| A | B |
|---|
| prehistory v. history | Prehistory - no written documents; History - written proof of history |
| features of civilization | Social etiquette, religion, education, literature, specialization, cities, written language. |
| stages of hominid development | Austrolopithecus, homo habilis, homo erectus, homo sapiens |
| "Out of Africa" thesis vs. multiregional thesis | Humans originated from Africa and proliferated vs. originated from Africa but multiple geographical locations first 100 million years |
| Paleolithic Era | Old Stone Age |
| Neolithic Era | New Stone Age |
| family units, clans, tribes | A group of people sharing common ancestry |
| foraging societies | Nomadic, small communities and population, no political system, economic distribution is more equal |
| nomadic hunters/gatherers | Move place to place according to environment; adapts to environment |
| Ice Age | Period of time where Earth was covered partly in ice |
| civilization | Changes when agriculture started |
| Neolithic Revolution | Farming uses; start of agriculture |
| Domestication of plants and animals | Farming system where animals are taken to different locations in order to find fresh pastures |
| nomadic pastoralism | Slash-and-burn; once land is depleted, moved on to let soil recover |
| migratory farmers | Farmers that migrate instead of settling after using up the land. |
| patrilineal/patrilocal | Live with husband's family. Traced through father's lineage. |
| irrigation systems | replacement or supplementation of rainfall with water from antoher source in order to grow crops |
| metalworking | craft and practice of working with metals to create parts or structures. It requires skill and the use of many different types of tools |
| ethnocentrism | to look at the world primarily from the perspective of one's own culture |
| foraging | Looking for food |
| sedentary agriculture | Domestication of plants and animals |
| shifting cultivation | process by which people take an area of land to use for agriculture, only to abandon it a short time later |
| slash-and-burn agriculture | Trees cut down, plots made for agriculture |
| matrilineal | System in which one belongs to mother's lineage. |
| cultural diffusion | spread of ideas and material culture, especially if these occur independently of population movement |
| independent invention | Creative innovations of new solutions to old and new problems |
| specialization of labor | specialization of co-operative labor in specific, circumscribed tasks and roles, intended to increase efficiency of output. |
| gender divisiion of labor | Labor divided between man and woman, hunting and gathering etc. |
| metallurgy and metalworking | the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements and their mixtures, which are called alloys. craft and practice of working with metals to create parts or structures |
| Fertile Crescent | a region in the Middle East incorporating present-day Israel, West Bank, and Lebanon and parts of Jordan, Syria, Iraq and south-eastern Turkey. |
| Gilgamesh | Gilgamesh became a legendary protagonist in the Epic of Gilgamesh. |
| Hammurabi's Code of Law | First set of defined laws within a civilization. |
| Egypt | the civilization of the Lower Nile Valley, between the First Cataract and the mouths of the Nile Delta, from circa 3300 BC until the conquest of Alexander the Great in 332 BC. As a civilization based on irrigation, it is the quintessential example of a hydraulic empire. |
| Egyptian Book of the Dead | common name for the ancient Egyptian funerary texts. Constituted a collection of spells, charms, passwords, numbers and magical formulas for use by the deceased in the afterlife, describing many of the basic tenets of Egyptian mythology. They were intended to guide the dead through the various trials that they would encounter before reaching the underworld. Knowledge of the appropriate spells was considered essential to achieving happiness after death. |
| pyramids | tombs for Egyptian kings. |
| hieroglyphics | system of writing used by the Ancient Egyptians, using a combination of logographic, syllabic, and alphabetic elements. |
| Indus Valley civilization | an ancient civilization thriving along the Indus River and the Ghaggar-Hakra river in what is now Pakistan and western India. The Indus Valley Civilization is also sometimes referred to as the Harappan Civilization of the Indus Valley, in reference to its first excavated city of Harappa |
| early China | Xia, Shang, Zhou, Warring States Period, Qin, Han |
| the Celts | group of peoples that occupied lands stretching from the British Isles to Gallatia. Went to war with Romans. |
| the Hittites and iron weapons | First to work iron, first to enter Iron Age. controlled central Anatolia, north-western Syria down to Ugarit, and Mesopotamia down to Babylon, lasted from roughly 1680 BC to about 1180 BC. After 1180 BC, the Hittite polity disintegrated into several independent city-states, some of which survived as late as around 700 BC. |
| The Assyrians and cavalry warfare | indigenous people of Mesopotamia and have a history spanning over 6700 years. Started cavalry warfare? |
| The Persian Empire | used to refer to a number of historic dynasties that have ruled the country of Persia (Iran). the Achaemenid Empire that emerged under Cyrus the Great that is usually the earliest to be called "Persian." Successive states in Iran before 1935 are collectively called the Persian Empire by Western historians |
