AP EUROPEAN HISTORY AND HONORS WORLD HISTORY

NOTES FOR UNIT 1: THE BIRTH OF CIVILIZATIONS WORLD HISTORY NOTES #1 & 2 THE BIRTH OF CIVILIZATIONS - Early man identified by tools and fossils, etc. - Paleolithic Old Stone Age - @ 2 million years ago - people nomadic - hunter/gatherers - developed language - developed religion @ 10,000 years ago Neolithic era - New Stone Age - 1st farmers - better tools and buildings - cloth & pottery - domesticated animals - fire - trade between villages - invention of the wheel - copper working invented - then bronze from mixing metals - The Bronze Age - associated with ancient Greece - Many civilizations began close to rivers - four great river valleys - Egypt - Nile - China - Yellow - India - Indus - Mesopotamia - Tigris and Euphrates - The Fertile Crescent - Mesopotamia - “the land between two rivers” - polytheistic - trade was very important (barter system) - Sumer the first great city of Mesopotamia - Sumerians invented writing - cuneiform - 2350 BCE - Sumerians conquered by Sargon the Great of Akkad - he established the first Empire - other civilizations progressed into city/states - Mesopotamians invented multiplication, division, geometry, astronomy - 1792BCE it was unified under one ruler in the city/state called Babylon - ruled by Hammurabi - codified laws, some used today - Stele of Hammurabi Egypt - another center of civilization was in the Nile River valley - farms sprang up due to rich fertile soil after flood - Egypt’s Gift of the Nile - the farms turned to villages, then to 2 kingdoms - Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt - around 3100 BCE Menes brought the two together - changed his name to Narmer - he was considered the first Pharaoh - Egyptian civ. continued for at least 30 dynasties - after Menes, there were three periods of strong dynasties - The Old Kingdom - 2686- 2181 BCE - Age of the Pyramids - The Middle Kingdom - 2040 - 1786 - trade flourished during this time - w/Syria, Palestine & Crete - The New Kingdom - 1570-1090 - the Egyptian Empire established - from Euphrates south to Africa - while rulers changed, the culture remained same - for 3000 years - religion played important part of life - government was a theocracy - were polytheistic - believed gods influenced forces of nature - legend of Osiris, Isis, Horus, Seth, Anubis - believed in life after death - source of the mummy ritual - entrails taken out and put in canopic jars - brain whipped by stick and sucked out of nose - body left to soak in natron for more than 70 days - kind of salt - leaves body dark and rigid - then body wrapped and put in sarcophagus - and buried - hence the pyramids - Khufu or Cheops - Khafre - Menkaure - family members were buried in mastabas - the first designer of pyramids was Imhotep - built several pyramids for the Pharaoh Zoser - several survive today - notably the step pyramid of Saqqara - they invented hieroglyphics - writing on papyrus - sometimes on cartouches - developed a calendar more accurate then Sumerians - engineers used geometry - to build and plan irrigation works - they were first to use stone columns - the remains of their architecture is proof, well built - by 1200 BCE their power had peaked - others were coming into power.