Notes

Key Concepts:
*-Humans used fire to aid hunting and foraging, to protect against predators, and to adapt to cold environments.
*-Religion was most likely animistic.
*-Animism: The early Paleolithic people believed that animals, plants, rocks, trees, their environment, and the cosmos were animated by spirits, or had souls of their own. Everything is balanced and should not be messed with. They were not superior to anything else and it was balanced that way.
*-Economic structures focused on small kinship groups of hunting-foraging bands that could make what they needed to survive. However, not all groups were self-sufficient; they exchanged people, ideas and goods with other groups.
*-Possibly as a response to climatic change, permanent agricultural villages emerged first in the lands of the eastern Mediterranean. Agriculture emerged at different times in Mesopotamia, the Nile River Valley and Sub-Saharan Africa, the Indus River Valley, the Yellow River or Huang He Valley, Papua New Guinea, Mesoamerica and the Andes.
*-Pastoralism developed at various sites in the grasslands of Afro-Eurasia.
*-Different crops or animals were domesticated in the various core regions, depending on available local flora and fauna.
*-Flora: Plant life.
*-Fauna: Animal life.
*-Agricultural communities had to work cooperatively to clear land and create the water control systems needed for crop production aka irrigation systems.
*-These agricultural practices drastically impacted environmental diversity. Pastoralists also affected the environment by grazing large numbers of animals on fragile grasslands, leading to erosion when overgrazed.
*-Pastoralism and agriculture led to more reliable and abundant food supplies, which increased the population.
-Surpluses of food and other goods led to specialization of labor, including new classes of artisans and warriors, and the development of elites.
*-Technological innovations led to improvements in agricultural production, trade and transportation, including pottery, plows, woven textiles, metallurgy, wheels and wheeled vehicles.
*-In both pastoralist and agrarian societies, elite groups accumulated wealth, creating more hierarchical social structures and promoting patriarchal forms of social organization.
*-States were powerful new systems of rule that mobilized surplus labor and resources over large areas. Early states were often led by a ruler whose source of power was believed to be divine or had divine support, and who was supported by the religious hierarchy and professional warriors.
*-As states grew and competed for land and resources, the more favorably situated — including the Hittites, who had access to iron — had greater access to resources, produced more surplus food and experienced growing populations. These states were able to undertake territorial expansion and conquer surrounding states. Had advantages due to geographical area, natural barriers, and climate.
*-Early regions of state expansion or empire building were Mesopotamia and Babylonia — Sumerians, Akkadians and Babylonians — and Egypt and Nubia along the Nile Valley.
*-Pastoralists were often the developers and disseminators of new weapons (such as compound bows or iron weapons) and modes of transportation (such as chariots or horseback riding) that transformed warfare in agrarian civilizations.
*-Elites, both political and religious, promoted arts and artisanship (such as sculpture, painting, wall decorations or elaborate weaving).
*-Literature was also a reflection of culture (such as the “Epic of Gilgamesh,”).
*-New religious beliefs developed in this period continued to have strong influences in later periods, including the Vedic religion, Hebrew monotheism and Zoroastrianism.

*-Vedic Religion:
-Polytheistic

*-Hebrew
-Monotheistic
-Sacred writings recorded in the Old Testament
-'Eye for an Eye' Legal System

*-Zoroastrianism:
-One god that had many arms which each became a separate god of its own choosing. So basically it was kind of monotheism because all of their gods came from one unit god.

*-Trade expanded throughout this period, with civilizations exchanging goods, cultural ideas and technology. Trade expanded from local to regional and transregional, including between Egypt and Nubia and between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley.

*-Social and gender hierarchies intensified as states expanded and cities multiplied AKA Patriarchy Systems.

*River Valley Civilizations:
-Peaceful
-Merchants
-Unknown writing, never deciphered
-Disappeared either because of invasions of other tribes, natural disasters of over farming
-Traded with Mesopotamia and Egypt.
-Made the trading seals mentioned in the WWCC Videos

*Egypt:
-Nile River Valley civilization
-Polytheistic
-Positive World view, predictable and orderly
-Pharaohs are gods
-Had mathematical understanding
-Language = Pictographs = Based on Pictures

*Olmecs:
-Mesoamerica
-Modern civilizations of the Americas
-Economy based on Maize or Teosinle
-Mysterious appearance and disappearance.
-Basalt heads (Need to know what they look like)

*Mesopotamia:
-In between Tigris and Euphrates.
-Negative world view.
-Cereal Grains
-Distinct Patriarchy.
-Cuneiform, and Linear AB writing.
-Language was phonetic.
-Walled cities, but no natural barriers, kept people outside and insides
-City-states
-Lots of warfare
-Main cities were Uruk and Babylon
-Gave birth to the Hamurrabi Code, the first written law code.
-Assyria (City)


*Norte Chico:
-Located in the Andes
-Mainly based on fishing
-Advanced irrigation
-Mathematical knowledge
-Main language was Quipu (knotted string to record taxes)

*China:
-Yellow valley
-Shang dynastia
-Xia
-Ancestor worship
-Oracle bones (Written language)
-Rice
-Beginning of dynasty circle
-Mandate of heaven

***Factors that led to a change in hunting and gathering societies:
-After the last Ice Age came to an end, global warming took place, and plants and animals strived due to the fact that their range grew, since the global warming made cold places habitable, and they flourished. This benifited the humans environment and due to that fact, human populations began to grow. This led to some bands of humans, but not all, to begin to settle and live in more permanent settlements or villages. The societies were becoming larger and more complex.
*-Overall, agriculture shaped the way that these societies were constructed in contrast to the older paleolithic societies. Due to the fact that farming was difficult in some regions, pastoral societies were created where they focused around animal domestication. Agricultural villages did use agriculture as a main source of food, but continued to augment this diet with hunting, gathering, and fishing. And the chiefdoms came to organize political systems of inherited power, only possible after they formed large populations, only possible after agriculture.

