Lesson video

Hello, and welcome.

I'm Mr Hutchinson.

And this is geography.

We're learning all about villages, towns and cities.

You are very welcome.

If you haven't caught up with the lessons so far in this unit, then make sure that you go back and look at some of those.

Because we've already learned so much about different settlement types, what affects how they start and develop.

And in today's lesson, we're going to be thinking about how settlements are shaped, how settlements develop, and we're even going to be diving back into history to look at how settlements first began, how people first began to settle down in permanent locations.

Can't wait for the lesson.

We're going to learn lots throughout it, so stick with it for the whole for the whole lesson.

Make sure you've got somewhere quiet way you're not going to be disturbed.

You can really focus and concentrate.

Organise your equipment.

So you've got a pencil and a notebook or a piece of paper to write down your answers.

It's very important to pause and write your answers.

That helps your brain to really process that new learning and will make you more likely to remember it and understand it.

So let's get started.

Before we get started, have you done the quiz? Have you? Well done.

Excellent.

Well done.

How did you do? How many did you get right? Revisiting a lot of that knowledge, and hopefully, you're thinking, I know so many of these facts are really easy for me, because you've been doing those quizzes, so well done.

So our lesson today is how are settlements shaped? That's what we're going to be exploring.

And if we break it down, the lesson looks something like this.

First of all, we are going to look at nomadic no more.

That's mysterious, isn't it? We'll look at what that means.

Then we'll look at different settlement patterns.

And then I'm going to ask you to describe some different settlements once you've learned about the different settlement shapes and patterns.

We'll finished with our end of lesson quiz, as usual.

So this first bit Nomadic no more.

What does that mean? Well, for us to understand this, we're going to have to go back in time.

Okay, we're going to get in our time machines and travel back in time to look at some of the first settlements in the UK in particular.

So take a look at this picture here.

And you can see this is a photograph so it's not really a picture of what's the first settlements were like.

It's a recreation because of course there were no cameras right back when settlements were first being made.

It's important to know that the first settlements, the first humans were nomadic.

So try saying that word.

It's a really key word.

Nomadic.

Nomadic The first humans were nomadic.

And humans were nomadic for hundreds of thousands of years.

So our species Homo sapiens are over 250,000 years old and for hundreds of thousands of years at that time, humans were nomadic.

That meant that we moved around a lot.

Humans moved around.

They followed animals, and they moved around to find different plants and nuts and fruit.

And they were always looking for their next meal, never sure where it will come from, following animals around to try and find food and the different resources that they needed.

Then a big change happened.

A huge change in human history about 10,000 years ago.

So about 10,000 years ago, they moved to the Neolithic Age, the New Stone Age.

Humans began to stay in the same location.

And they did this around the world, slightly different times around the world, but around the world as humans have moved.

It all started in Africa, as humans moved out of Africa and into the Fertile Crescent and then eventually up into Europe and across the UK across a land bridge.

Humans started to settle about 10,000 years ago in one single location.

One of the reasons for this is humans learnt how to harvest.

So harvest is when you find some crops and take lots of those crops, you cut them all down so you have lots and lots of food.

A lot of the food that humans would have would spoil easily.

Things like meat and fruit, they go off very quickly.

And of course, there's no electricity, no refrigeration back then.

Grains were different.

So grains like wheat, or like rice, they're different because humans learnt how to harvest those.

And if you grind those into flour, then you can make bread.

And, grains go a long way.

So if you find a field full of grains and harvest all of that, then that can look after a family for weeks or even months.

So a few days work would give those humans enough food for weeks or even months.

So they don't need to chase around anymore.

They don't need to be nomadic anymore.

They've got enough food.

And lots of other animals don't try and have that grain because it's too tough.

It needs to be ground down, and then mixed with water and cooked using fire and only humans had worked out how to do that.

So about 10,000 years ago, we get this big change.

Humans begin to stay in the same place.

And about that same time, humans also begin to domesticate animals.

Domesticate.

Domesticate means training animals, selecting animals, learning how to control animals, so that they can stay in one place and we can use them for milk, or we can use them for eggs or we can use them for meat or different products like the leather.

So especially things like chickens and sheep and cow began to become domesticated about this time.

That meant that humans could stay in one settlement because they have crops, they have animals available and they don't need to move around.

That was about 10,000 years ago Get that first change.

However, to begin with, humans weren't great at looking after the ground.

They weren't great at looking after the soil.

So they just sort of had to find crops where they were, as opposed to planting them systematically.

And when they did plant them, they ruined the soil by planting too much perhaps and using all the nutrients up.

