Prehistory Flashcards
Austronesian migrations
The last phase of the great human migration, establishing the presence of humans in every habitable region of the earth. These migrations began about 3,500 years ago and were located at the Pacific islands and Madagascar through seaborne migrations.
Brotherhood of the Tomol
A reputable craft guild (group of workers that provide services for mutual benefit) that controlled the building and ownership of large ocean-going canoes, or tomols, among the Chumash people.
Chumash Culture
A culture in southern California of the paleolithic era that lasted up to the modern era.
Clovis Culture
The first known distinct culture in North America— named after the Clovis point, a type of projectile point.
Dreamtime
The complex understanding/belief of Australia’s first people that the current humans live in an echo or mirroring of past/ancestral happenings.
Flores Man
A recently discovered hominid species of Indonesia.
“Gathering and hunting peoples”
People who gather food or hunt food (more gather than hunt, hence the name change) from natural sources, rather than artificially producing food for survival.
Great Goddess
A theoretically dominant deity of the Paleolithic era.
Hadza
People belonging to almost the last surviving Paleolithic society of northern Tanzania.
“human revolution”
The term used to describe the transition of humans from acting out of biological imperative to dependence on learned or invented ways of living (culture).
Ice Age
Periods of cold (global warming/cooling) in the history of the earth— the last at its peak at about 18,000 BC.
“insulting the meat”
A San cultural practice where negative comments were used against a hunter’s meat with the expectation that a successful hunter would be more modest about their kill.
Jomon culture
A settled Paleolithic culture of prehistoric Japan, characterized by seaside villages and the creation of some of the world’s earliest pottery.
Megafaunal extinction
The extinction (death) of many large animal species, including the mammoth, horses, and camels at the end of the Ice Age (11,000-10,000 years ago) possibly caused by either climate change of the era or excessive hunting.
Neanderthals (Homo sapien neanderthalis)
A European version of Homo Sapiens that went extinct at around 23,000 BC.
n/um
Among the San, a spiritual force/power that becomes activated during “curing dances” and protects humans from the evil forces of gods or ancestral spirits.
“the original affluent society”
A term coined by Marshall Sahlins in 1972— describing Paleolithic societies as affluent not because they had so much but because they were in need or want of so little.
Paleolithic
Etymologized as “old stone age”— describing Homo Sapien societies before agriculture was developed. (250,000-10,000 BC)
Paleolithic rock art
Art that is derived from any paleolithic gathering and hunting society, specifically the many paintings discovered in Spain-France, dating to all the way to 18,000 BC. The art depicted many animals, and occasionally human figures and other abstract designs.
Paleolithic “settling down”
A process that occurred at the beginning of the last Ice Age in which Paleolithic peoples moved toward permanent settlements that were marked by increasing storage of food and accumulation of goods. Inequalities in society also grew.
San or Ju’/hoansi
A Paleolithic people still currently living on the northern edge of the Kalahari desert in southern Africa.
Shaman
People who provide contact from the human world with the spiritual realm through trances and psychoactive drugs.
trance dance
In San culture, a nightlong ritual held to activate a human being’s inner spiritual potency (n/um) to counteract the evil influences of gods and ancestors. The practice was apparently common to the Khoisan people, of whom the Ju/’hoansi are a surviving remnant.
Venus figurines
Carvings of women in the paleolithic era usually with accented breasts, buttocks, hips, and stomachs, possibly with religious significance.
