Unit 1: Chapter 1, 2, 3, 7 Flashcards
Socially transmitted patterns of human action and expression.
Culture
The study of past events and changes in the development, transmission, and transformation of cultural practices.
History
The historical period characterized by the production of tools from stone and other nonmetallic substances.
Stone Age
The period of the Stone Age associated with the evolution of humans.
Paleolithic
The period of the Stone Age associated with the ancient Agricultural Revolution(s).
Neolithic
People who support themselves by hunting, fishing, and gathering wild edible plants and insects.
Foragers
The change from food gathering to food production that occurred between 8000 and 2000 BCE. Also known as the Neolithic Revolution.
Agricultural Revolutions
The geological era since the end of the Great Ice Age around 13000 years.
Holocene
Structures and complexes of very large stones constructed for ceremonial and religious purposes in Neolithic times.
Megaliths
The people who dominated southern Mesopotamia through the end of the third millennium BCE.
Sumerians
Family of related languages long spoken across parts of Western Asia and Northern Africa. In antiquity these languages included Hebrew, Aramaic, and Phoenician. The most widespread modern member of the family is Arabic.
Semitic
A small, independent state consisting of an urban center and the surrounding agricultural territory. A characteristic political form in early Mesopotamia, Archaic and Classical Greece, Phoenicia, and early Italy.
City-state
Babylon
The largest and most important city in Mesopotamia. It achieved particular eminence as the capital of the Amorite king Hammurabi in the eighteenth century BCE.
Amorite ruler of Babylon. (r. 1792-1750 BCE). He conquered many city-states in southern and northern Mesopotamia and is best known for a code of laws, inscribed on a black stone pillar, illustrating the principles to be used in legal cases.
Hammurabi
In the governments of many ancient societies, a professional position reserved for men who had undergone the lengthy training required to be able to read and write using cuneiform, hieroglyphics, or other early, cumbersome writing systems.
Scribe
A massive pyramidal stepped tower made of mud bricks. It is associated with religious complexes in ancient Mesopotamian cities, but its function is unknown.
Ziggurat
Small charm meant to protect the bearer from evil. Found frequently in archaeological excavations in Mesopotamia and Egypt, these small charms reflect the religious practices of the common people.
Amulet
A system of writing in which wedge-shaped symbols represented words or syllables. It originated in Mesopotamia and was used initially for Sumerian and Akkadian but later was adapted to represent other languages of Western Asia. Literacy was confined to a relatively small group of administrators and scribes.
Cuneiform
The central figure in the ancient Egyptian state. Believed to be an earthly manifestation of the gods, he used his absolute power to maintain the safety and prosperity of Egypt.
Pharaoh
Egyptian term for the concept of divinely created and maintained order in the universe. The divine ruler was the earthly guarantor of this order.
Ma’at
A large, triangular stone monument, used in Egypt and Nubia as a burial place for the king. The largest of these, erected during the Old Kingdom near Memphis, reflect the Egyptian belief that the proper and spectacular burial of the divine ruler would guarantee the continued prosperity of the land.
Pyramid
The capital of Old Kingdom Egypt, near the head of the Nile Delta. Early rulers were interred in the nearby pyramids.
Memphis
Capital city of Egypt and home of the ruling dynasties during the Middle and New Kingdoms. Monarchs were buried across the river in the Valley of the Kings.
Thebes
A system of writing in which pictorial symbols represented sounds, syllables, or concepts. It was used for official and monumental inscriptions on ancient Egypt. Because of the long period of study required to master this system, literacy was confined to a relatively small group of scribes and administrators.
Hieroglyphics