history- study guide

Study Guide

World History

INSTRUCTIONS TO STUDENTS 1

LESSON ASSIGNMENTS 9

LESSON 1: FORAGERS, FARMERS, AND BUILDERS 11

LESSON 2: THE AXIAL AGE AND FITFUL TRANSITIONS 41

LESSON 3: CONTACTS, CONFLICTS, AND THE CRUCIBLE 81

LESSON 4: CONVERGENCE, DIVERGENCE, AND GLOBAL ENLIGHTENMENTS 119

LESSON 5: FRUSTRATIONS OF PROGRESS; CHAOS AND COMPLEXITY 167

SELF-CHECK ANSWERS 215

iii

Co

nt

en

ts

Co

nt

en

ts

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to your course in World History! Youre about totake an amazing journey from the earliest evidence of humanorigins to the world we all share today. The value of yourjourney will be directly proportional to how much effort youput into study and reflection. But, along the way, keep this in mind: Your knowledge of history will do more than makeyou witty at parties or prepare you to be a contestant onJeopardy. Historical knowledge will help you better under-stand current events, making you a more informed citizen. At the same time, your knowledge of history will help youbetter understand the contradictions of human nature andmake wiser life choices.

OBJECTIVES

When you complete this course, youll be able to

n Discuss the emergence and expansion of Homo sapiensbased on paleontological and archaeological data and thedevelopment of herding and farming following the end ofthe last Ice Age

n Describe the acceleration of social and cultural changeas organized states emerged along the great river valleysof Africa and Eurasia

n Discuss the succession of early civilizations across theglobe, including those that emerged in Asia, Africa, theMiddle East, the Mediterranean, and the central high-lands of Mexico

n Describe and discuss the major features of the axial age,including the important schools of religion and philosophyas well as the nature of the great empires, such as thoseof Persia, Rome, India, and China, in relationship tolesser states in Japan, Korea, and Mesoamerica

1

Ins

tru

ctio

ns

Ins

tru

ctio

ns

n Describe and discuss forces that challenged establishedempires, such as those of Rome and China, in responseto the rise of the Muslim world and the incursions ofnomadic barbarian invaders from northern Europe andthe Asian Steppes

n Explain important influences that accompanied of therise of the great world religions, including Christianity,Islam, and Buddhism

n Discuss factors that prevented geographically isolatedsocieties, such as those of sub-Saharan Africa, Australia,and the Americas, from developing stable, long-termstates or empires

n Describe and discuss the impact of nomadic peoples wholived along the boundaries of the Islamic world, theByzantine Empire, and imperial China between 1000 and1200 C.E.

n Explain the impact of the Asian Mongols on Eurasiansocieties during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries

n Discuss and explain factors, such as climate change andthe bubonic plague, that adversely impacted Europe andChina, but that provided opportunities to areas beyondthe plague zone, such as in India, Southeast Asia, andwestern Africa

n Describe and outline the rise of new empires during thesixteenth and seventeenth centuries as the EuropeanAge of Discovery began an era of Western-dominatedimperialism and colonialism, consequently producing anecological revolution as new sources of wealth and foodwere transported from the New World to the Old World

n Discuss and describe the impact of revolutionary devel-opments that pitted the interests of religion against arising tide of humanism and the accelerated importanceof science in the West, thus triggering political and socialchanges across the globe during the 1600s and beyond

Instructions to Students2

n Describe and explain the era of global enlightenmentsbetween 1700 and 1800, relating Enlightenment influ-ences to urbanization and other population trends,expanded interaction between global regions, and thespread of European Enlightenment ideas beyond theirimmediate revolutionary impact on European societies

n Describe significant developments since the beginning ofthe twentieth century, including new energy technolo-gies, the rise of industrialization, new approaches toagriculture, and changes in working conditions

n Discuss and describe significant nineteenth-centuryglobal developments, including the expansion ofWestern-dominated empires across the globe, the rise ofnationalism, and new faces of radicalism in the politicalsphere

n Discuss and describe key issues of the twentieth cen-tury, including the global impact of Western science, thetwo World Wars, the Cold War, and the global trendtoward independence (decolonization) among formerWestern colonies

n Describe various forces that have led to the current eraof globalization in the context of burgeoning populationgrowth, regional conflicts impacting civilian populations,and pressing issues related to climate change and ecological destruction

COURSE MATERIALS

This course includes the following materials:

1. This study guide, which contains an introduction to yourcourse, plus

n A lesson assignments page with a schedule of studyassignments, as well as projects for the six lessonsyoull complete during this course

n Assignment lessons emphasizing the main points inthe textbook

Instructions to Students 3

n Self-checks and answers to help you assess yourunderstanding of the material

2. Your course textbook, Felipe Fernndez-Armestos TheWorld: A Brief History, which contains the assignmentreading material

3. A DVD-ROM that supplements your course textbook

To complete this course successfully, youll need to do thefollowing:

1. Read and follow the study guide. Its designed to complement your work with the textbook.

2. Study the assigned material in your textbook.

3. Use this guide as a tool for review and for completing the required self-checks. The 30 chapters of the textbookare divided into 10 parts. A self-check is provided foreach part.

