Ukraine Quick reference
A Dictionary of World History (3 ed.)
...crops. As the coal mining and much of the heavy industry are currently controlled by separatists, further strain has been placed on what was already a poorly performing economy. In January 2016, a free trade area was established with the EU. History Originally inhabited by Neolithic settlers in the Dnieper and Dniester valleys, Ukraine was overrun by numerous invaders before Varangian adventurers founded a powerful Slav kingdom based on Kiev in the 9th century. Mongol conquest in the 13th century was followed in the 14th century by Lithuanian overlordship...
Prehistory Reference library
Marcia‐Anne Dobres
The Oxford Encyclopedia Women in World History
...of gendered divisions of labor were probably practiced across the Old World, there is no reason to assume that such divisions were based on a binary (heterosexual) model. In all likelihood at least some such cultures enjoyed third and fourth genders. Nor can we Neolithic Burial. Remains of a Neolithic woman discovered at Cys-la-Commune, Aisne, accompanied by ornaments attesting to her wealth, including sandstone and limestone bracelets and a necklace of small limestone disks and large cylindrical beads made from shell, c. 4500 b.c.e. Musée des Antiquités...
Central Asia Reference library
Jeannine David‐Kimball and Shoshana Keller
The Oxford Encyclopedia Women in World History
...increased grain consumption. It can be deduced from this information that women milked the sheep, making cheeses for consumption immediately and later in the year, and that those not giving birth or caring for infants gathered wild edibles. Neolithic Period in Central Asia. During the Neolithic Revolution, in addition to pastoralism, agriculture developed c. 6000 b.c.e . as a second economic base in the southern Turkmenistan Djeitun culture. Houses were constructed of daubed and painted clay brick and averaged 20 to 30 square meters (215 to 323...
Agriculture Reference library
Cornelia Butler Flora, Pam J. Crabtree, Carolyn E. Sachs, and Christine D. Worobec
The Oxford Encyclopedia Women in World History
...demanding, aspects of maize cultivation and distribution. Similar studies are also being carried out in the Old World. For example, in her 2002 volume Sexual Revolutions: Gender and Labor at the Dawn of Agriculture , Jane Peterson discusses the evidence of human skeletal remains from Natufian and Neolithic sites in the southern Levant and how this may help us understand the pre‐Neolithic sexual division of labor and the ways in which it may have changed with the adoption of agriculture. Her data suggest some sexual division of labor during the...
Textiles Reference library
Sandra Alfoldy and Irene Good
The Oxford Encyclopedia Women in World History
...tradition of ancient textile study is in place. Eighteenth‐century bog finds in Sweden and Denmark occurred at the very beginnings of archaeology. Neolithic and Mesolithic Danish textile fragments of willow and poplar bast and tilia (lime bast; bast is the fiber derived from the inner bundled cells of a plant stem) have been found from sites from the Ertebølle culture off the coast of Jutland. Swiss Neolithic lake dwellings of the so‐called Funnel‐Necked Beaker Culture contained textiles and cordage of tree basts and also of flax; these textiles were often...
China Reference library
Lisa Raphals, Beverly Bossler, and Delia Davin
The Oxford Encyclopedia Women in World History
...practices, including ritual prescriptions for the subordination of women to men, reinforced the authority of men over women. Nonetheless, limited evidence of social practices suggests that norms for these rituals were often disregarded in practice. The Neolithic and Shang Periods. Neolithic and Shang mortuary evidence provides some data on sex ratios, vital statistics, and marriage patterns, and divination inscriptions also offer perspectives on the status of women in the late Shang dynasty ( c. 1200–1045 b.c.e. ). The names of royal women such as ...
