Early Civilization Flashcards
The most significant changer in all of human history was the domestication of_________.
What thesis is founded on this idea?
Plants and Animals
Diamond Thesis
Using an approach called “periodization” the various human eras have been defined as
Stone Age
Bronze Age
Iron Age
The stone age is divided into how many eras? What are they?
2
Paleolithic
Neolithic
The Paleolithic Era existed when and was characterized by____?
250,000 - 9000 BCE
humans used tools of stone and wood and gathered their food
When did the Neolithic period begin? What started it?
9000 BCE.
The beginning of agriculture and the domestication of plants and animals
Around 5 - 7 million years ago some Hominids in East Africa began to walk_____, which is usually referred to as ___________
upright, bipedalism
Homo habilis started making simple stone________
axes/tools.
Homo erectus had a larger brain and migrated out of the continent of
Africa
Homo sapiens had a even larger brains and developed spoken _________.
language
By 25,000 years ago Homo sapiens were making baskets and 17,000 years ago they used bows and ________ to launch arrows.
atlatls
In Europe a group of Homo Erectus known as __________ existed 150,000 years ago and probably died out after interacting and breeding with Homo Sapiens
Neanderthals
In the later Paleolithic, people in many parts of the world created _______ and ________, and developed ________ ideas
art and music, religeous
Paleolithic society were considered___________ (how did they obtain their food?)
Hunter/Gatherers
Foraging societies featured a division of __________ and their diets contrasted sharply with the way we eat today. Their diets were low in _____ and ______, high in ________ and rich in ______ and _________.
labor
fat and salt
fiber
vitamins and minerals
Paleolithic people thought of their world as existing beyond the visible - “People, animals, plants, natural occurrences, and other things around them had spirits, and idea called ___________. In these societies spiritually adept men and women were called ________, who had the ability to communicate with the unseen world.
animism
shamans
Around 9,000 BCE, a gradual shift from foraging to raising crops and animals developed into “the most important change in human history,” the _______________. This marked the transition from the _________ to the _________.
Agricultural Revolution
Paleolithic
Neolithic
Through human intervention, certain crops became_______, modified by selected breeding.
domesticated
Crop raising with hand tools and human power is known as ____________.
Horticulture
intentional crop planting developed first in an area called the __________.
Fertile Crescent
A recent archaeological find at Gobekli Tepe in present-day Turkey suggests that __________ factors may have played a role in the development of agriculture. It is very near hear that the oldest domesticated _________ was discovered.
cultural
wheat
Within several centuries of initial crop planting, people in the _________, parts of _________, and the __________ Valley were relying on domesticated food products alone. They were building permanent houses in villages and had invented new ways of storing food such as _______ made from _________.
Fertile Crescent,
China
Nile
New crops were domesticated such as _______ in southern Mexico, ________ and Quinoa in the Andes, squash and ________ in eastern North America.
Corn
Potatoes
beans
At roughly the same3 time as the domestication of plants, people also domesticated _________ and an economic system based on herding flocks of animals emerged and is referred to as _____________.
animals
pastoralism
Human interaction with domesticated animals allowed the development of resistance to many diseases, which is one of the main contentions of the _______________.
Diamond Thesis
Sometime around the 5th millennium BCE, pot-makers in Mesopotamia developed a potter’s wheel, which was later adapted for use on carts and _________ pulled by animals.
plows
What was life like for the creatures as portrayed in the opening minutes of the movie?
Primitive, fight for survival, survival of the fittest - eating roots and grass
An object appears in their camp one day. What do you think this object represents?
Intelligence - more to the world
How is life different for these creatures after they have had contact with “the object”?
Bones could be used as weapons. Discovered first tools. Learned how to survive better since they changed their diet.
Which elements of “human nature” are displayed by the creatures after they have had contact with “the Object”.
Technology - tables have turned - vengeance against the predators - started walking upright.
Jared Diamond has spent thirty years investigating why the world became so __________.
Unequal
A New Guinean name Yali once asked Diamond “why you white men have so much __________ and we New Guineans have so little?”
