Semester 1 Final Part 1 Flashcards
What family does Australopithecus belong to?
hominid—a creature belonging to the family Hominidae, which includes human and human-like species.
What is an example of an Australopithecus?
Lucy - Lucy and other australopithecines would seem short, hairy, and limited in intelligence. They stood something over 1 meter (3 feet) tall, weighed 25 to 55 kilograms (55 to 121 pounds), and had a brain size of about 500 cubic centimeters. (The brain size of modern humans averages about 1,400 cc.)
How did Australopithecus compare to other apes and animal species that made them unique?
They walked upright on two legs, which en-
abled them to use their arms independently for other tasks. They had well-developed hands with opposable thumbs, which enabled them to grasp tools and perform intricate operations. They almost certainly had some ability to communicate verbally, although analysis of their skulls suggests that the portion of the brain responsible for speech was not very large or well developed.
Where did Australopithecines establish themselves throughout?
With the aid of their tools and intelligence, australopithecines established themselves securely throughout most of eastern and southern Africa.
How were Paleolithic societies somewhat equal to gender?
All members of a Paleolithic group made important contributions to communities survival, men went on hunting expeditions, and women gathered plants, roots, etc.
What was the Agricultural Revolution also known as?
known also as the Neolithic era, starting twelve to six thousand years ago, it encouraged the growth of edible crops and domesticated animals.
What was one of the earliest metals humans worked with systematically?
Copper, copper occurs in many regions around the world and was easily malleable.
By 6000 B.C.E. what did Neolithic villagers discover with what they could do to copper?
That they could use heat to extract copper from its ores and allows it also to easily be worked with.
By 5000 B.C.E. what else did they find when heating copper?
They could now heat it high enough to melt copper and pour into molds, they could now make knives, axes, hoes, and weapons
Who was Gilgamesh?
The fifth king of the city of Uruk
He was the subject of numerous poems and legends, and Mesopotamian bards made him the central figure in a cycle of stories known collectively as what?
The Epics of Gilgamesh
The stories that make up the Epic of Gilgamesh recount the adventures of this hero and his cherished friend _____ as they sought fame. They killed an evil monster, rescued Uruk from a ravaging bull, and matched wits with the gods.
Enkidu
The place-name Mesopotamia comes from two Greek words meaning what?
“the land between the rivers,” and it refers specifically to the fertile valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern-day Iraq.
Where was Sumer located?
In the southern half of Mesopotamia
By about 5000 B.C.E. what had the Sumerians constructed?
an elaborate irrigation network that helped them realize
abundant agricultural harvests.
Beginning around 4000 B.C.E., as human numbers increased in southern Mesopotamia, the Sumerians built what?
The world’s first cities; settlements, the Sumerian
cities were centers of political and military authority, and their jurisdiction extended into the surrounding regions; it also contained markets; served as cultural centers where priests maintained organized religions and scribes de-
veloped traditions of writing and formal education.
For almost a millennium, from 3200 to 2350 B.C.E., a dozen Sumerian cities like what dominated public affairs in Mesopotamia?
Eridu, Ur, Uruk, Lagash, Nippur, Kish, and others
The earliest Sumerian governments were probably assemblies of what?
prominent men who made decisions on behalf of the whole community. When crises arose, assemblies yielded their power to individuals who possessed full authority during the period of emergency. These individual rulers gradually usurped the authority of the assemblies and established themselves as monarchs.
Hammurabi also sought to maintain his empire by providing it with what?
a code of law, Hammurabi borrowed liberally from his predecessors in compiling the most extensive and most complete Mesopotamian law code.
Hammurabi’s laws established high standards of behavior and stern punishments for violators. What did they prescribe?
They prescribed death penalties for murder, theft, fraud, false accusations, sheltering of runaway slaves, failure to obey royal orders, adultery, and incest. Civil laws regulated prices, wages, commercial dealings, marital relationships, and the conditions of slavery.
The code relied heavily on the principle of lex talionis, which means what?
the “law of retaliation,” whereby offenders suffered punishments resembling their violations.
