Lesson video

Hello.

I'm Mr. Hutchinson, and welcome to our history lesson, where we're learning all about prehistoric Britain.

And we've got another great lesson today where we're going to be learning all about prehistoric farming.

All about Neolithic farming, and why farming changed everything.

Farming was a huge change in how people lived, and how humans developed.

That's what we're going to be finding out about today.

I can't wait to get started.

So our lesson's going to look like this.

We're going to think, first of all, about why continuity and change is an important thing to think about when we're studying history.

Continuity, things continuing, things staying the same, and change things being different.

And we need to have that in our mind as we're studying history.

We'll think about how diet changed, the things that people ate changed, throughout prehistory.

How language changed and developed.

And then you'll have a chance at the end of the lesson to plan your own Neolithic farm.

That's going to be a really exciting activity.

We'll finish off with that end of lesson quiz, and make sure you're doing those quizzes, it's really important to think, "Did I remember all of the key facts from that lesson? "Have I got those locked in?" By doing those quizzes, even if you get the questions wrong, it will just remind you of the real key facts.

And that builds up lesson on lesson so that you have an amazing knowledge of this period.

You're very, very smart, so it's important to do that quiz and get them right, or if you get them wrong, remember the correct answers.

So first of all, continuity and change.

So we already know that there was the Stone Age, and in the Stone Age, there were those three periods.

The Palaeolithic era, What was the next one called, the Middle Stone Age.

Well done.

the Mesolithic era.

Say the next stage for me, the next era.

Excellent, the Neolithic era.

Well done, great work.

So the Palaeolithic era was the Old Stone Age.

What does Mesolithic era mean? Say it out loud, use your voice.

Good, the Middle Stone Age.

And the last one, the Neolithic era was, let me hear it.

The New Stone Age, well done.

You already know about the different eras in the Stone Age.

So these all occurred about, over the last 3 million years.

So the first humans appeared how long ago? You should know this by now, we do this every lesson.

How many years ago for the first, earliest humans? Good, 2 1/2 million years ago.

And our species, Homo sapiens, don't evolve until later.

There are other types of humans, like Homo habilis and Homo heidelbergensis, and Homo australopithecus, all of those early humans.

But our species, Homo sapiens, when did we appear? When were Homo sapiens first evolving? 300,000 years ago, well done.

And for most of that period, we have the Palaeolithic era.

Then the Ice Age ends and we get the, what was it, the good, the Mesolithic era.

And finally, the last little bit that we're going to be looking at today, and we were looking at our last lesson, the Neolithic era or the New Stone Age.

So during the Stone Age, throughout those different periods, some things stayed the same.

We've already looked at that, when we were looking at artefacts.

Some things, there were some similarities, some things stayed the same.

But some things change.

And this is the story, this is what happens in history.

Some things stay the same and some things change, and we need to have in our mind, which things are staying the same and which things are changing throughout the different periods that we're learning about.

So in the Palaeolithic era, the Mesolithic era, and the Neolithic era, some things are staying the same and some things are changing.

Now we're going to look specifically in between the Mesolithic era and then the Neolithic era.

And in between the Mesolithic era and the Neolithic era, the reason that there's a new age, that we give it this new name, a different age, is 'cause a big change happened.

There was a big change in between the Mesolithic era and the Neolithic era.

And that change is that humans started farming.

Now in the Mesolithic era, humans might have gathered some crops and things that they found around, but it wasn't until the Neolithic era that we started to plan farms, planning crops, grow our own food and keep our own animals.

That was the big change that happened.

And we sometimes call it the Agricultural Revolution.

Agriculture just means farming.

Okay, it's just another word for farming.

It's a better word for farming, it's a bit more of a technical word.

So, the Agricultural Revolution, big change, revolution's a big change, was when humans started farming.

What was.

So humans started farming, another name for that is what? Say it out loud.

Good, good.

Agricultural Revolution, well done.

So we sometimes get things staying the same, and we sometimes get things changing.

Now this is true, whether we're thinking about big history, in terms of thousands of years, and millions of years, or even smaller periods.

I bet it's happened in your life.

So, think now about your life.

What's stayed the same in your life? All through your life.

what's been consistently the same? And what sorts of things have changed in your life? Make a list of things that have stayed the same.

And make a list of things that have changed.

Pause the video and make that list now.

Great work, I wonder what you put down.

I was thinking that things have stayed the same.

