Exam 1 Western Civ. Weeks 1-8:Chapters 1-7

Paleolithic

Definition: The Old Stone Age, when humans primarily lived as hunter-gatherers and used stone tools. Significance: This was the earliest stage of human society, when humans developed tools, language, cooperation, art, and early religious practices that laid foundations for later civilization.

Neolithic Revolution

Definition: The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture and permanent settlements. Significance: Farming created food surpluses, allowing populations to grow and leading to cities, governments, specialized jobs, and social classes—the foundations of civilization.

Hunter-gatherer

Definition: A person who obtains food by hunting animals and gathering wild plants rather than farming. Significance: This was the dominant human lifestyle for most of history; moving toward agriculture and permanent settlement eventually allowed civilizations to develop.

Polytheism

Definition: Belief in multiple gods. Significance: It was common in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece and influenced the religious traditions and cultures that later shaped the Western world.

Mesopotamia

Definition: Ancient region between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Significance: One of the earliest centers of civilization, developing some of the first cities, governments, writing systems, laws, and organized religions.

Sources

Definition: Evidence historians use to study the past, such as documents, artifacts, buildings, artwork, and oral traditions. Significance: Sources allow historians to reconstruct and interpret how ancient societies developed.

Maps

Definition: Visual representations of geographic locations and relationships between places. Significance: They help historians understand how geography influenced migration, trade, warfare, agriculture, and the spread of civilizations.

Prehistory

Definition: The period of human history before written records. Significance: Studying prehistory helps us understand human development before written civilization, primarily through archaeology and artifacts.

Early Near East

Definition: Ancient region including Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Levant, and surrounding areas. Significance: It was an early center of agriculture, cities, writing, government, religion, and law—major foundations of later civilizations.

Cuneiform

Definition: One of the earliest writing systems, developed in Mesopotamia using wedge-shaped marks pressed into clay. Significance: Writing allowed people to record laws, trade, taxes, religion, and historical events, making complex civilizations easier to organize.

Hieroglyphs

Definition: Ancient Egyptian writing system using symbols and pictures to represent words, sounds, or ideas. Significance: It allowed Egyptians to record religion, government, history, and daily life, giving historians evidence about ancient Egypt.

Hammurabi

Definition: Babylonian king famous for creating the Code of Hammurabi, an early written law code. Significance: His code demonstrates the development of organized government and standardized laws in early civilization.

Ziggurat

Definition: Large stepped temple structures built in ancient Mesopotamian cities. Significance: They demonstrate the importance of religion, centralized government, architecture, and organized labor in early civilizations.

Pharaoh

Definition: The ruler of ancient Egypt who held political and religious authority. Significance: Pharaohs demonstrate how closely religion and political power were connected and how centralized governments organized Egyptian society.

Monotheism

Definition: Belief in one God. Significance: Hebrew monotheism became the foundation of Judaism, which later influenced Christianity and Islam and had a major impact on Western civilization.

Assyrians

Definition: Ancient Mesopotamian people who created a powerful empire known for military strength and conquest. Significance: They demonstrated how military organization and imperial administration could create and maintain a large empire.

Persian Empire

Definition: A massive ancient empire centered in Persia (modern Iran). Significance: It developed sophisticated systems of government, taxation, roads, communication, and administration and later came into major conflict with the Greek city-states.

Hebrews

Definition: Ancient people associated with the Israelite tradition and development of Judaism. Significance: Their religious tradition was central to the development of monotheism and later influenced Christianity and Western religious and ethical traditions.

Egypt

Definition: Ancient civilization centered along the Nile River. Significance: Egypt developed centralized government, writing, mathematics, monumental architecture, religion, and complex social organization.

Hatshepsut

Definition: A powerful female pharaoh of Egypt's 18th Dynasty. Significance: Her reign demonstrates that women could hold significant political and religious authority in ancient Egypt; she also promoted trade and major building projects.

Rosetta Stone

Definition: Stone containing the same decree written in three scripts, including Greek and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Significance: It allowed scholars to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs, greatly increasing knowledge about ancient Egyptian civilization.

Oral composition

Definition: Creating and passing stories through spoken performance rather than writing. Significance: It explains how Greek stories and traditions were preserved before widespread literacy and before works like the Iliad and Odyssey were written down.

Linear B

Definition: An early writing system used by the Mycenaeans for administrative records. Significance: It shows that the Mycenaeans spoke an early form of Greek and provides evidence about early Greek society.

"Sea Peoples"

Definition: Seafaring groups that attacked or migrated throughout the eastern Mediterranean around 1200 BCE. Significance: Their movements contributed to the Late Bronze Age collapse, which helped create conditions for the emergence of later Greek societies.

Iliad

Definition: Ancient Greek epic poem traditionally attributed to Homer that focuses on events surrounding the Trojan War. Significance: It became one of the foundations of Western literature and influenced ideas about heroism, honor, warfare, fate, and the gods.

Odyssey

Definition: Ancient Greek epic poem traditionally attributed to Homer about Odysseus's journey home after the Trojan War. Significance: It became a foundation of Western literature and influenced ideas about identity, loyalty, perseverance, cleverness, and human relationships.

Minoan influences

Definition: Cultural influences from the Minoan civilization of Crete. Significance: Minoans influenced the developing Greek world through trade, art, architecture, religion, and cultural exchange.

Mycenaean influences

Definition: Cultural influences from the Mycenaean civilization of mainland Greece. Significance: Mycenaeans contributed to later Greek civilization through their language, religion, warfare, political organization, and cultural traditions.

