Essential Question: How did humans progress from bands of hunter-gatherers to developing

the great civilizations of the ancient world?

Objective:
● Describe the factors that led to the collapse of some empires and the success of others, including the failure of the Han
Empire, the division of the Roman Empire, and the expansion of the Mongol Empire.
● Analyze historic information to explain why the first empires declines and how new empires rose.
● Develop a claim for an argument that is supported by historical evidence and reasoning.

Vocabulary:

Hunter-gatherer, domestication, sedentary, pastoral nomad, civilization, hierarchy

city-state, dynasty, absolute monarch, empire, direct democracy, republic
● About 60,000 years ago, according to a widely
held theory, our earliest ancestors began
migrating out of Africa.
● These early humans survived by roaming the
land in search of wild animals to hunt or by
collecting berries, nuts, and seeds to eat.
● Populations grew as more people began to settle
together in areas that were good for growing
crops.
● The story of ancient peoples is the story of how
human beings colonized the continents and went
on to develop more and more sophisticated
societies that interacted with one another in a
multitude of ways.
● For most of human existence, humans lived as hunter-gatherers.
They hunted wild animals and gathered edible plants.
● Those clues about early modern humans, along with evidence
gathered by archaeologists, suggest that in a hunting-and-gathering
economy the people were largely self-sufficient.
● Because of the widespread use of stone tools, the period in human
history that began 2.5 million years ago and ended around 3000
B.C.E. is known as the Stone Age. Archaeologists divide the Stone
Age into two major periods: the Paleolithic (“Old Stone”) and the
Neolithic (“New Stone”).
● The earliest hunter-gatherers’ “toolkit” included stone flakes—sharp
pieces of stone that could be used like knives to butcher animals.
● Near the end of the Paleolithic period, some dramatic changes took
place. One advance was the development of composite tools, like
the spear.
 ● Hunter-gatherers used their tools to gather, hunt, fish, and trap those
resources.
● They moved from one place to the next in an ongoing quest for food.
● Much of their movement related to the seasonal migrations of the game
animals that they hunted.
● Hunter-gatherers could not afford to gather possessions. They had no pack
animals to help them carry loads of belongings from one place to another.
They had to carry everything themselves.
● Mobility was a key to the hunting-and-gathering way of life. Nonetheless,
later hunter-gatherers maintained “central places”—sites within their
territory to which they continually returned.
● Hunter-gatherer bands consisted mainly of kin groups—people who claim
a common ancestor.
● Members of hunter-gatherer bands generally enjoyed equal status in the
group. They had no real government—no one person had political
power—but they did have leaders.
● Hunter-gatherers traveled far and wide to exploit available resources.
● At the end of the Paleolithic period, some hunter-gatherer communities were
becoming more complex.
 ● Complex hunter-gatherer societies appeared in regions that were rich in
resources.
● One such region existed in Southwest Asia, in the area known as the
Fertile Crescent.
● The western area of the Fertile Crescent, near the Mediterranean Sea,
offered a wealth of natural resources.
● Wild grasses were the key ingredient in the momentous shift from hunting
and gathering to farming.
● The goats, sheep, and cattle that fed on wild grasses became the first
domesticated animals (except for the dog, which had already been living
with humans for thousands of years).
● Domestication is a biological process in which the physical characteristics
of wild plants and animals change as a result of human intervention.
● Sowing one variety of wheat seed led it to dominate the local stands of wild
wheat. Through this process, hunter-gatherers unintentionally changed the
overall traits of the wheat in their territory.
● People moved with their herds as the animals moved to fresh pastures. Those
who engage in this kind of food-producing economy are called pastoral
nomads.
 ● In the Fertile Crescent and other places in which farming began, the climate
turned favorably warm and rainy around 11,500 years ago.
● The shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture, once it had started in any
location, took hundreds or thousands of years.
● Agriculture was widespread in the Fertile Crescent around 9,000 years ago.
Through cultural diffusion, it spread from there to Egypt, Europe, and India.
● The shift to agriculture ushered in the Neolithic period, or New Stone Age.
● In time, Neolithic people invented the wheel, which served as a turntable for
pottery-making.
● Instead of drawing resources from an extensive territory, as hunter-gatherers did,
Neolithic farmers cultivated a small area intensively.
● The population density—the number of people in a unit of area—rose as kin
groups came together in farm villages.
● Ownership of such luxury goods brought respect and signaled a family’s wealth,
as did the amount of land the family farmed or the size of the family’s herd of
livestock.
● Instead of the equality that characterized hunter-gatherer societies, Neolithic
farming villages gradually became stratified.
● The shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture is often called the
Agricultural Revolution.
 ● A civilization is a highly organized and
complex society.
● To acquire writing, a society had to find a way
to represent spoken language with visual
symbols.
● Ancient civilizations arose in river valleys,
where access to water and fertile soil made
farming much more productive, making it a
popular place for early civilizations to settle.
● Usually, the urban social system evolved into a
hierarchy—a ranking of groups of people
according to their importance, status, or power.
● Most cities contained large public
structures—palaces for kings and temples for
priests—as well as markets for the exchange of
goods.
 In this lesson, you learned about the development of hunting and gathering societies, the beginnings of
agriculture, and the rise of ancient civilizations.

Cultural Interaction Most cultural knowledge accumulated by hunter-gatherers stayed within the group.
Farmers and herders had more interaction with outsiders. Knowledge of agriculture appeared first in the Fertile
Crescent and spread from there to Egypt, Europe, and the Indus River Valley. The main principles of
civilization spread in a similar way, although civilizations also arose in several places independently. Complex
societies exchanged elements of their cultures, often along trade routes. In this way Buddhism spread from
India to China.

Political Structures Political structures grew progressively more complex during ancient times. Elders served
as leaders of hunter-gatherer groups and farm villages. Civilizations often turned to priest-kings for leadership
and a set of officials to carry out government policy. Strong states arose, and some, through conquest of
neighboring lands, became empires.
Economic Structures The earliest humans survived by hunting animals and gathering plants. The development of
agriculture, marked by the domestication of food plants and animals, led to an increase in the production of food.
Surplus crops allowed some members of society to pursue non-farming activities, including trade. Agriculture
remained the basis for the economies of even the largest states and empires. Trade brought them needed goods as well
as luxury items.

Social Structures Hunter-gatherer and ancient village societies were made up of kin groups, or related families, in
which all members had fairly equal status. Generally, the men did the hunting and the women did the gathering. Cities
drew their much larger populations from a variety of different groups within the surrounding region. In such complex
states, societies evolved hierarchies, often based on differences in economic status.

Human-Environment Interaction Mobility was a key characteristic of hunter-gatherers. They moved from place to
place to maintain access to the animals and plants that gave them food, clothing, and shelter. Farmers stayed in one
place and tended to settle in resource-rich areas. They cleared land near their villages for planting crops. The first
civilizations rose in river valleys, where fertile soils and irrigation water helped them raise plenty of food. Improved
tools, such as the plow, also boosted food production.