Science & Origins
The era before written history existed for historians to examine.
What is Prehistory?
The survival strategy of hunting small animals and gathering wild plants.
What is hunting and gathering?
To tame wild plants or animals in ways that directly benefit human survival.
What is to domesticate?
Producing more food than a community strictly requires to survive day-to-day.
What is a food surplus?
The temporary shelters constructed by nomadic hunters using tree branches or animal skins upon finding a new location.
What are huts?
A scientist who studies past humans by investigating physical artifacts like tools.
What is an archaeologist?
Someone who travels continuously in search of food rather than settling in one spot.
What is a nomad?
The type of lifestyle marked by living in permanent settlements rather than moving constantly.
What is a sedentary lifestyle?
The practice where individuals specialize in non-farming crafts like weaving, pottery, or metalwork.
What is job specialization?
Aside from providing heat, light, and cooking capabilities, fire provided this vital defensive safety benefit to early humans.
What is scaring off predatory animals?
A scientist who studies how human societies behaved, interacted, and developed.
What is an anthropologist?
The major advancement discovered around 800,000 years ago used for cooking, light, and protection.
What is fire?
The global region believed to be the very first center of agriculture.
What is Southeastern Asia?
The organizational structure shaped like a pyramid that ranks people by power and wealth.
What are social classes?
The complex craft developed in Neolithic permanent villages to create durable containers out of hardened earth.
What is pottery?
The continent where most scientists believe humans first originated.
What is Africa?
The typical size of early hunter-gatherer bands of adults and children.
What is 10 to 12 people?
The primary crop domesticated in Central America during the agricultural expansion.
What is corn?
The feature of civilization used to record data, laws, and cultural records using symbols or pictures.
What is a system of writing?
The double-edged stone tool specifically highlighted as being used by Neolithic farmers to clear and work the land.
What is a hand axe?
Strips of dry land exposed during the Ice Age that allowed humans to cross between continents.
What are land bridges?
Materials used alongside stone to create sharper weapons and blades as technology progressed.
What are bones and antlers?
The approximate timeframe when the Neolithic Age began due to climate warming.
What is 9,000 years ago (or around 8,000 BCE)?
Large-scale government projects like city walls, roads, granaries, and water systems, what feature of a civilization is this known as?
What are public works?
The skilled Neolithic craft involving thread and fiber production that emerged alongside settled village life.
What is weaving?