Highlands Ranch High School - Mr. Sedivy
Highlands Ranch, Colorado

World History - Prehistory
Neolithic Age
(About 9,000 Years Ago)

How Early Humans Avoided Constant Wandering:

1. Farm and herd. Gather seeds from wild grasses and cultivate crops. Tame and domesticate animals - now there was a dependable food source. Do all of this by a river. Why along rivers? Fresh water for people, animals and crops, and it made trade easier because it is easier to travel on water.

Domesticated Sheep Herded in the Alps

2. Now, you can build a house. Others build houses close by, so they can be by the food source.

3. Social structure. Men hunt; women and children work the farm.

4. Artisans. Others, who don't want to farm, make things. Invented baked clay pottery, potter's wheel, looms for weaving, etc.

5. Barter system. How the farmers get the goods from the artisans and the artisans get food.

What Were Their Houses Like?
Rectangular, flat roofs, only entrance was through the top. For ease, the houses were built adjoining each other.

Who Did They Worship and How?
Goddess of Agriculture. Decorated building to her. Buried dead with food, showing a belief in the afterlife.

Stonehenge

How Did They Improve Agriculture?
Plow (pulled by oxen), metal tools

The Iceman's Axe, Discovered in 1991

Now, How Would They Trade with People Far Away?
Develop the wheel and the sail.

What Were the Problems of Ownership?
Needed a government. Usually a leader or chief - usually had a council to help make decisions.

Where Was the First Town?
Jericho, on the Mediterranean 7000 B.C.

First Civilizations
The earliest civilizations were in the river valleys of Asia and Africa.

Earliest - Mesopotamia (5,000 years ago). Between Tigris and Euphrates Rivers

Egyptian - Along the Nile

Chinese - Along the Yellow River

(New early site is being uncovered at this time in Honduras.)