Well, my family has stayed the same.

I've got the same family.

I've got the same mum and brothers.

And so that's always been the same all through my life.

But one thing, well, lots of things have changed.

One thing that changed is that I changed schools when I was younger.

I went to high school, so that was a big change.

What else changed? Oh, I left school and went to university, that was another big change.

So there have been big changes in my life, but then other things have stayed the same.

I've always been really interested in learning, and learning about the world, and learning different things.

That stayed the same, even if I went to different places.

So there are things that have stayed the same in my life, and there are things that have changed.

I bet it's the same for you.

So what's stayed the same and what's changed? Be really interested to find out.

One of the things that changed for humans was their diet.

As they started farming, this had an impact on their diet, the things that they ate.

So early humans in the Palaeolithic era, and for some of the Mesolithic era, humans were hunter-gatherers.

They were moving around all the time.

We've talked about that already.

What were they eating? Well they were eating anything that they could find, maybe some wild mushrooms, maybe some nuts that they see around.

They might have eaten berries and fruits.

And of course they would have hunted some animals, maybe a big woolly mammoth.

So for hunter-gatherers, they would have had, actually a very, varied diet, because they're eating all sorts of different things, whatever they can find.

And that varied diet is very healthy.

It's good to have a varied diet.

It's good to eat lots of different things, 'cause you get different vitamins and nutrients and protein from all sorts of different things.

So that's a big benefit of this hunter-gatherer lifestyle, that you're getting a really varied diet.

You're less likely to get ill, and you're less likely to be vulnerable to all of your food going all of a sudden, because it's really varied.

But the problem with that is the availability of that food.

They never, Palaeolithic humans, never knew where the food was.

If they didn't, couldn't find an animal to hunt, then they risked starving.

They risked not having enough food.

If there wasn't any berries around because berries only grow at certain points in the year, then they would start to get very hungry.

And so, although the hunter-gatherer lifestyle gave them this varied diet, it also meant that they were always at risk of starvation.

So that's a con, that's a negative.

Once we get the Agricultural Revolution, on the other hand, things start to change.

We invent, we looked at this in our last lesson, we invent a sickle that allows us to cut down wheat, which is kind of grass that grows, and that has flour inside it.

So we cut down lots and lots of wheat, and that can be stored away.

And it means that that availability of food isn't such a problem anymore.

We've got plenty of food available.

We're not going to starve.

We've actually got too much food.

And as a result, it means that our settlements can start to grow.

So because we've got so much food, our settlements will start grow to bigger because we can have more people around.

The only problem is, it's not a varied diet anymore.

Now we're eating the same thing all of the time, which isn't as healthy.

And if the crops get diseased or something, or there's some sort of problem with the crops, then all of our food is wiped out because we're set up for, just have that same kind of crop.

And so all of our food is wiped out.

And so there are pros and cons of the Farming Revolution, the Agricultural Revolution.

But on the whole, humans wanted to have the safety of knowing that they will always have food nearby.

It wasn't just crops, they would also keep animals.

They would domesticate animals, like sheep and cattle and goats.

We're going to watch a quick video now, which will tell us all about, it's from the BBC, that tells us all about early farming and Neolithic farming.

And as you watch this, what I'd like you to do is, I'd like you to have this question in your mind.

And you could even write down a response to it.

How did farming change how humans lived in the Neolithic era? So listen carefully and watch carefully, and have that question in your mind as you do.

Thousands of years ago, back in the early Stone Age, people were what we call hunter-gatherers.

They hunted animals and used their skin for clothing, their bones for tools, and of course ate what was leftover.

But, their diet mainly consisted of nuts, berries, fruit, and wild plants that they gathered in the forest.

Then towards the end of the Stone Age, a new idea began to spread across Britain, farming.

Instead of following or tracking animals over long distances, people began to settle and stay in one place, People from Europe, brought new animals, such as goats and sheep, like this rare breed.

They're much smaller than the ones that we see today.

People also started clearing trees from the forest to create areas to grow wheat and barley.

Up until now, people had lived in caves or tents made out of animal skins and wood, which could be broken down and transported easily.

Now they were settling in one place.

They began to build homes which were meant to last.

This is a replica Neolithic house from over 4 1/2 thousand years ago.

But how do we know they looked like this? When you excavate, you find marks in the ground, postholes, where the posts that support the house have been in the past.

