TASC Ancient History Level 3 cheat sheet
TASC Ancient History Level 3 · Keep the key ideas within reach.
Ancient History: Chronology, Sources, and Key Civilizations
Periodization used on the exam: Prehistoric (to c. 3500 BCE), Bronze Age (c. 3500–1200 BCE), Iron Age (c. 1200–550 BCE), Classical Antiquity (c. 800 BCE–500 CE), Late Antiquity (c. 300–700 CE).
Primary sources are contemporary artifacts, inscriptions, and texts (e.g., the Rosetta Stone, Linear B tablets, the Res Gestae); secondary sources are later analyses and histories (e.g., modern archaeological reports).
Reliability test for a written source: authorship and date, audience and purpose, whether it is eyewitness, whether it is corroborated by material evidence, and whether it is propaganda (royal inscriptions routinely exaggerate).
Writing systems and their decipherment: cuneiform (Sumerian/Akkadian, deciphered via Behistun trilingual), Egyptian hieroglyphs (Rosetta Stone, 1822), Linear B (Mycenaean Greek, deciphered 1952), Linear A (Minoan, still undeciphered).
Key absolute dates: unification of Egypt under Narmer c. 3100 BCE; Hammurabi's laws c. 1750 BCE; eruption of Thera c. 1600 BCE; fall of Troy (traditional) 1184 BCE; founding of Rome (traditional) 753 BCE; Battle of Marathon 490 BCE; death of Alexander 323 BCE; assassination of Caesar 44 BCE; fall of the Western Roman Empire 476 CE.
River-valley civilizations: Mesopotamia (Tigris–Euphrates), Egypt (Nile), Indus (Indus), China (Yellow River); each depended on floodplain agriculture, irrigation management, and surplus storage that supported cities and specialization.
Archaeological dating methods: relative dating by stratigraphy and seriation; absolute dating by radiocarbon (organic remains, roughly 50,000-year limit), dendrochronology, thermoluminescence (pottery), and potassium-argon (volcanic rock).
Empire comparison rule: Assyria is known for mass deportation and siege warfare; Persia for satrapies, tolerance of local cults, and the Royal Road; Rome for citizenship extension, law, and roads; Han China for a merit-based bureaucracy and the Silk Road.