Homer

Definition: Poet traditionally credited with composing the Iliad and Odyssey. Significance: His works became foundational to Greek education, culture, and Western literature and influenced later European writers.

Hesiod

Definition: Early Greek poet who wrote Theogony and Works and Days. Significance: His works shaped Greek ideas about the gods, creation, justice, morality, work, and human behavior.

Sappho

Definition: Archaic Greek poet from Lesbos famous for her lyric poetry. Significance: She helped develop Greek lyric poetry, which focused on personal experiences and emotions rather than only heroic stories.

Myth

Definition: Traditional story involving gods, heroes, supernatural events, or explanations of the world. Significance: Greek myths shaped Western ideas about religion, morality, human nature, literature, art, and storytelling.

Polis

Influenced Western Civilaztion bu being early citizens who moved away from leaders.

Socrates and Pluto

Impacted western civilization by enlightening people to shift focus to human ethics and nature of polis

Solon

Reforms and was a fair leader

Cleisthenes

Father of Athenian Democracy. introduced isonomia, equality before law.

Lycurgus

Lawgiver of ancient sparta, created strict military & politics. Made Sparta into a superpower

Euclid

Systemized geometry

Archimedes

Pioneered advanced mechanics and engineering

Eratosthenes

Calculated circumference of earth using shadow angles

Stoicism

Teaches Virtue, Reason, and living in agreement with nature. internal sanctuary

Epicureanism

Defines pleasure as the highest good, and the absence of pain and mental anxiety as the ultimate goal. quiet simple living.

Hellinism

Historical period sparked by Alexander the Great’s Conquests, in which greek, persian, egyptian, and other nearby cultures blended

Athens

the birthplace of democracy. It serves as the primary historical archetype for civic participation, philosophical rationalism, and classical aesthetics in the Western tradition.

Alexander the great

conquered persian empire, egypt, and other territories. in doing so caused the shift to hellenistic age

limited tenure

constitutional principle that a public official can only hold power for a limited time

Republics

Served as early ways in which citizens had power and elected representatives

Collegiality

Public offices must be held by at least two equal members.

Twelve Tables

First written, public displayed legal code in ancient rome.

Julius Caesar

Roman general who’s military conquests lead to the collapse of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire.

Crossing of Rubicon

Julius marched 13th legion across Rubicon river, starting the Roman Civil war and bringing an end to the Roman Republic

Romulus and Remus

Mythological brothers. Ro=Founder of Rome and first king. Re=killed by Ro.

Established that roman culture takes state laws very seriously

Punic Wars

Fought between Roman and Carthaginian Empires for control of western mediterranean. Lead to roman expansion.

Hannibal

A Carthaginian general who crossed the Alps to fight Rome during the Second Punic War.

Consuls

Two elected officials who led the Roman Republic's government and army.

Civil War

A series of conflicts between Romans competing for political and military power, including Caesar's war against Pompey.

Gladiators

Fighters, often enslaved people or prisoners, who fought for public entertainment in arenas.

Pax romana

A period of relative peace and stability across the Roman Empire, lasting about 200 years. Rome expanded greatly; golden age of literature.

Triumvirate

A group of three men who shared political power in Rome and used it to hunt down Julius Ceasar’s murderers.

Deification

The process of declaring someone a god or treating them as divine.

Battle of Actium

The 31 BCE naval battle where Octavian defeated Antony and Cleopatra, securing his rise to power.

Principate

The system of government established by Augustus(Octavian) that kept republican traditions while giving the emperor supreme power. Alluded to the republic and serve governance still being in place.

Augustus

Rome's first emperor, formerly Octavian, who began his rule in 27 BCE.

Rise of Christianity

The spread of Christianity from a small Jewish movement to a major religion throughout the Roman Empire.

Jesus of Nazareth

The Jewish teacher whose life and teachings form the foundation of Christianity.

Paul

An early Christian missionary who spread Christianity to Gentiles and wrote letters included in the New Testament.

Julio-Claudians

The first Roman imperial dynasty, ruling from Augustus through Nero (27 BCE–68 CE).

Constantine

Roman emperor who supported Christianity and founded Constantinople as a new imperial capital.

Tetrarchy

Diocletian's system dividing imperial rule among four rulers to improve administration and defense.

Arianism

A doctrine that contradicted the holy trinity, stating that jesus, god, and the holy spirit were not equal to each other. It caused mass debate and rejected at the council of nicaea

Heresy

A belief that religious authorities consider contrary to accepted religious teachings.

Vandals

A Germanic people who invaded Roman territories and sacked Rome in 455 CE.

Goths

Germanic peoples who migrated into Roman territory and fought against Rome. The Visigoths, led by Alaric, sacked Rome in 410 CE, showing the weakening of the Western Roman Empire.

East vs. West

The Roman Empire was divided into the Western Empire, centered on Rome, and the Eastern Empire, centered on Constantinople. The West fell in 476 CE, while the East survived until 1453.

Crisis of the Third Century

A period from 235–284 CE when Rome faced political instability, civil wars, invasions, and economic problems. These crises weakened the empire and threatened its survival.

Diocletian

A Roman emperor who ruled from 284–305 CE and introduced reforms to strengthen Rome. He created the tetrarchy, dividing power among four rulers to improve the empire's government and defense.

Germanic Tribes

Groups of people from northern and central Europe who migrated into Roman territory. Some fought Rome or invaded its lands, contributing to the weakening of the Western Roman Empire.

Fall of Rome

The end of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE, when Odoacer removed the last western emperor, Romulus Augustulus, from power. Political problems, economic difficulties, and invasions contributed to its fall.