GCU 114 : Themes Review.doc
Document Summary
When people first discovered agriculture, they were forced to settle in one place. Agriculture meant that leaders accumulated more wealth than anybody else. They had more power because they were leaders and they had the money, so they formed the upper class. For example, in ancient egypt, there was the pyramid-style class structure. During the neolithic era, people started to make metal tools. The new tools were more precise and longer-lasting, which allowed civilizations to farm more productively. This caused more people to be free to do other tasks (specialization of labor) and created more stable states. Gender roles and relations: status of women decreases. As people settled down, the gender roles changed. Before, in hunter-gatherer societies, women provided most of the food by gathering while men consumed lots of calories for relatively small gains by hunting. In sedentary societies, the men did most of the farming work while the women stayed at home caring for the children.
