This is considered the earliest true species of hominid that emerged in

Africa about 3.5 million years ago. It was the first hominid species to demonstrate truly human

traits.  walked on two feet, stood about four feet tall, and had a brain that was

This was a period of the Prehistoric Era, or the Stone Age, that occurred

from about three million to about 10,000 years ago. The term “Paleolithic Age” means “Old

Stone Age” because it was characterized by relatively simple stone tool technologies and also

This was the transitional time between full-time hunting

and gathering and full-time agriculture and animal husbandry. This occurred for virtually every

society during the Neolithic Age.

This is a society in which most members have no direct or even indirect

relationship to the ruler. Moreover, family relations no longer have any relevance in the political

order because it is constituted separately from the principal familial structures.

This is the river valley between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in what is

today modern Iraq where the first true civilization arose about 4,500 BC. Mesopotamia was

home to a variety of groups in ancient times, most of whom spoke Semitic languages, including

the Sumerians, Akkadians, Kassites, Assyrians, and Babylonians. The Mesopotamians

developed a system of writing known as cuneiform and built large temple mounds known as

ziggurats.

The  were the first Mesopotamian society to emerge on the historical

stage about 4500 BC. They lived in what is today southern Iraq, where they established about a

dozen independent city states such as Ur, Lagash, Eridu, Kish, and Uruk. Many cultural

conventions that characterized the Mesopotamian culture such as writing and religion originated

with the Sumerians.

This man was a king of the Semitic-speaking Akkadians. In about 2350

BC, he first extended his rule over all of the Akkadian cities and then swept down and

conquered the Sumerian city states, thus creating the Akkadian Empire.

These were a series of gardens built upon terraces in the city of

Babylon that were constructed by the Chaldean king Nebuchadnezzar. The Hanging Gardens,

while they no longer exist, were considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and

helped make Babylon one of the most brilliant urban centers in history.

This was the system of writing used in ancient Mesopotamia that utilized wedgeshaped

marks in clay. It was first developed by the Sumerians. The cuneiform system utilized

several thousand characters that could stand for both things and syllables.

These were pyramidal-shaped structures about seventy feet high that were found

in every city in ancient Mesopotamia. They housed each city’s main temple, which sat atop the

mound. The ziggurat had a series of receding tiers that were built upon a rectangular, oval, or

square platform; the temple at the top was accessed by steep staircases.

This man was one of the greatest of the Egyptian pharaohs. He ruled from 1279

BC to 1212 BC during the period of the New Kingdom. It was under his rule, historians believe,

that the Twelve Tribes of Israel fled Egypt under the leadership of Moses.

This was the system of writing in ancient Egypt. It used characters, or

, that could be used to stand for objects or for syllables. The  system

had between 700 and 800 .

This word from ancient Egyptian translates as “justice,” or “what is right.” It was a

concept upon which the governmental system of ancient Egypt was based. Ma’at was also a

goddess: the goddess of justice, and when a person died, their soul would be put into a balance

along with the feather of Ma’at to determine whether it deserved eternal life.

This was a religious text from ancient Egypt written in hieroglyphs

containing prayers, spells, and hymns; the knowledge of this text was to be used to guide and

protect the soul on the journey through the afterlife. The text of this work appears on many

tomb walls.

This was a box constructed of precious woods and gold. It

contained the tablets on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed, and it was first housed

in the Tabernacle (or the Tent of Meeting) before it was moved into the First Temple in

Jerusalem.

This is the most important set of ancient Israelite scriptures. It is composed of the first

five books of what Christians call the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and

Deuteronomy. The Torah outlines the early history of the Israelites as well as the laws delivered

by Moses. This includes the Ten Commandments and the Mosaic Law.

This is the name of the God of the ancient Israelites (as well as their Jewish

descendants), and it translates as "He who has always been and always will be." He is also the

God of Christians and Muslims. Unlike the gods of other ancient peoples, Yahweh was

transcendent and thus was above and beyond nature rather than part of it.

This is a kind of religion in which only one god is prayed to and believed in.

Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are the principal monotheistic religions in the world today.

This is an agreement between God and man, and it was a religious concept that

originated with the Israelites and still continues to be the foundation of the modern faiths of

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The idea behind a covenant is that God promises His

followers certain things in exchange for their obedience.

These were the basis of the law for the ancient Israelites as well as

for their Jewish descendants. They were delivered by Yahweh, or God, to Moses atop Mount

Sinai after the Israelites left Egypt.