4. Take all lesson examinations.

KNOW YOUR TEXTBOOK

Success in this course depends on your knowledge of thetextbook. For that reason, you should take some time to lookthrough it from front to back. Get a feel for how the materialis arranged and presented. The following are some of the keyfeatures of your textbook.

Front Matter

n The Brief Contents are found on page iii.

n An extended table of contents is provided on pagesivxviii.

n A list of maps featured in the textbook is provided onpages xixxxi.

n Introducing the World on pages xxiixxx offers insightinto the authors approach to his textbook and acknowl-edges people and academic institutions that contributedto his work on it.


n You can learn a bit about the author, Felipe Fernndez-Armesto, on page xxxi.

Content Features

n Each part of the book is introduced with engaging graphics,a list of the chapters included in that part, and two timelineson for environmental events and another for culturalevents. You can use the time lines to keep yourself orientedas you work your way from the past toward the present.

Chapter Features

n Chapter topics are listed at the top of the first page ofeach chapter.

n A sidebar (feature box) on the next page challenges youwith a set of focus questions. Study them to betterunderstand what you should get from the chapter.

n Making Connections features offer information thatsupplements the main chapter content.

n Maps used for various purposes are a major feature ofeach chapter.

n Illustrations and their extended captions should be studied as carefully as the main textbook material.

n Small feature boxes pop up here and there, usually tohelp elaborate the time lines that head each part of thetextbook.

n A Chronology feature at the end of each chapter providesdates for the material covered in the chapter.

n At the end of each chapter, youll find mind-teasing questions under the heading Problems and Parallels,along with references to important Documents in GlobalHistory and a Read On feature that guides you toimportant historical sources relevant to that chapter.


End Matter

n A glossary is provided on pages G-1 through G-9. Youcan refer to it at any point it you become a bit hazyabout theories, concepts, or terms.

n A Note on Dates and Spelling is on page DS-1

n Notes for key chapter sources begin on page N-1.

n Credits for each chapter begin on page C-1.

n The textbooks index begins on page I-1.

n A list of the contents on the DVD-ROM that accompaniesthe textbook is provided on pages DVD-1 through DVD-10.

A STUDY PLAN

Here are some time-tested ideas for getting the most fromyour course.

1. Set aside a regular time for reading and writing. Writedown your intended schedule for reading and writing.You might want to use a wall calendar to show what you need to do and when. Check off assignments as you complete them to see your progress.

2. Read everything twice, or at least review after carefulreading. No one gets everything on the first reading. Usethe questioning method (posing each topic heading as aquestion to be answered) to test your understanding asyou review.

3. Dont look up answers in the key before you completethe self-checks at the end of a chapter. Not only is thatdishonest, it also defeats the purpose of the exercises.


4. Give yourself credit for completing each assignment.Your work and self-discipline will take you through this course. You deserve the credit. So give yourself a pat on the back as you complete each assignment.

5. If you have any questions, e-mail your instructor.


NOTES


9As

sig

nm

en

tsA

ss

ign

me

nts

Lesson 1: Foragers, Farmers, and Builders

For: Read in the Read in study guide: the textbook:

Assignment 1 Pages 1113 Pages 225





Examination 007678 Material in Lesson 1

Lesson 2: The Axial Age and Fitful Transitions








Lesson 3: Contacts, Conflicts, and the Crucible








Lesson Assignments10

Lesson 4: Convergence, Divergence, and GlobalEnlightenments










Lesson 5: Frustrations of Progress; Chaos andComplexity











Note: To access and complete any of the examinations in this studyguide, click on the appropriate Take Exam icon on your My Coursespage. You should not have to enter the examination numbers. Thesenumbers are for reference only if you have reason to contact StudentServices.

11

Le

ss

on

1L

es

so

n 1

Foragers, Farmers, and Builders

FORAGERS, FARMERS

The first part of Lesson 1 includes Chapter 1, Out of the Ice:Peopling the Earth, and Chapter 2, Out of the Mud:Farming and Herding after the Ice Age. Be sure to takeadvantage of the time line found in the Part 1 openingspread.

ASSIGNMENT 1: OUT OF THEICE: PEOPLING THE EARTH Read this assignment. Then read the Part 1 opening spread andChapter 1, pages 225, in your textbook.

