Difference between revisions of "*History 8 Neolithic Revolution Concepts"

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***Page 33-34

1. Describe the physical and social changes brought about by the end of the Younger Dryas.

One of the physical effects of the end of the Younger Dryas is that more food became abundant. Because the abundance of food grew many groups were able to live in the same face, affecting them socially. Also people began to notice that different animals had different migration patterns(according to the season) making them easy to manage and keep them closer to where they lived. Also because it was not as dry there was more grain. With a combination of the animals and plants factors people had more food to plan for the future, allowing them to have larger groups and produce more offspring. When the Younger Dryas ended villages became based around farming plots. This caused the Women to become more powerful because they knew how to farm. The women started deciding where the villages would be and they exercised political power, affecting the groups socially. -Alex Ainbinder

2. Describe the Role of Women in Horticultural societies.

3. Where and why did the switch from hunting/gathering to plant cultivation and animal husbandry occur. What social change happened?

4. What was the role of irrigation in the urban revolution?

***Page 35

5. Urban life had some challenges:

• • • a. Disease - Disease was a very large problem in Urban life.
    • b. property

• Security New security measures, such as laws, barriers, and soldiers, were required to prevent crime.

• Economics Economics played a large role in the successes and failures of urban life.

• • • Page 36

6. Name and explain the distinguishing characteristics of culture. Culture is a pattern for how people in certain social groups behave and think. Culture is what make people from one group different than people from another It is also what separates humans and animals. Culture includes beliefs, behavioral standards, language, religion, art, government systems, technology, clothing, and culinary style. What is culture's essential feature?

7. What is the purpose of language and art in a culture? Language provided a system of meaning in a culture, which could be spoken or written, and include number systems for keeping records in trade, drama, literature, music or dance. Art and language were a way of recording culture as well as expressing it. They contained meaning or symbolism that were important to a culture, and was unique to a culture's beliefs. Art allowed other cultures to experience rituals and beliefs not familiar to them. It allows historians to follow historical civilizations.

8. What are systems of meaning? A system of meaning is the set of associations linking variables such as terms or behaviors, with their meanings.

9. Why is culture learned? A person is not born with culture. One must learn the art, rituals, technology, and religion, just to name a few of the aspects of culture, of their society; a person is not born knowing a language or religion, per say. People are immersed in culture to learn how to behave and what to do.

***Page 37-39

10. What important principles follow from the definition of culture given in the manual?

11. What is the first purpose of a myth?

12. Why is mythology a universal need?

13. What is the second purpose of a myth?

14. What role does mythology play in morality of a culture?

15. What is religion and its characteristics, elements and functions in a society?

16. What were some of the problems of complex societies?

Even though complex societies brought good changes to growing villages, it also produced bad problems. Power struggle, land struggle, environmental exhaustion, and unsannitary living conditions all were issues produced by complex societies. Once the complex society became dominant, there was a need for a better system of ruling. This need for new ruling caused powerful leaders to quarel over simple ruling strategies, causing dramatic power struggles. As well as power struggles, there were also land struggles. With better technology, farmers were able to farm bigger fields faster. They began to exhaust the soil in the fields sooner, and needed new land with which to farm on. However, the villages were right next to each other, especially in the southern Fertile Crecent, and there was no extra land. This lack of land caused fights, even wars, for years. Third, another problem brought on by the complex societies was that of enviromental distress. The villages were using up their natural resources, exhaustign their fields, and dirtying their villages. These new environmental stresses caused issues with health, food, and, with lacking resources, trade. Finally, the final thing a complex society produced was unsanitary living conditions. With a growing society, the population began to grow too, causing overcrowding in dwellings. People often had to sleep with their animals, and new sicknesses began to emerge. These illnesses were competely foreign to the villagers, coming from close contact with animals, unclean food, and inproperly dicarded human and animal waste. This lack of hygene slowly began to take a toll on the villegers. As history exemplifies, complex societies have many pros, btu they also produce many problems.