Europe Reference library
Joanna S. Smith, Ann Suter, Lena Larsson LovÉn, Liz James, and Merry E. Wiesner‐Hanks
The Oxford Encyclopedia Women in World History
...J. Anthropomorphic Figurines of Predynastic Egypt and Neolithic Crete with Comparative Material from the Prehistoric Near East and Mainland Greece . London: Szmidla, 1968. Vitelli, Karen D. “Pots, Potters, and the Shaping of Greek Neolithic Society.” In The Emergence of Pottery: Technology and Innovation in Ancient Societies , edited by William K. Barnett and John W. Hoopes , pp. 55–63. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995. Whitehouse, Ruth D. “Gender in the South Italian Neolithic: A Combinatory Approach.” In In Pursuit of Gender:...
World Religions Reference library
Arvind Sharma, Katherine K. Young, Katherine K. Young, and Katherine K. Young
The Oxford Encyclopedia Women in World History
...Lucca, Italy/Scala/Art Resource, NY role that religions have performed in this regard is solemnizing marriage. At the origin of marriage was a primeval reciprocity, which involved two exchanges. Men provided the protein of big animals; women provided plants and, after the Neolithic revolution, the protein of small animals. Men protected and provided for pregnant women, mothers, and children; women provided their loyalty to these men, assuring them that they were indeed the fathers—which increased the involvement of fathers in family life and might have...
Nile Reference library
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt
...than habitation sites, it is still uncertain whether, in addition to residual fisher and gathering groups, there may also have been distinct groups favoring farming activities or pastoralism. In both the Faiyum and Nile Valley, therefore, it is plausible that there was no “Neolithic Revolution.” Instead, it is possible that several groups of people with different ecological adaptations utilized the larger system represented by the Egyptian Nile, emphasizing complementary or only partially overlapping econiches. Alternatively, their economies may have been...
Malaria Reference library
James L. A. Webb
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World
...Other hemoglobin mutations, such as thalassemia and sickle cell, offered protection against falciparum, but they exacted a heavy cost. Following the expansion of Homo sapiens from Africa into Eurasia, malaria became more broadly distributed. In the aftermath of the Neolithic agricultural revolutions, malarial infections became more prevalent, as human population densities increased. Across the Eurasian landmass, vivax was probably the most common and was particularly dominant to the north of the subtropics, owing to the warmer temperatures required by the...
Caribbean Sea Reference library
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History
...despite the reduced international market for sugar. The French Revolution of 1789 ignited a revolution in the French colony of Sainte-Domingue, where nearly half a million slaves worked plantations held by a small minority of white and mixed-race elites. The slaves defeated French armies sent by Napoleon to quell the revolt, invaded the Spanish half of the island, and gained abolition and independence in 1804 . The new nation was named Haiti , the Taino word for the area. The Haitian revolution ended the sugar trade from what had been the largest producer...
Astronomy Reference library
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt
.... The oldest possibly astronomically inspired monuments on record consist of a series of aligned megalithic structures and stone circles found adjacent to Middle and Late Neolithic ( 7000–5000 bce ) settlements at Nabta in the Western Desert of Egypt just north of Sudan. One of these, a 4-meter (12-foot) circle of small upright and recumbent stone slabs, also contains four sets of narrower pillar-like stones arranged in pairs that form slots at opposite ends of a diameter that appears to have been aligned along the summer solstice sunrise—sunset line of...
Greece Reference library
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome
...plants are wheat and barley. At the same time, new tools such as sickles appear, pottery is introduced, and the area of occupation is extended. All signify the agricultural revolution. Although this revolution is documented by a cave site, its result was the emergence of settled farming villages as the dominant mode of life; the monumental discovery gave birth to a new age: the Neolithic, or New Stone Age. Caves continued to have importance, but primarily as religious sites. From circa 7000 bce people now lived in villages like Nea Nicomedia in Macedonia,...
Art Reference library
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt
...items, such as combs made of ivory or bone; because the teeth mimicked animal legs, the comb backs were carved in zoomorphic shapes. Hardly practical, at times this practice rendered the combs more susceptible to breakage. Some of Egypt's earliest human sculpture (from the Neolithic and Badarian periods) likewise shows the depiction of essential aspects reduced to their most basic shapes. Simple cones and cylinders of clay joined together form graceful, naturalistic torsos; facial features consisting of no more than holes poked or pinched into clay succeed...
