NAME:_________________________________________________________________CLASS:______DATE:_________

AMSCO CH. 1: FROM HUNTER-FORAGERS TO SETTLED SOCIETIES

Answer the following questions, using complete sentences, your own words, and citing specific details from the
reading.
BIG QUESTION:
How did human social interaction evolve beginning in the Stone Age to the earliest civilizations?
1. How do scholars study and come to understand history before the existence of written records? Give examples.

MIGRATING ACROSS THE GLOBE

2. How did most humans live between 200,000 and 12,000 years ago? Describe.

3. How did climate change affect humans thousands of years ago?

THE PALEOLITHIC PERIOD

4. When was the Paleolithic period? What characterized this time period?

5. Describe the different ways early humans used technology to adapt to their environment.

6. Evaluate the extent of benefits humans gained from learning to control fire.

7. What social groups were typically found in the Paleolithic time period? How did the different groups connect with
one another?

8. What does it mean that Paleolithic groups were relatively egalitarian?

9. Describe the gender roles of early human societies.

10. How did some of the earliest religious beliefs develop during the Paleolithic time period?

NEOLITHIC REVOLUTION
11. What and when was the Neolithic Revolution?

12. Where did the Neolithic Revolution happen? Did it occur at the same time in these places? Explain.

13. How did agriculture change the lifestyles of societies that were formerly hunter-foragers?

14. What were the consequences of farming concerning diet and plant diversity?

15. What were the earliest animals to be domesticated? What kind of lifestyle change did the development lead to in
some groups of people? Describe this lifestyle.

16. Use the chart on pg. 7 to answer the following:

a. Where and when were dogs first domesticated?

b. What (and when) two grains were domesticated early on in Asia?

c.

When and where was sorghum domesticated?

d.

What (and when) three crops were domesticated in the Americas?

17. How were the lifestyles of farmers and pastoralists different?

18. How did the surplus of food from agriculture begin to change early societies?

19. How important was the development of writing? How did it change societies?

20. What is social stratification?

21. What, where, and when was the earliest cities?

22. Why did governments develop? How is it connected to farming?

23. What problems often plagued early farmers?

24. How did the problems you discussed in #23 help lead to the development of more complex religious ideas and
traditions?

25. What are the five big technological developments from the Neolithic Revolution period?
i.
ii.
iii.
iv.
v.

THE FIRST CIVILIZATIONS

26. What issues/problems became more apparent after the development of the first civilizations?

27. Where did the early four civilizations develop?

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
28. What arguments have scholars made for and against the development of farming?

MULTIPLE-CHOICE ANSWERS:
Five of these questions will appear on the reading quiz!
1. ________

2. ________

3. ________

4. ________

5. ________

6. ________

7. ________

8. ________

9. ________

10. ________