Early Technologies

Question 1

What is technology?

Answer 1

A system that leads to creation of predetermined products.

Question 2

What is invisible technology? Give an example.

Answer 2

Technology where you can’t see the product. Education, government.

Question 3

When is the prehistoric period?

Answer 3

Before 3200 BC.

Question 4

When did we first start seeing stone tools being used?

Answer 4

Around 2.5 million years ago.

Question 5

Where did stone tool using begin?

Answer 5

In the Great Rift Valley, in Africa.

Question 6

What are the two types of stone tools?

Answer 6

1. Oldowan (flake tools)

2. Acheulean (core tools)

Question 7

How is a flake tool made?

Answer 7

Taking a hard hammer stone and hitting it against another rock (a core), and having a “flake” broken off.

Question 8

What is an example and a use of a flake tool?

Answer 8

Quartz, basalt, obsidian. Cutting skin off animals.

Question 9

What was the first species to use the flake tools?

Answer 9

Australopithecus.

Question 10

How is a core tool made?

Answer 10

Reverse process of flake tools, chop the flakes off the core and discard the flakes, have the core become your tool.

Question 11

What was the first species to use the core tools?

Answer 11

Homo Erectus.

Question 12

What is an example and a use of a core tool?

Answer 12

Flint hand axe, humans killing animals.

Question 13

When approximately was fire domesticated?

Answer 13

1 million years ago.

Question 14

When did our species come around?

Answer 14

100,000 years ago.

Question 15

What do scientists say cannot happen in other animals? What does this phenomenon lead to?

Answer 15

Abstract thinking, leads to ideas for new technologies.

Question 16

When and where did agriculture first arise?

Answer 16

Around 10,000 BC, Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq/Iran).

Question 17

Why was Mesopotamia an ideal settling ground in ancient times?

Answer 17

Everything was warm, green, growing, not so cold. Grains were already growing here, not planted.

Question 18

When did domestication of animals come around?

Answer 18

7500 BC.

Question 19

What was the shift in mentality for food as agriculture became prevalent? What did this lead to?

Answer 19

From ‘eat when you catch it’ to ‘sae the best for the next year’. Led to division of labour, specialization, political elite, first towns.

Question 20

What was the first sign of a town? Where?

Answer 20

Çatalhöyük, Turkey.

Question 21

What was the greatest invention ever and when did it come around?

Answer 21

4000 BC, the plow!

Question 22

What did the greatest invention lead to?

Answer 22

Plow led to first civilizations, cities, monumental movements.

Question 23

What was the first advanced civilization?

Answer 23

Sumer. People were called the Sumerians.

Question 24

What rivers did the Sumerians rely on? What was the nature of these rivers?

Answer 24

Euphrates and Tigris. Unpredictable.

Question 25

What was the first modern city? Under which civilization? What was its population?

Answer 25

Uruk, by the Sumerians. 50,000.

Question 26

What is specific to each Sumerian city?

Answer 26

Each protected by a goddess, which was monumentized and worshipped. Offers of tribute were brought to the monument.

Question 27

What signifies the end of the prehistoric period?

Answer 27

Invention of writing, in 3200 BC.

Question 28

What was an example of writing in the Sumerian civilization?

Answer 28

Hundreds and thousands of receipts on clay tablets, there were no actual foundations or stories.

Question 29

What are some other major inventions from the Sumerians?

Answer 29

- clock - calendar - wheel - mathematics - government - armor/weapon/metallurgy (bronze)

Question 30

Did the invention of the wheel have an immediate impact? Did the plow?

Answer 30

Wheel, no. Most cargo was transported by water. Plow, yes. Led to surplus and advancement of civilizations.

Question 31

When did Sumerians start using metallurgy? When did the bronze and iron ages start?

Answer 31

Gold first, then copper, then silver, then smelting: - Bronze age (3000 BC) - Iron age (1480 BC, AFTER Sumerians)

Question 32

How did the Sumerian civilization end?

Answer 32

Were captured by nomadic Amorites (Babylonians). Eventual decline led to civil disputes for power, and a weakened government.

Question 33

Why are Egyptians considered more prominent than Sumerians?

Answer 33

Their tombs (pyramids) survived.

Question 34

What benefit did the Egyptians have from their geography?

Answer 34

- Protective desert. - Nile, predictable river. - Predictable water supply, when it was gonna flood, how much it's gonna flood each year. - leads to new layer of topsoil every year.

Question 35

What was a nilometer? What advantage did this lend Egyptians?

Answer 35

A stake with notches on it used to measure the height of the Nile. Led to easier prediction of Nile's water supply, led to storage of excess water and allowance of TWO harvests.

Question 36

How did the Egyptians execute social control?

Answer 36

By using stars - used stars to tell time and therefore predict annual Nile events. Knowing this and predicting it correctly made them seem like gods to peasants .

Question 37

Who was the first pharaoh of Egypt? When? What is a pharaoh's duty?

Answer 37

Menes c. 3200 BC. | Along with being a god on earth, had to oversee the wealth, centralize granary, make sure taxes were being collected.

Question 38

When was the Archaic Period?

Answer 38

3100-2800 BC.

Question 39

What is a mastaba?

Answer 39

Egyptian tomb, flat-roofed, constructed out of mud bricks.

Question 40

How did the first step pyramid come to be? When?

Answer 40

Imhotep made increasingly smaller mastabas. c. 2650 BC.

Question 41

When and what was Sneferu's pyramid?

Answer 41

2613 BC, bent pyramid, didn't work.

Question 42

Who built the pyramids? Why?

Answer 42

Not slaves, but rather paid contract workers as a form of social control. Keep the population busy.

Question 43

What are two theories on how the pyramids were built? Which one holds more likelihood?

Answer 43

1. Ramp theory | 2. Earth ramps, more likely

Question 44

What was the purpose of the pyramids?

Answer 44

Act as a tomb for the pharaohs, their wives and belongings and everything they would need for the afterlife would be brought to here.

Question 45

What were two setbacks that prevented Egyptians from becoming much more technologically advanced?

Answer 45

1. Too focused on afterlife, not enough on moving forward with present life. 2. Did not know how to separate the divine from the real, when not knowing why something is the way it is: divine, no other reasoning or questioning.

Question 46

What happened in Egypt around 1700 BC?

Answer 46

Pharaohs abandoned, Hyksos came to be. Egypt was never the same.