First of all, though, let's see before we get on to how that changed, let's see if you were paying close attention.

So my first question for you to get you going.

To see if you can think hard about our learning today is, is this true or false? Humans began farming about 1000 years ago.

About 1000 years ago, humans began farming.

True or false? Put your finger on the correct answer.

Well done if you said false.

It wasn't 1000 years ago, it was 10,000 years ago.

Humans first started their farming about 10,000 years ago.

Okay, let's put all of that together.

So have a go finishing the sentences for me.

I've given you lots of different words in those sentences.

I just want you to use some of our new keywords, harvest, at the bottom here.

Harvest, domesticate, and nomadic.

These are the key words that you will need.

And they need to go into these gaps, but I've modelled them all up.

So the sentences are, for over 200,000 years humans were.

and would constantly be moving, hunting and gathering.

Around 10,000 years ago, humans learn how to.

and process grain into bread.

And around the same time humans learned how How to animals.

Write out those sentences, selecting the new vocabulary we've learned today, and pause the video and do that now.

Super work, well done for working hard.

I'm going to put the answers up now so you can give yourself a tick if you've got it correct.

And if you've got it wrong, no problem, now's your chance to edit it.

So your sentences should say, for over 200,000 years, humans were nomadic, and would constantly be on the move.

Nomadic means moving around all the time.

It'd be hunting and gathering.

Around 10,000 years ago, humans learnt how to harvest and process grain into bread.

About the same time humans learnt to domesticate animals.

So in the UK, humans beginning to settle into the same location.

And humans around the world started to do that.

Now there are still some nomadic communities today.

So not all humans did that.

There are some nomadic communities like the Kochi people in Afghanistan, who are still nomadic today, still move around and use the land as they find it, and the animals as they find them.

But most people have settled now in one location.

So, we start to then get some different settlement patterns because after about 5000 years, humans get better at looking after the soil.

And that means that the villages become permanent.

So those villages which might have been a bit so temporary as human stayed in one place until they ruin the soil.

As we get better looking after the soil, then the villages become more permanent.

The houses that are put up they're not sort of basic animal skins anymore.

They might be wattle and daub, some mud and sticks, and maybe even stone houses, because they're much more permanent, and people are staying in the same place.

That means that people can then start to trade with each other.

'cause if you know a village is permanent, and it's always going to be there, if they've got lots and lots of eggs, then you can go and say, "We would like some of your eggs, and in return, we will give you some of these tools that we've made." And so we started to get trading between different villages about 5000 years ago.

So a quick question to see if you've been paying close attention on this.

What happened about 5000 years ago that villages could become more permanent? Did the population in the villages increase? Did humans just get bored of moving around all the time? Did humans learn how to build better houses? Or did humans learn to take better care of the soil? Put your finger on the correct answer.

So it's because humans were taking better care of the soil, that they were able to stay in one location.

Now that's a bit of a tricky question because when humans were in one location, they then did get better at building new houses because they had the time and they can invest in the one location and it was worth it.

The populations did grow, but they grew because they were staying in one location, and were taking better care of the soil.

So had more food available to them.

That meant that they could support a larger location.

But they stopped moving.

They could become more permanent settlements because they were taking better care of the soil.

So that was about 5000 years ago.

Then about 2000 years ago, invaders came across to Britain.

They heard all about this fertile soil that could grow lots of different crops.

And the Romans invaded.

They had one guy invading and failed.

And then another guy in was successful.

And the Romans already started to change the settlements in Britain.

The settlement patterns begin to change.

So, about 2000 years ago Romans came and they built towns, just like towns that they had across the rest of their empire, especially in Italy.

So whereas lots of England and the UK at that time, were villages in the countryside.

As the Romans came, they built much larger towns with stone buildings, villas, and is a process called Romanization where they made Britain a bit more like Rome.

This is a picture of barf, which is in England, in the South West of England, and that's a Roman bathhouse that's still there today.

It has lasted 2000 years.

Now, these towns could become some more central places for trade, so they might not have been growing things in the town, like in the villages growing plants and crops and domesticating, and farming animals.

But people would take all of their places to the towns, take one of their things to the towns to trade and people could make money and make a living just being a trader, being a merchant.

Not actually growing anything yourself.

Just buying and selling.

And so that's how we start to get towns larger settlements than just villages.

And lots of people moved out of the villages and into the towns.

Some of those towns became huge, and one large Roman town was Colchester.

Another St Albans, and another in what was called Londinium, which you might recognise what does Londinium sound like? The Roman town of Londinium.

What does that sound like? It sounds like London, our capital city.

And Londinium was where our capital city of London is now.

