This is the vocabulary for Period 1 in Strayer's Ways of the World textbook and AP World History classes. It includes the vocabulary for chapters one and two.
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| 2328401947 | Austronesian Migrations | The last phase of the great human migration that established a human presence in every habitable region of the earth. | 0 | |
| 2328401948 | Clovis culture | The earliest widespread and distinctive culture of North America; named from the Clovis point, a particular kind of projectile point. | 1 | |
| 2328401949 | Dreamtime | A complex worldview of Australia's Aboriginal people that held that current humans lived in a vibration or echo of ancestral happenings. | 2 | |
| 2328401950 | "gathering and hunting peoples" | As the name suggests, people who live by collecting food rather than producing it. Recent scholars have turned to this term instead of the old "hunter-gatherer" in recognition that such societies depend much more heavily on gathering than hunting for survival. | 3 | |
| 2328401951 | Ice Age | Any of a number of cold periods in the earth's history; the last Ice age was at its peak around 20,000 years ago. | 4 | |
| 2328401952 | megafaunal extinction | Dying out of a number of large animal species, including the mammoth and several species of horses and camels, that occurred around 11,000-10,000 years ago, at the end of the Ice Age. The extinction may have been caused by excessive hunting or the changing climate of the area. | 5 | |
| 2328401953 | Neanderthals | Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, a European variant of Homo sapiens that died out about 25,000 years ago. | 6 | |
| 2328401954 | Paleolithic | literally "Old Stone Age"; the term used to describe early Homo sapiens societies in the period before the development of agriculture. | 7 | |
| 2328401955 | shaman | In many early societies, a person believed to have the ability to act as a bridge between living humans and supernatural forces, often by trances induced by psychoactive drugs. | 8 | |
| 2328401956 | Venus figurines | Paleolithic carvings of the female form, often with exaggerated breasts, buttocks, hips, and stomachs, which may have had religious significance. | 9 | |
| 2328401957 | Agricultural revolution | Also known as the Neolithic Revolution, this is the transformation of human (and world) existence caused by the deliberate cultivation of particular plants and the deliberate taming and breeding of particular animals. | 10 | |
| 2328401958 | Bantu (pron. BAHN-too) | An African-language family whose speakers gradually became the dominant culture of eastern and southern Africa, thanks to their agricultural techniques and, later, their ironworking skills. | 11 | |
| 2328401959 | Bantu migration | The spread of Bantu-speaking peoples from their homeland in what is now southern Nigeria or Cameroon to most of Africa, in a process that started around 3000 B.C.E. and continued for several millennia. | 12 | |
| 2328401960 | Çatalhüyük (pron. cha-TAHL-hoo-YOOK) | An important Neolithic site in what is now Turkey. | 13 | |
| 2328401961 | chiefdom | A societal grouping governed by a chief who typically relies on generosity, ritual status, or charisma rather than force to win obedience from the people. | 14 | |
| 2328401962 | diffusion | The gradual spread of agricultural techniques without extensive population movement. | 15 | |
| 2328401963 | domestication | The taming and changing of nature for the benefit of humankind. | 16 | |
| 2328401964 | end of the last Ice Age | A process of global warming that began about 16,000 years ago and ended about 5,000 years later, with earth enjoying a climate similar to that of our own time; the end of the Ice Age changed conditions for human beings, leading to increased population and helping to pave the way for agriculture. | 17 | |
| 2328401965 | Fertile Crescent | Region sometimes known as Southwest Asia that includes the modern states of Iraq, Syria, Israel/Palestine, and southern Turkey; the earliest home of agriculture. | 18 | |
| 2328401966 | Jericho | Site of an important early agricultural settlement of perhaps 2,000 people in present-day Israel. | 19 | |
| 2328401967 | Mesopotamia | The valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in present day Iraq. | 20 | |
| 2328401968 | native Australians | often called "Aboriginals" (from the Latin ab origne, the people who had been there "from the beginning"), the natives of Australia continued (and to some extent still continue) to live by gathering and hunting, despite the transition to agriculture in nearby lands. | 21 | |
| 2328401969 | pastoral society | A human society that relies on domesticated animals rather than plants as the main source of food; pastoral nomads led their animals to seasonal grazing grounds rather than settling permanently in a single location. | 22 | |