This was an ancient people who lived in what is today Turkey. They were Indo-

European speakers whose empire reached its height between 1400 BC to about 1200 BC.

Their most significant legacy was that they unlocked the secret of working iron, and Hittite iron

smiths later spread this knowledge to other cultures.

This was the main palace complex of the Minoans on the Island of Crete. It

influenced later Greek architecture and art.

The lived in what is today Greece from about 2000 BC to about

1100 BC, and they were the first Greek speakers to move into this region. They were most

likely a mix of Greek speakers from the north and pre-Greek speaking Neolithic peoples. The

principal city state that modern scholars have learned the most from is ----, and for this

reason the city has given its name to the entire civilization.

This is considered by historians to be that period from about 1100 BC to 383

BC when the Greeks developed their culture largely without significant outside influences and

had relatively little cultural or political influence outside of Greece.

Also known as the Assembly in English, the --- was established by Solon the

Reformer so that the common people of Athens had a body to represent them. Under the tyrant

Cleisthenes, all political power was lodged with the ---. It was a direct democracy in that

all free-born adult male citizens of Athens participated and voted in the ----.

This was a Greek poet and writer who lived about the same time as Homer.

Hesiod’s most valuable work was the Theogony, which was essentially a genealogy of the

Greek gods. It related who among the gods was related to whom.

---- was an Athenian who fought in the Persian Wars, and afterward the

Assembly of Athens made him a magistrate, or one of the full-time politicians who administered

the day-to-day functions of government in the city. Under his leadership, some of the greatest

architectural works that we associate with the Greeks were built upon a central hill in the city

known as the Acropolis.

This was the central hill in the city of Athens that, during classical times, was the

location of the city’s principal temples, particularly the Parthenon, which was dedicated to the

goddess Athena.

This was a defensive alliance formed by the city of Athens after the Persian

Wars. It became one of the two major alliances that fought in the Peloponnesian War.

This was a defensive alliance formed by the city of Sparta after

the Persian Wars.

This is considered by historians to be that period between about 383 BC to

about 200 BC when Greek culture was pushed farther to the east due to the conquests of the

Alexander the Great, and Greek culture in Greece proper was opened up to more outside

cultural influences from places such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Persia.

This was a city in Egypt that was founded upon the north shore of the

Mediterranean Sea by Alexander the Great. It was essentially a Greek city with a Greek upper

class. It became the most important center of Greek learning in Hellenistic times and had a

great library and museum.

These philosophers in Hellenic Greece were a transitional school between the

Cosmologists and the Speculative Philosophers. They focused upon teaching young men

rhetoric and oratory and believed in moral relativism, or the idea that any moral position can

justified through a well-crafted argument.

This man was an Athenian philosopher. He did not write anything down or

develop any doctrines. Instead he developed a system of question-and-answer known as

Dialectics (or Socratic Questioning) by which truth could be discovered.

This was a philosophical method developed by Socrates that sought to

determine the truth of an assertion by using repeated questions to strip away the assumptions

surrounding the assertion.

This man was an Athenian philosopher and a student of Socrates who developed the

Theory of Forms; this was the idea that perfection exists beyond the human mind. He used this

idea to write his most famous work, the Republic.

This was a philosophical principle developed by Plato. This principle

asserted that a perfect version of all things existed in a super-conscious realm known as the

Realm of Forms or the Realm of Ideas.

This was Plato’s most famous work. It incorporated his Theory of Forms by

describing the perfect city state. Plato believed Athens could become almost perfect if it could

model itself upon the city state he described in the Republic.

This man was an Athenian philosopher and a student of Plato. Unlike Plato,

Aristotle rejected the Theory of Forms and decided that people come to understand the world

not because of ideal forms as Plato said but through individual examples experienced through

the senses. This led to the development of scientific disciplines as we know them today.

This was the main temple on the Athenian Acropolis. It was built under the

leadership of the Athenian statesmen Pericles. It was a temple in honor of the patron goddess

of Athens, Athena.

This was the name of a civilization in northwestern Italy. The --- had

about one dozen city states that formed a confederation. --- kings ruled Rome for about a

century until 509 BC, and the ---- provided the Romans with many cultural legacies.

After the Romans overthrew the Etruscan kings and established the Roman

Republic in 509 BC, this was the ruling body of the city state of Rome. It consisted of the most

prominent members of the land-owning class, or the patricians.

