World History and Early Civilizations Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards covering early river valley civilizations, early writing systems, law codes, social structures, and major world religions based on lecture notes.

River Valley Societies

Societies that developed around water with population explosions, including the Nile River Valley, Yellow River Valley, Indus River Valley, the river valleys of Mesopotamia, and the Andes mountains.

Justice System of Hammurabi

An early legal code and justice system based on the principle of an 'eye for an eye'.

First Invention of Writing

The earliest writing created specifically to keep track of grain supplies.

Cuneiform

The written language developed in Mesopotamia.

Hieroglyphics

The written language developed in the Nile valley society.

Pastoralists

People who continued hunting and gathering in nomadic ways.

Judaism

A religion that spread around 600 BCE as its followers were forced to move by foreign invaders.

Hinduism

A religion originating from the Indus River that organized society into a hierarchical structure and sometimes spread voluntarily via merchants.

Caste

A hierarchical social structure in Hinduism in which individuals can move up or down in different lives depending on their behavior.

Buddhism

A religion that emerged out of Hinduism in South Asia around 500 BCE, teaching that life is suffering caused by desire.

Eightfold Path

A set of behaviors in Buddhism followed to eliminate desire and achieve a better life.

Christianity

A religion that emerged from Judaism in the first century in northern Israel, centered on Jesus, resurrection, and forgiving sins.

Confucius

A thinker who provided a predictable way of ordering human relations based on a hierarchical structure, teaching that society will be at peace if everyone plays their role rightly.

Daoism

An East Asian belief system that encourages looking away from human creations and looking at the order of nature.