Chapter 1- Toward Civilization (Prehistory-3000 B



Chapter 1- Toward Civilization (Prehistory-3000 B.C.)

Section 1- Understanding Our Past

I. Geography and History:

- Geography: the study of people, their environments and the resources available to them.

- 5 themes of geography that illustrate the impact of geography on people

o A. Location:

▪ Where people are located on the map using latitude and longitude (lat= north/south of equator; long= east/west of PrimeMEridian)

▪ Relative location refers to where something is located in relation to something else

o B. Place:

▪ Physical features (landforms, bodies of water, climate, resources)

▪ Human characteristics (where people live, religious beliefs, languages, economic needs)

o C. Human-Environments Interaction:

▪ This refers to how people interact with the land/resources/etc around them

▪ Technology greatly impacts this

o D. Movement: moving of people, goods, ideas and how that impacts society. One should also keep in mind the causes of such movements (i.e. disease? War? Better economic opportunities?)

o E. Region: This can be based on physical characteristics; culture is also another factor

II. How do we know?

- prehistory: long period of time before people invented systems of writing; no cities, countries, organized gov’t, or inventions existed

- anthropology: the study of the origins and delopment of people and their societies

o anthropologists look at culture: the way of life for a society

- archaeology: study of the past people and culture

o specifically study material remains and/or artifacts (objects made by humans. I.e. jewelry, pottery, etc).

o try to gain an understanding of technology used (the skills/tools people developed to meet their basic needs)

o often work in conjunction with geologists, zoologists, botanists, biologists

III. Historians reconstruct the past

- Historians study how people lived in the past; rely even more on written evidence

- Historians must be able to tell if a source is reliable

- Historians must keep their own bias from interfering with their analysis

- Historians can disagree!

- The first historians emerged thousands of years ago (we read their works to learn about the past!)

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