That's where it first began to build up along the River Thames.

So that was about 2000 years ago.

And that really started to change the settlement types as we got towns.

About 2000 years ago, we move from villages to towns as the Romans move in.

Then we're going to jump forward in history quite a long time.

We're going to look at the 18th century.

So the 1700s, about 1760 we get the industrial revolution in England and the UK.

So about 300 years ago, humans start to build factories and they're powered by coal and by steam, and we learn much better how to burn coal and use steam, and make trains, and steam trains and railway tracks to move the coal, and make factories to mass produce things.

This hugely increased the production of different materials and different things like textiles, like metals and all sorts of other things that people need.

And because these were in factories that were powered by coal, people would have reliable work the whole year round.

If you lived in a village and you were farming, you may have only had work when it was harvest time.

And the rest of the time there might not have been much of work available.

People were attracted to moving into the cities because they could have work every single day because the factories were available every single day.

And so these cities start to grow very quickly as more people moved to them, and then the population increases within these cities.

So the first cities of England, what we call cities is really, really large settlements.

They grow around these factories during the Industrial Revolution.

Okay, so I've taken you on a little bit of a journey of the history of the UK in terms of settlements and how settlements move from villages to towns to cities, and different types of why that might be and how they were shaped.

Let's have a look at a timeline, and just plot all of those on our timeline.

So we can see how geographically the UK has changed in terms of settlement types.

So far, something happened 10,000 years ago, then something happened 5000 years ago.

Something happened then about 2000 years ago, and something happened 300 years ago that changed the way that settlements were organised and shaped around the UK.

Can you remember what those different things were? Let me give you a clue.

I've jumbled them up a little bit.

But at one point, humans learnt how to reuse soil, and we get permanent villages.

At another point there was the Industrial Revolution, where we get our large cities.

At another point the Romans were invaded, and they built towns and roads between those towns.

And finally, and another big change was when humans first began farming, and stopped being nomadic.

So put those in order.

Draw a timeline.

I'll pause the video and put these events in order, in the correct order.

Great work, well done.

Hope you've got a nice timeline with those different events.

You can see how settlements are changing over the last 10,000 years.

So your timeline should look something like this.

So we've got our different times.

10,000 years ago, 5000 years ago, 2000 years ago and 300 years ago.

So 5000 years ago, that was when humans began to reuse soil.

300 years ago, that's when the industrial revolution happened.

2000 years ago, the Romans invaded, we get our towns, those first towns.

And way back 10,000 years ago, that was when we got our first permanent villages because humans learn how to farm.

The settlement types look slightly different, and geographically, we can categorise and put into different groups, the different types of settlement patterns.

Let's have a look at how those different categories and how we categorise them.

The first category, the first type of settlement is what's called nucleated, you say nucleated.

Good.

Nucleated.

So nucleated is where you have one central point and everything else grows around it, quite packed, quite closely together.

That's what nucleated means.

So for a settlement, and if each of those orange dots is maybe a house or a building, a nucleated settlement will be quite closely packed around one particular point.

It's not the only settlement type though, you can also get isolated settlement types.

So there could be a place where there's just one building or one house and lots and lots of open land.

You can also get linear settlement patterns.

So linear settlement patterns, the key in that word is line.

So these sorts of settlements are along a line.

You can find all these settlement patterns today.

The last one is a dispersed settlement pattern, where there are different buildings and different people in different places, but these permanent buildings are quite spread out from each other.

They're quite sparsely populated.

So those are different settlement patterns.

And villages, towns cities, might be described as one of those sorts of shapes.

Let's see if you can remember the names of them.

I'm going to put up the different settlement patterns in a different order.

And can you remember whether it's nucleated? So say the word now that you're ready to write it.

Nucleated, isolated, linear, or dispersed.

Few different ones to remember.

Let's give it a go.

What would this one be? How would you describe this one? What's the settlement pattern? What about this one? What would that settlement pattern be? And this settlement pattern? How would you describe that? What category would it be? And finally, this settlement pattern, how would you describe that? Can you remember the names of those different categories? Let's see if you are right.

This first one.

This one up here, it's just one building.

Remember these orange dots representing buildings, perhaps this one building is quite isolated.

It's all on its own.

So it's an isolated settlement.

The next one is a linear settlement pattern.

I changed it a little bit, but it's still along a line.

It's not clustered around one point like a circle, it's a longer line.

So that's a linear settlement pattern.

This one is dispersed, nicely spread out.

And finally, nucleated.

Did you get those correct? Well done if you're able to describe those using the correct categories.

Lots of new vocabulary that make you, and that vocabulary makes you a better geographer, as you're describing things using the correct technical language.

