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Social sciences: history

Grade 5

The story of your province

Module 1

The past of your province: archaeology

ARCHAEOLOGY CAN HELP YOU TO HAVE A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF THE PAST OF YOUR PROVINCE BY LOOKING AT:

How people lived; and

Which objects they used in their daily lives.

In this learning unit you are going to do four exercises to help you with this.

Activity:

How to acquire sources, use them and report back

[lo 1.1; 1.2; 1.3]

(a) The following objects were found in a cave!Work in pairs and discuss the following questions:

For what purpose was each object used?

How were they made?

From what were they made

When we they made?

The following objects have been found in your neighbour’s refuse bin. The objects found at the top were written down first, and those found at the bottom of the bin were written down last.

A TASK FOR YOU!

(b) Divide into groups and use the clues to discover as much as possible about this family. Then write a short account on a typical day in their lives.

meat bones

two empy cold drink tins and a wine bottle

twelve cigarette butts

potato peels

The Sunday Times

an empty Cereal box

egg-shells

pieces of bread

empty dog food bag

two empty Pick 'n Pay bags

empty Solly Kramer bag

Radio and TV magazine

four old spark-plugs, oil-filter

empty oil-can

used tea-bags, milk-container

broken rugby-ball

(Your teacher can also bring his/her clues to school to bring the exercise closer to reality!)

Did you know?

When you, as detectives, have gathered information about this, you are called archaeologists and you are busy with:

A Y

An archaeologist can also obtain information from rock-paintings . We are going to study San rock-paintings.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION!

There have been hunter-gatherers in Southern Africa for more than 2 million years. The first of these groups, like the San, arrived in South Africa 10 000 years ago. They trekked around in small family groups, looking for food. (This has been confirmed by research related to their bones, rock-paintings and tools.) The men hunted and the women gathered wild edible plants (e.g. fruit, bulbs, etc.). They also caught fish. During winter they usually lived in reed huts or caves. In summer they just slept in hollows covered with grass or reeds. The clothes of the San, of course, were made from animal skins.

(c) Your friend is an archaeologist. State whether his deductions are true or false about the rock-paintings.

TRUE FALSE
1. While the men dance, the women sit on the side, clapping their hands.
2. The men carry three sticks to keep the rhythm or beat.
3. The men wear caps made from antelope hair.
4. The painting was originally red.

TRUE FALSE
5. The San usually hunted alone.
6. They could hunt animals bigger and stronger than themselves.
7. The San were good hunters.

(d) Acquire sources from which you can get the following information. Name the source and the page number on which the information is found.

1. How did the San hunt wild animals?

2. How did they start the fire when they wanted to cook meat?

3. Did the San tame animals? Motivate.

4. How did they save important stories (like a great hunt) for posterity?

Assessment

LO 1

HISTORICAL ENQUIRY The learner will be to use enquiry skills to investigate the past and present.

We know this when the learner:

1.1 finds sources: with guidance, selects sources useful for finding information on the past (e.g. oral, written and visual sources, including maps, graphs and tables, objects, buildings, monuments, museums);

1.2 works with sources:

records and categorises information from a variety of sources (e.g. oral, written and visual sources, including maps, graphs and tables, objects, buildings, monuments, museums);

1.3 answers the question:

continues to use information from sources to answer questions about people, events, objects, and places in the past.

Memorandum

ACTIVITY

  1. Artefacts such as pots, scrapers and arrow-heads were made two million years ago from clay, stone, bone and wood.
  2. Archaeology
  • (1) True
  • (2) False
  • (3) True
  • (4) True
  • (5) False
  • (6) True
  • (7) False
  • Arrow, bow
  • Use two sticks (one hard, one soft). The hard stick is twirled to and fro with the person’s hands, with one point in a hole in the soft stick. After a while the soft stick starts to smoke. Dry grass is placed on the smouldering coal.
  • Rock-engravings (painting)

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Source:  OpenStax, Social sciences: history grade 5. OpenStax CNX. Sep 23, 2009 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10988/1.2
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