AP World History Exam Study Guide Latest

AP World History Exam Study Guide ( Latest – ) Graded A+ | Passed | New Full Exam Actual

• Civilization

Answer: An ambiguous term often used to denote more complex societies but

sometimes used by anthropologists to describe any group of people sharing a set of cultural traits.

• Foragers

Answer: People who support themselves by hunting wild animals and gathering wild edible plants and insects.

• Cuneiform

Answer: A system of writing in which wedge-shaped symbols represented words or

syllables. It originated in Mesopotamia and was used initially for Sumerian and Akkadian but later was adapted to represent other languages of western Asia.Because so many symbols had to be learned, literacy was confined to a relatively small group of administrators and scribes.

• History

Answer: The study of past events and changes in the development, transmission, and transformation of cultural practices.

• City-state

Answer: A small independent state consisting of an urban center and the sur-

rounding agricultural territory. A characteristic political form in early Mesopotamia, classical Greece, Phoenicia, and early Italy.

• Culture

Answer: Socially transmitted patterns of action and expression. Material refers to physical objects, such as dwellings, clothing, tools, and crafts. also includes arts, beliefs, knowledge, and technology.

• Agricultural Revolution/Neolithic Revolution-When?

Answer: The change from food gathering to food production that occurred between

8000 and 2000 B.C.E., independently in various parts of the world. This also includes the domestication of plants and animals.

• Paleolithic

Answer: The period of the Stone Age associated with the evolution of humans. It

predates the Neolithic period.

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• Neolithic

Answer: The period of the Stone Age associated with the ancient Agricultural

Revolution (s). It follows the Paleolithic period.

• Mohenjo-Darro

Answer: Largest of the cities of the Indus Valley civilization. It was centrally located in the extensive floodplain of the Indus River in contemporary Pakistan.Little is known about the political institutions of Indus Valley communities, but the large scale of construction at Mohenjo-Daro, the orderly grid for streets, and the standardization of building materials are evidence of central planning.

• Name the 4 river valleys where civilization began.

Answer:

1) Mesopotamia, 2) Egypt, 3) Pakistan, 4) northern China

• What are the characteristics of civilization?

Answer: 1) Cities that serve as administrative centers, 2) a political system based on control of defined territory, 3) specialization, 4) status based on wealth, 5) monumental buildings, 6) a writing system, 7) long distance trade, and 8) major advancements in science and art.

• Loess

Answer: A fine, light silt deposited by wind and water. It constitutes the fertile soil of the Yellow River Valley in northern China. Because soil is not compacted,it can be worked with a simple digging stick, but it leaves the region vulnerable to devastating earthquakes.

• Daoism

Answer: Chinese school of thought, originating in the Warring States Period with Laozi. Daoism offered an alternative to the Confucian emphasis on hierarchy and duty. Daoists believe that the world is always changing and is devoid of absolute morality or meaning. They accept the world as they find it, avoid futile struggles, and deviate as little as possible from the Dao, or "path" of nature.

• Legalism

Answer: An authoritarian political philosophy that came to be called . These thinkers believe human nature is essentially wicked and that people behave in an orderly fashion only if compelled by strict laws and harsh punishments.

• Confucius

Answer: Western name for the Chinese philosopher Konzi (551-479 B.C.E.). His 2 / 3

doctrine of duty and public service had a great influence on subsequent Chinese thought and served as a code of conduct for government officials.

• Mandate of Heaven

Answer: Chinese religious and political ideology developed by the Zhou, according to which it was the prerogative of Heaven, the chief deity, to grant power to the rule of China and to take away that power if the ruler failed to conduct himself justly and in the best interests of his subjects.

• Shang

Answer: The dominant people in the earliest Chinese dynasty for which we have

written records (ca. 1750-1045 B.C.E.). Ancestor worship, divination by means of oracle bones, and the use of bronze vessels for ritual purposes were major elements of culture.

• Hittites

Answer: A people from central Anatolia who established an empire in Anatolia and Syria in the late Bronze Age. With wealth from the trade in metals and military power based on chariot forces, the vied with New Kingdom Egypt for control of Syria-Palestine before falling to unidentified attackers ca. 1200 B.C.E.

• Hatshepsut

Answer: Queen of Egypt (r. 1473-1458 B.C.E.). She dispatched a naval expedition

down the Red Sea to Punt (possibly northeast Sudan or Eretria), the faraway source of myrrh. There is evidence of opposition to a woman as ruler, and after her death her name and image were frequently defaced.

• Akhenaten

Answer: Egyptian pharaoh (r. 1353-1335 B.C.E.) He built a new capital at Amarna, fostered a new style of naturalistic art, and created a religious revolution by imposing worship of the sun-disk. The Amarna letters, largely from his reign, preserve official correspondence with subjects and neighbors.

• Ramesses II

Answer: A long-lived ruler of New Kingdom Egypt (r. 1290-1224 B.C.E.). He

reached an accommodation with the Hittites of Anatolia after a standoff in battle at Kadesh in Syria. He built on a grand scale throughout Egypt.

• Minoan

Answer: Prosperous civilization on the Aegean island of Crete in the second

millennium B.C.E. The Minoans engaged in far-flung commerce around the Mediter- ranean and exerted powerful cultural influences on the early Greeks.

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