WH1 Lesson 1, 2 & 3

• The earliest civilization was in Mesopotamia and Egypt.
• Stonehenge – it’s a double circle of “standing stones” – up to thirteen feet tall – looms over the plain where the center was created.
• Prehistory. The period of time before people kept written records.
• Artifacts object shaped by human beings.
• Fossils human or animal bones and teeth and other traces left in rocks by plants and animals.
• Archeologists are often study places where prehistoric people lived, looking for the remains of homes, graves, and towns and examining the artifacts found there.
• Anthropology are scientists study artifacts, bones and other clues and try to determine what people looked like, what they ate, how they long lived and other characteristics.
• Geologists analyze fossils and rocks in which they are found.
• Chemist and Physicists use special methods to estimate the ages of artifacts and other remains from the past.
• Botanist and Zoologist contribute their specialized knowledge about plants and animals.
• Archeological Dig the site where ancient objects are deeply buried.
• Scientific techniques are used to find the age of artifacts
• 1948. A major discovery in scientific methods of dating was made by an American chemist, Willard Libby
• Carbon 14 is the methods depends on the fact that all living organisms, plant or animal, contain a certain amount of radioactive carbon
• Nomads are the men and women of the Paleolithic Age.
• One of the widespread groups of Paleolithic hunting people was the Neanderthal.
• Religious beliefs may also have been the inspiration for some of the earliest prehistoric art. This was created by people who have been named Cro-Magnon.
• 1940 the most famous cave was found in Lascaux, France. The Lascaux cave contains dozens of paintings of animals in an even wider range of colors than those of Altamira.
• 1875 A Spanish nobleman, Don Marcelino de Sautuola, learned that an ancient cave had been found on his estate by a hunting dog and its master.
• 1879. Maria, daughter of Don Marcelino, came to cave with him, took a lantern, and began to explore a part of the cave I which her father could not stand upright.
• The period is called the Neolithic Age or New Stone Age. (Neo- “new”)
• Farming became a way of life throughout much of Europe, which people in Southeastern Asia learned grow rice in wetlands called paddies
• One of the earliest known towns was the walled city of Jericho, built about 7000 B.C near the eastern end of the Mediterranean.
• Artisans, people with skills in specialized crafts.
• Catal Huyuk was a farming village
• The demand for the products of expert artisans, such as toolmaker, potters, and weavers, led to trade.
• Barter, one good is exchanged for another
• As Neolithic people specialized in certain crafts, they developed new technology.
• Another important advance was the plow, which was pulled by oxen.
• Copper was probably the first metal used, for it is easily worked and easy to extract from the rock where it is found.
• The term Bronze Age is used to describe the period when bronze replaced copper and stone as the main material used in tools and weapons.
• Mesopotamia “Between the rivers”
• Cylinder Seal is a private communication between people wrote in CUNEIFORM
• When the Sumerians mixed with the farming people, and the Southern Mesopotamia became known as Sumer, Gradually the Farming villages along the river grew into twelve City States.
• POLYTHEISM - Sumerians also believed in many Gods
• ZIGGURAT - Large brick temple to provide a home for their Gods. Shaped like a pyramid.
• CUNEIFORM - Sumerians for of writing
• CUNEIFORM - System of record-keeping that used baked clay.
• SUMERIAN SCHOOLS - trained boys in art. Students were mostly the sons of upper class professionals.
• Mesopotamia make advances in mathematics and astronomy.