We don't find any evidence above ground, but from that, we can put together a picture of how we think the house would have looked.

Oh wow.

I didn't expect it to be so big inside.

But it's very dark in here, isn't it? It is quite dark.

You get the light from the fire, but of course there aren't any windows.

Being able to light a fire was something really important, which stone stone-age people had learned.

Not just to keep them warm, but for cooking food as well.

The walls are made from wattle and daub.

This is wattle, the woven wood.

That's very strong.

And then we'd cover it with daub.

This is daub, and that's going to be a draught excluder to keep the cold air out and keep the warmth in the house.

And you just push it on and smooth it on.

The daub is made out of animal manure, mud, hay, and water.

It's not very smelly though, is it? No no, once it's been lying in the field for awhile, the manure doesn't really smell very much.

And once it's dried on the wall, it doesn't smell at all.

It's quite weird.

It's like having pebbly mud in your hand that you're just flinging at a wall, But not all Neolithic homes would have looked like this.

In Skara Brae, a settlement on the Orkney islands in Scotland, homes were made out of stone because there were no trees for wood.

They even had stone cupboards and beds.

The Stone Age lasted for nearly 3 1/2 million years.

By the end of this period, people had come a really long way.

They'd invented farming, lived in proper homes, and they used fire for cooking and keeping themselves warm.

This was a tremendous achievement, and essential to their future survival.

So we can see there how farming really started to change everything.

Humans were developing these new skills of building permanent shelters with that wattle and daub, and keeping animals and growing their own crops.

And that really helped humans to change the whole way that they lived.

And since then, we've continued to stay in permanent settlements, largely.

There are still some nomadic communities that move from place to place, but mostly those settlements have built up and up and up into villages and towns and cities that we live in today.

As a result of this new way of living, humans would also be able to develop their language.

So, if you take a look at this replica Stone Age settlement, this one is actually from Ireland.

You can see that there is this sort of fireplace, this one's on the outside.

So there would be one inside, but there's also one on the outside.

And I'm imagining that the Neolithic humans would have gathered around that fireplace.

And maybe they'd be weaving baskets, or maybe they'd be making stone tools, or maybe they'd be cutting down animal skins, or maybe they'd be grinding the wheat, or maybe they'd be butchering the meat.

And as they did that, those tasks would take a long time.

And you're sat down with the other people in your little settlement.

And because they're doing something, they would be able to talk to each other.

And so during the Neolithic era, language would have really developed as people got better at describing the things that they were working with, and the actions that they were using, and talking and gossiping and, and finding out about each other a lot more.

So, language at this point would have been able to develop in a way it couldn't have before.

That's one of the changes.

Before, language couldn't really change hugely because humans were moving around, and they were too distant from each other.

Whereas when they're in the same place, like all humans do, if you're in the same place with somebody else, you have a chat.

And that chatting would have helped develop human language.

So this video here now, shows how harvesting that grain really starts to change things.

And I'm going to show you in this video, what harvesting the grain would have been like, and what it would have meant.

So watch this video here, and see if you can spot all of the things that were important about harvesting grain and how they helped humans, and the sorts of changes that were made as a result of it.

If I go out and about harvesting all of that wheat, then I'm left with this.

I can pick this off that grass, and it's called grain.

Now locked inside this grain, is the stuff that I want.

This is, this was a real, real game changer for early humans once they worked out how to grow, and harvest and process this, because once you've got grain, there's all sorts of things that you can do.

You can just pop it in a pot of water and boil it, and it will make a kind of porridge.

Because locked inside here, there is flour.

And the flour is really a kind of sugar, and it will help to nourish and give people everything that they need.

But, what we can do is, I've got a bowl of grain here that I've got.

And if early humans put that grain into something to grind, and they had different ways of doing this, I've got pestle and mortar here.

Then they can grind it down, and crack it and break it.

And then the shells, the chaff, they just blow away.

We don't want those, you can't eat those.

So they'll just blow as we break them.

And what starts to be left, is you'll see there, is just that flour, can you see that white flour in there? And so we can collect large amounts of grass, take off those grains, and sit down and grind down all of that grain, blowing off the shells there, the chaff, until we're just left with some flour inside, and that flour will store forever.

As long as it doesn't get wet, if it's stored in a cold, dry place, the flour will stay forever, it won't go off.

Same for the grains, it will keep pretty much forever and won't go off.

So you can harvest a huge amount of grain, process it down, and of course humans could do that in groups.

