Essential Vocab
The process of taming wild animals and planting seeds to grow farm food.
Domestication
Clue: The essential resource provided by rivers that early humans needed daily for drinking, cooking, and watering animals.
Answer: What is Fresh Water?
Clue: The lifestyle of early humans who moved constantly from place to place following wild animal herds.
Answer: What is Nomadic?
Clue: The king who ordered 282 laws to be carved onto a towering stone pillar in the city center.
Answer: Who is King Hammurabi?
Clue: Natural landforms like high mountains and vast deserts that block or severely slow down travel and trade.
Answer: What is a Geographic Barrier?
Clue: Trading goods directly for other goods without using money or coins.
Answer: What is a Barter System?
Clue: The Egyptian river that flooded every summer, leaving behind fertile soil so farmers could grow wheat and barley.
Answer: What is the Nile River?
Clue: The major historical turning point when humans shifted from nomadic hunting and gathering to permanent farming.
Answer: What is the Neolithic Revolution?
Clue: Specially trained record-keepers who spent years in school learning complex writing symbols.
Answer: What are Scribes?
Clue: The towering mountain range that created a massive natural wall between ancient India and ancient China.
Mountain, Rivers, Deserts
Clue: Rich, dark mud left behind on farm fields after a river floods.
Answer: What is Silt?
Clue: Having an extra supply of stored grain beyond what a farming family needs to survive.
Answer: What is a Food Surplus?
Clue: Human communities built these permanent structures inside river valleys once they mastered farming.
Answer: What are Permanent Homes / Villages?
Clue: The main reason monarchs relied heavily on trained scribes to keep official government records.
Answer: What is because most common citizens could not read or write?
Clue: The major advantage of having steep mountains or deserts located next to an ancient city.
Answer: What is natural protection from invading armies / enemies?
Clue: A system that ranks citizens by job, wealth, and power, with kings at the top and farmers at the bottom.
Answer: What is a Social Hierarchy?
Clue: In Mesopotamia, villagers dug long channels from this river to keep their crops alive during dry summer months.
Answer: What is the Euphrates River?
Clue: Two extreme landforms that early humans avoided settling in large numbers due to a lack of fresh water and poor farm soil.
Answer: What are Deserts and Mountains?
Clue: In an ancient social hierarchy, this ruler held absolute control at the very top of society.
Answer: Who is a King / Monarch?
Clue: The major drawback of geographic barriers, which cuts a society off from outside tools and ideas.
Answer: What is Cultural Isolation?
Clue: Man-made canals or ditches dug to bring river water directly to dry farm fields.
Answer: What is Irrigation?
Clue: Because farming produced extra food, citizens no longer had to farm all day and could learn these specialized trades, like weaving or craft-making.
Answer: What is Job Specialization (or Specialized Workers)?
Clue: Before paper money existed, artisans traded clay pots directly for farm grain using this system.
Answer: What is the Barter System?
Clue: Two types of information scribes recorded for monarchs on stone pillars or clay tablets.
Answer: What are laws, taxes, or trade deals?
Clue: The term for the spread of new tools, languages, and ideas between trading societies, which geographic barriers prevent.
Answer: What is Cultural Diffusion?