Name ____________________________________________________
CHAPTER
3
SECTION QUIZ
Date _____________________
The Indo-Europeans
Section 1
A. Terms and Names Write the letter of the term or name that best matches the
description. A term may be used more than once.
a. Indo-Europeans
b. steppes
c. Aryans
d. migration
e. Hittites
f.
g.
h.
i.
j.
Anatolia
Vedas
Brahmin
untouchable
Mahabharata
______ 1. This is the process by which people or groups of people move from their home
area to a new area.
______ 2. This group of people settled in what is now India.
______ 3. This group, undefeated by the Egyptians but unable to defeat them, made
peace with them.
______ 4. These people spoke related languages that form the basis of a family of
languages spoken by half of the current world population.
______ 5. This is the name of the sacred literature of the Aryan people.
______ 6. This poem with 106,000 verses is the longest poem ever composed.
______ 7. This is a huge peninsula also known as Asia Minor.
______ 8. This is a member of the highest Indian social class and a Hindu priest.
______ 10. This tells the story of a great battle between two groups of cousins.
______ 11. This names someone so lowly that he or she exists outside the caste system.
______ 12. For many years, these collections of prayers and instructions existed only in
oral form.
B. Extended Response Briefly answer the following question on the back of this paper.
How do you think the caste system that developed in India compares to the class system
that exists in the United States today?
36 UNIT 1, CHAPTER 3
© McDougal Littell Inc. All rights reserved.
______ 9. This is the name for the dry grasslands north of the Caucasus.
Name
Date
CHAPTER
3
GUIDED READING
The Indo-Europeans
Section 1
A. Summarizing As you read about the migration of Indo-European peoples, fill in
the blanks in the following summary.
From about 1700 to 1200 B.C., waves of Indo-European nomads migrated from
their homelands in the (1) _______________, the dry grasslands north of the Caucasus
Mountains. One group, the Hittites, settled in (2) _______________, a rugged peninsula
in a region today called Turkey. They conquered (3) _______________, the chief city in
the Tigris-Euphrates valley, signed a peace treaty with Egypt, and blended many of their
traditions with the more advanced Mesopotamian culture. With their superior two-wheeled
(4) _______________ and their war weapons made of (5) _______________, the Hittites
created an empire that dominated Southwest Asia for over 450 years.
About 1500 B.C., another Indo-European group, the (6) _______________, entered India
through the mountain passes of the Hindu Kush. Unlike the people they conquered, they were
light skinned and had not developed a writing system. The invaders were divided into social
highest being the (8) _______________, or priests, and the lowest, the (9) _______________,
or laborers. Beginning around 1000 B.C., chiefs began to set up kingdoms in the Indian
subcontinent; the most important of these kingdoms was (10) _______________.
Many modern languages trace their origins to languages spoken by the Indo-Europeans.
Among the Indo-European family of languages spoken in Europe and Asia today are
(11) _______________ and (12) _______________.
B. Writing for a Specific Purpose Identify and explain the significance of the
Vedas and the Mahabharata in Indian history.
44 Unit 1, Chapter 3
© McDougal Littell Inc. All rights reserved.
classes, later called (7) _______________. Over time four major social classes developed, the