Part I Notes Flashcards
Hunting and gathering economies dominated human history until…
9000 BC. These economies helped to propel migration over most of the lands on earth.
Agriculture generated some surplus that could…
support other specialist labor. By 7000 BC, cities and crafts that depended on trade emerged in the Middle East.
The emergence of civilization occured in…
many, though not all, agricultural societies. Early civilizations formed in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus river basin, China, and the Americas.
Mesopotamian civilization pioneered…
basic forms of civilizaton, from an urban economy to writing. Frequent invasions contributed to their distinctive religious belief and political systems.
Egypt benefited from…
Mesopotamian trade and technology, developing a different and more stable version of civilization.
The two great cities discovered thus far and numerous towns of Harappan civilization…
flourished in the Indus River valley between about 2500 and 1600 BC. As in the Fertile Crescent, environmental change, natural calamities, and successive nomadic migrations brought about the irretrievable decline of Harappa in the middle centuries of the 2nd millennium BC.
Chinese civilization emerged from…
the unification of large village communities that had developed along the Yellow River. In the Shang era, which spanned much of the 2nd millennium BC, existing irrigation systems were extended, and a system of writing was devised that has proved a key source of Chinese identity to the present day.
The Olmec civilization spread…
certain elements of culture over the Mesoamerican region. The civilization of Chavin spread along the Peruvian coast and created a horizon of widely shared culture.
Most river valley civilizations declined after…
1200 BC. A number of small centers emerged in the Middle East that introduced further innovations, including the religion of Judaism.
