Final Notes for Study Cards - Sheet1 Flashcards
- Describe the development of Mesopotamian civilization. Provide a chronology and description of sites.
Presence of Rivers
Formative Period (8000-7000 BP) Farms
Ubaid Period (7300-5600 BP) Templesirrigation
Eridu - oldest temple
Uruk Period (5600 - 5100 BP) - city states, walls, trade
Early Dynastic/Sumerian Civilization (5100 - 4300 BP) - 13 City States - wheeled carts
- How did the development of Neolithic towns along the Nile set the stage for the development of a unified Egypt? (what are the first clues of complex society?)
The civilization of ancient Egypt was indebted to the Nile River and its dependable seasonal flooding. The river’s predictability and fertile soil allowed the Egyptians to build an empire on the basis of great agricultural wealth
- What is the significance of Hierakonpolis in the development of Egyptian civilization?
evidence of the unification of Egypt N/S
- Describe the development of Indus Valley civilization. Provide a chronology and description of sites. In what ways do the Indus Valley civilization differ from Egyptian and Mesopotamian?
• 12,000 BP -stone age hunter/gatherers
• 8,000 BP -settled farming villages,
domesticated plants and animals
Mehrgarh -best known early farming site
• Domesticates: wheat, barley, peas, lentils,
buffalo, cattle, pig, sheep, goats
• 5,000 BP -Harappan civilizations begin to
flourish
- Compare and contrast conflict theories and integration theories for the evolution of ancient state societies.
In Chapter 10 I think
- Describe the development of Chinese civilization. Provide a chronology and description of sites.
Lung-shan Culture
• 5000 BP
• Rice dominant cultigen
• Sites larger and more permanent
• Started on the lower Yangtze river - became
widespread through trade and interaction
- How do the cemeteries at Ch’eng-tzu-yai and T’a-ssu show the emergence of a socially stratified society in ancient China?
Ch’eng-tzu-yai Cemeteries: show status differentiation
• Elaborate graves and small, narrow pits
- What was the terra cotta army of the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty? What does it tell us about the nature of economic, social, and political inequality in ancient Chinese civilization?
Qin Dynasty of Imperial China (2200 BP)
Strong economy to have warriors and weapons
Beief in the afterlife
- List and describe the basic elements of Classic Maya civilization.
• Emerged from Preclassic
to Classic Period (AD 250
- AD 950)
Codices / Codex
Stelae
Tikal
Copan
- What reasons have been proposed for the collapse of the Maya civilization?
environmental catastrophe or regional abandonment and reorganization
- Describe the civilization of Teotihuacán. How did its enormous empire evolve?
Basin of Mexico, ca. 200 – 500 CE
Population estimated as high as 200,000
Urban planning
Avenue of the Dead
Pyramid of the Sun
Pyramid of the Moon
- Identify the pre-Inca civilizations of South America. Who were they?
Andean Civilization
• Intensive farming systems
• Massive pyramids and temples
• Large cities
• Powerful armies
• Hierarchies of wealth, power, and prestige
• Pottery, gold-smithing, textiles
• No written language
- Who were the Inca? How did they maintain their vast civilization?
Inca
• AD 1476-1525
• Largest and most highly integrated
political system in New World
Highly integrated system of fishing, herding, and farming • Irrigation systems brought under central command
- Discuss the evolution of the mound builders. When did mound building in North American begin? How did the purpose of the mounds change through time?
• By 12,000 years ago, huge continental ice
sheets retreat
- What does the construction of mounds like those at Cahokia signify in terms of the social and political organization of the mound builders?
Cahokia
• Over 100 mounds within 5-6 square miles
• Great ceremonial center
•
“downtown” area covered 200 acres
• Monks Mound - central pyramid (102 ft tall,
covers area of 16 acres)
• 30,000-40,000 people
• Class-based society
- Who were the Ancestral Pueblos? What sites do we attribute to this culture?
• Ancestral Pueblo (Anasazi)
• ancestral to cultures of the modern Pueblo Indians
(Hopi, Zuni)
• lived on the Colorado plateau in northern Arizona,
into southern Utah, southern Colorado, and
northern New Mexico (four corners region)
• By 1000 years ago, people lived in year round
villages; maize agriculture important
• Early: pithouses
• later: construction of apartment like pueblos -
stone masonry complex
Stonehenge
Megalithic monuments
The construction of Stonehenge
Trilithons
Sarsen
Lintels
sarsens
sandstone boulder Stonehenge
Catalhoyuk
Catal Höyük
• 9000 BP
• Large settlement
• (26 acres)
• 2000+ interconnected houses
• No streets
• Enter houses through rooftops
• Population over 8000 people
Gobekli Tepe
• Southeastern Turkey
• 11,600 BP
• Monumental carved stone
• Circles of limestone pillars
• Largest: 18 foot tall / 16 tons
• Images of animals: lions/scorpions/fox
Jericho
This wall is among the earliest archaeological evidence in the world for construction on a monumental scale. The builders of the wall likely were members of an ancient chiefdom society beginning some 9,000 years ago.