So You Think Youre Human

Humans are genetically related to anthropoid apes, such asthe chimpanzee, the gorilla, and the gibbon, as well as to avariety of related, extinct hominids. Hominids are creatureswith humanoid or humanlike physical characteristics. Theearliest evidence of physically modern humans dates to about150,000 years B.C.E (meaning Before the Current Era) in apart of Africa now known as Ethiopia. The most recent of ourgenetic cousins were the Neanderthals. As youll learn, theirphysical characteristics and their level of social developmentwere very similar to what we find in Homo sapiens. Indeed,evidence reveals that they lived more or less side-by-side with their human cousins. For reasons that remain uncertain,Neanderthals vanished from the scene about 30,000 years ago.

World History12

Out of Africa

Current evidence suggests that our species evolved over aperiod of about 4 million years from hominids that occupiedareas around the Great Rift Valley of northeast Africa. In anycase, a peculiar fact may fascinate you. Regardless of wherewe find modern humans, anywhere on the globe, they havethe same basic genetic makeup. So, how did that happen?

See Map 1.1 on pages 1011 of your textbook.

Based on genetic evidence, all living humans trace theirancestry to a prototypical breeding female, whom scientistshave named Eve, who lived in present-day Ethiopia about150,000 years ago. In any case, heres the evidence in a nutshell: The cells of modern humans contain somethingcalled mitochondrial DNA. Female mitochondrial DNA changes(mutates) over time at a known rate. By looking at DNA samples of human populations around the planet, scientistshave been able to work out the likely track of human migra-tions out of Africa.

The Last Great Ice Age

For the last few millions of years or so, Earth has been subject to a 100,000-year cycle of cooling and warming. Anumber of ice ages and so-called interglacial periods haveoccurred over this long span of time. The peopling of theEarth occurred during a period of intense climatic challengesthat accompanied the last great Ice Age.

Study Map 1.2 on pages 1415 to better understand how thecontinents were impacted by the Ice Age that began to thaw150,000 years ago.

As the polar cap began to shrink and the deep carpet of icebegan to retreat in the Northern Hemisphere, herds of migratingmammals extended their range northward. Humans followed theherds into the great expanse of the thawing tundra. MigratingIce-Age humans (like their Neanderthal cousins) thrived on thehigh-calorie fat from Ice-Age mammals. Ice-Age foragers, suchas Cro-Magnon man in Europe, experienced Ice-Age affluence

Lesson 1 13

in that their diet was highly nutritious. Indeed, at least interms of caloric intake, human diets wouldnt be as nutri-tious again until well into modern times.

For archeologists and paleontologistsscientists who studythe physiology and evolution of ancient speciesIce-Age globalization refers to the fact that artifacts as well as reli-gious practices have been found to follow the same patternswherever evidence of Ice-Age humans has been found. Ineffect, the archaeological evidence indirectly supports the thesis of common genetic heritage among early humanmigrants out of Africa.

However, one of the mysteries of human migration aroundthe globe involves the peopling of North and South America.Substantial evidence suggests that humans were in the NewWorld from 8,000 to 13,000 B.C.E. However, although theissue is barely touched on in your textbook, some recentarchaeological findings seem to support much earlier humancolonization in areas as far south as Chile. In light of thatfact, you should keep in mind that all history, and certainlyhumankinds ancient history, is interpretive and not neces-sarily exhaustive. Mysteries and unanswered questionsabound.

Study Map 1.3 on page 20 for graphical information on thepeopling of the New World.

Survival of the Foragers

As Earths climate warmed after the Ice Age, humans turnedaway from foraging and hunting to pursue husbandry and agri-culture. Husbandry is the herding and breeding of animals.Agriculture is the systematic planting and farming of foodcrops. Climate change certainly played a part in this process.Deciduous forests spread after the Ice Age. As that happened,sources of edible plants increased in regions that included richtemperate forest soils suitable for planting crops. Husbandry in regions previously devoted to foraging and hunting mayhave helped offset seasonal food-shortage problems related to animal migration patterns. People may also have turned to husbandry and agriculture for social reasons.

World History14

ASSIGNMENT 2: OUT OF THEMUD: FARMING AND HERDINGAFTER THE ICE AGERead this assignment. Then read Chapter 2, pages 2647, inyour textbook.

There are two key ideas to take away from this chapter. First,with the advent of husbandry, Darwinian natural selectiongave way to something radically different. As animals wereconsciously bred to favor particular characteristics, such asdocility among cattle and agile responsiveness among horses,natural selection gave way to managed selection. Second, asimportant a revolution as was the advent of husbandry, the advent of agriculture was, so to speak, the really bigrevolution. Complex hierarchical states, the organization ofsocieties into social classes, and the advent of imperialism allfollowed on the rise of agriculture.

