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Here are the notes that Sydney gave me from when I missed:

- prehistory: the period of time before written records.

- Paleolithic Age: second part of the Stone Age beginning about 750,000 to 500,000 years BC and lasting until the end of the last ice age about 8,500 years BC.

- Neolithic Age: latest part of the Stone Age beginning about 10,000 BC in the middle east

- Agricultural Revolution: a significant change in agriculture that occurs when there are discoveries, inventions, or new technologies that change production.

- cuneiform: denoting or relating to the wedge-shape characters used int he ancient writing systems of Mesopotamia, Persia, and Ugarit, survive mainly impressed on clay tablets.

- ziggurat: a rectangular stepped tower, sometimes surmounted by a temple.

- Indo-Europeans: a large, widespread family of languages, the surviving branches of which include Italic, Salvic, Hellenic, Celtic, Germanic, and Indo-Iranian, spoken by about half the world's population: English, Spanish, German, Latin, Greek, Russian, Albanian, Lithuanian, Armenian, Persian, Hindi, and Hittite are all Indo-Europeanlanguages.

Prehistory to Civilization (3000 - 1200 B.C.) 

Before Civilization: Prehistoric Era (Lo - 1) 

• Origins and
  "ages" of Human Beings 
• 200,000 years ago a human species emerged in southwestern Africa
• 14,000 years ago, worldwide human race existed 
• Paleolithic age is the earliest prehistoric age 
• Neolithic age was marked by tool making and the beginning of agriculture

Agricultural Revolution 

• Also know as the Neolithic Revolution 
• Population rose, because they could now care for the children 
• Hierarchies in village life, women had a lower status and were to do more domestic duties
• Invention of the wheel and plow made it possible to produce enough food for storage 
• Villagers were still polytheists, worshipped multiple nature, human and animal gods

The Earliest Cities: Mesopotamia (lo-2)

• District know as Sumer occupied the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. 
• Population increased due to new irrigation techniques 
• Cities and Towns were founded, some with as many as 40,000 inhabitants 
• Better food storage allowed for diversity in professions: priest, tradesmen, etc. 
• Sumerians invented the earliest form of writing called cuneiform
• Sumerians first divided the hour into sixty minutes and the minute into sixty seconds; they also organized a calendar based on moon cycles
• The Ziggurat was a Sumerian temple built on top of a “mountain” of earth
• King Hammurabi of Babylon created a series of laws known as “Hammurabi’s Code” - laws that included “an eye for an eye” and regulations of marriage, divorce, and punishments for all sorts of crimes

Mesopotamia: the expansion 

• Indo-Europeans were people from the grasslands of the Russian steppe who introduced the horse to the Near East
• The warlike Indo-European tribe known as the Hittites settled in Asia Minor
• The Hittites had a lucrative trade in metals and conquered nearly all of their neighbors, even threatening Egypt

Mesopotamia then ....