Spring Benchmark Review

1. Spring Benchmark Review

2. What happened to cause the Neolithic Revolution? • Where did early man originate and where did they migrate? • What is culture?

3. Neolithic EraWhat happened to cause the Neolithic Revolution? What technologies are associated with each era?What is culture? • Neolithic Period, also called New Stone Age, • It was characterized by stone tools shaped by polishing or grinding, dependence on domesticated plants or animals, settlement in permanent villages, and the appearance of such crafts as pottery and weaving. • During this time, humans learned to raise crops and keep domestic livestock, and were thus no longer dependent on hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plants. • Neolithic cultures made more useful stone tools by grinding and polishing relatively hard rocks, rather than merely chipping softer ones down to the desired shape. • The cultivation of cereal grains enabled Neolithic peoples to build permanent dwellings and congregate in villages, and the release from nomadism and a hunting-gathering economy gave them the time to pursue specialized crafts. • Neolithic technologies also spread eastward to the Indus River valley of India and to the Huang Ho (Yellow River) valley of China. • Corn (maize), beans, and squash were gradually domesticated in Mexico and Central America from 6500 bc on, though sedentary village life did not commence there until much later, at about 2000 bc. • All of these events created a cohesive Culture or a collected group of rituals, traditions, ideas and technologies created over time.

4. Why did the river valleys nurture civilization? • What are the five characteristics of civilization? • What is cultural diffusion?

5. Early River Valley CivilizationsWhy did the river valleys nurture civilization?What are the five characteristics of civilization? • Approximately 5000 years ago the first complex, politically centralized civilizations began to appear independently along a number of river valleys throughout the southern half of Asia and northern Africa . • Why did the first complex, politically centralized civilizations materialize along rivers? Because the rivers supplied a continuous flow and supply of water for farming and drinking. • These rivers along with climate, vegetation and geography shaped the development of these early river valley civilizations. • Between 3000 and 2000 B.C.E. such river valley civilizations formed independently of each other along the Indus, the Nile, the Tigris and Euphrates, and the Yellow Rivers. These civilizations shared certain characteristics that distinguished them from the collections of Neolithic communities that preceded them.

6. Civilizations must have cities that are centers of trade for large areas

7. Civilizations must have technologies that make their lives easier

8. Civilizations must have writingin order to keep records of taxes, laws, or trade

9. Civilizations must have specialized workers that create a class system

10. Civilizations must have complex institutions like government & religion to keep order

11. Cultural DiffusionWhat is cultural diffusion? • All civilizations expand and contract. • As they grow, their cultural practices are exported to other cultures and they absorb others’ cultures. • This is called cultural diffusion and is the way that civilization and the triumph of Homo Sapiens has been accomplished.

12. What role does the Nile play in the early Egyptian civilization? • What is the Fertile Crescent? • What distinguishes the Code of Hammurabi? • What are the major characteristics of Judaism?

13. Nile Valley CivilizationWhat was the governmental structure? • The Nile River was the axis of two early African civilizations, Egyptian and Nubian . The Nile River shaped the development of both civilizations, providing a reliable source of water for farming and linking them to sub-Saharan Africa and the Mediterranean Sea . • The Nile gave them limited access to various Bantu peoples to the south and various Mediterranean peoples to the north. • Although both civilizations crystallized along the Nile , they developed along different lines. • Egypt unified politically earlier and more effectively than Nubia . The ruler-conqueror first united Egypt about 3100 B.C.E. The idea of the pharaoh as a deified ruler developed during a period known as the Archaic Period(3100-2660 B.C.E.). • This created the first Monarchy or rule by kings

14. Nile ValleyWhat role does the Nile play in the early Egyptian civilization?How did geography aid the Egyptians? • Geography is destiny. This was particularly true for the Nile River Valley Civilization.   • The Nile would flood each year starting in July and lasting until November.  This flood would provide new, rich soil for the Egyptians and would wash away waste.   • The seas and the desert that surrounded the Nile Valley served as a barrier against conquest and disease.