The Problem of Agriculture

Around 14,000 to 15,000 years ago, permanent settlementsarose in the Middle Eastern regions that include present-dayTurkey, areas south of the Caucasus, as well as parts of Iran,Iraq, and Syria. These areas had an abundance of wild plantsand game animals such that it was possible to sustain stablevillage communities without the bother of systematic farming.In short, archaeologists have found evidence of permanenthouses and social arrangements in places where foragingremained the main way to gather food.

Study Map 2.1 on page 29 of your textbook for information onpreagricultural settlements in the Middle East.

Husbandry in Different Environments

Early on, herding tended to develop in regions where plantswere either sparse or not digestible by humans but weredigestible by animals such as goats, cattle, or horses. By contrast, where soils were suitable for farming, tillers made

Lesson 1 15

their living by farming as well as by way of husbandry. Thatsthe issue in a nutshell. However, in this section, your chal-lenge is become aware of the different kinds of herding andtilling environments, which are described on pages 3238 ofthe textbook.

Spend some quality time with the Making Connections feature on page 31 of your textbook. Note the significant differ-ences between the ways of life and worldviews of foragersand farmers.

The Spread of Agriculture

How did agriculture spread? Diffusion is one likely cause.Agricultural techniques and practices could have spreadthrough social or cultural contact, as seems to have been thecase for the spread of agriculture outward from Anatolia andthe Jordan valley. Diffusion could also have resulted frommigration or invasion (or both). Scenarios for diffusion offeredin your textbook include the possibility that migrants out ofAsia brought their agricultural practices with them intoEurope. The fact that the Indo-European languages foundtoday from India to England originated with these Aryanmigrants offers some support for that diffusion hypothesis.Another possibility, of course, is that agriculture was inventedin different places at different times. In fact, its likely thatboth of these things happened.

Map 2.2 on pages 4041 of your textbook deserves you carefulattention. Note the locations of swamplands, uplands, andfloodplains. Study the Early Crop Sites table on page 40 ofyour textbook.

So Why Did Farming Start?

You textbook offers seven basic theories as to why food production started:

n Population pressures: The advent of agriculture in anarea was often followed by population growth, which, inturn, required more effort and energy devoted to large-scale food production through organized farming. Thepopulation-pressure hypothesis is called a stress theory.

World History16

n Ecological abundance: In areas where the fishing is goodand the living is easy, people have leisure time to experi-ment with plants. However, theres no necessary reasonto develop agriculture in such an environment.

n Politics: When a society develops a hierarchy of socialclass and status, the people at the top tend to exhibittheir wealth and power through celebratory feasting. Asa result the little people have more pressure on them toproduce ever larger harvests.

n Cult agriculture: Fertility rituals represented by the cycleof planting through harvest played a part in early humansocial history. In effect, religious beliefs and practiceshave may have inspired agriculture long before it becamea practical political necessity.

n Climatic instability: Earth became hotter and drier13,000 to 11,000 years ago. In areas like the MiddleEast, drier conditions favored grasses of the sort thatproduce edible grains. As a result, people becameincreasingly dependent on edible grains and learned howto plant and harvest grass crops.

n Agriculture by accident: Your textbook refers you to acommon nineteenth-century theory that agriculture wasdiscovered by accident, probably by women, becausethey were more likely to be plant foragers as opposed togame hunters. Charles Darwin favored this theory.

n Production as an outgrowth of procurement: Improvedtechniques for obtaining edible grains from grasses couldbe a logical extension of plant foraging. In other words,the work of procuring food may show us how to producemore food.

Be sure to conclude your study of Chapter 1 with a carefulcontemplation of the Chronology sidebar on page 45 of yourtextbook.

Please complete Self-Check 1 now.

Lesson 1 17

Self-Check 1At the end of each section of World History, youll be asked to pause and check yourunderstanding of what youve just read by completing a Self-Check exercise. Answeringthese questions will help you review what youve studied so far. Please complete Self-Check 1 now.

Indicate whether each of the following statements is True or False.

______ 1. Potatoes were first grown for food in Africa.

______ 2. Speculations that Asians may have migrated into Europe are supported by the fact that

Indo-European languages are found in early Europe.

______ 3. The last Ice Age was the last great era of what we now call globalization.

______ 4. Between 9,000 and 11,000 years ago, farming villages appeared in what is now called

Turkey.

______ 5. The Bantu-speaking peoples lived in North Africa.

______ 6. Neanderthals and Homo sapiens were essentially members of the same species.

______ 7. Its reasonable to assume that societies were more inclined to risk men in war because

women were necessary for reproduction and the care of infants.