These were the highest class of citizens in Rome, particularly during the period

of the Roman Republic. They owned most all of the land, and they rented it to the lower-class

members of Roman society, the plebeians. They also dominated the Senate.

In Rome, particularly during the period of the Roman Republic, these were the

lower-class members of Roman society, and they were generally landless and rented from the

patrician class.

As part of the Struggle of the Orders in early Rome, this was an

attempt to standardize what had been an oral and customary law code among the Romans.

The Law of Twelve Tables recorded the laws on twelve bronze tablets that were prominently

displayed in the Roman Forum.

During the Second Punic War, this man was the commander of the Carthaginian

armies. He crossed the Alps with his army (which included elephants). While he inflicted much

damage upon Rome’s armies, he and his army were defeated by a Roman army under Scipio

Africanus at the battle of Zama in North Africa in 202 BC.

This man was a powerful Roman politician and military leader in the late

Roman Republic. He was a member of the First Triumvirate, conquered Gaul, and was

appointed Dictator for Life by the Senate before he was assassinated in 44 BC by a group of

Senators who feared he was becoming too powerful.

This man was a member of the Second Triumvirate of Rome in addition to

Octavian (Julius Caesar’s adopted son) and Lepidus. Marc Antony married Cleopatra, and

together they planned to combine their armies and defeat Octavian, but Octavian defeated their

military forces at Actium in 31 BC.

This woman was the last of the Greek Ptolemy family, which had ruled Egypt

since the days of Alexander the Great. She was a lover to Julius Caesar, who set her up as the

ruler of Egypt. Later, she fell in love with Marc Antony and, with their combined armies,

unsuccessfully tried to defeat the armies of Julius Caesar’s adopted son Octavian (Augustus

Caesar) at Actium in 31 BC.

This battle was fought in 31 BC between the combined forces of Marc

Antony and Cleopatra and the armies of Octavian. Octavian was victorious and subsequently

became the undisputed ruler of the Roman world.

Originally named Octavian, he was the adopted son of Julius Caesar.

After Julius Caesar died, he was a member of the Second Triumvirate along with Marc Antony.

When Marc Antony married Cleopatra, both tried to take the reigns of power, but Octavian was

successful and defeated their military forces at Actium in 31 BC. Afterward, he became the first

Roman emperor and changed his name to Augustus Caesar.

This was one of three offices assumed by Augustus Caesar and his successors.

It essentially meant “First Citizen of Rome.”

This was one of three offices assumed by Augustus Caesar and his

successors. It essentially meant “High Priest.”

This was one of three offices assumed by Augustus Caesar and his successors.

It essentially meant “Commander of all Roman Armies.”

These were man-made rivers that the Romans used to bring freshwater to

localities that did not have natural sources of freshwater.

This was the local law code for the city of Rome, which began with the writing of

the Twelve Tables during the early Roman Republic.

This was the law code of the Roman Empire. Originally, the Romans were

content to let their conquered people use their own local law codes, but as the empire grew and

imperial legal questions emerged, this law code was developed to deal with imperial issues.

This is a Latin term that translates as the “Peace of Rome.” It was a period

from 31 BC to 180 AD where there was almost complete peace within the Roman Empire, and

Greco-Roman culture blossomed.

This is a Latin term that translates as the “Peace of Rome.” It was a period

from 31 BC to 180 AD where there was almost complete peace within the Roman Empire, and

Greco-Roman culture blossomed.

This man lived from 106 BC to 43 BC and was considered the greatest orator and

statesman of the Roman Republic. He was also very influenced by Greek Stoicism, which he

believed dovetailed with the Roman values of self-sacrifice and simplicity.

This was an epic poem written by the Roman poet Virgil, who borrowed heavily from

the Iliad and the Odyssey by saying that Rome was founded by the ancestors of Aeneas, who

fled from Troy after it was destroyed in the Trojan War.

This man was a Roman writer and scientist who compiled Greek science

into a single source, which made it easier to disseminate. The name of this work was the

Naturalis Historia, which was essentially an encyclopedia of the best Greek knowledge of the

time.

This was a Roman architectural innovation that involved making a support by

creating a perfect half circle of stones that locked together under pressure and could hold a

tremendous amount of weight.

This was the largest dome structure in Roman times. It was a temple dedicated

to all of the major Roman gods.