Persian Empire
This ancient empire stretched across the Iranian Plateau, was ringed by the Zagros and other mountain ranges, bordered the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and reached from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indus River.
What is the Persian Empire?
Unlike mobile herding communities that move with their animals, this kind of society grows crops in settled areas and usually produces the food surpluses needed for civilizations to develop.
What is an agrarian society?
These South Asian empires, including the Maurya and Gupta, grew on the fertile Indo‑Gangetic Plain between the Himalaya and the Indian Ocean, using the Indus and Ganges rivers to support large populations and trade.
What are the South Asian (Maurya and Gupta) Empires?
According to the Out of Africa Theory, some early humans moved northeast through the Nile and Sinai into Southwest Asia, while others crossed the Red Sea into Arabia and followed these southern coastal routes toward India and beyond.
What are the early human migration routes out of Africa?
Christians believe that this figure is both fully God and fully human, the promised Messiah whose death and resurrection bring salvation.
Who is Jesus Christ?
This term describes how the Persian king held supreme power over the whole empire, even though local officials helped rule its many provinces.
What is centralized government?
This Babylonian law code, carved on a stone monument, used “if…then…” rules and “an eye for an eye” punishments to keep order, while clearly treating nobles, commoners, and enslaved people differently.
What is the Code of Hammurabi?
These cave monasteries and temples in western India, decorated with detailed murals about the Buddha’s life, are famous examples of Gupta Golden Age art.
What are the Ajanta Caves?
Paleolithic foragers are said to have had this kind of diet, made up of many different wild plants and animals instead of relying on a single main crop.
What is a broad-spectrum diet?
This term describes the situation of the Jewish people living outside their ancestral homeland after ancient exiles, maintaining their religion and identity in communities across many countries.
What is the Jewish diaspora?
In the Persian Empire, these royal governors ran provinces called satrapies, collecting taxes and enforcing the king’s laws while being watched by the “eyes and ears of the king.”
What are satraps?
This wedge-shaped writing system, first used to track grain and taxes in Mesopotamian city-states, later became a key political tool for recording laws, treaties, and royal orders.
What is cuneiform?
Gupta mathematicians refined this place-value system, using a symbol for zero, that later spread west and became known in Europe through “Arabic numerals.”
What is the decimal system?
In the Fertile Crescent, this major shift from foraging to settled farming led people to clear forests, irrigate fields, and domesticate plants and animals, reshaping local ecosystems.
What is the agricultural (Neolithic) revolution?
This Indian religion teaches that souls are reborn in a cycle of reincarnation, that people must follow their dharma (duty), and looks to sacred texts like the Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita for guidance.
What is Hinduism?
Built under King Darius I, this ancient highway stretched over 1,500 miles from Susa to Sardis and used relay stations to speed messages, trade, and armies across the Persian Empire.
What is the Royal Road?
In ancient China, emperors claimed this divine approval to govern, which could be lost if disasters or rebellions showed that Heaven no longer supported them.
What is the Mandate of Heaven?
During the Gupta Golden Age, poets like Kalidasa wrote famous dramas and poems in this classical Indian language.
What is Sanskrit?
This term describes how early agriculture moved out of the Fertile Crescent into Europe, North Africa, and Asia as people and farming ideas spread into new environments.
What is diffusion?
As the main religion of the Achaemenid and Sasanian empires, this faith taught that rulers must defend truth and justice under Ahura Mazda, shaping Persian law and kingship.
What is Zoroastrianism?
This ancient empire used the Royal Road and a system of satrapies, while its later Mediterranean rival relied on a vast paved road network and provincial governors under an emperor to control their lands.
What are the Persian Empire and the Roman Empire?
These two Indus Valley cities were laid out on a grid with brick houses, private bathrooms, and covered street drains that carried wastewater out of town, showing remarkably advanced urban planning and sanitation.
What are Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro?
This religion became the official faith of many European kingdoms through a centralized church, while this Asian religion spread along the Silk Roads and adapted to local cultures without a single unifying church.
What are Christianity and Buddhism?
This term describes the layered ranking of groups—such as landowning elites, common farmers, and enslaved laborers—that solidified as agricultural surpluses and specialized jobs concentrated wealth and power in a few hands.
What is social stratification?
Unlike many religions centered on gods and worship, this Chinese belief system taught a mostly secular political theory, using civil service exams and strict social roles to create order in society.
What is Confucianism?