Deep History
Anthropologists and archaeologists use this term to refer to the time before written records.
What is Pre-history?
The meaning of the name Mesopotamia.
What is "land between the rivers"?
A blind poet whose writings at about 800 B.C. took Greece from the "Dark Ages" into the Archaic period.
Who is Homer?
The twin founders of Rome, briefly raised by a wolf.
Who are Romulus and Remus?
Wrote the Allegory of the Cave. He was the student of Socrates and the teacher of Aristotle.
Who is Plato?
This site in New Mexico included the largest structures built in North America before the 19th century, and was engineered and created by people without writing technology.
What is Chaco Canyon?
What is Sumer, or the Sumerian Civilization?
Considered the earliest proto-Greek civilization, this palace culture had no high walls or defensive fortifications and was situated on the island of Crete.
What is the Minoan civilization?
These women were stolen by the early Romans in order to bear children as the first Roman citizens.
Who are the Sabines?
The mother of Alexander the Great, she convinced her son that his real father was actually Zeus.
Who is Olympias?
This term has often been used to distinguish between groups of ancient people and attaches particular significance to achievements such as the development of representational art, settled cities, and writing.
What is civilization?
The King of Uruk and the hero of one of the most important Ancient Mesopotamian stories, he tried to conquer death but ultimately learned to simply enjoy life.
Who is Gilgamesh?
A "citadel culture," this proto-Greek civilization on the Peloponnesian Peninsula valued war, martial valor, and arete above all things. They may be the Achaeans of the Iliad, but are known to scholars by this name.
Who are the Myceneans?
Her assault led to the end of the Kingdom of Rome and the establishment of the Republic.
Who is Lucretia?
This title, one of many given to Caesar Augustus, indicated that he was the son of a god.
What is "divi filius?"
The people who built this famous Neolithic British site brought some of its stones from Wales and northern Scotland without using wheels.
What is Stonehenge?
Who is Enkidu?
His famous judgment between the beauty of three goddesses helped lead to the Trojan War, as described in The Iliad.
Who is Paris?
Most important body of the Roman Republic - a deliberative body who did not make laws, but whose advice must be followed.
What is the Senate?
Term that means "Greek-like" or "Greek-influenced," this describes the world created by the conquests of Alexander.
What is Hellenistic?
This term means "new stone age."
What is Neolithic?
The Babylonian Epic of Creation, this violent and chaotic tale explains how Ancient Mesopotamians understood the nature of the universe and humanity's place before the vengeful and capricious gods.
What is the Enuma Elish?
Despite the previous nine years of fighting alongside the Greeks, this hero sat out much of the end of the Trojan War because Agamemnon had stolen his war prize, a woman named Briseis.
Who is Achilles?
The three men who made up the First Triumvirate, and whose civil war helped bring about the fall of the Republic.
Who are Crassus, Pompey, and Julius Caesar?
Brought about half of the Parthenon sculptures from Greece back to Britain, where he initially displayed them in his own home.
Who is Lord Elgin?