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The Bronze Age
- Bronze: alloy of copper and tin, arsenic, lead
- Monumental architecture
- Social stratification
- Militarism
- Administrative bureaucracies
- Theocratic states (Egyptians and Sumerians)
- Writing
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Writing
- Invented 5,100 years old
- The graphic representation of language
- Accountancy
- Store, manipulate, communicate data
- Proper names of sites, regions, individuals
- Immortalize people or events
- Propaganda
- Story telling
- Divination
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Forms of Writing
- Logographic – Signs represent words or ideas
- Syllabic – Signs represents individual syllables
- Logosyllabic – Combination of logographic and syllabic
- Alphabetic – Signs represent individual consonants and vowel
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Iron Age
- ~3,000 - 500 BP
- Empires
- Powerful militaries
- Large populations
- Conquest states and tribute societies
- Social stratification
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Homo Floresiensis
- Eight individuals founds
- 1 meter tall; 50-60 pounds
- Remains date to ~18,000 years ago
- Controversy: New species OR modern humans suffering from microcephaly?
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New World Archaeology
- North and South America
- Paleo-Indian
- Archaic
- Pre-Classic
- Classic
- Post-Classic
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Human Arrival Debate
- 40,000 year old footprints discovered in Mexico
- >200 human footprints found in a quarry; Preserved by volcanic activity (ash cover)
- Highly controversial; many claim that the quarry was too recently disturbed to give accurate data
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The Paleo-Indian
- Lasted until ~10,000 BP
- Big game hunters of the megafauna — long-horned bison, horses, mammoths, mastodons, camels, wolves, ground sloths
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The Paleo-Indian Clovis
- Lance shaped and “fluted” points
- Clovis (12,000 - 11,000 BP)
- Big game hunters
- Scrapers and knives
- Exploited fish and shellfish
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The Paleo-Indian Folsom
- 11,000 - 10,000 BP
- Smaller point
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The Archaic
- Broad spectrum H/G
- Local resources; Increased sedentism
- Tools made from wood, bone, and antler
- By 6,000 BP agriculture in Mexico; By 4,500 BP pottery; By 4,000 BP villages in Mexico; By 4,000 BP Alaska to Greenland inhabited
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Pre-Classic, Classic, and Post Classic
- Began ~4,500 BP
- Mesoamerica and Peru = agriculture
- Urban development
- Social stratification
- Formal political organization
- Imperialistic states
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