Chapter Exercises

Questions and Activities

Q1. Can we compare historians to detectives? Give reasons.

Answer: Yes, historians are very much like detectives.

• Evidence: Just as a detective looks for clues at a crime scene, a historian looks for “sources” (coins, pots, old texts).
• Reconstruction: Detectives piece together what happened during a crime; historians piece together what happened hundreds or thousands of years ago.
• Verification: Detectives check if witness statements match physical evidence; historians check if literary sources (like a book) match archaeological sources (like an inscription).

Q2. Dating Exercises

A. Place these dates chronologically on a timeline:

• Dates: 323 CE, 323 BCE, 100 CE, 100 BCE, 1900 BCE, 1090 CE, 2024 CE.

Chronological Order (Oldest to Newest):

1. 1900 BCE
2. 323 BCE
3. 100 BCE
4. 100 CE
5. 323 CE
6. 1090 CE
7. 2024 CE

B. If King Chandragupta was born in 320 CE, which century did he belong to? And how many years was that after the Buddha’s birth (560 BCE)?

1. Century: 320 CE falls in the $4^{\text{th}}$ Century CE.
2. Years after Buddha’s birth:
   • Formula: $(\text{Year in BCE} + \text{Year in CE}) - 1$
   • Calculation: $(560 + 320) - 1 = 880 - 1 = \mathbf{879 \text{ years}}$.

C. Rani of Jhansi was born in 1828. Which century did she belong to? How many years was that before India’s Independence (1947)?

1. Century: 1828 falls in the $19^{\text{th}}$ Century CE.
2. Years before Independence:
   • Calculation: $1947 - 1828 = \mathbf{119 \text{ years}}$.

D. Turn ‘12,000 years ago’ into a date (assuming the current year is 2024).

• Calculation: $12000 - 2024 = 9976$
• Date: 9976 BCE.