AP World History Ch. 1 Flashcards

10416791976	Civilization	An ambiguous term often used to denote more complex societies but sometimes used by anthropologists to describe any group of people sharing a set of cultural traits	0
10416791977	Culture	Socially transmitted patterns of action and expression	1
10416791978	History	The study of past events and changes in the development, transmission, and transformation of cultural practices	2
10416793188	Stone Age	The historical period characterized by the productions of tools from stone and other nonmetallic substances. It was followed in some places by the Bronze Age and more generally by the Iron Age	3
10416793189	Paleolithic	The period of the Stone Age associated with the evolution of humans	4
10416795019	Neolithic	The period of the Stone Age associated with the ancient Agricultural Revolution	5
10416795020	Foragers	People who supported themselves by hunting wild animals and gathering wild edible plants and insects	6
10416795469	Agricultural Revolutions	The change from food gathering to food production that occurred between c. 8000-2000 BCE	7
10416795470	Holocene	The geological era since the end of the Great Ice Age which ended about 11,000 years ago	8
10416795471	Megalith	Structures and complexes of very large stones constructed for ceremonial and religious purposes in Neolithic times	9
10416796381	Babylon	The largest and most important city in Mesopotamia. It achieved particular eminence as the capital of the Amorite King Hammurabi in the 18th century BCE and the Neo-Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar in the sixth century BCE	10
10416796382	Sumerians	The people who dominated southern Mesopotamia through the end of the third millennium BCE. They were responsible for the creation of many fundamental elements of Mesopotamian culture- such as irrigation technology, cuneiform, and religious conceptions- taken over by their Semitic successors	11
10416796383	Semitic	Family of related languages long spoken across parts of western Asia and northern Africa. In antiquity these languages included Hebrew, Aramaic, and Phoenician. The most widespread modern member of the family is Arabic	12
10416796384	City-State	A small independent state consisting of an urban center and the surrounding agricultural territory	13
10416797000	Hammurabi	Amorite ruler of Babylon; he conquered many city-states in southern and northern Mesopotamia, and he is most known for a code of laws, inscribed on a black stone pillar, illustrating the principles to be used in legal cases	14
10416797001	Scribe	In the governments of many ancient societies, a professional position reserved for men who had undergone the lengthy training required to be able to read and write using cuneiforms, hieroglyphics, or other early, cumbersome writing systems	15
10416797002	Ziggurat	A massive pyramidal shaped tower made of mudbricks; associated with the religious complexes in ancient Mesopotamian cities, but its function is unknown	16
10416797003	Amulet	Small charm meant to protect the bearer from evil; found frequently in archaeological excavations in Mesopotamia and Egypt, the reflect the religious practices of the common people	17
10416797383	Cuneiform	A system of writing in which wedge-shaped symbols represented words or syllables; it is originated in Mesopotamia and was used initially for Sumerian and Akkadian but later was adapted to represent other languages of western Asia. Because so many symbols had to be learned, literacy was confined to a relatively small group of administrators and scribes	18
10416797384	Pharaoh	The central figure in the ancient Egyptian state; believed to be an earthly manifestation of the gods, he used his absolute power to maintain the safety and prosperity of Egypt	19
10416797385	Ma'at	Egyptian term for the concept of divinely created and maintained order in the universe	20
10416797975	Pyramid	A large, triangle-shaped monument, used in Egypt and Nubia as a burial place from the king	21
10416797976	Memphis	The capital of Old Kinggdom Egypt, near the head of the Nile Delta. Early rulers were interred in the nearby pyramids	22
10416797977	Thebes	Capital city of Egypt and home of the ruling dynasties during the Middle and New Kingdoms	23
10416798515	Hieroglyphics	A system of writing in which pictoral symbols represented sounds, syllables, or concepts. It was used for official and monumental inscriptions in ancient Egypt. Because of the long period of study required to master this system, literacy in this was confined to a relatively small group of scribes and administrators. Cursive symbol forms were developed for rapid composition on other media, such as papyrus	24
10416798516	Papyrus	A reed that grows along the banks of the Nile River in Egypt	25
10416798517	Mummy	A body preserved by chemical processes or special natural circumstances, often in the belief that that deceased will need it again in the afterlife. In ancient Egypt the bodies of people who could afford this underwent a complex process of removing organs, filling body cavities, dehydrating the corpse with natron, and then wrapping the body with linen bandages and enclosing it in a wooden sarcophagus	26
10416798518	Harappa	Site of one of the greatest cities of the Indus Valley civilization of the third millennium BCE. It was located on the northwest frontier of the zone of cultivation, and may have been a center for the acquisition of raw materials, such as metals and precious stones, from Afghanistan and Iran	27
10416801126	Mohenjo-Daro	Largest of the cities of the Indus Valley civilization. It was centrally located in the extensive flood-plain of the Indus River in contemporary Pakistan. Little is known about the political institutions of the Indus Valley communities, but the large-scale of construction at this place, the orderly grid of streets, and the standardization of building materials are evidence of central planning	28