Chapters 1-7: Period 1 Flashcards
What is the evidence that explains the earliest history of humans and the planet? How is this evidence interpreted?
Humans first appeared on Earth during the Paleolithic Era. The evidence of burial grounds, as well as stone tools and other items explains this. They show a general migration path from Africa outwards. These tools show that the groups were hunter-foragers and nomadic.
Where did humans first appear? What were their society, technology, and culture?
Humans first appeared on Earth during the Paleolithic Era, in the steppes and savannah of Africa. These humans were hunter-foragers, changing their tools and culture to adapt to their surroundings.
Humans used fire in new ways: to aid hunting and foraging, to protect against
predators and to adapt to cold environments.
Humans developed a wider range
of tools specially adapted to different environments from tropics to tundra.
Describe the earliest humans’ technology and tools.
They used fire as a main tool everywhere, from hunting and foraging, as well as for defense and warmth. The earlier human’s used a variety of stone weapons for their specific environments and food they hunted.
How did the earliest humans’ society help them procure enough supplies to survive?
Each band of hunter-foragers had specific duties assigned to a group of people to make what they needed for survival. However, exchanges in items and ideas between these groups were common.
What were the long-term demographic, social, political, and economic effects of the Neolithic Revolution?
In response to warming climates at the end of the last Ice Age from about 10,000 years ago, some groups adapted to the environment in new ways while others remained hunter/foragers.
Settled agriculture appeared in several different parts of the world. The switch to agriculture created a more reliable, but not necessarily more diversified, food supply.
Agriculturalists also had a massive impact on the environment, through intensive cultivation of selected plants to the exclusion of others, through the construction of irrigation systems and through the use of domesticated animals for food and for labor.
Populations increased; family groups gave way to village and later urban life with all its complexity. Patriarchy and forced labor systems developed giving elite men concentrated power over most of the other people in their societies.
How did pastoral societies resemble or differ from early agricultural societies?
Differences:
•Pastoral societies were smaller and more mobile than early agricultural societies. Because of this, they rarely accumulated large amounts of material possessions.
•Pastoralism focused more on hunting and gathering, while early agricultural societies depended more on the same soil
•Pastoral societies adapted far better to their environment as they could move
Similarities:
•Both bred animals
How did the Neolithic Revolution affect human societies economically and socially?
The Neolithic Revolution began the era of permanent societies.
· Due to the closed nature of society, the demographic of farmers was less diverse than of the demographic of herders as they mostly mated within their population
· Gender roles became more prevalent
· The reliance on the limited amount of land they had gave way to political organization
· Less variety in terms of food which affected the overall health of the farming society’s citizens
· Political organization caused social organization which was divided by amount of property and power.
Why did the Neolithic Revolution start? Where did the Neolithic Revolution first transform human populations?
Possibly as a response to climatic change, permanent agricultural villages
emerged first in the lands of the eastern Mediterranean. Agriculture emerged
at different times in Mesopotamia, the Nile River valley and sub-Saharan
Africa, the Indus River valley, the Yellow River or Huang He valley, Papua-New
Guinea, Mesoamerica and the Andes
Where did pastoralism persist even after the Neolithic Revolution?
Pastoralism developed at various sites in the grasslands of Afro-Eurasia.
What various crops and animals were developed or domesticated during the Neolithic Revolution?
Maize, beans, and squash Rye, wheat, barley Potato Teff Rice Quinoa Various marine animals, snails Sheep, goats, yaks, llamas
What labor adjustments did humans make in order to facilitate the Neolithic Revolution?
Agricultural communities had to work cooperatively to clear land and to create
the water control systems needed for crop production.
Domestication of beasts of burden for work (pulling carts/plows); women also took part in gardening and there was an increase of work burden on females
What were the environmental effects of the Neolithic Revolution?
Soil was overused.
Deforestation occurred to make more land available for agriculture
Overgrazing
Animals became more suited to human needs due to breeding.
What were the effects of pastoralism and agriculture on humans?
Agriculture and pastoralism began to transform human societies. Pastoralism
and agriculture led to more reliable and abundant food supplies which increased
population.
What effects did pastoralism & agriculture have on the food supply?
Increased and more dependable food supply.
What were the social effects of the increased food supply caused by the increase of agriculture?
Surpluses of food and other goods led to specialization of labor and class distinctions, including new
classes of artisans and warriors, and the development of elites. The people with more land and therefore more food were higher up in the social hierarchy.
Increased population
More leisure time