| 2328401970 | stateless societies | Village based agricultural societies, usually organized by kinship groups, that functioned without a formal government apparatus. | 23 | |
| 2328401971 | Code of Hammurabi | A series of laws published at the order of King Hammurabi of Babylon (d. 1750 B.C.E.). Not actually a code but a number of laws that proclaim the king's commitment to social order. | 24 | |
| 2328401972 | cradle of civilization | Commonly used term for southern Mesopotamia (in present-day Iraq). | 25 | |
| 2328401973 | cuneiform | Wedge shaped writing in the form of symbols incised into clay tablets; used in Mesopotamia from around 3100 B.C.E. to the beginning of the Common Era. | 26 | |
| 2328401974 | Egypt | is often known as "the gift of the Nile" because the region would not have been able to support a significant human population without the Nile's annual inundation, which provided rich silt deposits and made agriculture possible. | 27 | |
| 2328401975 | Epic of Gilgamesh | The most famous extant literary work from ancient Mesopotamia, it tells the story of one man's quest for immortality. | 28 | |
| 2328401976 | Harappa (pron. hah-RAHP-uh) | A major city in the Indus Valley civilization; flourished around 2000 B.C.E. | 29 | |
| 2328401977 | Hatshepsut | Ancient Egypt's most famous queen; reigned 1472-1457 B.C.E. | 30 | |
| 2328401978 | Hebrews | A smaller early civilization whose development of a monotheistic faith that provided the foundation of modern Judaism, Christianity, and Islam assured them a significant place in world history. | 31 | |
| 2328401979 | hieroglyphs | Ancient Egyptian writing system; literally "sacred carvings"--- so named because the Greeks saw them prominently displayed in Egyptian temples. | 32 | |
| 2328401980 | Hittites | An Indo-European civilization established in Anatolia in the eighteenth century B.C.E. | 33 | |
| 2328401981 | Hyskos (pron. HICK-sose) | A pastoral group of unknown ethnicity that invaded Egypt and ruled in the north from 1650 to 1535 B.C.E. Their dominance was based on their use of horses, chariots, and bronze technology. | 34 | |
| 2328401982 | Indus Valley | home of a major civilization that emerged in what is now Pakistan during the third millennium B.C.E., in the valleys of the Indus and the Saraswati rivers, noted for the uniformity of its elaborately planned cities over a large territory. | 35 | |
| 2328401983 | Mandate of Heaven | The ideological underpinning of Chinese emperor, this was the belief that a ruler held authority by command of divine force as long as he ruled morally and benevolently. | 36 | |
| 2328401984 | Minoan civilization | An advanced civilization that developed on the island of Crete around 2500 B.C.E. | 37 | |
| 2328401985 | Mohenjo Daro (pron. moehen-jo-DAHR-oh) | A major city of the Indus Valley civilization; flourished around 2000 B.C.E. | 38 | |
| 2328401986 | Nubia | a civilization to the south of Egypt in the Nile Valley, noted foe development of an alphabetic writing system and a major ironworking industry by 500 B.C.E. | 39 | |
| 2328401987 | Olmec civilization | An early civilization that developed along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico around 1200 B.C.E. | 40 | |
| 2328401988 | oracle bones | In Chinese civilization, animal bones that were heated and the cracks then interpreted as prophecies. The prophecies were written on the bone and provide our earliest writing sources for Ancient China. | 41 | |
| 2328401989 | patriarchy | literally "rule of the father"; a social system of male dominance. | 42 | |
| 2328401990 | pharaoh | A king of Egypt. The term literally means "the palace" and only came into use in the New Kingdom, but is generally employed in reference to all ancient Egyptian rulers. | 43 | |
| 2328401991 | Phoenicians | A civilization in the area of present-day Lebanon, creators of the first alphabetic writing system. | 44 | |
| 2328401992 | pyramid | Monumental tomb for an Egyptian pharaoh; mostly built during the Old Kingdom (2663-2195 B.C.E.). Pyramids are also found in Meroë to the south of Egypt. | 45 | |
| 2328401993 | quipu | A series of knotted cords, used for accounting and perhaps a form of writing in the Norte Chico civilization. | 46 | |
| 2328401994 | Son of Heaven | Title of the Ruler of China, first known from the Zhou dynasty. It acknowledges the ruler's position as intermediary between heaven and earth. | 47 | |
| 2328401995 | Uruk | The largest city of ancient Mesopotamia | 48 | |
| 2328401996 | Xia dynasty (pron. shah) | A legendary series of monarchs of early China, traditionally dated to 2200-1766 BCE | 49 | |
| 2328401997 | Zhou dynasty (pron. joe) | Period of Chinese history from 1122 to 256 BCE | 50 | |
| 2328401998 | ziggurat | A Mesopotamian stepped pyramid. Unlike an Egyptian pyramid, a ziggurat was a solid structure of baked brick, an artificial hill at the summit which stood a temple. | 51 |