In the Hammurabi code, if a noble destroyed the eye or broke the bone of another noble, he would have his own eye destroyed or bone broken, but if a noble destroyed the eye or broke the bone of a commoner, what happened?
the noble merely paid a fine in silver.
After the collapse of the Babylonian empire, what empire was one among many jockeying for power and position in northern Mesopotamia?
Assyrian state
After about 1300 B.C.E. Assyrians gradually extended their authority to much of what?
southwest Asia
At its high point, during the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.E., the Assyrian empire embraced not only Mesopotamia but also what?
Syria, Palestine, much of Anatolia, and most of Egypt.
Moses embraced monotheism: he taught that there was only one god, known as Yahweh, who was a supremely powerful deity, the creator and sustainer of the world. What did Yahweh expect?
He expected his followers to worship him alone, and he demanded that they observe high moral and ethical standards. In the Ten Commandments, a set of religious and ethical principles that Moses announced to the Israelites, Yahweh warned his followers against destructive and antisocial behaviors such as lying, theft, adultery, and murder.
The original homeland of Indo-European speakers was probably the steppe region of what?
of modern-day Ukraine and southern Russia, the region just north of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. The earliest Indo-European speakers built their society there between about 4500 and 2500 B.C.E.
What provided Indo-European speakers with a means of expanding far beyond their original homeland.
Horses; as they flourished in southern Russia, Indo-European speakers experienced a population explosion, which prompted some of them to move into the
sparsely inhabited eastern steppe or even beyond the grasslands altogether.
Indo-European society began to break up about 3000 B.C.E., as migrants took their horses and other animals and made their way to new lands. When did it stop?
Intermittent migrations of Indo-European peoples continued until about 1000 C.E.
Some of the most influential Indo-European migrants in ancient times were who?
Hittites. About 1900 B.C.E. the Hittites migrated to the central plain of Anatolia, where they imposed their language and rule on the region’s inhabitants.
The Hittites were responsible for two technological innovations, what were they?
the construction of light, horse-drawn war chariots and the refinement of iron metallurgy—that greatly strengthened their society and influenced other peoples throughout much of the ancient world.
Where else did Indo-European peoples migrate into?
Some went east into central Asia, venturing as far as the Tarim Basin (now western China) by 2000 B.C.E.
After 5000 B.C.E. what place experienced a long-term climatic change that profoundly influenced social organization and agriculture throughout the
region.
the northern half of Africa; Although it considerably fluctuated, the climate generally became much hotter and drier than before.
The Sahara desert, which as late as 5000 B.C.E. had been cool and well watered enough to support human, animal, and vegetable life, became increasingly arid and uninhabitable. This process of desiccation turned rich grasslands into what?
into a barren desert, and it drove both humans and animals to more hospitable regions.
What did Egyptians view their pharaohs as?
Egyptians associated the early pharaohs with Horus, the sky god, and they often represented the pharaohs together with a falcon or a hawk, the symbol of Horus.
Later they viewed rulers as offspring of ____, a sun god, so that the pharaoh was a son of the sun.
Amon
Gradually, however, Egypt came under the pressure of foreign peoples from southwest Asia, particularly a Semitic people whom Egyptians called what?
the Hyksos (“foreign rulers”).
What information survived about the Hyksos?
they were horse-riding nomads with horse-drawn chariots, they also used bronze weapons and bronze-tipped arrows
Hyksos rule provoked a strong reaction especially in Upper Egypt, where disgruntled nobles organized revolts against the foreigners. Who did they work with?
Working from Thebes and later from Memphis, Egyptian leaders gradually pushed the Hyksos out of the Nile delta and founded a powerful state known as the New King-
dom
What women took the title of the pharaoh in 1473 B.C.E., serving as co-ruler with her stepson Tuthmosis III.
Queen Hatshepsut (reigned 1473–1458 B.C.E.)
In an effort to present her in a way that was familiar, what did they do to Queen Hatshepsut?
a monumental statue of Queen Hatshepsut depicts her wearing the stylized beard traditionally associated with the pharaohs.
Bronze was even less prominent in Nubian societies than where?
in Egypt.