And so their language is developing.

Process it down and then have enough food to last you for a very, very long time.

That meant that humans stopped having to chase their next meal constantly, and could have enough food to focus on other things.

So, in that video, we've seen how farming really started to change things for humans.

We've seen how that grain gave them a food security they didn't have before.

If you pick plants or berries, well, you, have you ever seen your fruit in your fruit bowl? How long does it last? If you leave some fruits out, it can last maybe for berries a week, maybe two weeks, then it starts to rot, it starts to go off.

Fruit starts to go off quite quickly.

And so, humans would always have to find new fruit.

Same for meat, they didn't have any fridges back then, so any meat they had they'd have to eat quite quickly, or it would go rotten.

And so this grain was so valuable because you could stick it in a pot that you made, and then they got better at making pottery.

Stick it in a pot, and it's there forever.

It would last forever.

So even in the winter months, if there's no food around, they can just go to that pot of grain and take out some grain, grind it down into some flour and make themselves some bread.

So that was a big game changer.

I'd like you now to pause the video and answer this question based on what you've heard.

"How did harvesting and grinding down wheat "lead to better language development?" So based on what you saw me doing there, and from the videos from BBC, "How did harvesting and grinding down the wheat "lead to better language development?" And I've got some sentences here for you to fill in.

So, I've written, "To turn into flour, "Neolithic humans would have had to sit down "and grind the grains.

"They may have done this together, "perhaps sitting around a.

"As they worked, humans would have long periods to " to each other.

"This would help to improve , "and create new.

"This is a change from earlier periods, "when humans would have been , "and wouldn't have been able to talk as much." Your key words are at the bottom here, that fit into those different gaps.

Pause the video and see if you can answer that question.

Now write out that full paragraph now.

Great work, let's see if you're right.

Get your pen out and ready to tick or fix any errors.

So, this is what it should look like.

"To turn wheat into flour, Neolithic humans "would have to sit down and grind the grains.

"They may have done this together, "perhaps sitting around a fireplace.

"As they worked, humans would have long periods "to talk to each other.

"This would help to improve language and create new words.

"This is a change from earlier periods, "when humans would have been moving around "and wouldn't have been able to talk as much." So, if you've got all of those correct, then it's time to plan your own Neolithic farm.

The moment you've been waiting for, 'cause this is going to be a lot of fun.

You've learned a lot about the sorts of things that were in Neolithic farms, Neolithic settlements.

You know that there were those roundhouses made with wattle and daub, and those straw sort of cone, coned rooves.

You've learnt they domesticated animals, including goats and pigs and sheep and cattle, cows.

That they grew their crops, especially things like wheat and barley, those grasses that you can take the grains off.

They even had some storage, which could have been the pots that they made, or those cupboards like in Skara Brae, The fireplace would be very important, and they would have those inside the roundhouses and maybe also outside the roundhouses as well.

And they'd need a water source nearby, because so much of what they did relied on water.

And because they weren't moving around.

Humans need water to drink, you need water.

If you don't drink, you'll die after about three days, so you need to make sure you're near to water.

So make sure you include all of those things in your round, in your Neolithic settlement, your farm.

And I'd love to see how brilliant your farm could be.

I wonder if I'd want to live on your farm if I was in Neolithic person.

See if you can tempt me, see if you can make it the best Neolithic farm in the whole of great Britain.

So pause the video and have a go at designing and drawing your own Neolithic farm now.

Great work, I'm sure it looks absolutely brilliant.

And I hope you had a lot of fun doing that.

Well done for including all of those different components, all of those different criteria.

And I'd love to see some of those, so you can always ask your parents or carers to share your work on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook.

And to do that, you need to ask your parent or carer to take a photo with their phone, and then they can just upload it to @oaknational and then I'll be able to see it, and everybody else will be able to see your amazing Neolithic farm.

I'm sure that they'll tell you how brilliant it is, that they would like to live there, too.

So that brings us to the end of our lesson.

And I'd like to say a big well done, and a big thank you for working so hard, for completing all the tasks, and for learning even more new things all about prehistoric Britain.

As we move into our next lessons, we're going to start learning about how humans discovered metal.

Moving out of the Stone Age and into the Metal Ages, and how that was another big change.

So we thought at the start in this lesson about continuity and change.

The next big change came when humans discovered metal.

And we'll learn all about that in our next few lessons.