First Day of Notes

Today we started to take notes, and we got our textbooks for the class.  They're only three years old, but look older, but that's perfectly fine with me because at least we have them.  The notes we took today started the first chapter called: 

BEFORE CIVILIZATION: THE PREHISTORIC ERA

*prehistory: before anything was written down

*humans were just another species of animal

*paleolithic- stone age

*no tools, villages, written languages, etc.

*Neolithic- when people started using tools

*even back then, there were people all around the world; on every continent.

*humans were part of migratory groups; hunting, fishing, and gathering plants for survival.

^Agricultural Revolution:

*AKA the neolithic revolution, this was a shift from itinerant hunting/gathering to more permanent settlements centered on agriculture (beginning in southwestern Asia).

*babies- not like a horse, a horse can walk within a few minutes, whereas a baby can't walk until a little over a year.

*having a home, it's easier to take care of babies.

*hierarchies appeared in village life; the status of women was lowered as women were confined more to domestic duties.

*wheel and plow made it possible to produce enough food for storage.

^earliest cities: Mesopotamia

*Sumer occupied the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers

*The population increased drastically due to new irrigation techniques

*cities and towns were founded, some with as many as 40,000 people.

*more adequate food storage allowed for diversity in professions: priests, tradesmen, artisans, politicians, and farmers.

*kings emerged, as did family dynastic and the concept of the "city-state".

*Sumerians invented the earliest form of writing, known as "cuneiform".