BharatNotes Note on editions: This was Chapter 3 in the original edition of Our Pasts – I. From the 2020 printing it is merged with Chapter 2 as "From Hunting–Gathering to Growing Food", and the rationalised 2023-24 edition keeps that merged chapter. Its core (domestication, the new way of life, Burzahom, Mehrgarh) is still taught; the grain-and-bones table, the box on tribes, "Earlier and later levels" and Daojali Hading were cut. All of it is covered here.
Why this chapter matters for UPSC: The move from gathering to growing food explains settled villages, storage, pottery and the first property in grain and animals. Prelims tests the sites (Mehrgarh, Burzahom, Chirand, Hallur, Daojali Hading) and what was found at each; GS3 links run to crop diversity, millets and farmers' rights over seed.
Contemporary hook: Seed saving, the oldest farming practice in this chapter, reached the Supreme Court in August 2026. In Kavitha Kuruganti v. PepsiCo India Holdings, the Court upheld a Delhi High Court ruling that had restored PepsiCo's application for its registered potato variety, and said that farmers who are sued can rely on their statutory right under Section 39 of the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Act, 2001 to save, sow and exchange seed (LiveLaw; Down To Earth).
🧠 First Principles — Read This First
People became farmers by watching plants and protecting them. As the climate changed (Chapter 2), men, women and children noticed where edible plants grew and how seeds fell, broke off stalks and sprouted. They began looking after plants, protecting them from birds and animals until the seeds ripened. In this way people became farmers.
They became herders by taming animals. By leaving food near their shelters, people attracted and tamed animals. The first animal tamed was the wild ancestor of the dog. Later, relatively gentle herd animals that ate grass, such as sheep, goat, cattle and pig, were encouraged to come near camps and were protected from wild animals. In this way people became herders.
Domestication changed both people and plants. It began about 12,000 years ago in many parts of the world. People chose plants with large grain and strong stalks and animals that were gentle and not prone to disease, so domesticated plants and animals slowly became different from wild ones (wild animals' teeth and horns are usually larger). Among the earliest domesticated plants were wheat and barley; among the earliest animals, sheep and goat.
Why UPSC cares: farming made people stay in one place, store food and make pots; that settled life is the base for the villages and cities in the next chapters.
PART 1 — Quick Reference
Key Ideas (NCERT)
| Idea | What NCERT says |
|---|---|
| Domestication | The process in which people grow plants and look after animals; began about 12,000 years ago |
| First animal tamed | The wild ancestor of the dog |
| Earliest domesticated plants | Wheat and barley |
| Earliest domesticated animals | Sheep and goat |
| Storing grain | Large clay pots, woven baskets, pits dug into the ground |
| Animals as a "store" | They multiply and give milk, and meat when required |
| Village | Most people who live there are engaged in food production |
Grain and Bones Sites (NCERT's table)
| Site | Present location | Grain | Animals |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mehrgarh | Pakistan | Wheat, barley | Sheep, goat, cattle |
| Koldihwa | Uttar Pradesh | Rice | Fragmentary animal bones |
| Mahagara | Uttar Pradesh | Rice | Cattle (hoof marks on a clay surface) |
| Gufkral | Kashmir | Wheat, lentil | — |
| Burzahom | Kashmir | Wheat, lentil | Dog, cattle, sheep, goat, buffalo |
| Chirand | Bihar | Wheat, green gram, barley | Buffalo, ox |
| Hallur | Karnataka* | Millet | Cattle, sheep, goat, pig |
| Paiyampalli | Tamil Nadu* | Black gram, millet | Cattle, sheep, pig |
*NCERT's 2018-19 table places Hallur and Paiyampalli "in present-day Andhra Pradesh". Hallur is on the Tungabhadra in Karnataka (M.S. Nagaraja Rao's report on it is titled Protohistoric Cultures of the Tungabhadra Valley), and Paiyampalli is in the Palar basin of Tamil Nadu. NCERT's "millet" at these sites means the small native millets, not jowar, bajra or ragi (see section 3b).