Fill in the blank with the correct term.

8. River deltas that renew good soil for farming on a regular basis are called _______ plains.

9. The Scythians of the Asian steppe domesticated the _______ and developed the wheel andaxle approximately 6,000 year ago.

10. Evidence supports the hypothesis that the earliest Homo sapiens occupied regions of east_______.

(Continued)

World History18

Self-Check 111. Peoples of Mesoamerica developed farming that concentrated on growing maize, _______,

and squash.

12. In early human tribes and groups, the role of the _________ was to act as an intermediarybetween humans and gods or spirits.

Answer each question in no more than four complete sentences.

13. What would climate instability have to do with the development of farming?

__________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________

14. What is meant by the term Ice-Age affluence?

__________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________

Check your answers with those on page 215.

Lesson 1 19

BUILDERS

The second part of Lesson 1 includes Chapter 3, The GreatRiver Valleys: Accelerating Change and Developing States;Chapter 4, A Succession of Civilizations: Ambition andInstability; and Chapter 5, Rebuilding the World: Recoveries,New Initiatives, and Their Limits.

ASSIGNMENT 3: THE GREATRIVER VALLEYS:ACCELERATING CHANGE ANDDEVELOPING STATESRead this assignment. Then read the Part 2 opening spread andChapter 3, pages 4873, in your textbook.

Growing Communities, DivergentCultures

Remarkable differences separated societies that adopted agri-culture as their main source of food. Why? You can think ofit like this: Agriculture sustains denser populationsmorepeople can live in a limited space. As population densityincreases, farming must be organized. Food must be availablefor the populations day-to-day needs, and harvest surplusesmust be set aside for times when the harvest is poor. Highlevels of social organization require some kind of lawfully recognized elitepeople who are empowered to decide whowill do what.

Those are the common factors that appear with increasingpopulation density. However, just as there are often severalpaths to the top of a mountain, there are all kinds of ways asociety may go about organizing itself, establishing norms ofbehavior, differentiating classes of people, or inventing sacredmyths that justify the way the society is organized.

World History20

For example, as population densities increase, people tend to get sorted into categories. Social organization can be horizontal (hierarchical) or vertical. In a hierarchical socialorganization, people are organized into social classes, such as ruling elites, bureaucrats who administer functions of thestate, and commoners, most of whom are farmers. In a vertical social organization, people are organized by commonallegiances, such as clan membership, place of origin, orshared mythical beliefs. In most societies, there has beensome kind of mixture of these two modes of social organization.

Large cities and states developed in the regions of Peru andMexico from about 2000 B.C.E. In Eurasia, significant socio-cultural developments arose from the British Isles to areasacross Eastern Europe and beyond. The horse was firstdomesticated around 5000 B.C.E. in the region of present-dayUkraine. The first chariots appeared around 2000 B.C.E. inthe region of the southern Ural Mountains. The earliest mon-umental stone buildings have been found on the island ofMalta between Sicily and North Africa of all places! Stone circle monuments, such as Stonehenge in England and similar monumental efforts in Western Europe, certainly suggest complex societies with amazing technological skills.

Study Map 3.1 on page 55 to reflect on intensified settlementsin Western Eurasia between 5000 and 2000 B.C.E.

The Ecology of Civilization

Civilization has become a somewhat discredited term, inpart, because theres no sound evidence of distinct stages insocial evolution. Even so, we can use that term to refer tosocieties that ambitiously altered their natural environment,attempting to remodel the rest of nature to suit human pur-poses (textbook, page 56)for better or for worse.

Lesson 1 21

The Great Floodplains

The author of your textbook refers to the ecology of civiliza-tion with good reason. The four most ambitious societaldevelopments occurred where great rivers provided alluvialflood plains that enriched the soil on a more or less regularannual cycle.

The Ecology of Egypt

Egypt is the Nile; the Nile is Egypt. Thats a poetic way ofsaying that without the regular flooding of the Nile, ancientEgypt would never have existed. The Nile, originating fromthe region of Lake Victoria, flows north to the Mediterranean.Upper Egypt is defined by large measure by the rich soils andwetlands of the Nile Delta. The Pharaoh Menes is creditedwith uniting Upper and Lower Egypt around 3600 B.C.E. andthe first capital of united Egypt was Memphis, near the mod-ern city of Cairo.

Map 3.2 on page 58 of your textbook shows the sources of precious resources and the important trade routes in ancientEgypt. Gold, turquoise, copper, and ivory were a fundamentalbasis of Egyptian trade and wealth.

Egyptian agriculture was sufficient for feeding a large popula-tion, but most people ate only moderately above subsistencelevel.