15. Mesopotamia means “land between the rivers” & is often called the “Fertile Crescent” or as the “Cradle of Civilization” The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers flooded once per year, leaving behind fertile soil ideal for farming

16. MesopotamiaWhat is the Fertile Crescent?Why were the Sumerians vulnerable to invasions? • Mesopotamia is a Greek word that means “land between the rivers”, referring to the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers. • This area is also called the Fertile Crescent • These two rivers were the axes of one of the most influential ancient civilizations in history. With the development of irrigation around 6000 B.C.E. farming villages appeared and grew into larger communities and then cities along these rivers. • Because they had no geographic barriers protecting them, they were prone to invasion.

17. Lasting Contributions • Government: • Babylonian King Hammurabi created the first legal code • Hammurabi’s Code had 282 laws based on justice & retaliation (an eye for an eye) • The code had different punishments for the various levels of society

18. JudaismWhat are the roots of Judaism?What are the major characteristics of Judaism?What set Judaism apart from other religions of the era? • Judaism claims a historical continuity spanning more than 3,000 years. • It is one of the oldest monotheistic religions,and the oldest to survive into the present day. • Judaism is the religion, philosophy and way of life of the Jewish people. • It is a monotheistic religion originating in the Hebrew Bible • Judaism is considered by Jews to be the expression of the covenant God established with the Children of Israel

19. What are the major characteristics of Confucianism? • What was the social result of Confucianism? • What are the Vedas and Upanishads?

20. Lasting Contributions • Government: • China was also ruled by the ethical system, Confucianism • Confucianism focused on filial piety (respect for elders) • Confucius taught social order through 5 key relationships:1) ruler-subject 2) father-son 3) husband-wife 4) brother- brother & 5) friend-friend • These ideas were written down in The Analects

21. What is Jainism? • Who was Siddhartha Gautama? • Buddhism and Hinduism come from the same background and culture. What do they have in common and what are their differences? • How did Asoka spread Buddhism in India? • What were two Indian advances in Mathematics?

22. Mahavira • In 500 BC, a Hindu teacher named Mahavira developed an offshoot of Hinduism called Jainism. • Jainism emphasizes meditation, self denial and Ahimsa or nonviolence. • This was developed because Mahavira did not believe that the Hindu priests had an exclusive franchise on attaining Moksha. He believed people could do it themselves. • The Jainists are so nonviolence, they will not even kill insects.

23. Gautama Buddha: the Enlightened One • Siddhartha Gautama founded the religion of Buddhism • He was a child of wealth, born in what is now India in 566 BC. It was predicted that he would become a wandering holy man, so his father essentially kept him prisoner in the palace. He lived there for a large part of his life. • One day, in a single day, he saw a sick man, a dead man and an old person for the first time. This made him aware of suffering in the world. • He was raised a Hindu, but he Hindu doctrines did not satisfy his need to understand why suffering was universal and unfair. • He sat beneath a Baoboth tree, meditating and fasting for 48 days. During this time was tempted by evil spirits. At the end of his fast he understood the causes of suffering and became the Enlightened One or Buddha. • The resemblance of Buddha’s quest to the experiences of other founders of the major religions of the world is obvious.

24. Asoka: the Buddhist • Asoka used missionaries to spread the religion of Buddhism. He sent them into all of India and to Sri Lanka. • Asoka outlawed animal sacrifices in his kingdom in line with the Buddhist respect for all life • He became a vegetarian as an example to his people.

25. Gupta Golden Age • The Gupta Golden Age was the result of a period of peace and wealth. • All advances in society are usually based on changes in education. The Indian schools were religious schools that started teaching something other than religion. • Mathematics: the use of Arabic numerals was perfected in India, along with the creation of the concept of zero (which is a very bizaare concept to begin with) and the creation of the decimal system.

26. What is filial piety and why is it so important in Chinese society? • What areas were linked by the Silk Road? • Why did the Han emperors use civil service tests?

