World History – Sapiens Part One Study Guide (Vocabulary)

Question 1

Harari v.s. Textbook

The Two Definitions of History

Answer 1

• Harari’s definition of history is that it begins with the development of human culture after the cognitive revolution 70,000 years ago
• The textbook definition is 5,000 when people began writing things down

Question 2

Harari v.s. Textbook

The Two Definitions of Pre-history

Answer 2

• Harari’s definition of prehistory is rather called biology and started before the cognitive revolution
• The textbook definition of prehistory starts before humans began recording things down

Question 3

Archaeology

Answer 3

Archaeology is the profession where people dig up fossils and determine the animal that the biome belonged to. In this context, it would be humans, and how they might have died, what they ate, how old they were, etc.

Question 4

Anthropology

Answer 4

Profession where people observe modern forager societies to determine how ancient forager societies acted/what they did.

Question 5

Artifact

(Artefact)

Answer 5

A thing that someone could bring with them. We have a lot of artifacts because we are not nomadic. Ancient forager societies had very few artifacts because they were nomadic and couldn’t bring that much with them.

Question 6

Biology

Answer 6

Harari’s definition of “prehistory”. How animals function.

Question 7

Biological Evolution

Answer 7

When the DNA changes as the animal evolves over a very long time.

Question 8

Culture

Answer 8

Harari says that culture is the immense diversity of imagined realities that Sapiens invented, and our diverse behavior patterns.

Question 9

Cultural Evolution

Answer 9

How Sapiens imagined realities and behavior evolved over time.

Question 10

Homo Sapiens

Answer 10

Homo Sapiens are the only living “humans” in the genus homo.

Question 11

Homo Erectus

Answer 11

Homo erectus also fall under the genus homo, they lived 2 million years BP, they were shorter and their brain size was a bit smaller than Homo Sapiens

Question 12

Homo Neanderthalensis

Answer 12

Lived in colder climates, looked different, lived 500,000 years BP, Homo Sapiens might have killed them.

Question 13

Paleolithic period

Answer 13

Paleolithic means the “old Stone Age”. Stone refers to the tools they used, and it begins 2.5 million years BP. It happened then because that’s when there was evidence of tool use. It ends with the agricultural revolution (or neolithic revolution).

Question 14

Stadel lion-man

Answer 14

A representation of imagined realities that we create.

Question 15

Chauvet Cave

Answer 15

The Chauvet cave is a representation of how we don’t know what happened when other humans were alive.

Question 16

Cognitive Revolution

Answer 16

The cognitive revolution started 70,000 years ago (BP). It was when we started to travel to places outside of Africa.

Question 17

Bypassing the Genome

Answer 17

Humans changed their behavior without evolving. We bypassed our DNA because we didn’t have to change our DNA in order to change our culture (imagined realities) and behavior.

Question 18

Imagined reality

Answer 18

Imagined realities are the stories that come from Sapien’s imagination. An example is religion, it helps form our societies and that’s why we can cooperate on a mass scale.

Question 19

Animism

Answer 19

The belief that everything is alive and has a soul. Everything is equal. We speculate that our ancestors Sapiens might have followed these beliefs, but we have little to no evidence to prove this.

Question 20

Forager

Answer 20

A forager is a hunter-gatherer who forages for food. Our ancestors were forager societies.