Paleolithic & Neolithic
The Old Stone Age
What is Paleolithic?
The two rivers which define Mesopotamia
What are the Tigris and the Euphrates?
In its earliest stages, Ancient China developed around this geographic feature
What is the Yellow River?
The Indus River Valley Civilization existed primarily in which two present-day countries?
What are Pakistan and India?
The study of past events
What is history?
The New Stone Age and the emergence of agriculture
What is Neolithic?
These were the most common political units in Ancient Mesopotamia
What are city-states?
Between the Shang Dynasty and the Zhou Dynasty, this system of relations between men and women became more pronounced
What is patriarchy?
Both the Harappan and Egyptian civilizations utilized this technology to provide their crops with an ideal amount of water
What is irrigation?
History before written records
What is prehistory?
How people obtained food and other resources before the invention of agriculture
What is hunting and gathering?
A writing system which involved creating wedge-shaped characters on clay tablets
What is Cuneiform?
The Zhou Emperors were the first to use this justification for the legitimacy of their rule
What is the Mandate of Heaven?
In both Ancient Egypt and the Indus Valley Civilization, different people had different levels of wealth and power. Such privileges were based on this
What is a social hierarchy?
The process of breaking up the past into smaller units of time so that it is easier to study
What is periodization?
During the Neolithic, humans abandoned their nomadic lifestyle and created these kinds of settlements
What are villages and towns?
Some Mesopotamian Kings were able to control other societies through this
What is warfare?
The defining feature of religion in Ancient China
What is ancestor veneration?
Egyptian religious beliefs about the afterlife encouraged them to build this type of monumental architecture for its most elite
What are pyramids?
When something becomes different over time
What is change?
A lifestyle in which people primarily herd animals such as sheep, cattle, goats for resources; semi-nomadic
What is pastoralism?
In an attempt to maintain order in his increasingly large and complex civilization, Hammurabi created the first of this type of document
What is a law code?
The Shang and Zhou emperors used this type of government, which allowed local leaders significant autonomy
What is decentralized government?
Because the Indus Valley script hasn't been deciphered, we must rely on this instead of information from written records
What is archaeology?
A significant historical event; a decisive moment which alters the course of history
What is turning point?