Cargo
Western colonials typically believed that power was determined by _______. Can you think of an example of how this type of thinking was used by Europeans and Americans?
race
Holocaust and Slavery
Diamond claims that any explanation based on race is __________ because human intelligence is the same all over the globe.
absurd
All great civilizations have at least three things in common:
1) advanced technology
2) large populations
3) organized laborforce
13,000 years ago the last _______ age was over. Humans around the world lived as __________/__________ in small mobile groups. This way of life is still prevalent in parts of New guinea.
Ice
Hunter/Gatherer
In the ancient Middle East two cereal grasses grew wild, ______ & ________.
barley and wheat.
The most recent archaeology suggests that a place known as ______,near the Dead Sea was one of the earliest villages in the world - it existed ______years ago.
Dhra
11,500
The world’s first ______ was found in Dhar which was evidence that humans had begun growing and ________ their own food.
granary
storing
Stone Age people of the Middle East were becoming _______ they were beginning to control _________. This was the first _____ of crops
farmers
nature
domestication
In China, ______ was the main crop.
Rice
Native Americans grew _______, ________ and _________
corn, squash and beans
Diamond argues that New Guineans failed to advance because they lacked ____________ crops.
productive
Those people with access to the most productive crops became the most productive farmers - it came down to _______ luck.
geographic
Diamond is arguing that the inequalities of the world were born from the ______ we eat. For example, Americans have wheat which provides _____ of the calories they eat.
crops
1/5
_______ domestication created a dependable meat and milk supply, as well as a source of power once the ______ was invented
Animal
Plow
Diamond point out that the number of animals that have actually been domesticated is small, ______ out of 148 possibilities, and _____ of these were native to the Middle East, which became the ______ ______ because it had the best crops and animals.
14
4
Fertile Crescent
A site in Southern Jordan tells us that ______years ago people were living in and decorating their homes
9,000
Production of a surplus of food meant that _______ could emerge in the community. As an example, people learned to work with ________ to produce plaster.
specialization, limestone
In New Guinea, specialization did not occur because
their agriculture was not such that they could produce a surplus of food.
Despite the advantages, the people of the Fertile Crescent ______ most villages around _______ years after their emergence. They did this because__________. However, the knowledge of the Middle East was transferred along the ________ axis of Eurasia.
abandoned
1000
destroyed their environment
east/west
The fact that Diamond won a __________ indicates that his ideas are taken seriously by the scholarly community. According to Diamond, the reason some cultures are so far advanced beyond other is ___________.
Pulitzer Prize
location, location, location
An agriculture revolution got started in an area known as the _________, around __________ years ago, and soon after it appeared in the country of _________.
Fertile Crescent
11,500
China
Diamond argues that technological advances spread much easier from _____ to _______ than they do from _______ to _______ because latitude plays a major role. This explains why the agricultural revolution spread from the Fertile Crescent to the continent of _______, and then ton to ___________.
East, West
North, South
Europe
North America
Western Europeans developed such a technological advantage over the indigenous people of North and South American continents. At one point, 169 _________ defeated 80,000 _________ in a short period of time.
Spaniards
Inca
It is estimated that _______% of Native american casualties resulted from disease. Eurasians had developed __________ to many disease because they had a long history of contact with _________ __________
95, disease
immunities, domestic animals
Even though it is believed that humans first appeared on the continent of _________, colonialism worked to rob it of its resources as it established a “_____________”
Africa
legalized institution of corruption
Why does Diamond reject the notion that his theory is a version of geographic/environmental determinism?
His example is that people can make the decision to do something about their adverse situation that is holding them back (i.e. disease in Singapore, Malaysia & Taiwan) and don’t need to accept those adversities presented by their geographic location and environment.
What are some objections to Diamonds theisi.
1) Some scholars diagree with the premise itsel and claim that history developed the same way everywhere following the exact same pattern in every place on Earth.
2) Diamond is too quick to dispose of the human brain.
Origins of the human race can be traced back to the continent of______?
Africa
People in the Fertile crescent started storing their food in ________ made from ________.
pottery, clay
In the 16th century Europeans took their crops and animals to the Americas. At that time there was not a single _ or ear of ____.
cow, wheat
Now there are ___ million cattle in the US and Americans consume _____ million tons of wheat each year. In exchange, _ and ______ were introduced to Europe.
100, 20, corn potato
Why was the farming the key step toward technological advancement?
It allowed people to produce a surplus of food which allowed other people in the community to become specialized in other areas. Some of these areas were tool making and production of building materials.
