Non-Rationalised History NCERT Notes, Solutions and Extra Q & A (Class 6th to 12th)
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Class 6th Chapters
1. What, Where, How And When?	2. From Hunting–Gathering To Growing Food	3. In The Earliest Cities
4. What Books And Burials Tell Us	5. Kingdoms, Kings And An Early Republic	6. New Questions And Ideas
7. Ashoka, The Emperor Who Gave Up War	8. Vital Villages, Thriving Towns	9. Traders, Kings And Pilgrims
10. New Empires And Kingdoms	11. Buildings, Paintings And Books

Chapter 1 What, Where, How And When?

Understanding history helps us answer questions about what happened in the past, where it happened, how we know about it, and when it occurred.

Finding Out What Happened

We can learn about recent events from sources like the radio, television, and newspapers. To find out about something that happened last year, we can ask people who remember it. However, to learn about events from the distant past, we need different methods.

What Can We Know About The Past?

Studying the past allows us to discover various aspects of life from long ago, such as:

The types of food people consumed.
The clothing they wore.
The kinds of houses they inhabited.

We can also learn about the lives of different groups of people, including hunters, herders, farmers, rulers, merchants, priests, craftspersons, artists, musicians, and scientists. Additionally, we can find out about the leisure activities of children, the stories they listened to, the plays they watched, and the songs they sang.

Where Did People Live?

People have lived in the Indian subcontinent for hundreds of thousands of years.

Some of the earliest populations lived along the banks of the river Narmada. These were skilled gatherers who collected food from forests and hunted animals.
Around 8000 years ago, in areas like the Sulaiman and Kirthar hills in the northwest, women and men first began to cultivate crops such as wheat and barley and started rearing animals like sheep, goat, and cattle, leading to settled village life.
Agriculture also developed in other regions, including the Garo hills in the north-east and the Vindhyas in central India. Rice cultivation first began in areas located north of the Vindhyas.
About 4700 years ago, some of the earliest cities emerged on the banks of the river Indus and its tributaries (smaller rivers flowing into a larger one).
Later, around 2500 years ago, cities developed along the banks of the river Ganga and its tributaries, and along the sea coasts.
In ancient times, the region south of the river Ganga, near its tributary the river Son (in present-day Bihar), was known as Magadha. Its powerful rulers established a large kingdom, and other kingdoms also arose in different parts of the subcontinent.

Throughout history, people traveled across the subcontinent despite challenging geographical barriers like hills, mountains, deserts, rivers, and seas. They moved for various reasons: in search of livelihood, to escape natural disasters, as armies conquering lands, as merchants trading goods, as religious teachers offering guidance, and driven by a spirit of adventure. These movements facilitated the sharing of ideas among people.

The natural features like hills, mountains, and seas have historically formed the frontiers of the Indian subcontinent. While these were difficult to cross, movement into and out of the subcontinent did occur, enriching cultural traditions through the exchange of practices in areas like stone carving, music, and cooking over centuries.

Names Of The Land

Two common names used for our country are India and Bharat.

The name India originates from the river Indus, called 'Sindhu' in Sanskrit. Iranians and Greeks who arrived from the northwest around 2500 years ago were familiar with the Indus. They referred to it as the 'Hindos' or the 'Indos'. The land located to the east of this river was then called India.
The name Bharata was initially used for a group of people living in the northwest. This group is mentioned in the Rigveda, the earliest known composition in Sanskrit, dating back about 3500 years. Later, the name Bharata came to be used for the entire country.

Finding Out About The Past

There are several ways to learn about the past:

Manuscripts: These are old books that were written by hand (from the Latin word 'manu' meaning hand). They were typically written on materials like palm leaves or the specially prepared bark of the birch tree found in the Himalayas. Many manuscripts were lost over time, damaged by insects or destroyed, but some have been preserved in places like temples and monasteries. Manuscripts cover a wide range of subjects including religious beliefs, lives of kings, medicine, science, epics, poems, and plays. They were written in various languages such as Sanskrit, Prakrit (languages used by ordinary people), and Tamil.
Inscriptions: These are writings found on relatively hard surfaces like stone or metal. Kings often had orders inscribed for public viewing. Inscriptions also include records of actions by men and women, including kings and queens, such as records of victories in battles. Writing on hard surfaces had the advantage of durability but presented difficulties in the inscription process itself.