The Indus Valley

The ancient Harappan civilization arose in the broad Indusdelta region. From an archaeological point of view, Harappancivilization is poorly understood. This is the case in largemeasure because the rivers of the Indus system havechanged course so many times and because the drying up ofthe Saraswati River long ago seems to have sounded a deathknell for the Harappan peoples. Archaeologists have notedthe fine workmanship of Harappan seals (see illustrations onpage 58), but their writing system has been lost to history.

World History22

Map 3.3 on page 59 of your textbook depicts the Indus riversystem that existed mainly in present-day Pakistan. The cityof Harappa is located on one the five rivers that feed the Indusfrom the Himalayas. The largest Harappan site is located atMohenjodaro on the banks of the Indus.

Mesopotamia

Unlike the fairly consistent annual flooding of the Nile, theTigris and Euphrates Rivers (located in present-day Iraq)drain a land of climactic turbulence, regular sandstorms, anduncertain alluvial deposits from river flooding. Nevertheless,the first significant cities arose near the rivers deltas alongthe Persian Gulf. One of these, the fabled Ur, is associatedwith Abraham of the Hebrews. Later, Akkad and other citystates in northern Mesopotamia would dominate the region.

The ancient mythology of this area posited a sort of endlesstension between the Earth-mother goddess Nintu and theassertive land-managing god Enki, even as both deities wereforced to submit to the wrath of storm gods.

Map 3.4 on page 60 of your textbook illustrates the so-calledFertile Crescent that extends from the Tigris and Euphratesvalleys onto the edge of modern-day Turkey and then south-ward along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean throughmodern-day Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. Needless to say, itwas more fertile thousands of years ago than it is today.

Early China

Egypt engaged in a steady trading relationship withMesopotamia. Mesopotamian city states were in touch with and traded with the Harappan peoples. By contrast, the complex society that arose along the course of the Yellow River in China was isolated from the other great river societies. Therefore, the distinctive cultural features ofChinese society developed on their own, without significantinfluence from the outside world. As a result of isolation, the Chinese have tended to see themselves as inhabiting adistinct and central place in the world.

Lesson 1 23

The tendency of societies to see themselves as unique andspecial leads to a universal tendency toward ethnocentrismand, often, xenophobia. Ethnocentrism is the tendency to seeones societys beliefs and customs as superior to those ofother societies. Xenophobiafear of strangersrefers tofear, loathing, and contempt associated with barbarian outsiders.

The Yellow River gets its name from the loose, windbornedusts from Mongolia. Sweeping out of the west, they colorboth the soil and the river yellow. The annual spring floodingof the Yellow River arrives torrentially from the highlands ofShaanxi province. The flooding deposits immensely fertilealluvial soilssoils sufficiently productive to feed what, evenin ancient times, was one of the densest populations any-where on the globe.

The turbulent uncertainty of flooding along the Yellow Riverbrought with it the need for canals, dikes, and reservoirs asinsurance against drought. As you can imagine, these civilengineering challenges would have required a high degree ofhierarchical social organization.

The primary food grain produced by Yellow River agriculturewas millet. (Millet isnt a single plant species but a family ofgrasses that produce edible grains. Millet is about as nutri-tious as wheat and tends to resist drought.) Over time, theattractions of rice, and somewhat milder climatic conditions,encouraged a gradual process of Chinese colonization southward toward the Yangtze River.

Map 3.5 on page 61 shows the relationship of the Yellow Rivervalley to wet-rice growing areas in the seaward regions of theYangtze River.

Configurations of Society

Patterns of Settlement and Labor

Population density encourages a greater complexity in thedivision of labor. Food surpluses permit people to engage inspecialized activities like weaving, pottery-making, carpentry,building construction, stone masonry, and metallurgy.

World History24

Craft specialization tends to be associated with trade, espe-cially as advances in maritime technology lead to improvedtravel over lakes, rivers, and oceans. Furthermore, trade and conquest have ever tended to be associated in one way or another. In that context, for example, developments inmetallurgy have, inevitably, been associated with ever moreefficient tools and ever more lethal weapons of war.

Study the Making Connections feature on page 63 of yourtextbook. Compare the ecology of civilizations based on theNile, the Indus, the Tigris and Euphrates, and the Yellow River in China. Remember that the term ecology refers to the relationships of species within types of habitats (prairies, wet-lands, river valleys). In the historians perspective, the focus ison human relationships to an environment.

Politics

All of the great river valley civilizations lent themselves totyranny. This was the case because minutely controlled col-lective efforts of individuals were vital to agriculture aimed atproducing surpluses and handling threats by way of floodcontrol. All of the river states featured divine kingship andrigid social hierarchies that required everyone to be sub-servient to the state.

