yet given the marks for each unit (page 14), so ask your school how the annual exam is split.

What the chapter says you need

Facts from the NCERT textbook (Understanding Society: India and Beyond, Part 1 for Grade 9, Chapter 4, printed pages 61 to 94):

A timeline of human prehistory

Question 1. (a) Put these in order, oldest first, with the date the chapter gives for each: (P) Homo sapiens evolve in Africa; (Q) the earliest known stone tools are made; (R) Homo erectus begins to leave Africa; (S) people live at Isampur in Karnataka; (T) Earth's climate turns warmer and forests and grasslands spread; (U) farming begins at Mehrgarh; (V) the Sumerians begin to write. (b) The chapter says the time before writing stretches from roughly 3 million years ago up to 5000 years ago. What percentage of those 3 million years do the last 5000 years make, to two decimal places, and does that fit the chapter's "less than 1 per cent"? (c) Why are dates before writing only approximate?

Answer.

(a) Q, R, S, P, T, U, V.

(b) 5000 ÷ 3,000,000 × 100 = 0.17 per cent. It is well under 1 per cent, so it fits (page 63).

(c) Without written records, a period is dated from tools and other remains. Only written documents mention exact dates of events such as coronations and wars (Fig. 4.3, page 63).

Which age is this site from?

Question 2. Five made-up excavation reports are given below. For each, name the age the chapter would place it in, and give the clue that decides it.

Answer.

Our human ancestors

Question 3. Match each description to Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens. (i) Lived in Europe and Southwest Asia until about 40,000 years ago and made Middle Palaeolithic flake tools. (ii) Its name means "handy man"; it lived around the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania and Kenya and made chopper tools. (iii) The first hominin to leave Africa, inventor of handaxes and cleavers. (iv) Evolved about 300,000 years ago and reached Australia and the Americas between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago. (b) What does the chapter mean when it calls tools "extra-corporal limbs"? (c) What is a fossil?

Answer.

(b) Tools worked as extensions of the body. They let people do jobs their hands alone could not (page 65).

(c) A fossil is the preserved remains, traces or impressions of a plant, animal or human from long ago. Once buried deep in the ground, such remains harden into stone across thousands or even millions of years (page 66).

Harappan weights and fields

Question 4. The Harappans weighed smaller amounts with cubical stone weights in a binary series, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 and so on, and used multiples of ten for larger amounts (page 76). (a) A bead-maker must balance a load of 27 units using the fewest weights, with at most one of each size. Which weights go on the pan? (b) Which two weights come next after 16 in the series? (c) What did the ploughed field at Kalibangan show, and which present-day practice does the chapter compare it to?

Answer.

(a) 16 + 8 + 2 + 1 = 27, which is four weights. Start with the largest weight that fits (16), leaving 11; then 8, leaving 3; then 2 and 1.

(b) 32 and 64. Each weight in the series is double the one before (page 76).

(c) The furrows run both lengthwise and crosswise, which points to two crops grown in the same field. The chapter compares this to the Rabi and Kharif seasons farmed today (page 76).

The city-states of Mesopotamia

Question 5. (a) Put the four city-based civilisations of Mesopotamia in order, with the date each began or took over: Assyrian, Sumerian, Babylonian, Akkadian. (b) How many years passed between the rise of Akkad in 2334 BCE and Hammurabi's rise in Babylonia in 1792 BCE? (c) The Sumerian number system was based on 60. Using it, how many minutes are there in 3 hours, and how many 60-degree parts make the 360-degree circle? (d) Why is the Sumerian script called cuneiform, and what was it written on?

Answer.

(a) Sumerian (from 3500 BCE), Akkadian (2334 BCE), Assyrian (2154 BCE) and Babylonian (1900 BCE) (Fig. 4.22, page 78, and page 83).

(b) Both dates are BCE, so subtract: 2334 − 1792 = 542 years (pages 81 and 83).

(c) 3 × 60 = 180 minutes, and 360 ÷ 60 = 6 parts (page 81).

(d) The name comes from the Latin cuneus, meaning "wedge". Scribes pressed wedge-shaped reeds into damp clay tablets (pages 80 to 81).

Trade with Meluhha

Question 6. (a) The tablets of the Akkadian king Sargon mention trade with Dilmun, Magan and Meluhha. What is each identified with today? (b) Name four goods traded with the Harappans. (c) Name the Harappan water works the chapter describes at each of these places: small streams in the Baluchistan foothills, Dholavira in Kachchh, and Lothal.

Answer.

(a) Historians usually take Meluhha to be the Sindhu–Sarasvatī (Harappan) civilisation. Dilmun is today's Bahrain, and Magan is the Oman peninsula (page 82).

(b) Any four of: ivory, timber, gold dust, beads of semi-precious stone, and probably copper (page 82).

(c) The chapter describes three works (page 80):

The Egyptian calendar and the Rosetta Stone

Question 7. (a) The Egyptian year had 12 months of 30 days plus 5 extra days. How many days is that? (b) The real year is about a quarter of a day longer. By about how many days would this calendar drift in 4 years, and in 120 years? (c) Who found the Rosetta Stone and in which year, who deciphered the script and when, and how many years apart were the two events? Why did the stone help? (d) Cleopatra lived from 69 to 30 BCE and became queen at eighteen. Roughly in which year did she become queen?

Answer.

(a) 12 × 30 + 5 = 365 days (page 85).

(b) A quarter of a day each year gives 1 day in 4 years and 30 days in 120 years, about a whole month (page 85).

(c) Pierre Bouchard, a French army engineer, found it in 1799, and Jean-François Champollion deciphered the script in 1822, 23 years later. The stone carried three kinds of writing, one of them Greek, which people could still read, so it worked like a dictionary between the two (page 84).

(d) BCE years count down, so 69 − 18 = about 51 BCE (page 88).

China's dynasties

Question 8. (a) Using the chapter's dates, how long did the Shang dynasty (1600 to 1046 BCE) and the Zhou dynasty (1046 to 256 BCE) last? (b) The Han dynasty ruled from 206 BCE to 220 CE. How many years is that? Remember there is no year 0. (c) What were oracle bones, and what do they tell historians? (d) Name two firsts the chapter credits to China.

Answer.

(a) Shang: 1600 − 1046 = 554 years. Zhou: 1046 − 256 = 790 years (page 89).

(b) The count runs from 206 BCE to 1 BCE, then from 1 CE to 220 CE. That is 206 + 220 − 1 = 425 years: you take away 1 because 1 BCE is followed directly by 1 CE (page 89).

(c) Oracle bones were pieces of animal bone and tortoise shell marked with symbols. They were heated until they cracked, and the patterns of the cracks were read to foretell the future. Today they tell historians what early Chinese people hoped for, wanted and feared, and they are the earliest source of information about China (page 90).

(d) Any two of these (page 92):

Practise more, and check your marks

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Sources

All opened and read on 3 November 2026. Page numbers are the printed page numbers of the textbook.

The facts and dates are from the textbook pages above. The questions, worked answers, the sums and the made-up site reports are our own. This guide is general information; follow your teacher and the official CBSE notices.

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