27. The Five Relationships • According to Confucius, everyone had responsibilities in all relationships. • In all relationships there were Superiors and Inferiors. The Superiors should care and guide their inferiors and set a good example. In return, the inferior owed loyalty and obedience to their superiors. • The most important duty of all, by either Superiors or Inferiors was filial piety or respect for elders. • The elders are always the superiors.

28. Wudi • One of the most important innovations of Wudi was sponsoring the Silk Road. • Silk had become very popular in India and farther to the west as far as Imperial Rome. • Wudi had the route surveyed and sponsored expeditions. Pretty soon the Silk Road was very busy and new foods like figs and cucumbers were coming from Mesopatamia and silk was going to the west. This guaranteed that China could not stay isolated forever.

29. Confucian Government • Confucius believed that the government should set a good example. The Ruler had to provide good government. • He also believed that those in government should be well educated which meant that to become a government official, you had to pass a test for each job. • The Chinese used this method starting about 530 BC. The U.S. did not use it until the 1880’s. • One of the problems of Confucian government is that there is really nothing anyone can do if the government is bad. People continue to obey.

30. What effect did geography and climate have on creation of Greek city states? • How are Sparta and Athens mirror images of human nature? • What was the result of the Battle of Marathon and Salamis? • What was the Golden Age of Pericles? • What prompted the Peloponnesian War? What was the result of the Peloponnesian War? • What was the legacy of Alexander?

31. Factors in the creation of Classical Greece - Geography • The geography of Greece is a primary factor, if not the pre-eminent feature of the culture and lives of the ancient populations who lived there. • Inhabiting an area that is ninety percent mountains with little arable land forced the Greeks into ways of life which did not center strictly around farming and agriculture. • They were, for the most part, driven to go to sea to make ends meet. No place in Greece is further than fifty miles from the sea, • In some ways the ancient Greeks were generally friendlier with people across the sea than their own neighbors, because the landscape made foreign nations seem "closer" than many cities on the Greek mainland. • Overall, their geographical situation forced the ancient Greeks from early on to look outward from their immediate locality and internationalize their interests. This broadened their horizons and exposed them like few other civilizations to foreign ideas and ways of living.

32. Sparta • The prehistory of Sparta is difficult to reconstruct because the literary evidence is far removed in time from the events it describes and is also distorted by oral tradition • The legendary period of Spartan history is believed to fall into the Dark Age. It treats the mythic heroes such as the Heraclids and the Perseids, offering a view of the occupation of the Peloponnesus that contains both fantastic and possibly historical elements. • Between the 8th and 7th centuries BC the Spartans experienced a period of lawlessness and civil strife • As a result they carried out a series of political and social reforms of their own society which they later attributed to a semi-mythical lawgiver, Lycurgus. • These reforms mark the beginning of the history of Classical Sparta.

33. Sparta • Sparta was unique in ancient Greece for its social system and constitution, which completely focused on military training and excellence. • Its inhabitants were classified as Spartiates (Spartan citizens, who enjoyed full rights), Mothakes (non-Spartan free men raised as Spartans), Perioikoi (freedmen), and Helots (state-owned serfs, enslaved non-Spartan local population). • Spartiates underwent the rigorous agoge training and education regimen, and Spartan phalanges were widely considered to be among the best in battle. • Spartan women enjoyed considerably more rights and equality to men than elsewhere in the classical world.

34. Sparta • Sparta fought a war with Messenia to the west and subjugated the entire population of Messenia, reducing them to slaves or helots. • These helots were no more than serfs and worked the land for the Spartans. • Because the helots vastly outnumbered them, the Spartans had to create a society that would protect them not just from external enemies but from a revolt  from within. • Men lived in barracks and male children were taken from their mothers at a young age to learn how to serve the state, meaning the art of warfare. • Unhealthy children were killed or left to die. • Life had one purpose. To defend the state. • The Spartan model has been the ideal state for many nations and has proven to be short-lived in all examples. • The Spartans were considered the greatest land warriors of Ancient Greece. They employed the phalanx as their method of fighting. A phalanx is a massive formation of armored soldiers with overlapping shields. The phalanx was considered the greatest of all military strategies until the Romans introduced the Legions.

