Try to see how well you can weave your way through a small part of history.

To begin your adventure click the picture of the world below!

You are living in northern Africa, in about 8000 BCE, in a hunter-gatherer society. Decide which path to take to best enable the survival of your family and community for now and in the future.

Stay where you are Move to a different area

You have stayed in one location and depleted all the resources of your environment.

What will you do next?

Stay where you are Move to a different area

There is no more of the resources for you to survive, therefore you have not only destroyed your surrounding ecosystem, but also caused your whole community to starve and die.

END

You have just saved your family and community from starvation!

However, a drought has hit and what was once a thriving and fertile land is now becoming a desert.

What will you do?

Stay where you are and hope to wait it out

Move towards the east and hope to find an area that hasn’t become

desert

Your family and community have all perished because the desert continued to spread and you could no longer find the resources needed to survive.

END

You find a valley with a large river running as far north and south as you can see.

You decide to stay here permanently as it seems like a reliable resource.

You stay here for a short while and decide it is best to move away.

You cannot find any other areas with enough resources further away from the river and die out.

END

Since you decide to stay where you are, you stop your hunter-gatherer lifestyle and start producing your own food.

You find other people along the river who produce different resources from you, and vice versa. You…

…ignore them, you are happy with what you have.

…want what they have and try to take it by force.

…swap some of what you have for some of what they have.

You manage for a little while with what you have, but it does not provide you with enough resources for you to live properly, as you cannot depend on only one resource.Therefore, you and your community all die out.

END

The other group was larger and more advanced than you are, so you did not survive the conflict.

END

Congratulations! You have just set up a trade system!You begin to trade with others who come along the river, from both up and down stream.

You build a centre from where trade can occur. However, there is so much trade happening that it is becoming hard to keep track of.What do you do next?

Leave it as it is now, you’ll manage as you have before.

You start to keep a record of the trade that occurs.

It has become unmanageable, causing your trade system to collapse, which leaves you with nothing.

END

This system of record keeping gradually becomes more complex and develops into a system of writing.

Through this process you have become one of the world’s first civilisations!

Welcome to the Egypt of the ancient world!

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