historynerd94's definitions

Civilization

An ambiguous term often used to denote more complex societies but sometimes used by anthropologists to describe any group of people sharing a set of cultural traits.

Scholars agree that political, social, economic, and technological phenomena are indicators of civilization.

by HistoryNerd94 September 26, 2010

Foragers

People who support themselves by hunting wild animals and gathering wild edible plants and insects.

Modern foragers in the Kalahari Desert of southern Africa and the Ituri Forest of Central Africa derive the bulk of their day-to-day nourishment from wild vegetable foods.

by HistoryNerd94 November 8, 2010

Holocene

The geological era since the end of the Great Ice Age about 11,000 years ago.

Most researchers today, however, believe that climate change drove people to abandon hunting and gathering in favor of pastoralism and agriculture. So great was the global warming that ended the last Ice Age that geologists gave the era since about 9000 B.C.E. a new name: the Holocene.

by HistoryNerd94 November 15, 2010

Scribe

In the governments of many ancient societies, a professional position reserved for men who had undergone the lengthy training required to be able to read and write using cuneiform, hieroglyphics, or other early, cumbersome writing systems.

Male domination of the position of scribe—an administration or scholar charged by the temple or palace with reading and writing tasks—further complicates efforts to reconstruct the lives of women.

by HistoryNerd94 December 21, 2010

Cuneiform

A system of writing in which wedge-shape symbols represented words or syllables. It originated in Mesopotamia and was used initially for Sumerian and Akkadian but later was adapted to represent other languages of western Asia. Because so many symbols had to be learned, literacy was confined to a relatively small group of administrators and scribes.

Because the reed made wedge-shaped impressions, the early pictures, which were more or less realistic, evolved into stylized combinations of strokes and wedges, a system known as cuneiform writing.

by HistoryNerd94 December 25, 2010

City-State

A small independent state consisting of an urban center and the surrounding agricultural territory. A characteristic political form in early Mesopotamia, Archaic and Classical Greece, Phoenicia, and early Italy.

The term city-state refers to a self-governing urban center and the agriculture territories it controlled.

by HistoryNerd94 December 18, 2010

Renaissance

The intellectual and artistic flowering in Europe during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries sparked by a revival of interest in classical antiquity.

The Renaissance celebrated human possibility.

by HistoryNerd94 December 30, 2011