This document provides an overview of early human civilizations beginning around 3 million years ago. It discusses hominids like Homo sapiens migrating out of Africa around 70,000 years ago. Neanderthals and Homo sapiens are compared, noting they coexisted and may have interbred. Key developments of the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods are outlined. Characteristics of civilization are defined. Early civilizations including Sumer and Babylonia are then described, noting Sumer's use of agriculture and writing as well as Babylonia's Code of Hammurabi.

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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