Unit I: 8000 BCE to 600 CE

1. Unit I: 8000 BCE to 600 CE An 8600-year journey beginning with the transition from hunting and gathering to farming … all the way through the collapse of classical civilizations

2. Before History What is the technical term for the “old stone age?”

3. Before History Paleolithic Society

4. Before History The exaggerated sexual features of venus figurines suggests that paleolithic peoples fashioned them out of an interest in what?

5. Before History Fertility

6. Before History When people started to shift away from hunting and gathering and began farming and domesticating animals, this was called what?

7. Before History Neolithic transition

8. Before History Name three craft industries that were common to the earliest civilizations.

9. Before History • Pottery • Metalworking • Textile production

10. Before History When people began farming and domesticating animals, and a food surplus developed, and a rise in the population occurred, what entities came into existence that became the centers for trade and the exchange of ideas?

11. Before History Cities

12. Mesopotamia Mesopotamia means “the land between the rivers.” What are the names of the rivers?

13. Mesopotamia The Tigris and Euphrates

14. Mesopotamia Sumer was a region within Mesopotamia, and Mesopotamia was a part of what larger region that spanned southwest Asia and the southeast coast of the Mediterranean Sea?

15. Mesopotamia The Fertile Crescent

16. Mesopotamia Who was Hammurabi, and what notable thing did he do?

17. Mesopotamia A Babylonian king who established one of the first systematic codes of law put down in writing. (“An eye for an eye …”)

18. Mesopotamia What was metallurgy, and why was it an important technological innovation?

19. Mesopotamia Metalworking, and it enabled people to fashion sharper, more effective tools and weapons.

20. Mesopotamia Name three of the most important foundational inventions usually attributed to the Sumerians.

21. Mesopotamia The wheel, sail and plow

22. Mesopotamia What is the term for the social arrangement that describes the inequality between males and females that emerged during the neolithic transition?

23. Mesopotamia Patriarchy

24. Mesopotamia What is the name of the Sumerian system of writing?

25. Mesopotamia Cuneiform

26. Mesopotamia Who were the first people to establish a monotheistic belief system?

27. Mesopotamia The Hebrews

28. Mesopotamia What’s the most important innovation – and the reason we still remember them to this day – of the Phoenicians?

29. Mesopotamia Alphabetic writing

30. Mesopotamia Why were horses so important in Mesopotamia and other early civilizations?

31. Mesopotamia They provided a huge advantage over cattle, donkeys and human power when it came to transportation and war-making capabilities.

32. Africa The earliest civilization in Africa emerged along what major river valley?

33. Africa The Nile

34. Africa What were the “god kings” of ancient Egypt called?

35. Africa Pharaohs

36. Africa What was the name for the pictographic writing system the Egyptians developed?

37. Africa Hieroglyphics

38. Africa Did the ancient Egyptians have a more benign or more pessimistic view of the afterlife than did the Sumerians? Why?

39. Africa More benign … because, scholars believe, their relationship with the environment was less severe (i.e., more predictable flooding, less threat from outside invasion, etc.)

40. Africa What is the name for the people of sub-Saharan Africa who spoke a related family of languages and migrated for millennia down through the continent of Africa, spreading their cultural influence?

41. Africa The Bantu

42. South Asia Harappan society developed on the Indian subcontinent, in modern-day Pakistan, along what major river valley?

43. South Asia The Indus

44. South Asia What unique feature – at least for the ancient world – did Harappan households have?

45. South Asia Private bathrooms with showers and toilets, which drained into a city sewage system

46. South Asia Why do scholars still have a lot of questions about the mysterious Harappan culture?

47. South Asia Its writing hasn’t yet been deciphered.

48. South Asia Which band of Indo-Europeans migrated down into India through the passes of the Hindu-Kush mountains by 1500 BCE?

49. South Asia Aryans

50. South Asia The Aryans brought with them – orally, at first, in their Sanskrit language – the Vedas. The Vedas were a. really poorly built Italian cars. b. their obnoxious cousins. c. collections of religious and literary works.