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| 6467153904 | Agricultural Revolution | The time when human beings first domesticated plants and animals and no longer relied entirely on hunting and gathering. Also known as the Neolithic Revolution. Changed human society by bringing sedentary living, food surpluses, social hierarchies, increased patriarchy, and job specialization. | 0 | |
| 6467153905 | Surplus | A situation in which the quantity supplied is greater than the quantity demanded. A product of the domestication of plants and animals. Gave rise to job specialization and elite ruling classes needed origionally to manage the extra grain. | 1 | |
| 6467161609 | Hunter-Gatherer (aka forager) | describes the societies of the Paleolithic Era. Used tools like the spear, fishhook and bow and arrow. Probably lived in small groups of about 30 people. Gendered social roles with men doing most of the hunting. Adapted to various climates and used fire 500,000 years ago for warmth, community-building, hunting, and cooking. | 2 | |
| 6467161610 | Barbarian | A term sedentary peoples used for nomadic peoples who sometimes raided their cities. | 3 | |
| 6467164092 | Nomadic | paleolithic people adopted this pattern of living, which involved following animal migrations and vegetation cycles. . | 4 | |
| 6467164093 | Pastoral People | Herders who migrated around a region, following the fertile grasses to feed their herds. | 5 | |
| 6467166332 | Sedentary | People who settled in a region permanently. The first agricultural villages were founded near sources of fresh water. Many agricultural breakthroughs are believed to have occurred after hunting and gathering peoples had already grown substantially in number and established a sedentary way of life. | 6 | |
| 6467166333 | Bureaucracy | a way of organizing government tasks by departments, called bureaus, so that each department can specialize and stabilize. A feature of centralized governments such as Zhou Dynasty (and all subsequent dynasties) of China. In pre-modern history these government jobs went to wealthy nobles and their offspring whereas in the modern era increasingly the jobs were open to individuals of merit. | 7 | |
| 6467169059 | Civilization | A complex culture in which large numbers of human beings share a number of common elements: cities, complex governments, religions, hierarchical social structure, writing, and art. | 8 | |
| 6467169060 | City-State | Early civilizations made up of an urban center and the agricultural land around it under its political and economic control. For Example, ancient Sumer with it's independent cities of Ur and Uruk. Also Athens and Sparta in Greece, and the Swahili cities in East Africa. | 9 | |
| 6467171123 | Empire | a large political unit or state, usually under a single leader, that controls many peoples or territories. The Akkadians created the first one by taking over the Sumerian city-states of ancient Mesopotamia around 2340 B.C.E.. | 10 | |
| 6467173492 | Heirarchy | Organization structure with the leader on top followed by his subordinates each reporting to the level above. For example, 1. King 2. Landed Elites 3. Peasants 4. Slaves, which are classified according their various criteria into successive levels or layers. Also called social groups or social strata. As the first civilizations took shape this form of inequality came to be regarded as normal and natural. Upper-classes enjoyed great wealth and top positions in the military and civilian bureaucracy. | 11 | |
| 6467178110 | Neolithic and Paleolithic | "New Stone" and "Old Stone". Archeologists uncovered new stone tools used for farming to identify where agricultural revolutions occurred. | 12 | |
| 6467183087 | River Valley Civlilizations | This first complex cultures based on agricultural settled near sources of fresh water essential for farming. Examples include the Nile, the Niger, in the Tigris and Euphrates valley, and along the Yellow River in China. | 13 | |
| 6467183088 | Alexander the Great | son of Philip of Macedon, who defeated and unified the Greek city-states in 338 B.C.E. He led a 10 year campaign of conquest that defeated Persia and included Egypt, Anatolia, and India in a huge empire. He was hailed "King of Asia" and credited with the spread of Greek culture, creating the Hellenistic Era, which saw many diverse cities such as Alexandria, Egypt. The Empire was divided into 3 when he suddenly died in 323 B.C.E. | 14 | |