Was the Agricultural Revolution inevitable?
*-After all, the agricultural revolution was inevitable, because hunting and gathering was using up to many resources and at the end of the ice age, the global warming provided the perfect conditions in many places for the agricultural revolution.
*-It was slowed down due to the fact that many people lived in regions and areas that were still not suitable for farming such as harsh desert or arctic environments. Or, like the people of Australia, they remained contempt with hunting and gathering, and agriculture did not pass by them throughout the process of its globalization. This prolonged the process, making it take at least 10,000 years.

*Austronesian migrations: The last phase of the great human migration that established a human presence in every habitable region of the earth.

*Austronesian- speaking people settled the Pacific islands and Madagascar in a series of seaborne migrations that began around 3,500 years ago

*Banpo: A Chinese archeological site, where the remains of a significant Neolithic village have been found.

*Bantu: An African-language family whose speakers gradually became the dominant culture of eastern and southern Africa, thanks to their agricultural techniques and, later, their ironworking skills.
Bantu migration: The spread of Bantu-speaking peoples from their homeland in what is now southern Nigeria or Cameroon to most of Africa, in a process that started ca. 3000 b.c.e. and continued for several millennia.

*Brotherhood of the Tomol: A prestigious craft guild that monopolized the building and ownership of large oceangoing canoes, or tomols (pron. toe-mole), among the Chumash people (located in what is now southern California).

*Broad spectrum diet: Archeologists’ term for the diet of gathering and hunting societies, which included a wide array of plants and animals.

*Cahokia: An important agricultural chiefdom of North America that flourished around 1100 C.E. (pron. cah-HOKE-ee-ah)

*Çatalhüyük: An important Neolithic site in what is now Turkey. (pron. cha-TAHL-hoo-YOOK)

*Chumash culture: Paleolithic culture of southern California that survived until the modern era.

*Clovis culture: The earliest widespread and distinctive culture of North America; named from the Clovis point, a particular kind of projectile point.

*Diffusion: The gradual spread of agricultural techniques without extensive population movement.

*Dreamtime: A complex worldview of Australia’s Aboriginal people that held that current humans live in a vibration or echo of ancestral happenings.

*Fertile Crescent: Region sometimes known as Southwest Asia that includes the modern states of Iraq, Syria, Israel/Palestine, and southern Turkey; the earliest home of agriculture.

*Flores man: A recently discovered hominid species of Indonesia.

*Great Goddess: According to one theory, a dominant deity of the Paleolithic era.

*Hadza: A people of northern Tanzania, almost the last surviving Paleolithic society.

*Horticulture: Hoe-based agriculture, typical of early agrarian societies.

*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: Any of a number of cold periods in the earth’s history; the last Ice Age was at its peak around 20,000 years ago.

*Insulting the Meat: A San cultural practice meant to deflate pride that involved negative comments about the meat brought in by a hunter and the expectation that a successful hunter would disparage his own kill.

*Jericho: Site of an important early agricultural settlement of perhaps 2,000 people in present-day Israel.

*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: Dying out of a number of large animal species, including the mammoth and several species of horses and camels, that occurred around 11,000–10,000 years ago, at the end of the Ice Age. The extinction may have been caused by excessive hunting or by the changing climate of the era.

*Native Australians: Often called “Aboriginals” (from the Latin ab origine, the people who had been there “from the beginning”), the natives of Australia continued (and to some extent still continue) to live by gathering and hunting, despite the transition to agriculture in nearby lands.

*Neanderthals: Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, a European variant of Homo sapiens that died out about 25,000 years ago.n/um: Among the San, a spiritual potency that becomes activated during “curing dances” and protects humans from the malevolent forces of gods or ancestral spirits.

*The Original Affluent Society: Term coined by the scholar Marshall Sahlins in 1972 to describe Paleolithic societies, which he regarded as affluent not because they had so much but because they wanted or needed so little.

*Paleolithic Rock Art: While this term can refer to the art of any gathering and hunting society, it is typically used to describe the hundreds of Paleolithic paintings discovered in Spain and France and dating to about 20,000 years ago; these paintings usually depict a range of animals, although human figures and abstract designs are also found. The purpose of this art is debated.

*San, or Ju/’hoansi: A Paleolithic people still living on the northern fringe of the Kalahari desert in southern Africa. (pron. ZHUN-twasi)

*Secondary Products Revolution: A term used to describe the series of technological changes that began ca. 4000 BCE, as people began to develop new uses for their domesticated animals, exploiting a revolutionary new source of power.

*Shaman: In many early societies, a person believed to have the ability to act as a bridge between living humans and supernatural forces, often by means of trances induced by psychoactive drugs.

*Stateless Societies: Village-based agricultural societies, usually organized by kinship groups, that functioned without a formal government apparatus.

*Teosinte: The wild ancestor of maize. (pron. tay-oh- SIN-tay)

*Trance Dance: In San culture, a night long ritual held to activate a human being’s inner spiritual potency 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: Paleolithic carvings of the female form, often with exaggerated breasts, buttocks, hips, and stomachs, which may have had religious significance.