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(a) Conduct a group discussion based on the following questions:

  • Have you ever come across something important or valuable while walking in the veld - something that no one else has discovered?
  • Was Mzonjani found by lucky chance or by accident?

The Boomplaas cave

People inhabited the Boomplaas cave in the Kango, near Oudtshoorn in the Southern Cape over a long period of time. When archaeologists excavated a cross section of this cave, each layer of soil that they examined told a story about a different period in the history of the cave and the people who had inhabited it.

b) Study the diagram about the Boomplaas cave that follows and answer the following questions:

1. Identify the weapons that were used during the following periods:

  1. 40000 B.C. – 30 000 B.C.
  2. 4450 B.C – 50 A.D.

2. What are the activities that the people undertook?

3. Which kind of people lived there at about 250 A.D. and what did they do?

4. What can we discover from earthenware and domesticated animals?

Broederstroom

Broederstroom is one of the best-known early agricultural villages situated south of the Limpopo River. It is situated against the southern slopes of the Magalies River valley, in what used to be the south-western Transvaal. The people who lived here about 350 to 600 A.D. were hunters who also kept cattle, as it was a bushy environment with sufficient water and pastures approximately two days’ distance on foot.

After 600 A.D. the village was abandoned, to be discovered again through scrupulous investigation by archaeologists linked to the University of the Witwatersrand. Floors and foundations of the buildings of long ago are all that have remained.

The remains, however, indicate that the houses were mostly round and had floors of hardened plastered clay. The roofs were probably made of reeds supported by wooden beams. The excavation also revealed decorated clay pots of varying shapes and sizes and copper objects, and it was possible to learn that iron was smelted and processed at the site.

c) Study the following map and indicate whether the statements that follow represent facts or opinions:

Map of the terrain

The first villagers built their houses in the north-western part of the terrain.
Broederstroom expanded towards the eastern part of the area.
Villages that become buried are often discovered by chance.

Assessment

Learning Outcomes(LOs)
LO 1
HISTORICAL ENQUIRY The learner will be able to use enquiry skills to investigate the past and present.
Assessment Standards(ASs)
We know this when the learner:
1.1 finds sources:
  • identifies sources to help answer the question about the topic;
1.2 works with sources:
  • selects and records relevant information for specific purposes 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:
  • arranges information logically and chronologically in answering questions about people, events, objects, and places in the past.
LO 2
HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDINGThe learner will be able to demonstrate historical knowledge and understanding.
We know this when the learner:
2.1 chronology and time:
  • places events, people and changes on a timeline which includes terms such as ‘BC’, ‘AD’ and ‘BCE’;
2.2 cause and effect:
  • gives reasons for and explains the results of key events and changes in more than one context;
2.3 change and continuity:
  • identifies some aspects of society which have changed and some which have stayed the same over time in more than one context.

Memorandum

Activity 1

(1) d (3) f (5) g (7) b

(2) f (4) a (6) c

Activity 2

(a) Yes

(b) (1) Sinkers (fishing), arrows and hand axes (stone, wood), arrowheads

of bone

(Middle Stone Age) Materials became more advanced (Late Stone Age)

  1. Manufacture tools, food, jewelry, hunt, practising art, build houses
  2. Khoina – partly also black farmers, keep sheep, earthenware
  3. The Khoina introduced the first tamed animals (eg. fat-tailed sheep) and the first earthenware to South Africa.

(c) f, f, f

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Source:  OpenStax, History grade 6. OpenStax CNX. Sep 08, 2009 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11011/1.1
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