Journal 1.2 Characterizes of Civilization Can you name the 8 indicators of a civilization?

1. Cities as administrative centers 2 1. Cities as administrative centers 2. political system based on control of a defined territory rather than kinship connections. 3. many people engaged in specialized, non food producing activities. 4. status distinction based largely on accumulation of wealth.

5. monumental building. 6. a system for keeping permanent records. 7 5. monumental building. 6. a system for keeping permanent records. 7. long distant trade 8. major advancements in the sciences and arts.

Civilizations Developed writing, starting with cuneiform (writing based on wedge-like characters) in the Middle East around 3500 B.C.E. One of the earliest written records from the Middle East is a recipe for making beer.

Gender Roles - Family Unit Extended families clustered together, forming clans bound by ties of kinship. Larger groups such as bands and tribes. Social groups sustained themselves by hunting and gathering (foraging). Most hunter-gatherer societies were mobile or nomadic. Coordination and teamwork were needed to hunt large creatures and wage war.

Gender Division of Labor Men hunted, made war, and performed heavy labor. Women gathered nuts, berries, and plants; prepared food; maintained home; and tended children. Some historians believe women and men were basically equal.

(POSSIBLE B/C FOOD SURPLUSES!) The Neolithic Revolution First Towns Develop Towns require social differentiation: metal workers, pottery workers, farmers, soldiers, religious and political leaders. (POSSIBLE B/C FOOD SURPLUSES!) Served as trade centers for the area; specialized in the production of certain unique crafts Beginnings of social stratification (class)

Roles of Women Women generally lost status under male-dominated, patriarchal systems. Women were limited in vocation, worked in food production, etc. Women may have lacked the same social rights as men.

Why did the agricultural revolution exaggerate the gender roles of men and women? civilization tends to cause war, and men mostly fight wars. Their militaristic prowess gets exaggerated value. Large, permanent agricultural settlements depend on coercion to get the necessary work done. Men do most of the forcing, wind up with most of the power. Women are stereotyped as sources of fertility--their roles in child-bearing and raising get emphasized. Hunter-gathering societies grant greater status to women partly because everyone is working together so much of the time (men gather along with the women, as well as hunting). Perhaps the privatization of economic life and the development of the concept of personal property led men to think of women as "property" in a way they had not before.

What age did they start a family. Was there marriage What age did they start a family? Was there marriage? How did they go about finding a mate? We can't really know much about preliterate, precivilized social customs. We can draw analogies with modern hunter-gatherers, but that's risky. Given that people had very short lifespans back in those days it is unlikely they waited any past puberty to begin families, and in many cultures puberty and adulthood are pretty much synonymous. So say, mid-teens. There are a host of ways to get "married" around the world--and nobody knows which of them were in use back in those days. We do know that small hunter-gatherer bands learn early on that if they marry "out" they get healthier offspring. Often there is some kind of deliberate exchange by which people from group A try to marry people from group B.

A big effect of the agriculture on civilization was the separation of men and women.  Although today, women's roles are going back to being equal to those of men, in between the ag revolution and now there has been a definite difference. It all started when women took on the jobs that required being in one place for a long time – they stopped hunting and gathering. Some tasks were pottery, weaving, and cooking. These jobs may have been even tougher than those of the hunters, who were men. The men had to rely on the women for food most of the time because they seldom brought home food.