AP World History Ways of the World – Flashcards
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Venus Figurines
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May had religious significance; exaggerated carvings of women
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Dreamtime
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a complex world view of Australian Aboriginal people that held that current humans live in a vibration or echo of ancestral happenings.
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Clovis Culture
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Named after distinct stone tools found in Clovis, New Mexico; earliest widespread and distinctive culture of North America named from the Clovis Point, a particular kind of projectile point.
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Megafaunal Extinction
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The end of 85% of all the large mammals including the mammoth, many species of horses, and camels that occurred around 11,000 to 10,000 years ago at the end of the Ice Age. The extinction may have been caused by excessive hunting or by the changing climate of the era.
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Austronesian Migration
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Last phase of the great human migration that established a human presence in every habitable region of the earth. Austronesian speaking people settled the Pacific Islands and Madagascar in a series of sea-born migrations that began around 3500 years ago.
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The Original Affluent Society
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Term coined by the scholar Marshall Sahlins in 1972 to describe Paleolithic societies, which he regarded as affluent not because they had so much, but because they wanted or needed so little.
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Shamans
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In many early societies, a person believed to have the ability to act as a bridge between living humans and supernatural forces, often by the means of trances induced by psychoactive drugs.
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Trance Dance
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In San culture, a nightlong ritual held to activate a human being's inner spiritual potency to counteract the evil influences of gods and ancestors. The practice was apparently common to the Khoisan people, of whom the Ju/'hoansi are a surviving remnant.
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Paleolithic Settling Down
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The process by which some Paleolithic people moved towards permanent settlement in the wake of the last Ice Age. Settlement was marked by increasing storage of food and accumulation of goods as well as growing inequalities in society.
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Göbekli Tepe
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oldest religious structure. made by hunter gathers. Indicates that religion came before organization of labor, settlement and agriculture
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Fertile Crescent
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A geographical area of fertile land in the Middle East stretching in a broad semicircle from the Nile to the Tigris and Euphrates
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Teosinte
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a grass from which modern maize/corn subsequently developed in a process of adaptation and "genetic engineering" over thousands of years
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Diffusion
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Refers to spread of ideas, beliefs, and technologies among people
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Bantu Migration
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The Bantu, beginning in southern Nigeria, began to migrate south and east, bringing their agricultural skills with them. This process diffused agriculture to southern and eastern Africa and drove away Paleolithic-like people.
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Ishi
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An example of a modern day Paleolithic man. Ishi was part of the hunting and gathering society of the Yahi, who managed to keep their culture and not convert to agriculture.
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Banpo
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a Neolithic village in the Yanshao society. The whole village was discovered in 1952. Large quantities of fine painted pottery and bone tools used by early cultivators in the 6th and 5th millennia B.C.E. was found there
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Secondary Products Revolution
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a term used to describe the series of technological changes that began ca. 4000 B.C.E., as people began to develop new uses for their domesticated animals, exploiting a revolutionary new source of power
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Pastoral Societies
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Based on the domestication of animal herds and the use of their products as primary source of food. Groups move to where there is pasture for their animals to eat but they are more settlers than nomads. Independent and warlike societies; watching their land boundaries. A few remain in deserts of North and East Africa, Middle East.
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Chief doms
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a political organization created in regards to ranking in non-industrial societies. The leaders are dominated by the eldest members of certain families-were precursors to states with privileged and effective leaders-cheif-but lacking the sharp class divisions that characterize states
