What caused the change?
Labs / History
The First Farmers
Around 9,500 BC people in the Fertile Crescent began growing crops and herding animals. Watch that new way of life spread across the map as a slow wave, and see how fast it travels when each generation raises a few more children and moves a little farther. Click any town to read the year farming reached it.
Labs / History / The First Farmers
The First Farmers
Around 9,500 BC people in the Fertile Crescent began growing crops and herding animals. Watch that new way of life spread across the map as a slow wave, and see how fast it travels when each generation raises a few more children and moves a little farther. Click any town to read the year farming reached it.
Why it matters
Why explore this?
History is about change over time and the choices that shape it. This model helps you compare causes, consequences, and patterns without treating the past as a list of dates.
Explore
Try the model
Year —Frontier —Town click a town
Investigate
Questions to test
Predict first, try it in the model, then use what you observe to answer.
What to try
- The real frontier crept forward at roughly one kilometre a year. Which combinations of growth rate and dispersal distance land near that speed?
- Turn off seas & mountains. Why does the wave suddenly reach Spain and Britain far too early compared with the real dates?
- Click a town in Britain, then one in Greece. Why is there a gap of thousands of years between when farming arrived at each?
- If people had children faster but never moved far, would farming still spread quickly — or does the wave need both?
- Move the origin to the Aegean. Does starting closer to Europe change where farming arrives last?
Explain
Make sense of what happened
Build an explanation with a cause, a change, and a consequence. Then identify evidence from the model and one limitation of what the model can show.
Check
Before you leave
Who or what was affected?
What can this model not tell us?
If you can answer all three using evidence from the model, you understand the main idea. If not, return to Explore and change one setting at a time.