The Egyptian State

The top survival priorities for Egypt were harvest storage asinsurance against drought and flood control. The guidance orvision of the state was decreed in the sacred orders from themouth of the divine pharaoh, in some ways a representativeand in other contexts the virtual incarnation of the sun god,Ra. Egypt also featured a literate priestly caste. Priests inter-preted and decreed a divine moral code to which even thepharaoh was more or less subservient.

Interestingly, monumental Egyptian statuary and architecture,including the fabulous pyramids of Giza near present-dayCairo, were seen in a somewhat different light in Egypts later development. Tombs and monuments that had initially

Lesson 1 25

glorified kings increasingly represented an Egyptian concernwith moral virtue, the weighing of souls, and preparation foran afterlife that rather resembled Egypts earthly character.

Statecraft in Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia was composed of a number of rival kingdoms,all of which were typically represented by a single city, suchas Akkad in the north or Ur in the south. The kings decisionswere guided by oracles provided by court augurers, who triedto foretell the future by reading messages perceived from theentrails of sacrificed animals. The king could also seek hisown oracles by sleeping in temples and awaiting messagesthrough dreams; thus the will of the king wasnt necessarilyguided by religion or priestly decrees.

Consider the Epic of Gilgamesh to better understand thenature of Mesopotamian kingship.

The First Documented Chinese State

Along the course of the Yellow River, the first documentedChinese state was ruled by the Shang dynasty throughoutthe second millennium (2000 to 1000 B.C.E.). The Shang statewas unitary; that is, it was considered a single entity thatembraced the identities and social roles of everyone in thepopulation. As in Egypt and Mesopotamia, kingship was con-nected to the management of food and water, and, as inthose places, the Chinese king was, above all, a mediator ofthe gods. In that sense, the king replaced the shaman (spirittalker) of earlier tribal societies.

The king was charged with foretelling the future. Will therebe drought? Will the harvest be good? Will we defeat ourenemy? The means of divining the future was assigned todiviners. Diviners would read the cracks and fissures ofheated animal bones and tortoise shells in rather the samemanner as Gypsies might read messages in tea leaves. Asoracle interpretations were etched onto the bones by thediviners, they became oracle bones (or shells). Oracle bonesand tortoise shells, in turn, would provide archaeologists withrecords of kingly deeds and significant events. In any case,

World History26

although wealth and warfare were essential to successful king-ship, success in meeting the needs of the people was alsoconsidered important.

Study the chronology of major events in the sidebar feature onpage 68. Its important to keep time lines sorted out in yourmind as you move along in this course.

Ruling the Harappan World

A remarkable feature of Harappan ruins is the geometric consistency of urban design and the nature of building construction. The design of the largest Harappan cities(Harappa and Mohenjodaro) is echoed in the layout of themore than 1,500 villages excavated or studied throughout theHarappan lands. Scholars speculate that the rigid consis-tency of urban and village design suggests a rigid social classstructure, possibly even a caste system rather like the onethat would emerge in India. However, because theres littleevidence of kingly palaces or even clear archaeological distinctions between rich and poor, others have speculatedthat Harappa was either a republic or a theocracy. In anycase, because we have no knowledge of the Harappan writingsystem, and because art objects are all but absent, none ofthese speculations can be grounded in solid evidence.

The Politics of Expansion

All four of the great giver states expanded their territorythrough conquest. In every case, the processes of expansionwould challenge the stability of the river valley societies.Expansion has limits imposed both by geography as well asby the finite resources available to any human enterprise.

Study the Making Connections feature on page 69 of yourtextbook to contrast and compare politics and state power inthe great river valley societies.

The social organization required for survival in all of the greatriver societies inclined them to tyrannyto autocratic rule.Autocratic rule is all about subjugating commoners to thewill of the elites. Over time, the gap in wealth between haves

Lesson 1 27

and have-nots leads to civil discontent. By about 1500 B.C.E.,the river states were being destabilized by revolt and resist-ance from the common people.

Literate Culture

Writing has often been thought of a necessary preconditionfor the rise of civilizations. A cuneiform system for writing onclay tablets was developed in Mesopotamia. Both in Egyptand in China, written language consisted of logograms.Egyptian hieroglyphics and Chinese characters can bethought of as icons, a bit like those we see on traffic signs,which suggested an object or a concept. All of these writingsystems were well developed. However, your textbook willchallenge you to consider three reasons why we cant assumethat writing and advanced social development are more orless joined at the hip. These reasons are discussed on pages 7172 of the textbook.

ASSIGNMENT 4: A SUCCESSIONOF CIVILIZATIONS: AMBITIONAND INSTABILITYRead this assignment. Then read Chapter 4, pages 7495, inyour textbook.

