Chapter 12

Question 1

When did pottery become widespread in the Middle East?

Answer 1

7000 B.P.

Question 2

What is the name of the cultural period during which the first chiefdoms and elites emerged in northern Syria?

Answer 2

Halafian

Question 3

An egalitarian society

Answer 3

lacks status distinctions except those based on age, gender, and individual talents or achievements.

Question 4

The foundations of the state—a social and political unit featuring a central government, extreme contrasts of wealth, and social classes—emerged

Answer 4

in the alluvial desert plain of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, where a new economy based on irrigation and trade fueled the growth of this entirely new form of society.

Question 5

Cuneiform is the term for the early writing (which presumably developed to handle record keeping for a centralized economy) developed in what part of the world?

Answer 5

Mesopotamia

Question 6

Metallurgy and the wider and rapid distribution of metals evident after 5000 B.P. would not have developed without the crucial discovery of

Answer 6

smelting

Question 7

Like Mesopotamia and China, many early civilizations came to rely on metallurgy. Aside from metallurgy, a skill that set the early civilizations of Peru’s Andes apart was

Answer 7

their pottery techniques.

Question 8

Which of the following best describes the role of hydraulic systems in state formation?

Answer 8

Some states were the by-products of the organizational requirements of large irrigation systems.

Question 9

Which of the following played a key role in the formation of Mesoamerica’s earliest state, the Zapotec state?

Answer 9

conquest warfare

Question 10

Early states lacked social classes.

Answer 10

false

Question 11

In the Middle East, as subsistence economies became more specialized and more dependent on domesticated species, population centers began to emerge that had temples, writing, and canals for irrigating fields.

Answer 11

true

Question 12

The earliest states emerged in Mesopotamia.

Answer 12

true

Question 13

The Natufians were the first culture to develop a state in the Indus Valley.

Answer 13

false

Question 14

Teotihuacán and Çatalhöyük are two of the earliest towns in the Middle East.

Answer 14

false

Question 15

Jericho, the earliest known town, is located in central Turkey.

Answer 15

false

Question 16

Which of the following attributes distinguishes states from chiefdoms?

Answer 16

sharp class distinctions

Question 17

Ranked societies have hereditary inequality, but they lack stratification.

Answer 17

true

Question 18

China’s first state, the Shang dynasty, had bronze metallurgy and writing.

Answer 18

true

Question 19

The major cities Harappa and Mohenjo Daro, exhibited urban planning with carefully laid out wastewater systems and residential sectors. Where were these cities located?

Answer 19

Indus River Valley

Question 20

The first writing presumably developed to handle record keeping for a centralized economy. Where did this first happen?

Answer 20

southern Mesopotamia