Aurochs A type of wild cattle, much larger than the modern cow, which is probably descended from it. Aurochs were domesticated around 8000 years ago. They can often be seen in ancient cave art.

Bronze Age The period when people learned to make tools from the metal bronze. Bronze was made by melting tin and copper together. Bronze was found to be harder and longer-lasting than other metals, but still easy to cut and shape. The Bronze Age began about 3300 BC in the Middle East and India, but a few hundred years later in Egypt, China and elsewhere.

Çatal Höyük An ancient city built in about 7000 BC in what is now Turkey. Its brick houses were packed together with no streets to separate them. Çatal Höyük may have been home to about 8000 people. Some were farmers but others were craftworkers, making ornaments, jewellery and cloth to trade.

Cave paintings Paintings thought to have been made by hunter-gatherers from around 44,000 years ago onwards. They usually show wild animals such as horses, bison and deer. There are examples of cave art on every continent in the world.

Civilization A society, or group of people, that have developed art, government, learning and trade. In a civilization, work is divided up so that only a few people provide enough food for everyone to eat. This enables other individuals to develop different skills such as craft and trade.

Cradle of civilization A name for the place where civilization first emerged. It is usually used to describe the Fertile Crescent but can also refer to China, India or Mexico.

Domestication The process of taming wild animals and looking after crops. Domestication meant that people had a steady supply of food and no longer needed to move about to hunt.

Fertile Crescent A curve of land that stretched from the Persian Gulf in the east to the Mediterranean in the west. The land was perfect for farming as there was plenty of sunshine and rain. Some of the earliest civilizations developed in the Fertile Crescent, such as those that developed in Mesopotamia.

Hunter-gatherers People that found their food by hunting and foraging in the wild. They did not stay in one place for long, but followed animals that moved to different areas with the changing seasons.

Ice age A period when the Earth’s temperature drops significantly and ice sheets spread out from the poles. The term usually refers to the most recent Ice Age, more correctly termed the last glacial period of the Quarternary glaciation, which began about 126,000 years ago, reached its peak (called the Last Glacial Maximum) between around 26,500 and 20,000 years ago, and ended only approximately 11,500 years ago.

Iron Age The period when people learned to make tools from the metal iron. The Iron Age first began in about 1500 BC in the Middle East. Iron was found to be more widely available than tin and copper and stronger than bronze. However, it was also harder to produce as it required smelting.

Irrigation A means of supplying dry land with water using ditches or streams. Irrigation meant that farming could develop in naturally dry areas so long as they were close to rivers.

Jericho One of the oldest cities in the world. Built in around 8000 BC on the banks of the River Jordan, Jericho had huge walls built around it to protect it from attack.

Lascaux The site in southern France where many cave paintings were discovered in 1940. The paintings are about 17,000 years old.

Mesolithic period The Middle Stone Age, the period during which the hunting of large animals in Europe and southwest Asia was replaced by hunter-gathering. It spans the time between the end of the Last Glacial Maximum (the peak of the last ice age), 20,000 years ago, to the start of the Neolithic period—11,500 years ago in southwest Asia, or 8500 years ago in Europe.

Neolithic period The New Stone Age, when humans learned to domesticate plants and animals and began farming and living in settled communities. The Neolithic started in about 11,500 years ago in southwest Asia, but later in other parts of the world.

Palaeolithic period The first part of the Stone Age, when the ancestors of modern humans began using simple stone tools. It started around 3.3 million years ago.

Prehistoric The time before people started to write records. The prehistory of human civilization is divided into the Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age.

Smelting The process through which iron or other metals are extracted from rock. Blacksmiths produce iron by heating the rock that contains it to incredibly high temperatures in a furnace.

Stone Age The period when most tools were made out of stone. The Stone Age is divided into the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic periods.

Consultant: Chris Jarvis