**Source Reading One: Pages 40-42

17. Summarize Impact of containers

18. Summarize Impact of domestication of animals The domestication of animals resulted in many short- and long-term advantages for early civilizations. The dog was the first domesticated animal by humans, which was used for hunting. But the domestication of farm animals such as sheep, pigs, cattle, and goats impacted humans the most. They provided more food, which resulted in growing populations. More people began to live together in small villages, which developed into bustling towns. The cattle also provided land transportation, with the ability to pull carts and wagons. This caused humans to move into neighboring towns and conquer them. In addition to all the positive impacts, there were some negative ones also. With humans and animals living in extremely close proximity to each other, this provided a great environment for the rise of epidemic diseases like smallpox, influenza, and the measles. People were constantly being exposed to animal viruses which eventually mutated into human viruses. (Page 42 in the manual)

19. Summarize Impact of methods of water management Digging canals through high riverbanks to allow water to flow to dry areas, building embankments around fields to allow water to drain out of them, and creating dams upstream to prevent spring floods were all methods of water regulation. These techniques allowed a smaller group of people to work on bigger areas of land because the land no longer had to be naturally productive. A society of laborers, supervisors, and administrdators was also established to for the planning, building, and mantaining of large irrigation projects. Water managment also led to social stratification, or "institutionalized inequalities in power, wealth, and status between categories of persons within a single social system (e.g., classes, castes, ethnic groups)." [1] Since, procductive land became more profitable, some gained more wealth and pwer than others, and societies were divided into roylaty, peasants, and slaves. (page 41 in the manual) Also, irrigation caused more land to be settled in because people no longer had to live right next to a water source. The Ghassoulians, who lived in the Jordan Valley, used irrigation to their adnvantage by digging canals that were many kilometers long in the hills surrounding where they lived. (End of the Stone Age video)

File:ImagesCAALTSF5.jpg [2]

Noel Higgason

20. Summarize Impact of growth, populations and food production.

Population: The growth of population caused more advances in irrigation as farmers moved further from the rivers to incorporate more farm area to feed the growing amount of people. This also resulted in diseases because humans were in such close quarters with each other and their animals. (Manual p41)

Growth: The growth of towns caused environmental distress, many times causing the people living there to have to move. The main distress was the depletion of wood. This caused plaster to become scarce because of the amount of wood required to burn the limestone and turn it into lime. Another effect was the lack of sufficient wood for hearths, which may have caused some groups to move south because they were too cold. For more on the video *History 8 First Towns and Villages Video Notes

Food Production: As food production grew, so did leisure time. This led to all kinds of new technology and social structures, including the first governments and civilizations, as well as specialized jobs, or crafts. Also, the surplus of food allowed for the trade of foodstuffs from one group or civilization to another, therefore increasing the ability of all groups involved to obtain the resources to better their technology. (Manual p42)

For the Online Version of this chapter of the Manual[3]

For a website that may explain more about this as well as other topics[4]

**Source Reading Two Pages 43-44

21. Fertile Crescent

22. Summarize Impact of record keeping Record keeping allowed government and trade to fully develop, as well as allow people to express their thoughts. A written language is a key part of a civilization, and written records are a very important resource in finding information about the past.

One of the first forms of record keeping was through calendars. Accurate calendars became a necessity because irrigation projects had to be constructed when the water was low, so societies needed to know and record water levels and weather patterns. This information was also needed to find out when to plant seeds. If it weren't for these calendars, the society could've died because of famine or drought. These calendars were based on the movements of the moon and sun. Later, the Egyptians developed calendars as well in order to predict flooding.

When government formed in societies to control security and other needs of the population, they needed laws or rules to control the population. This is why written laws came to be.

Record keeping was also used to keep track of food amounts in warehouses around Mesopotamia. This record keeping method became the first written language, called cuneiform, which the Sumerians used to write the first myth, "The Epic of Gilgamesh." Cuneiform consisted of triangular shaped letters. The Sumerians used cuneiform to record taxes and bills, as well as laws.

For an image of cuneiform: http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/traveler-magazine/photo-contest/entries/50329/view/ http://www2.sjs.org/beniretto/neolithic/chapter3.%20pdf.pdf http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/encyclopedia/civilization/#page=2

Brooke Lummis

23. Summarize Impact of water in Mesopotamia and Babylon

24. Summarize Impact of water in Egypt

**25. Summarize Impact of Water in Indus River Valley