Page 1
New ideas, practices, and technology began in places called ____________________.
What are cultural hearths?
Mesoamerica, which means “____________________ America,” refers to the ancient geographic and cultural region that reached from central Mexico south through Central America.
What is middle?
Over time, cultural hearths around the world transformed into civilizations. A civilization is an advanced and complex ____________________.
What is society?
As cities developed, complex institutions such as ____________________ and organized religion emerged as ways to manage resources and populations. ____________________, or an organization set up to make and enforce rules in society, provided leadership and laws.
What is government?
The Yangshao culture was one of China’s Neolithic cultural hearths. The Yangshao lived along the Huang and Wei Rivers from about 5000 to 3000 B.C. One of this culture’s best-known sites is Banpo, a large farming ____________________.
What is a village?
Cultural hearths from long ago spread ideas and practices that ____________________ the way people did everyday things.
What is influenced?
For thousands of years, Mesoamericans traveled in small nomadic groups. Eventually, though, they began to ____________________ wild plants.
What is domesticate?
Two important markers of civilization are agriculture and ____________________ religion, or the belief in and worship of gods and goddesses.
What is organized?
Societies had to manage ____________________ as they developed. Record keeping, or organizing and storing ____________________, became an important job.
What is information?
The process by which cultures ____________________ and spread from one area to another is called cultural diffusion. This process helped establish the Nile River Valley as an important cultural hearth.
What is interact?
Each cultural hearth made an important ____________________ to surrounding cultures and regions.
What is contribution?
One of the main plants Mesoamericans farmed was ____________________, or what we know as corn. We know this because archaeologists found prehistoric corncob fragments in the highland caves of Oaxaca and the Tehuacán Valley.
What is maize?
Civilizations had five traits, or characteristics, in common: ____________________, complex institutions, specialized workers, record keeping, and improved technology. The first ones were born in ____________________.
What are cities?
Eventually, complex writing ____________________ helped people record important information and abstract ideas.
What are systems?
Çatalhöyük developed in present-day Turkey beginning around 7400 B.C. It still fascinates people thousands of years later because of the rich cultural ____________________ left behind by those who lived there.
What is material?
Faiyum is an oasis about 50 miles south of present-day Cairo. It is considered Egypt’s earliest ____________________ community.
What is farming?
Cities were more than just large population ____________________. They were political, economic, and cultural ____________________ for the surrounding areas.
What are centers?
As early cultures advanced towards civilization, the design and manufacture of ____________________ improved. For example, hand-held ____________________ called sickles were used to harvest grain.
What are tools?
Around 5000 B.C., warmer, wetter weather prompted the development of cultural hearths in the fertile river valleys of ____________________.
What is China?
According to archaeologists, people from neighboring ____________________ introduced new practices to Faiyum farmers.
What are cultures?