Understanding Social Science
Geography and History
See what geography and history study, and how historians find evidence.
A drought hurts crops, incomes, government plans, families and old customs all at once. To understand something like that, you need to look at it from several sides. So Social Science is not one subject but a family of subjects (disciplines).
In Grades 9 and 10 you study four core disciplines:
| Discipline | What it studies |
|---|---|
| Geography | The Earth, its environments, and how people and their surroundings affect each other |
| History | The human past, and how societies change over time |
| Political Science | Government, power, and citizens' rights and duties |
| Economics | How societies produce, share out and use resources |
Sociology, Philosophy, Anthropology and Psychology are also part of the family. You will meet them in higher grades.
Geography (bhugol) asks three questions: where things are, why they are there, and how places near and far affect one another over time. It studies both the physical Earth and the people who live on it.
Geography mixes two views:
- the spatial view: location, and why it matters;
- the temporal view: change over time.
It borrows from the natural sciences (Physics, Chemistry, Biology) and from the social sciences (Political Science, Economics, History).
An example from the book: "Why has India been a hub of contact with the world for so long?" Geography points to the long coastline of the Indian peninsula, which made contact with Africa, Europe and Southeast Asia easier.
Geography's tools: maps, globes, atlases, GIS (Geographical Information System, maps made and studied on a computer) and infographics. With NCERT's School Bhuvan portal, you can even map your own village or city.
History (itihas) is the study of the human past: people's experiences, values and changes over time. One of the oldest ways of keeping memory in Bharat is the itihāsa-purāṇa tradition. It passes on history through stories, which also give events meaning and carry values and a sense of identity.
Modern history-writing leans on empirical evidence: information collected by actual observation or experiment. It uses tools like archaeology, carbon-14 dating and even human genetics to fix timelines.
"How do historians know what happened?" From sources (srot). The book shows four kinds. Learn them by what they are made of:
| Kind | What it is | Book's examples |
|---|---|---|
| Literary | Written texts | The Sāmaveda manuscript; a palm-leaf manuscript of the Tamil Tirukkuṟaḷ |
| Archaeological | Material remains: monuments, sites, objects, art | A terracotta figurine from the Sindhu-Sarasvatī Civilisation; a 12th-century sculpture of Viṣhṇu |
| Epigraphic | Writing carved or engraved on stone, metal plates or rock (abhilekh) | A Brahmi inscription on a Gupta-period pillar; Krishnadeva Raya's Kannada inscription at Hampi |
| Numismatic | Coins, currency, medals (sikka) | A coin of Samudragupta (4th century CE); Jahangir's coin showing Sagittarius |
Watch out: a text written on paper or palm leaf is literary, but a text carved on stone or metal is epigraphic. Ask yourself: what is it written on?
Coins tell more than you might think. From the metal, the words and the symbols on them, historians learn about the economy, dates, rulers, trade, borders and culture of a time. And genealogical records trace a family's line through births, marriages and deaths.
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