A photograph of a page from a palm leaf manuscript, showing ancient writing.

A photograph of an old inscription carved on a stone surface, showing ancient script.

Other physical objects made and used in the past also provide valuable information. Scholars who study these objects are called archaeologists. They examine:

Remains of buildings constructed from stone and brick.
Ancient paintings and sculptures.
Tools, weapons, pots, pans, ornaments, and coins unearthed through exploration and excavation (digging under the earth's surface). These objects can be made of durable materials like stone, bone, baked clay, or metal, which survive for long periods.

A photograph of an ancient pot unearthed from an archaeological site.

A photograph of an old silver coin, likely from ancient times.

Archaeologists also study animal bones (of animals, birds, fish) to determine people's diets in the past. Plant remains are rarer, but burnt seeds or wood pieces can survive in charred form. Cloth is seldom found by archaeologists due to its perishable nature.

Scholars who study the past are called historians. They use information from manuscripts, inscriptions, and archaeology as 'sources' to reconstruct the past. Historians and archaeologists act like detectives, using these sources as clues to uncover details about our pasts.

One Past Or Many?

The title of the book, 'Our Pasts' (in plural), highlights that the past was not the same for everyone. Different groups of people experienced the past differently:

The lives of herders or farmers differed from those of kings and queens.
Merchants' lives were distinct from craftspersons' lives.

Furthermore, just as today, people in different parts of the country followed diverse practices and customs in the past. For instance, communities in the Andaman Islands historically relied on fishing, hunting, and gathering for food, unlike city dwellers who depended on others for food supplies. These regional and social differences also existed in the past.

Another type of difference lies in the availability of records. We have substantial information about kings and their battles because they often kept records of their achievements. However, ordinary people like hunters, fishing folk, gatherers, farmers, or herders generally did not maintain such records. While archaeology helps us learn about their lives, much about their past remains unknown.

What Do Dates Mean?

Historical dates are commonly referenced in relation to the birth of Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity. The year 2000, for example, means 2000 years after Christ's birth. Dates before Christ's birth are counted backward and are typically followed by the letters BC (Before Christ).

Letters With Dates

BC: Stands for 'Before Christ'.
AD: Stands for 'Anno Domini', a Latin phrase meaning 'in the year of the Lord' (referring to Christ). So, AD 2012 means in the year 2012 after Christ's birth.

Increasingly, secular terms are used for dating:

CE: Stands for 'Common Era', used instead of AD.
BCE: Stands for 'Before Common Era', used instead of BC.

These terms are used because the Christian Era system is widely adopted globally. India began using this dating system about two hundred years ago.

Sometimes, the letters BP are used, meaning 'Before Present'.

Elsewhere

Decipherment

Ancient inscriptions often contain scripts and languages that have changed over time, making them difficult to understand. Scholars employ a process called **decipherment** to figure out the meaning of these old writings.

A famous example of decipherment comes from Egypt, where an inscribed stone was found at Rosetta. This stone contained the same text written in three different languages and scripts: Greek and two forms of Egyptian. Scholars who knew Greek were able to identify the names of kings and queens, which were enclosed in a frame called a cartouche. By comparing the Greek text with the Egyptian scripts, they could match letters or signs in one script to sounds in the other, gradually figuring out what the Egyptian letters represented (e.g., a lion symbol stood for the sound 'L', and a bird symbol for 'A'). This breakthrough enabled them to read other Egyptian inscriptions as well.

Image showing symbols from an ancient Egyptian script (hieroglyphs) and their corresponding sounds, as discovered through decipherment.

Decipherment is a crucial process that allows historians and archaeologists to unlock the meaning of ancient texts and gain insights into the past from written records.