Whaling Reference library
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History
...1968. Stuart M. Frank Europe The history of European whaling begins and ends with Norway , and can be said to fall into six somewhat overlapping epochs: Prehistoric, Medieval, Early Pelagic, Arctic, South Seas, and Modern. Prehistoric European whaling is known only through Neolithic rock pictures in caves in coastal Norway . Absent other direct evidence, these petroglyphs are presumed to represent occasional onshore fisheries during the whales’ migratory seasons, employing methods similar to those of medieval Norse hand whaling. Nothing is known about...
Drugs and Narcotics Reference library
Patricia Barton, Patricia Barton, Monica Rankin, Kathryn Meyer, Patricia Barton, Patricia Barton, Monica Rankin, and Joseph J. Hobbs
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World
...uses in Anatolia. His Bronze Age culture anthropomorphized the poppy, dedicating it to the god of dreams, Morpheus. The earliest geographic range of cannabis ( Cannabis indica , C. sativa ) is uncertain, but the plant's euphoric properties were apparently known as early as the Neolithic Age in Europe, and cannabis usage is documented in the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia and the Indus River Valley. Some authorities believe cannabis was the divine soma plant of the Aryan culture in India and Central Asia. The stimulant khat ( Catha edulis ) is widely...
Communities Reference library
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History
...the coastal regions of Taiwan , Fujian, and Zhejiang and on the Zhoushan Islands in the East China Sea, large numbers of shell mounds dating back to the Neolithic Age have been discovered. The Fuguodun shell-mound site, the Keqiutou shell-mound site, and the Tanshishan site, all in Fujian Province, speak of maritime transportation between Fujian and the Ryukyu Islands in prehistoric times. The Neolithic remains on the Zhoushan Islands point to maritime life there. In Zhejiang Province, the remains of coastal buildings at the Yuyao site and the fishing tools...
Mediterranean Sea Reference library
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History
...that a complete replacement of the water of the Mediterranean occurs about every eighty years. Map of the Mediterranean Sea Map by Mapping Specialists Limited Local Maritime History and Naval Operations Along the coasts of the Mediterranean numerous traces of settlements of the Neolithic Age have been found, but the first great civilizations grew in the eastern part of the basin. The first great civilization was the Egyptian, which even as early as 2650 b.c.e. maintained intense commercial relations by sea with the city of Byblos, slightly north of Beirut....
Sculpture Reference library
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt
...Museum, Cairo . The earliest sculpture in the round yet found is a half life-size oval terra cotta head with gouged eyes, nostrils, and slit mouth, unearthed at Merimda at the western edge of the Nile Delta. Dated to the end of the fifth millennium bce , it recalls earlier Neolithic stone masks found near the Dead Sea. Ivory—both elephant and hippopotamus—was favored for small anthropoid statuettes in the Badarian period ( 5500–4000 bce ). A buxom female of 14 centimeters (5.5 inches), in the British Museum, stands on athletic-looking legs and has large,...
῾Ain Ghazal Reference library
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East
...London, 1986. Köhler-Rollefson, Ilse. “The Aftermath of the Levantine Neolithic Revolution in the Light of Ecological and Ethnographic Evidence.” Paléorient 14.1 (1988): 87–93. Köhler-Rollefson, Ilse , and Gary O. Rollefson . “The Impact of Neolithic Subsistence Strategies on the Environment: The Case of ῾Ain Ghazal, Jordan.” In Man's Role in the Shaping of the Eastern Mediterranean Landscape , edited by Sytze Bottema et al., pp. 3–14. Rotterdam, 1990. Mellaart, James . The Neolithic of the Near East . New York, 1975. Perrot, Jean. “ Les deux premières...
