Compare early human perspectives on death and the afterlife. Include preliterate societies, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. How do each of these civilizations conceive of and contextualize death?
What will be an ideal response?
Students should be able to discuss the different perspectives on the afterlife in prehistorical societies, such as burial chamber findings, and contrast these with the organized religious perspective of Egypt and Mesopotamia. In Egypt, access to the afterlife was limited, in the Old Kingdom, to the pharaohs and their immediate family; thus, access was an indication of status. Their burial in huge pyramids was also a marker of social importance. The transition or democratization of access to the afterlife in Egypt is noted in the Middle Kingdom. In Mesopotamia, the afterlife was unpleasant for all; they believed that burial goods were stolen by demons on the journey to the underworld, and the dead spent eternity eating dust and weeping. Answers will vary.
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The preeminence of the Kingdom of Aksum after the decline of Meroë was a result of:
a. a changing climate. b. religious freedom. c. declining population. d. agricultural and commercial wealth.
What ultimately resulted in a decline in child labor?
A) mandatory school attendance B) legislation by the Progressive era Congress C) the decreasing population of young children D) lower wages paid to children
The longer life expectancy of women and the tendency of women to marry men older than themselves leads to ______.
A. women living with their adult children in later life B. higher rates of satisfaction among older women C. women becoming widowed at higher rates than men D. higher rates of remarriage among older women
The British Raj
A. brought even greater disorder and inefficiency in Indian governmental administration. B. enacted a homestead decree which gave all Indian peasants approximately fifty-five acres for each family to cultivate as its own, private property. C. established a new school system to educate the children of the elite. D. quickly allowed native Indians to join the highest levels of the colonial administration. E. brought democracy to the subcontinent by 1892.