| 6467188825 | Confucianism | The dominant governing philosophy in China starting in the Han dynasty. Taught that the moral example of superiors was the key to social harmony. Very Patriarchal that stressed the leadership of husbands over their wives. Based on the Analects, which are considered a record of the words and acts of the central Chinese thinker and philosopher Confucius and his disciples, as well as the discussions they held. | 15 | |
| 6467188826 | Bronze Age | the latter part of the Neolithic Era is often to reffered to as this, because the people figured out how to make bronze. | 16 | |
| 6467191196 | Byzantium | the city to which Constantine moved the capital of the Roman empire. This shifted all of the power to the East | 17 | |
| 6467191197 | Code of Hammurabi | a series of social codes for every day life developed by King Hammurabi of Babylon, is often credited as a significant step toward our modern legal codes. Harsher punishments for lower classes. Eye-for-an-eye type punishments. | 18 | |
| 6467193513 | Cuneiform | The world's earliest know system of writing that evolved beyond merely pictographs, from the ancient Sumerian Civilization, circa 2900 B.C.E.. Using a reed stylus they wrote on clay tablets. Used originally for tax and trade records. Eventually replaced by Greek alphabetic script in 400 B.C.E. | 19 | |
| 6467193514 | Eightfold Path | Aka the Middle Path was an original teaching of the Buddha. Included Right view, right intention, right speech, and right action, right effort, and right concentration. | 20 | |
| 6467196095 | Indian Ocean Trade | a system of maritime trade routes that connected China, India, Thailand, the Indonesian and Malaysian islands, East Africa and Arabia. It dates back at least to the third century B.C. and involved ancient empires like the Mauryan Empire and the Han Dynasty. | 21 | |
| 6467196096 | Iron Age | An archaeological era beginning around 1000 B.C.E., referring to a period of time in the prehistory of the Old World (Afro-Eurasia) when the dominant tool-making material was iron. Enabled more powerful armies, increasing conquest and empire-building. Ex: Assyrian conquest of Mesopotamia. Iron tools also enabled increased farm production and larger populations. | 22 | |
| 6467199046 | Jewish Diaspora | Around the 1st century ad, an estimated 5,000,000 Jews lived outside Palestine, about four-fifths of them within the Roman Empire, but they looked to Palestine as the centre of their religious and cultural life. | 23 | |
| 6467199047 | Legalism | A philosophy of administration in ancient China. Proposed that human beings were evil by nature and therefore required harsh laws and punishments. Adopted by the Qin Dynasty who executed scholars and burned all books that disagreed with this philosophy. | 24 | |
| 6467201554 | Shang Civilization | China's first dynasty almost 2000 BC. It was a city state that had writing, bronze weapons, and appearance of social classes, believed in supreme deity and lesser ones, observed movements of the stars and planets. Mostly a farming society ruled by an aristocracy whose major concern was war. Used oracle bones to tell the future. | 25 | |
| 6467201555 | Qin Shihuangdi | In 221 B.C.E. the king of Qin ended the warring states period by unifying the kingdoms of East Asia and proclaimed himself the First Emperor. His lasted only 14 years because of insurrection, but he established a tradition of centralized imperial rule by ignoring the nobility and running the empire with a centralized bureaucracy instead. He used harsh Legalist policies to silence critics (burned thousands of books) and keep the Chinese obedient to the authority of the state, but he also unified China by standardizing measurements and writing, building roads and bridges, and building some of the Great Wall of China. His tomb was discovered in 1974, which contained 15,000 terra cotta soldiers. | 26 | |
| 6467206314 | Siddhartha Gautama | founder of Buddism; born a prince; left his father's wealth to find the cause of human suffering; also know as Buddha | 27 | |
| 6467206315 | The Vedas of Hinduism | A collection of hymns, songs and prayers honoring the gods of the Aryans. They were orally transmitted in the Aryan language, Sanskrit, then written down circa 600 B.CE. Meaning "wisdom" or "knowledge" they represent a priestly perspective. They reveal a decentralized Indian subcontinent of hundreds of herding and farming chiefdoms that frequently raided and fought each other. | 28 | |
| 6467212678 | Ziggurats | Step pyramids constructed of bricks and topped by altars (example of monumental architecture) usually associated with Mesopotamian temple complexes. Also seen in Mayan cultures and elsewhere. Associated with a priestly class of rulers, often Kings who were ordained by the gods, and they alone could perform the rituals and sacrifices necessary to keep the cosmos in balance. | 29 |
