AP World History Ways of the World book chapter 1 vocabulary/ defining terms
Terms : Hide Images
| 1617946246 | Venus figurines | Paleolithic carvings of the female form, often with exaggerated breasts, buttocks, hips, and stomachs, which may have had religious significance | 0 | |
| 1617946247 | trance dance | In San culture, a nightlong ritual held to activate a human being's inner potency (n/um) to counteract the evil influences of gods and ancestors. The practice was apparently common to the Khoisan people, of whom the Jo/'hoansl are a surviving remnant. | 1 | |
| 1617946248 | shaman | In many early societies, a person believed to have the ability to act as a bridge between living humans and the supernatural forces, often by means of trances induced by psychoactive drugs | 2 | |
| 1617946249 | San, or Jo/'hoansl | A Paleolithic people still living on the northern fringe of the Kalahari desert in Southern Africa | 3 | |
| 1617946250 | Paleolithic | Literally "old stone age"; the term used to describe early homo sapiens societies in the period before the development of agriculture | 4 | |
| 1617946251 | Paleolithic rock art | Although this term can refer to the art of any gathering and hunting society, it is typically used to describe the hundreds of Paleolithic paintings discovered in Spain and France and dating to about 20,000 years ago; these paintings usually depict a range of animals, although human figures and abstract designs are also found. The purpose of this art is debated | 5 | |
| 1617946252 | Paleolithic "settling down" | The process by which some Paleolithic peoples moved toward permanent settlement in the wake of the last ice Age. Settlement was marked by increasing storage of food and accumulation of goods as well as growing inequalities in society | 6 | |
| 1617946253 | megafaunal extinction | Dying-out of a number of large animal species, including the mammoth and several species of horses and camels, occurred around 11,000 10,000 years ago, at the end of the Ice Age. Extinction may have been caused by excessive hunting or by the changing climate of the era | 7 | |
| 1617946254 | "the original affluent society" | term coined by the scholar Marshall Sahlins in 1972 to describe Paleolithic societies, which he regarded as affluent not because they had so much but because they wanted or needed so little | 8 | |
| 1617946255 | Neanderthals | Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, a European variant of Homo sapiens that died out about 25,000 years ago | 9 | |
| 1617946256 | Jomon culture | A settled paleolithic culture of prehistoric Japan, characterized by seaside villages and the creation of some of the world's earliest pottery | 10 | |
| 1617946257 | n/um | Among the San, a spiritual potency that becomes activated during "curling dances" and protects humans from the malevolent forces of gods or ancestral spirits | 11 | |
| 1617946258 | "insulting the meat" | A San cultural practice meant to inflate pride that involved negative comments about the meat brought in by a hunter and the expectation that a successful hunter would disparage his own kill | 12 | |
| 1617946259 | Greek Goddess | According to one theory, a dominant deity of the Paleolithic era | 13 | |
| 1617946260 | Ice Age | Any number of cold periods in the earth's history; the last Ice Age was at its peak around 20,000 years ago | 14 | |
| 1617946261 | Hadza | A people of northern Tanzania, almost the last surviving Paleolithic society | 15 | |
| 1617946262 | "human revolution" | The term used to describe the transition of humans from acting out of biological imperative to dependence on learned or invented ways of living (culture) | 16 | |
| 1617946263 | "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 | 17 | |
| 1617946264 | Flores Man | A recently discovered hominid species of Indonesia | 18 | |
| 1617946265 | Chumash Culture | Paleolithic culture of southern California that survived until the modern era | 19 | |
| 1617946266 | Dreamtime | A complex worldview of Australia's Aboriginal people that held that current humans live in a vibration or echo of ancestral happenings | 20 | |
| 1617946267 | Clovis Culture | The earliest widespread and distinctive culture in North America; named from the clovis point, a particular kind of projectile point | 21 | |
| 1617946268 | Austronesian migrations | The last phase of the great human migration that established a human presence in every habitable region of the earth. Austronesian-speaking people settled the Pacific Islands and Madagascar in a series of seaborne migrations that began around 3,500 years ago | 22 | |
| 1617946269 | Brotherhood of the Tomol | A prestigious craft guild that monopolized the building and ownership of large oceangoing canoes, or tomols(pron. toe-mole), among the Chumash people (located in what is now southern California) | 23 |
