Date: 24 May 2026
Topic: History
Codebreakers are a fun way to build numeracy skills.
For most of human history, we lived in small clusters of 20 to 50 people, roaming around a region occupying caves and small bone/hide dwellings. They would occasionally trade and share with a larger network of up to 500 humans. You didn't have many possessions, just what you could carry on your travels.
Until, c. 10,000 BCE, humanity discovered agriculture. Likely, nomadic groups would revisit old sites of habitation and discover plentiful growth of foods they had eaten last time they were there. Seeds and waste had fallen, germinated, and flourished into more of what they liked.
Now we had to stop moving and stay put to tend to our crops that fed so many people. Soon after, we started developing permanent settlements, leading to the first walled towns like Jericho on the West Bank (c. 9,000 BCE) and, eventually, Sumer (c. 4,000 BCE)—the first proper civilization, inhabited by the Sumerians in modern-day Iraq. Sumer was responsible for the first written records, of which some are still around today.