Two Closer Looks
| Site | Where | What NCERT highlights |
|---|---|---|
| Mehrgarh | Fertile plain near the Bolan Pass, a route into Iran | One of the earliest villages known; people learnt to grow barley and wheat and rear sheep and goats; earliest levels have wild deer and pig bones, later levels more sheep and goat, still later mostly cattle; square or rectangular houses with four or more compartments; a burial with goats, probably food for the next world; settlement "about 8000 years ago" |
| Daojali Hading | Hills near the Brahmaputra valley, on routes to China and Myanmar | Stone tools including mortars and pestles (grain was probably grown and prepared); jadeite, perhaps from China; tools of fossil wood; pottery |
PART 2 — Concepts & Narrative
A New Way of Life
Growing plants meant staying in one place for a long time, watering, weeding and driving away animals and birds until the grain ripened. Grain had to be kept for food and for seed, so people made large clay pots, wove baskets or dug pits. NCERT asks whether hunter-gatherers would have made pots: think of carrying them on the move.
Grain was used as seed, as food, as gifts, and was stored. Animals were a living store of food: they multiply, and if well looked after they give milk, and meat when needed.
Towards a Settled Life
Houses: At Burzahom (Kashmir) people built pit-houses, dug into the ground with steps leading in, probably for shelter in cold weather. Cooking hearths have been found both inside and outside huts, so people could cook indoors or outdoors depending on the weather.
Tools: Many stone tools from these sites differ from Palaeolithic ones, which is why they are called Neolithic: tools polished to a fine cutting edge, and mortars and pestles for grinding grain (still used today). Palaeolithic-type tools continued in use, and some tools were made of bone.
Pots: Many kinds of earthen pots, sometimes decorated, used for storage and now also for cooking grains such as rice, wheat and lentils.
Cloth: People began weaving cloth from materials such as cotton, which could now be grown. (NCERT's next chapter: cotton was probably grown at Mehrgarh from about 7,000 years ago.)
Did Things Change Everywhere at Once?
No. In many areas men and women still hunted and gathered; elsewhere people adopted farming and herding slowly, over several thousand years; and some combined these, doing different things in different seasons.
Finding Out About the First Farmers
Archaeologists find sites of early farmers and herders all over the subcontinent, with important ones in the north-west, Kashmir, and east and south India. The most exciting finds are burnt grain (burnt by accident or on purpose), which scientists can identify, and animal bones. That is how the grain-and-bones table above was built.
Earlier and later levels: People living on a spot discard waste and rebuild houses in the same place, so over hundreds of years the ground rises into a mound. When it is dug, finds from the upper layers are generally later than finds from the lower layers. These layers are called levels. This is how the Mehrgarh sequence (wild animals → sheep and goat → cattle) was read.
Tribes: Learning From Present-Day Communities
Archaeology does not tell us directly about customs, so scholars study present-day farmers and herders who practise simple agriculture, many of whom live in tribes. NCERT's box describes common features: two or three generations living together in small villages, families related to one another; women doing most farm work (preparing the ground, sowing, tending, harvesting, threshing, husking and grinding); men leading large herds to pasture and children minding small flocks; both men and women making pots, baskets, tools and huts and taking part in singing, dancing and decoration; leaders who may be old and experienced men, brave young warriors or priests, with old women respected for their wisdom; their own language, music, stories, paintings and gods; and land, forests, grasslands and water regarded as the wealth of the whole tribe, with no sharp differences between rich and poor.
PART 3 — UPSC Integration
What Later Research Adds
| Question | What the evidence shows |
|---|---|
| How old is Mehrgarh? | Farming there starts perhaps c. 7000 BC (Fuller, 2006); NCERT's timeline gives settlement "about 8000 years ago". Both put Mehrgarh well before the Harappan cities |
| Were Mehrgarh's cereals domesticated locally? | Fuller (2006): claims for locally domesticated cereals at Mehrgarh are "unsubstantiated" (wheat and barley were already domesticated in West Asia), while the evidence for locally domesticated animals there is "quite strong" |
| When did Kashmir's Neolithic begin? | Burzahom, Gufkral and related sites begin between 3000 and 2500 BC, with most evidence nearer 2500–2000 BC (Fuller, 2006) |
| What are the ash mounds of Karnataka? | Accumulations of animal dung at ancient cattle pens, burnt from time to time; the earliest from about 2800 BC (Fuller, 2006). They are herders' sites, not cremation grounds |
| Where was rice first cultivated in India? | Unsettled. Charred rice at Lahuradewa (Uttar Pradesh) is dated to about 6400 BCE, but its grain shapes "overlap significantly with those of wild grains", so it may show cultivation of wild rice (Bates, Petrie and Singh, 2017) |
Domestication is not one event: some crops and animals were domesticated in the subcontinent; others (wheat, barley, and later African crops) arrived already domesticated and were adopted. An answer that says "India domesticated wheat, rice and millets" is wrong on two of three counts.
