Hunters & Gatherers
This phase of the Stone Age is the earliest and literally translates to "old stone age".
What is the Paleolithic?
This phase of the Stone Age was the last and literally translates to "new stone age".
What is the Neolithic?
This region supported the first civilizations of the world and its name literally translates to "the land between rivers".
What is Mesopotamia?
All early cities in Mesopotamia had these religious buildings at their city centers. They were shaped like step pyramids and were important places of trade, worship, and socializing.
What are ziggurats?
All major human developments happened near this type of geographical feature. Mesopotamia had two of them!
What are rivers?
Early humans that moved from place to place to collect resources.
What are nomads?
This is the name for the first time that humans began to farm on purpose.
What is the Agricultural Revolution or the Neolithic Revolution?
This was the earliest city-state in the Neolithic where writing was first developed.
What is Sumer?
This is name for the first written language that was developed to help merchants keep track of trade.
What is cuneiform?
This physical feature offered cities protection from invaders, but also isolated them from meeting other cultures.
What are mountains?
The first place that hunters and gatherers traveled to outside of the continent of Africa.
What is the Middle East?
This is when prehistoric people settled in one place and stopped being nomads. The result was advanced technology, class division, and developed cultures.
What is civilization?
People in the Fertile Crescent did this to plants and animals to "tame" them so that they could benefit from their labor and nutrients. This allowed people to work faster and to settle in one place.
What is domesticate?
This is the process by which different groups exchange ideas. This happens because groups are trading, or because they have been at war.
What is cultural diffusion?
This mud-like substance is deposited onto floodplains by rivers, making the valleys nearby fertile for growing crops.
What is silt?
The below freezing time period 200,000 years ago in which modern humans first lived.
What is the Ice Age?
This process diverts water from a river out into fields so that crops can grow in arid environments.
What is irrigation?
This is when a city-state would conquer other city-states to possess their land and resources. The king would then form this type of government system to control the regions that he had conquered.
What is an empire?
The division of people which determines their abilities, jobs, wealth, and often even who they married or how they could dress.
What is a social structure or social hierarchy?
This region was perfect for the first civilizations to form from the Middle East all the way down to Egypt. The land in this region was fertile due to rivers and the climate was arid with little rainfall.
What is the Fertile Crescent?
The hand axe, arrowheads, and spear tip are all examples of this prehistoric technology.
What are stone tools?
After a food surplus, this stage of civilization develops as people are assigned new roles in society.
What is job specialization?
This person was the first to create a written law system to govern a group of people. However, his laws were harsh and were not fairly applied to people of different social classes.
Who is King Hammurabi?
This was one of the great inventions of early Mesopotamian people.
What is the wheel/writing/mathematics/the time system?
Most buildings in Mesopotamia were built of this substance that was baked in the sun until it hardened, and it was also used to make tablets for writing on. There was plenty of this resource because of the rivers that enriched the land.
What is clay?