WELCOME TO WEEK 1

8-18-2017

The Birth of Civilization

 Concepts and Questions
Overview: Focuses on the overwhelming explosion of the earliest human
societies and cultures which had its beginnings in the early Paleolithic and Neolithic
societies and exploded to the Bronze Age and birth of civilizations. Endeavor to identify
key concepts in this lecture and notice the patterns of breakthrough.

Paleolithic Age
Neolithic Age
Bronze Age
Neolithic Revolution

Identify differences between Paleolithic societies, Neolithic societies,

and the early Bronze Age civilizations?
What is the difference between the Neolithic Age and the Neolithic
Revolution?
Finding our Location
Finding our Location
 Culture and Civilization

What is culture? What is civilization?

Culture - sum total of the ways of living built up by a group and passed
on from one generation to another.

Components of culture? Tools? Artifacts of human culture.

Civilization represents a new and particular type of human society

and culture, made possible by the immense productivity of the
Agricultural Revolution.
 World History and Humans

Three major phases of human history:

1. The Paleolithic stage
2. The Agricultural Revolution
3. The Industrial Revolution

Civilizations emerged out of these stages or phases.

Our class focuses on the first two and terminates on the
fringes of the Industrial Revolution.
 Paleolithic Age
Dates from the earliest use of stone tools (some 1 million years ago to 10,000 B.C.E.)

Features
Hunters, gatherers, fishers

Most important tool stone (what could be accomplished?)

Acquisition of language and its spread

Dependent on nature for food

Some division of labor (men and women)

Sparsely settled society with heavy migrations.

What were their vulnerabilities?

Could there have developed religious practices? Why?
What could humans in this age not do?
 Neolithic Age
(some 12,000 years ago) marked by iron tools and the domestication of plant and animals

Coincided with advances in stone technology greater precision in chipping and grinding

Features
Plants and animals were domesticated (what kinds?)

Invention of pottery (what could this mean?); Made cloth (how possible?)

Permanent dwellings (why?); typically village pattern

Food gathering to food production with large populations (why?)

Settled societies with occasional heavy migrations.

Long-Distance Trade (Effect?)

NEOLITHIC REVOLUTION???
appeared in the Middle East (c.12,000-10,200 B.C.E.); China (c. 9500
B.C.E.) and; India (c. 7500 B.C.E.)
Neolithic Age
Catal Huyuk
Catal Huyuk
The Bronze Age and the Birth of Civilization
Neolithic agricultural villages & herding culture gradually replaced Paleolithic culture

MAJOR SHIFT: occurred first along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia;
then later in the valley of the Nile River in Egypt and somewhat later in the Indus
Valley India and the Yellow River basin in China.

Why Significant?

Shift initially associated with the growth of towns alongside villages

(results?)

Urban centers emerged with monumental buildings like fortifications &

temples

Elaborate representational artwork and Writing emerged (why so

important?)
The Bronze Age and the Birth of Civilization
Why Significant?
New technologies (iron smelting and manufacture of metal tools and weapons)

Large scale production (importantly pottery and textile) and Social stratification

These attributes - urbanism, technological, industrial and social change;

long-distance trade; and new methods of symbolic communication - are
defining characteristics of the form of human culture called
CIVILIZATION.

Amazing New Discovery TIN + COPPER = ???

The result is what we know as the Bronze Age which refers to
the period 3100-1200 B.C.E. in the Near East and eastern
Mediterranean
Enjoy and Have Fun!!!