35. Results of the Persian Wars • The victory at Marathon and Salamis made Athens the most important city state in Greece. • Athens formed the Delian League as an alliance to protect Greece from any more invasions. Members of the alliance had to contribute men or money. • Athens was supposed to be just a member of the League, but ended up running it for their own advantage. • This angered the other members and led to the Peloponnesian War. • The victory at Marathon also ushered in the Golden Age of Athens

36. Golden Age of Greece • With the threat from the east gone Athens begins a fifty year period under the brilliant statesman Pericles (495-429 BC) during which time the Parthenon was built on the Acropolis and the city becomes the artistic, cultural and intellectual as well as commercial center of the Hellenic world, attracting all sorts of smart and interesting people and taking command of the other Greek states. Continuing their war against the Persians they liberate the Ionian Greek cities of Asia Minor and the Aegean islands.

37. Golden Age of Athens • In 478 the Delian League is formed by Athens and its allies on the island of Delos, the sacred island of Apollo. • After swearing an oath, these Greek city-states, some who were forced to join by threats, begin to rid the land of the last remaining Persians and free the seas of piracy. • But as enemies became fewer and members of the league want to devote their resources to peaceful endeavors, Athens is becoming more powerful and forces other members do what is best for Athens. • This takes the form of payments, supposedly for the maintenance of the fleet, from the other members. The flow of money is used to build the temples and monuments of the city of Athens. • When the island of Thassos rebels against this payment they are attacked by Athens. In 454 the treasury of Delos is moved to the Acropolis for 'safe-keeping'.

38. Golden Age - Socrates • Among the dwellers of Athens during its Golden Age is the philosopher Socrates. • Though he left no writings of his own, he is mostly known through the work of his student Plato in the form of written dialogues which are conversations with other learned and un-learned men on a variety of topics. • The 'Socratic method' consists of asking questions until you arrive at the essence of a subject, where the better hypotheses are found by identifying and eliminating the ones that lead to contradictions. • His philosophy begins with the belief that he knows nothing and that life is not for attaining riches but a process of knowing oneself. • He believed that virtue was the most valuable of all possessions and that the job of a philosopher was to point out to people how little they actually knew. • He was executed by the state, forced to drink Hemlock, for corrupting the youth of the city.

39. Golden Age - Plato • Plato became an opponent of the Athenian-style democracy, probably because any society that would condemn someone like Socrates to death had to be insane.   • He believed that society should be governed by governor kings, or benevolent dictators, educated and trained from the beginning of life for this purpose. • He went on to open the world's first university, the Saturday, the ruins of which can still be seen in Athens. • Plato was an idealist. He believed in a higher reality of which the material world is just a manifestation. • It is said that all philosophy is just a footnote to Plato. His student and then fellow philosopher Aristotle was more of a materialist and he believed in putting everything in categories and was the inventor of logic. He opened his own school the Lyceum and went on to become the tutor of Alexander The Great. He is considered the father of European thought though some of his scientific observations were simply wrong.

40. Golden Age - Aristotle • Plato’s student and then fellow philosopher Aristotle was more of a materialist. • He believed in putting everything in categories and was the inventor of logic. • He opened his own school the Lyceum and went on to become the tutor of Alexander The Great. • He is considered the father of European thought though some of his scientific observations were simply wrong.