| The Hebrews and monotheism | descendants of biblical Patriarch Eber; were people who lived in the Levant, which was politically Canaan when they first arrived in the area. First monotheistic group; Yahweh. |
| the Phoenicians and the alphabet | enterprising maritime trading culture that spread right across the Mediterranean during the first millennium BC. First form of language. |
| the Lydians and coinage | ancient kingdom of Asia Minor, first to mint coins. |
| Greek city-states | region controlled exclusively by Greek, and usually having sovereignty. Ex. Crete |
| democracy | form of government in which policy is decided by the preference of the majority in a decision-making process, usually elections or referendums, open to all or most citizens. |
| Persian Wars | a series of conflicts between the Greek world and the Persian Empire that started about 500 BC and lasted until 448 BC. |
| Peloponnesian War | began in 431 BC between the Athenian Empire (or The Delian League) and the Peloponnesian League which included Sparta and Corinth. |
| Alexander the Great | United Ancient Greece; Hellenistic Age, conquered a large empire. |
| Hellenism | shift from a culture dominated by ethnic Greeks to a culture dominated by Greek-speakers of various ethnicities, and from the political dominance of the city-state to that of larger monarchies. In this period the traditional Greek culture was changed by strong Eastern influences, especially Persian, in aspects of religion and government. Cultural centers shifted away from mainland Greece, to Pergamon, Rhodes, Antioch and Alexandria. |
| Homer | legendary early Greek poet and rhapsode traditionally credited with authorship of the major Greek epics Iliad and Odyssey |
| Socrates and Plato | Greek philosopher/student. |
| Aristotle | Along with Plato, he is often considered to be one of the two most influential philosophers in Western thought. He wrote many books about physics, poetry, zoology, logic, government, and biology. |
| Western scientific thought | Systematic apporach of observation, hypothesis formation, hypothesis testing and hypothesis evaluation that forms the basis for modern science. |
| Roman Republic | republican government of the city of Rome and its territories from 510 BC until the establishment of the Roman Empire, which sometimes placed at 44 BC the year of Caesar's appointment as perpetual dictator or, more commonly, 27 BC the year that the Roman Senate granted Octavian the title "Augustus". |
| plebians vs. patricians | peasants/slaves vs. elite/upper class |
| Punic Wars | series of three wars fought between Rome and the Phoenician city of Carthage. Reason: clash of interests between the expanding Carthaginian and Roman spheres of influence. |
| Julius Caesar | Roman military and political leader. He was instrumental in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. Dictator for life. |
| Roman Empire | Ancient Roman polity in the centuries following its reorganization under the leadership of Octavian. |
| Qin, Han, Tang Dynasties | First three dynasties of China that we have recordings of. First of 'centralized' China. |
| Shi Huang di | king of the Chinese State of Qin from 247 BC to 221 BC, and then the first emperor of a unified China from 221 BC to 210 BC, ruling under the name First Emperor. |
| Chinese tributary system | form of conducting diplomatic and political relations with China before the fall of the Qin Dynasty. |
| the Silk Road | interconnected series of routes through Southern Asia traversed by caravan and ocean vessel. |
| Nara and Heian Japan | last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. The Heian period is considered the peak of the Japanese imperial court and noted for its art, especially poetry and literature. Nara: agricultural in nature, centered around villages. Most of the villagers followed the Shinto religion, based around the worship of natural and ancestral spirits. |
| the Fujiwara clan | dominated the Japanese politics of Heian period. |
| Lady Murasaki and "The Tale of Genji" | Written by Murasaki. First novel of Japanese world literature. |
| Central Asia and Mongolia | historically been closely tied to its nomadic peoples and the Silk Road. As a result, it has acted as a crossroads for the movement of people, goods, and ideas between Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia |
| the Aryan invasion of India | Aryans invaded and destroyed Indus River civilization, settled, moved to Ganges River. |
| Dravidians | people of southern and central India and northern Sri Lanka who speak Dravidian languages, the best known of which are Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam. |
| Indian caste system | system was a basically simple division of society into four castes (Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Sudra) arranged in a hierarchy, with the "Untouchable" (Dalit) outcasts below this structure. But socially the caste system was more complicated, with many more castes and sub-castes and other divisions. |
| Ashoka | of the Mauryan empire from 273 BC to 232 BC. A convert to Buddhism. |
| Constantinople/Byzantine Empire | Made into second capital by Constantine in attempts to help Rome turn its economy around. |
