Download Early People/Pre-Civilization

Early People/PreCivilization
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Ms. Gerloski, World History Unit 1
Humans

Mankind's Success Story - HISTORY
Channel
Earliest People
Originated from Africa
 Nomads: Wander in search of food
 Hunters/gathers: remain in one place until food
supply runs out
 Migrated between 70,000 & 40,000 years ago

The Greatest Migration(s)

How did humans get from Africa to Asia, the
Americas, Europe and Australia?
Earliest People & Progress
Food (survival) & technology drive humanity
 Nomads temporarily settle as hunter/gatherers
 Domestication: create tamed animals/herds for
human use

Food, protection, hunting aid
 Animals procreate– stable food source

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Earliest domesticated animals???
Settlement & Cities
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New tools = farming  surplus food

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More food = more people!
New tools + large sedentary pop.  specialized
labor  social classes/government structure
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Cities and societies emerge  CIVILIZATION
How would these tools help
early humans survive?
Neolithic Revolution
Name given to period of time in which humans
stopped nomadic lifestyle and settled in cities
 Led to formation of civilization and culture
 10,000 years ago in India & Middle East

What is going on here? How is this
different from hunting/gathering?
Earliest People

Defining Humans - HISTORY Channel
Problems?
Answer these questions on a sheet of paper
 1. What problems might arise in the nomadic
and hunter-gatherer lifestyles? (Give at least 3)
 2. How might nomads dealt with, or fixed this
problem? (Give at least 3)
 3. What is so “special” about humans that
allowed them to create civilizations?
 4. What invention do you think impacted
humans’ success the most?

Mankind and Invention
Mankind and Invention HISTORY Channel

{ CIVILIZATION
The Beginning of Civilization

What factors led to the growth of civilization
over the nomadic lifestyle?
What is a Civilization?
A complex culture with 5 Characteristics:
 1. Advanced Cities
 2. Specialized workers
 3. Complex institutions
 4. Record keeping
 5. Advanced technology

5 LARGE Characteristics of Civilization
Language: Spreads ideas, keeps records
(histories, taxes)
Achievements: Important solutions to
problems (weapons, technology, irrigation)
Rules: Codes of behavior to follow (gov’t &
religion create order)
Geography: Location and land features (rivers
& resources)
Economics: Development of specialized labor
and forms of trade.

What do the 4 early
civilizations (Egypt,
Mesopotamia, Indus, China)
have in common?
4 River Civilizations
Nile River – Egypt
 Tigris & Euphrates
Rivers –
Mesopotamia
 Indus River –
Indus Valley
 Yellow & Yangtzee
Rivers – China

Nile River Flooding
What are the benefits of water?

Access to fresh water
For drinking, fishing
 Little sanitation

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Fertile Soil


Grow crops
Easy Transportation
Quicker than land
 Ability to trade

Create an Advertisement for Water
Imagine you live in one of the 4 river
civilizations
 Include a well thought-out image or picture
 Give at least 3 DETAILED benefits (not just
“transportation”)
 Include a funny/interesting/ironic slogan for
your advertisement
 You may work with ONE partner

Why was Mesopotamia in
the “Fertile Crescent?”
Located in modern day Iraq
 Region has curved shape – sort of like a
crescent moon
 Land is very fertile – located between two
major rivers
 Farmers there grow wheat and barley
 But, it went through long periods without rain
– How to solve this problem??

Indus Valley + Sanitation
Located in Pakistan and India
 One of the earliest public water system
 Some cities had toilets connected to sewer
system
 Wells used to bring water into homes
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What kind of fish call the
Nile home?
Nile Perch
Tiger Fish
Marbled
Lungfish
Problem/Solution
Protection from invaders: build walls, ditches,
military weapons, find allies
 Need water for crops: Irrigation ditches, man
made streams
 Difficult to plant & harvest: tools (plows),
selective planting, more people
 Need order and peace: create laws,
police/army, religion, government
 Need to know when to plant and harvest: map
the stars, weather patterns, almanacs/records
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LANGUAGE
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Problems??
What are the problems with using
pictures and drawings to represent
ideas/things?
How does our language (English) solve
this problem?
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Written Language Origins…
Who created the first alphabet?

Spoken Language
We don’t know when spoken language
originated – no direct evidence
 Speculated at 100,000 – 300,000 years ago (??)
 Pre-dates any uniform written language
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Written Language Origins

Cuneiform: Written Sumerian language
(Mesopotamia) [Government?]

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Used for tax records
Hieroglyphics: Picture writing of ancient
Egypt (Religious?)

Used symbols of common items in Egypt
The Rosetta Stone
196 B.C. – tax records and statue construction
orders
 Written in a spoken Egyptian dialect (demotic
language), hieroglyphics and Greek
 25 years to translate to hieroglyphics
 Discovered by Napoleon in 1799 A.D.

We could read hieroglyphics by
translating Greek to Egyptian &
matching Egyptian to Hieroglyphics

Ancient Mesopotamia
Fertile Crescent
 “Cradle of Civilization”
 About 4000 BC

Mesopotamia’s Successes
Modern agriculture
 Organized irrigation
 World’s first city-states
 Trade internally and
externally
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
Crop surpluses allowed
for long distance trade
Continued Successes
Created and used first known number system
– emergence of math
 One of earliest written languages (Cuneiform,
Phoenician alphabet)

Culture
Hammurabi’s Code – 1st uniform law code
 Placed importance of ridding society of evildoers, government responsibilities
 Polytheism: Many gods
 Gods controlled forces of nature

TRE – Thesis, Reasons,
Evidence

Thesis (Complete): Mesopotamia was gifted
as an early civilization because…
TRE Continued
Reasons:
 1. It’s location gave it many environmental
advantages.
 2. (Think of your own)
 3. (Think of your own)

TRE part 3
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Evidence:

Reason 1: Location/Environment
Evidence 1: located between two rivers, which
made transportation within and outside the
civilization easier
 Evidence 2: (think of your own)

Ancient Egypt
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Nile River
Longest river in the world – 4,100 miles
 Life-blood

Government & Religion
Pharaohs are god-kings
 31 dynasties
 Two kingdoms unite

Polytheism
 Pharaohs continued ruling after death
 Mummification saved body for afterlife
 Pyramids and burial chambers

Using the Nile
Straw and reeds
 Narrow strip of fertile land
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Environment
Desert barrier
 Less war, less trade
 Predictable flooding (seasons)
 Not much usable land
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Egyptian Burial
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Sarcophagus protects the physical body
Social Structure
(top) Royalty, landed/army,
artisans/merchants, farmers/workers, slaves
(bottom)
 Hierogylphics
 Papyrus – paper like plant
 Calendars, geometry, engineering, astronomy,
columns, medicine
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