41. Golden Age - Drama • The greatest contribution of the Greeks to art was in the field of theatre. • The orginal actor was a poet named Thespis that acted out his poetry and set the stage (pun) for the creation of theatre. • The greatest authors of Greek tragedy were Aeschuylus, Sophocles and Euripides. • The Greatest author of Greek Comedy was Aristophanes

42. Peloponnesian War • It was the Peloponnesian war which finally brought down Athens and the historian Thucydides has written an eye-witness account that goes into great detail and is a fascinating window on what the ancient Greeks said, and thought and how and why they fought. • Thucydides and Herodotus are considered the first historians. • The war itself was fought over a period of 30 years.

43. Peloponnesian War • The cause of the Peloponnesian War (from 431 to 404 BC) had to do mainly with Sparta's fear of the expansion of Athens. • The Spartans were masters of the Phalanx and the Athenians were masters of the sea. They both conducted the war according to their advantage. • The Athenians withdrew behind their walls and let the Spartans run wild and destroy the Athenian fields and orchards. • While this was going on the Athenians continued to trade and bring in food and supplies by sea. Their strategy was to simply wait out the Spartans. • This strategy might have worked if they had been able to maintain it, but they couldn’t

44. Peloponnesian War • The inability to maintain order behind the walls and the plague finally brought down Athens. • Athenian arrogance also played a huge role in the downfall of Athens. Excessive pride is called Hubris by the Greeks. • The Athenians believed that nothing could defeat them, so they never really prepared for the war. • Incompetent politicians played a major role also, particularly after the death of Pericles in 430 and the rise to power of the next generation of Athenian leaders who were unscrupulous and hungry for power. .

45. Peloponnesian War • It is the ill-fated invasion of Sicily in 415 that finally brings down the Athenians. • Alcibiadis claims passionately that they can easily defeat the enemy and that they will be welcomed as liberators by the Sicilians. • The Athenians are convinced that this is an opportunity to defeat the Spartans and their allies and rally to the cause. • But they are victims of poor intelligence or perhaps over-zealous leadership and find themselves with fewer allies and a larger and more organized enemy then they had planned on. • It is a disaster. • The Athenian fleet is destroyed. Athenian troops watch in horror realizing their escape is cut off. • They are then defeated and sold into slavery. With the Athenian army and navy gone the Spartans are able to march right into Athens, suspend the democracy and install a pro-Spartan oligarchy known as 'The Thirty'.

46. What were the social classes of the Republic? • What is a Republic? • Why did the Roman constitution allow for a Dictator? • What were the 12 Tables

47. Structure of the Republic • Republic means “thing of the people”. In this, people elect representatives to vote for them. This is different from a direct democracy • A Republic was seen as the easiest way to prevent the seizure of power by one person again.

48. Social Structure of the Republic • There were 2 social classes • 1) Patricians – upper/ruling class – 1/10 of pop. • * Patricians were supported by “clients” • * Clients were wealthy plebeians who were dependent on patricians for their wealth and position. • * The clients were wealthy enough to afford arms and some armies. • * They then had a vested interest in preserving the Status Quo. • 2) Plebeians – everyone else • *could not marry patricians • *could not hold important offices • *could not perform religious rituals • *often burdened with heavy public debts and held little land • Because they weren’t allowed to do any of these things, they could not hold high political office

49. The Republic • The Roman constitution allowed for the use of Dictators from time to time. • If conditions were bad enough, a Dictator could be appointed to take care of a specific problem, such as a war that endangered the Republic. • When he was appointed, he could not meddle in anything except what he was appointed for and his term was for 6 months. • Cincinnatus was the most famous of the early dictators • The US Constitution allows for the President to suspend habeas corpus during times of national emergency and thus becoming a dictator.

50. The Twelve Tables • The Twelve Tables were the laws of Rome inscribed on stone and posted, originally in the center of Rome. Later, they were posted throughout the Republic. • This limited the power of government by making access to the laws available to everyone. • The Tables were a document of slave owners, so don’t think that they were very lenient. Slaves, women and children did not come under the document because they were not people. • They provided for harsh penalties, but the Tables did allow the local rulers or judges to make lenient interpretations of the law. • The Tables included laws governing witchcraft. • The Tables served as models for later European justice systems.