[Additional] 3a. Seeds, Gene Banks and Farmers' Rights
| Term | Detail |
|---|---|
| PPV&FR Act | Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Act, 2001 (Act 53 of 2001). Brought into force in stages by notification, not on enactment |
| Section 39(1)(iv) | A farmer may "save, use, sow, resow, exchange, share or sell his farm produce including seed of a variety protected under this Act" as before the Act, but may not sell branded seed (seed packed and labelled as a protected variety) |
| National Gene Bank | At ICAR-National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, New Delhi; 4,71,561 accessions of 2,157 species, which the Ministry calls "the second largest Gene Bank globally" (Rajya Sabha answer, 28-Mar-2025) |
| Second Gene Bank | "The 2nd Gene Bank with 10 lakh germplasm lines will be set up for future food and nutritional security" (Budget Speech 2025-26, para 82) |
The PepsiCo potato case (FL 2027, sold as "FC-5"):
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 1-Feb-2016 | Variety registered under the PPV&FR Act |
| April 2019 | PepsiCo sues Gujarat farmers for growing it |
| May 2019 | PepsiCo announces it will withdraw the suits |
| 3-Dec-2021 | PPV&FR Authority revokes the registration |
| 5-Jul-2023 | Delhi High Court (single judge) upholds the revocation |
| 9-Jan-2024 | Delhi High Court division bench sets aside the revocation and sends PepsiCo's renewal application back to the Registrar |
| August 2026 | Supreme Court upholds the division bench: suing farmers is not, by itself, a ground to revoke a registration, and farmers who are sued can invoke Section 39(1)(iv) |
Mains angle: the case shows the PPV&FR Act's balance between breeders' rights and farmers' rights over seed. Note the final outcome: the registration was not finally cancelled.
[Additional] 3b. Millets: Which Are Native, and the Policy Push
Where millets come from (Fuller, Journal of World Prehistory, 2006):
- Native to India: small millets such as kodo and little millet, and the browntop and bristly foxtail millets of the Southern Neolithic, "presumably domesticated within South India".
- African in origin: pearl millet (bajra; West African savannah), finger millet (ragi; East African highlands) and sorghum (jowar). Sorghum reached the Ganga valley by the early second millennium BC; pearl millet and finger millet appear there only from the late second millennium BC.
Millets policy, with sources:
- The Government notified millets as "nutri-cereals" in April 2018 (PIB factsheet, 24-Feb-2022).
- On India's proposal, supported by 72 countries, the UN General Assembly declared 2023 the International Year of Millets in March 2021 (PIB factsheet, 24-Feb-2022).
- The name "Shree Anna" was used in the Budget Speech 2023-24 (1-Feb-2023), which said India is "the largest producer and second largest exporter of 'Shree Anna' in the world" and listed jowar, ragi, bajra, kuttu, ramdana, kangni, kutki, kodo, cheena and sama.
Prelims trap: "Shree Anna" covers African-origin crops (jowar, bajra, ragi) as well as native small millets; and kuttu (buckwheat) and ramdana (amaranth) in the Budget list are pseudo-cereals, not true millets.
Exam Strategy
Prelims traps:
- First animal tamed: the dog's wild ancestor. Earliest domesticated: wheat, barley; sheep, goat.
- Burzahom = Kashmir, pit-houses. Chirand = Bihar. Mahagara = Uttar Pradesh, cattle hoof marks. Hallur = Karnataka (NCERT says Andhra Pradesh).
- Daojali Hading = Brahmaputra hills, jadeite and fossil-wood tools.