La Venta
olmec city, at its peak covered about 2km squared, a little more than 0.75 miles squared
San Lorenzo
earliest olmec city. positioned on a dry terrace, well above the areas prone to flooding, but still postioned close to fertile soil.
Chavin de Huantar
Chavin seems to have functioned as a unifying element in the establishment of complex society in South America. (Courtesy of Gordon Willey)
megalith
a large stone that forms a prehistoric monument
complex societies
Economic organization
Social and political organization
Religious / Ideological justification
Are complexity and inequality inevitable
Mesopotamia
Ubaid
Irrigation
Power in the Temple
Uruk Period
City-State
Halafian
The Halaf culture is a prehistoric period which lasted between about 6100 BC and 5100 BC. Pottery Neolithic Turkey, Syria
Olmec
Ancient culture of lowland Mesoamerica. Dating to 3,200 years ago, the religious iconography of Olmec art seems to have served as a unifying element in ancient Mesoamerica.
Caral
Ancient north american city Located in the Supe River Valley, about 23 km (14 mi) from the Pacific coast and 200 km (about 124 mi) north of Lima, the modern capital of Peru
City-state
Political entity characteristic of some early civilizations. A central population center dominates the surrounding hinterlands. The wealth of the countryside flows into the city where it is concentrated in the hands of the elite classes.
Civilization
cultures exhibiting social stratification, labor and craft specialization, a food surplus used to support a political and/or religious elite, monumental construction, and a system of record keeping.
Social stratification
Pattern of social integration in which individuals are placed into a hierarchy of social levels.
Specialization of labor
Cultural pattern in which some individuals can focus all or most of their labors on some specialty: metal working, pottery manufacturing, stone working, weaving, architectural design, etc.
State
A state is both quantitatively and qualitatively different from a chiefdom. States ordinarily are bigger and their material accomplishments more impressive. But they are more than simply big, impressive chiefdoms; states are true class societies, often rigidly stratified into social levels. The ruling class controls the populace not by consensus but by coercion and force. A state possesses a true government with formal laws and regulations—and formal penalties for those who disobey—and the ruling class in a state society runs the government. “Civilization” is most often used to characterize the recognizable material results of the development of state societies
Monumental works
Large-scale, communal construction projects characteristic of civilizations.
Conflict models
Conflict-based explanations, which Joseph Tainter (1988) calls “internal conflict” models, propose that complex civilizations evolved as a way to reduce, control, and mediate conflict among people living in a society.
Integration models
Integration theories, which Joseph Tainter (1988:32) divides into “managerial” and “external conflict” models, see civilization as evolving from the need for increasingly complex integrative mechanisms in increasingly complex situations
Cuneiform
Early form of written records in Mesopotamia, involving the impression of standardized symbols on wet clay.
Token
Small geometric shapes of clay, some bearing impressed symbols, dating back to as much as 10,000 years ago in the Middle East that appear to represent an early system of record keeping.
Ubaid
Name given to the culture of southern Mesopotamia at 6,300 B.P. Irrigation canals constructed by the Ubaidic people made agriculture possible and larger settlements grew up in the Mesopotamian flood plain at this time.
Eridu
ubadic site
Tell al Ubaid
ubadic site
Ur
Uruk’s economic and military rival; site depicting social stratification • - royal cemetery at Ur: 2500 burials, 20 with private chambers with grave goods
Uruk
ubaid settlement, world’s first city, between 5500 and 5200 bp population was estimated to be more than 10000
Badarian
upper egytian period, 6400 years ago
Fayum/Merimden
lower egyptian periods, Fayum A: 7200 years ago, Merimden: 6800 years ago
Hieroglyphic
A writing system in which pictorial symbols are used to convey a particular sound, object, or idea—or some combination of these three things.
Nubia
The territory south of the ancient Egyptian nation; primarily between the first and sixth cataracts of the Nile, from southern Egypt to Sudan.
Rosetta Stone
Discovered in 1799, the Rosetta Stone bore the same message in three scripts: Greek and two versions of the written language of ancient Egypt, demotic and hieroglyphic.
Hierakonpolis
an egyptian community, likened to a city state. pottery manufacture being a booming business
