Chapter 1 Flashcards
Preliterate societies transmitted their culture by…
stone art, cave paintings, oral tradition, and creation myths
What is meant by culture?
learned patterns of expression and action
The Neolithic era is associated with…
the rise of agrictulture
What is the first recognizable cultural activity of human beings?
toolmaking
Most early human activity centered on
gathering food
Since the foraging lifestyle was not particularly unpleasant or hard, forager had a great deal of time left for…
socializing, making otols, and creating art
The Agricultural Revolutions occurred in which era?
Neolithic
Women played a major role in the transition to crop cultivation because?
they were the primary gatherers of wild plant foods
The earliest transition to agriculture was…
in the Middle East
Swidden agriculture describes…
a practice of shifting cultivation to new fields
Rice was first grown in which area?
China
the American continents contained very few domesticated animals because
there were few species suitable for domestication
The greatest change cause by the grdual adoption of agriculture was
global population increase
Pastoralism differed from animal husbandry in that
pastoralists were mobile populations without many material goods
Farming was probably a more difficult way of life than foraging because
working harder to clear and cultivate land
The religions of farming communities tended to focus on
an earth mother or female deity
Recent discoveries of large stones and burial chambers may indicate
ancestor rituals
Matrilineal societies were
defined by matrilineal heritage
Metalworking in the late Neolithic period was used for
decoration or in ceremonies
The term city-state refers to
an urban center and the agricultural hinterlands it controlled
In Mesopotamian cities, the temples housed
the cult of the deity or deities
In the third millennium BCE, the political ruler in Sumer was
a ‘lugal’
What motivated Mesopotamian conquest of far-reaching territories?
the need for vital resources
A means of distinguishing slaves in Mesopotamian society was by
a particular hairstyle
Historians can infer that Mesopotamian society was made up of how many classes?
three classes
Women in Mesopotamian society had a lower status than in a hunter-gratherer society because of
the shift of the major role in food provision from women to men
Mesopotamian gods were anthropomorphic; that is, they
were humanlike in form and conduct
How did Mesopotamians become priests?
inherited their positions form their fathers
The most visible part of the temple compound was the
ziggurat
The abundance of amulets in Mesopotamia suggests
the belief in the value of magic
The Mesopotamian writing system is called
cuneiform
The first metal that the Mesopotamians used was
bronze
Cuneiform writing was accomplished by
incising written symbols in clay
Mesopotamian’s numeric system was unique because it was
base-60
The culture that developed in Egypt was unique largely because of
Egypt’s natural isolationa dn essential self-sufficiency
Crucial to Egypt’s agriculture was
proximity to the Nile River
Which of the following was not among Egypt’s natural resources? [copper, reeds for paper, turquoise and gold, salt]
salt
Egyptians viewed the universe as an orderly and beneficient place because
their environment was largely stable and predictable, unlike Mesopotamia’s
According to the Egyptian belief, the function assigned by the gods ot the Egyptian kings was to mainting ma’at, or the
divinely authorized order of the universe
The pyramids were crucial to Egyptians kings because they ensure their place in the afterlife. The first great pyramid was constructed for
Djoser
Egyptian writing was
on papyrus in a cursive script and in hieroglyphics for monuments
Egyptian writing were probably first used for
administrative matters
Egypt’s external interest were primarily concentrated on
mainting access to valuable raw materials
Women in Egypt seemed to have
rights of divorce, rights to property, more status than in Mesopotamia, subordinate status to men
Fundamental concepts of Egyptian religion were based on
the vision of a cosmic order that the physical environment of the Nile Valley evoked
Egyptian kingship and religion were closely intertwined because it was believed
the pharaoh was the living Horus and son of Re
the Egyptian death ritual is complex because of
the belief that death was a journey beset with danger
Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Indus Valley civilizations were all
based on fertile floodplains and river valleys
Egyptians’ obssession with the physical condition of the cadaver was because
mummification was a way to preserve the body for the afterlife
The two main cities of early Indian civilization are
Harrapa and Mohenjo-Daro
Which was NOT a technology found in Indian civilization
mummification
The Indus valley system of writing
has not been deciphered
Metal objects unearthed in the Indus Valley
have been mostly tools and other useful objects
In order to discovery more specific information about the social structure of Indus Valley civilizations, what needs to be done?
the writing of the civilization must be deciphered