So well done for sticking with that great work.

So let's use that language to describe some settlements.

Nucleated, dispersed, isolated, linear, let's use that language to describe some settlements and think about why settlements might grow along those particular shapes.

So I'll show you the first settlement pattern, I've got the first settlement that I've got for you.

Have a look at their settlement here.

So how would you describe this settlement? Would you say this is an example of a linear, a nuclear, a dispersed or an isolated settlement? How do you describe it? Write a sentence of this is an example of a settlement.

And why do you think it's taken that shape? Why do you think it's taken that settlement pattern.

This settlement may have taken the shape because.

Pause the video and write your sentences now? Awesome work.

So if I look at that settlement, it looks like there's all along one line.

There's lots of different buildings.

It's not really clustered, they're not spread out.

And it's not just one, they're all along a line.

So I would describe this as a linear settlement pattern.

Now why would it take that shape? I think it's because it's along the coast.

And maybe people wanted a nice view.

In fact it's along a river, isn't.

A long a riverbank.

So maybe people want to be able to see the river and have a nice view.

Or it could be that they wanted quick access to the river because they wanted to get into their boat so that they could travel along the river to maybe another settlement, maybe do some trading.

Another reason is there's this big mountain here, this big hillside that would make it very difficult to build a nucleated settlement because it's not flat land.

So there are lots of reasons that this settlement has taken this linear shape, and that's based on the physical geography of the land.

Let's have a look at another settlement.

And what pattern would you give this settlement? Have a look at this one.

Have a close look, what can you see? And write your sentences for what type of settlement this is.

And make sure that you've written why you think it's taken that.

There are no right or wrong answers here.

I'm just interested in your thoughts.

So I would describe this, I think, if I'm looking at this, I can see that there's a little building here, maybe a house or a farmhouse, there are a few little buildings spread out here and one on its own here.

There are some in the distance on the horizon.

There's a small building here.

But they're very spread out from each other, aren't they? They're sort of dotted around the land.

And so I would describe this, I think, as a dispersed settlement, spread out.

Why might that be? Well, there's lots of what looks like lots of nice farmland around there.

And so maybe people wanted to have access to lots of lands so they could form their own particular area.

That could be a reason that it was dispersed.

Let's look at another settlement type.

What about this one? What about this settlement here? How would you describe this? What would the shape be? Write your answer using that key word, and then why you think it's shaped in that way.

Okay, how did you describe it? If I'm looking at it, even though it's on the coast, it looks like there's lots of buildings in a sort of circle or clustered very tightly together.

And I'm remembering that the word that we use for that is nuclear or nucleated.

So I would say this is an example of a nucleated settlement.

And even though it's on the coast here, they're packed tightly together.

Now, I'm looking at this settlement and they look like, it sort of looks a bit like a fort.

And so I wonder if along the coast here, this settlement was worried about people invading.

So maybe they wanted to stay close together, first of all, so they could all be near the coast if they wanted to do fishing, for example.

But secondly, so they could have protection from the fort that's nearby.

Our last settlement type.

How would you describe this settlement pattern? Write your own reason what that might be.

Awesome work? Well done.

So that, of course, is an isolated settlement type.

There's only one building there that we can see.

It looks like a house.

And it's all on its own and lots and lots of land.

So it's quite isolated.

What might that be? Well, who knows? Maybe there was a larger settlement and everybody else moved away.

Maybe they moved into the city.

Maybe there was a settlement nearby, and whoever this person was, they wanted a bit more privacy, or they wanted lots of land to be able to farm for themselves.

And there are lots of reasons that we can have an isolated settlement type like this house on its own here.

So you can see that there are a number of different factors for why settlements shape in the way they do.

And that's why geography is so amazing, I think.

That's why it's so interesting and fascinating because as we look around us, and as you look around your communities, you can think about the history thing.

I wonder why our settlement is shaped like this.

I wonder why the different settlements around throughout history have formed and developed in the way that they have.

I wonder how the natural resources influence that.

I wonder how different invaders and the Industrial Revolution, and all these other historical factors and physical geographical factors have influenced that.

And that is really, really interesting, I think.

And allows you to do lots of investigation into the settlements around you and how they've changed and stayed the same over time.

So the only thing left for you to do is your end of unit quiz.

So please make sure, End of lesson quiz.

So please make sure you do your end of lesson quiz to lock in all of the new knowledge and facts that you've learned today.

I will see you for our next lesson, where we will continue to think about settlements, villages, towns, cities and the world around us how we have settled in different locations in different ways.

And I can't wait to see you then.

Bye.