- Mehrgarh = near the Bolan Pass; burial with goats; earliest levels wild animals, latest mostly cattle.
- Ash mounds = burnt dung at cattle pens (Karnataka), not cremation.
- Jowar, bajra, ragi are African in origin; kodo and little millet are native.
Mains connections:
- Why settled life followed farming: storage, pots, houses, villages.
- Tribal commons (land, forest, water as shared wealth) and forest-rights debates.
- Seed saving, the PPV&FR Act and the PepsiCo case (GS3).
Practice Questions
Practice (UPSC-pattern, not past papers).
Prelims:
Which of the following pairs is correctly matched?
(a) Burzahom — Bihar
(b) Chirand — Kashmir
(c) Mahagara — Uttar Pradesh
(d) Mehrgarh — RajasthanThe ash mounds found at Neolithic sites in Karnataka are best explained as:
(a) burnt accumulations of dung at cattle pens
(b) burial sites of the Megalithic period
(c) remains of Vedic fire rituals
(d) copper-smelting wasteWhich of the following millets is native to the Indian subcontinent?
(a) Pearl millet (bajra)
(b) Finger millet (ragi)
(c) Sorghum (jowar)
(d) Kodo milletUnder the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Act, 2001, a farmer may NOT:
(a) save seed of a protected variety
(b) exchange seed of a protected variety
(c) sell branded seed of a protected variety
(d) re-sow seed of a protected variety
Mains:
- How did the shift from gathering to growing food change the way people lived? Discuss with reference to at least three sites. (GS1, 10 marks)
📦 Revision Capsule
Hard Facts
- Domestication began about 12,000 years ago; earliest plants wheat, barley; earliest animals sheep, goat; first tamed: the dog's ancestor
- Grain and bones: Mehrgarh, Koldihwa, Mahagara, Gufkral, Burzahom, Chirand, Hallur, Paiyampalli
- Burzahom pit-houses; Mehrgarh near the Bolan Pass, about 8,000 years ago, burial with goats; Daojali Hading jadeite
- Neolithic tools: polished edges, mortars and pestles
- Ash mounds = burnt dung at cattle pens
Core Concepts
- Farming → staying in one place → storage, pots, houses
- Change was slow and uneven; hunting and gathering continued
- Upper levels are later, lower levels earlier
Confused Pairs
- Domesticated here (animals at Mehrgarh, small millets) vs adopted (wheat, barley, African millets)
- Neolithic (polished tools) vs Palaeolithic (flaked tools)
- Breeder's registration of a variety vs farmer's rights under Section 39
PYQ Pattern
- No past UPSC question in our bank is directly on this chapter; Prelims tests its sites and GS3 its agricultural links.
Sources
Sources
- NCERT, Our Pasts – I (Class VI), ch. 3 and ch. 4, 2018-19 reprint: 2019 copy; Rationalised 2023-24 edition, ch. 2: 2023-24 copy.
- D.Q. Fuller, "Agricultural Origins and Frontiers in South Asia: A Working Synthesis", Journal of World Prehistory 20 (2006), 1–86: ucl.ac.uk PDF.
- J. Bates, C.A. Petrie and R.N. Singh, "Approaching rice domestication in South Asia", Journal of Archaeological Science 78 (2017), 193–201: PMC7773629.
- M.S. Nagaraja Rao, Protohistoric Cultures of the Tungabhadra Valley: A Report on Hallur Excavations (Dharwar).
- Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Act, 2001, s. 39 (bare-act text): advocatekhoj.com.
- Rajya Sabha Unstarred Question 3220, answered 28-Mar-2025 (National Gene Bank): icar.org.in.
- Union Budget 2025-26, Budget Speech, para 82: indiabudget.gov.in; Union Budget 2023-24, Budget Speech, paras 20–22: indiabudget.gov.in.
- PIB factsheet on millets, 24-Feb-2022: static.pib.gov.in.
- SCC Online, 11-Jan-2024, Delhi High Court division bench on the FL 2027 registration: scconline.com; LiveLaw, August 2026, Supreme Court ruling: livelawbiz.com; Down To Earth, 11-Aug-2026: downtoearth.org.in.
