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Chapter 1: The First
Civilizations
The First Humans

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Hominids
3,000,000 – 195,000 BCE

4. About 70,000 years ago, a group of Homo sapiens migrated out of
Africa. This is their story . . .

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Neanderthals and Homo
sapiens
Neanderthals Homo sapiens
• Stocky bodies, well-suited to colder climates. • Thinner & taller; better for hunting.
• Large skull, sloping brow & protruding jaw. • Facial features similar to modern people.
• Lived from ~ 250,000 to 30,000 BCE. • Emerged ~ 100,000 to present.
• Made tools, used fire & buried dead. • Made tools, used fire & buried dead.
DNA Evidence of Interbreeding

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Meet the Neanderthals and Homo sapiens
250,ooo BCE
Neanderthals and Homo sapiens:
The First Encounter

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Paleolithic Age (2.5 mya-10,000 BCE)
“Old”“stone”
Distinguishing Features of Paleolithic Humans:
• Hunter-Gatherers
• Simple Tools & Weapons
• Small Nomadic Groups
• Gendered Division of Labor
• Systematic Use of Fire for Cooking & Heating
• Art for Religious & Decorative Use

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• Agriculture & Domestication of Animals
• Flint Tools & Weapons
• Small Settlements
• Specialization of Labor
• Beginning of Trade in Products
• Men Tending Fields & Animals
• Women Raising Children &
Weaving
Distinguishing Features of Neolithic Humans:
“Ötzi the Iceman”: A Mummified Neolithic Hunter
discovered in the Tyrolean Alps in 1999
Ötzi with the grass cape and
weapons found with him.

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The Characteristics of Civilization
3. Social & Economic Stratification
2. Organized Political & Military Bureaucracy
1. Urbanization
4. Complex Agricultural & Material Production
The Bronze Age ~ 3000 –1200 BCE
5. Organized Religion
6. Writing (although some civilizations, such as the Inca, had no written language)
7. Significant Artistic & Intellectual Activity
IMPORTANT STUFF!!!

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• Primarily Agricultural
• Production of Textiles, Pottery & Metalwork
• Built Ziggurats
• Divine Kings
• Highly Stratified Society
• Polytheistic
• Cuneiform Writing

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• Oldest Known “Flood” Myth, predates Genesis by nearly 1000
years
• Based on Gilgamesh, King of Sumer
~ 2700 BCE, and his quest for immortality

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#196: “If a free man has destroyed the eye of a member of the aristocracy, they shall
destroy his eye.”
#141: “If a man's wife, who lives in his house, wishes to leave it, plunges into debt, tries to ruin
her house, neglects her husband, and is judicially convicted: if her husband offer her release,
she may go on her way, and he gives her nothing as a gift of release. If her husband does not
wish to release her, and if he take another wife, she shall remain as servant in her husband's
house.”
#129: “If a man's wife be surprised having intercourse with another man, both shall be
tied and thrown into the water, but the husband may pardon his wife and the king his
slaves.”
• Best known for the “Code of
Hammurabi”, 282 laws governing
Babylonian society
• Conquered Sumer & Akkad by 1763 BCE
First Babylonian Empire ~ 1792-1750 BCE