ANTH 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Minoan Civilization
3 May 2016
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Document Summary
By 5,000 years ago, most people were dependent on the domestication of plants and animals. Empire: when one state dominates or exercises control over another. Empires are usually recognized in the archaeological record by the blending of cultural traditions and connecting road systems. Earliest civilization we know of was the sumerians in mesopotamia. The indus valley was the first asian civilization. Difficulties for determining population sizes include: 1) many prehistoric sites for which no records exist or have been destroyed, and 2) estimates that require many assumptions and analogies. The primary method of estimating populations is to examine what are assumed to be residential structures in a settlement. A rough estimate is that one person equates to every 10 square meters of floor space. Current ethnographic research on certain kinds of societies are used to infer about past societies. Populations that used writing tend to give us more information about population size.
