Global: Foundations of Civilizations Study

Prehistory

Period of time before people invented writing and kept records. These allow scholars to study the past c 2mil BC - c 300 BC.

Historians

People who study and write about how people lived. They study artifacts, objects made by humans to learn about their past. Their purpose is to explain and interpret what the evidence means that caused certain developments of events.

Anthropology

The study of culture.

Archeology

Study of people and culture through artifacts

Artifacts

Objects made by humans like tools, buildings, weapons, art, pottery, and clothing that are usually found and studied by archaeologists.

Culture

A society’s way of life handed down from one generation to another through learning an experience.

Cultural Universal

The common traits, beliefs, gestures, and other features of human life that ALL cultures share.

Primary Sources

Sources that were created at the time under study. It serves as an original source of info.

Secondary Sources

Source of info created later by someone who didn’t experience first hand or participate in events.

Political Scientists

Study government systems. They measure their effectiveness, stability, justice, wealth peace and public health.

Economists

Study of choice under scarcity. How people use resources, the study of decision making. The economy is the system for coordinating the production and distribution of goods and services.

Technology

Tools created to meet the needs of people. (Metal tools and weapons introduced later on).

Bipedalism

Locomoting on 2 legs (one of the major biological innovations of the human lineage).

Hominids

Group that includes humans and their relatives that walk upright on two feet.

Traditional Economy

• Based on customs, habits, and immediate needs

• Produce what they need (food) on a subsistence level → no surplus

• Labor intensive

• Not equipped to deal with major changes in the natural or social (people) environment

Migration

Learned to travel across water into new places.

Paleolithic Era (Old Stone Age)

The time period from the evolution of the genus “homo,” human-like beings, to around 9,000 BCE when modern day humans started to farm. Modern-day humans evolved around 250,000 BCE, then spread across the world in search of food.

Nomads

People who frequently move from place to place in search of food, never living in one place for very long.

Neolithic Era (New Stone Age)

Period in time in human history that came after the start of agriculture and before the development of the first civilizations during which people started creating and using metal tools (The Bronze Age).