Features of the great river societies, including high populationdensities, cities, intensive agriculture, and stratification, arose inother places. The overall number of developed states increasedconsiderably, manifesting a wide variety in approaches to socialorganization and resource production. Accelerating change wascharacterized by warfare and by various kinds of environmentalcatastrophes, from plague to famine to ecological destruction.

The Case of the Hittite Kingdom

The rise and fall of the Hittite Kingdom illustrates the major his-torical themes of the second millennium (20001000 B.C.E.). Theheartland of the Hittite Kingdom (from 1800 to 1500 B.C.E.) wasnorthern Anatolia (Turkey). The Hittites called themselves the

World History28

Children of Hatti. Hittite palaces, storehouses, town, cities,and armies were all on a scale similar to that of Egypt orMesopotamia. Because the Anatolian environment was harsh,the power of the Hittites was derived from war, tribute, andtrade over an astonishing range of influence.

Map 4.1 on pages 7879 of your textbook deserves carefulstudy. Pay attention to the trade routes as well as the kinds ofgoods that were traded, such as granite, gold, copper, and timber.

The Hittite king was seen as the sun gods earthly messengerand was referred to as My Sun, just as one would callQueen Elizabeth Her Majesty. The kings court featured anelaborate array of clerks, administrative bureaucrats, militaryofficials, and concubines. Communication of the kings willwas recorded in writing and distributed throughout the kingdom. The Hittite economy was based on unifying thecontributions of both farmers and herders. That strategyhelped offset the disadvantages of the relatively harsh envi-ronment of Anatolia.

Hittites are often associated with the use of iron in warfare,which they used in weapons and chariots. However, theiriron-smelting techniques were undependable and rudimen-tary. Bronze (an alloy of tin and copper) was the basic metalused for armor, weapons, tools, and crafted metal objects. Inany case, Hittite society was male dominated and fixated onwar. Women had their voice as court diviners, healers, andseers. However, the great flocks of royal concubines weretreated as the rivets of the kingdom. Their charms wereoffered as good-faith currency in trade and to the end offorging alliances with the elites of bordering states. TheHittite Kingdom went into decline around 1300 B.C.E. andvanished from historical reference after about 1210 B.C.E.

Instability and Collapse in the Aegean

During the second millennium, two fascinating and some-what mysterious civilizations arose in the southern reaches ofthe Aegean Sea. The Minoan culture arose on the island ofCrete. Mycenae arose in southern Greece.

Lesson 1 29

Elaborate palace architecture was appearing on Crete by2000 B.C.E. The lavishly furnished palaces were the domain ofelites. Food and forage were stacked in storehouses, andmaritime trade was a vital source of Cretan wealth. However,wealth and food distribution was apparently inefficient. Theaverage commoner was likely to have a lifespan of about 40 years, just getting by on a diet barely sufficient for sustenance.

Cretan society was ravaged by natural disasters, includingearthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The great palace in theCretan city of Knossos was rebuilt several times, the last timebeing around 1400 B.C.E. Around that date, two patternsemerged. The first is evidence of warfare, some of it possiblyinternal. The second is that documents began to be written inan early form of Greek.

At that point, the Minoan and the Greek Mycenaean culturesbecame entangled. Gold-enriched royal tombs and fortifiedcities are found in Mycenae from about 1500 B.C.E. Artifactsand architecture are very like those of Crete. By 1100 B.C.E.,the cities of Crete and Mycenae had been abandoned. Its notclear how Cretan or Mycenaean culture is connected to therise of the Greek city-states hundreds of years later.

Map 4.2 on page 83 of your textbook will help you understandthe trade and cultural contacts that occurred around the east-ern Mediterranean between 2000 and 1200 B.C.E. Notice thattrade routes extended all through Western Europe, reachingthe British Isles and Scandinavia. To the east, trade routesconnected Mycenae and Crete to Anatolia and Egypt.

A General Crisis in the Eastern Mediterranean World?

Archaeological evidence from the second half of the secondmillennium indicates repeated incursions and invasions.Because their boundary areas were reasonably hospitable forhuman habitation, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Harappa werealways subject to intermittent invasions. However, duringthis same period, outsider invasions had a significant impactelsewhere. Around 1500 B.C.E. invaders from North Africathe Hyksosinvaded Egypt, occupying delta areas for quite

World History30

some time before they were finally expelled under PharaohRamses III. Then, around 1190 B.C.E., mysterious seaborneinvaders called the Sea People threatened settled populationsall around the eastern Mediterranean.

These second-millennium invasions stemmed mainly fromunstable populations driven to migration by hunger. Theseeffects, in turn, resulted from competitive politics, the ecolog-ical fragility of farmed lands, and, in some cases, disease andnatural disasters.

The Extinction of Harappan Civilization

In an era when empires were rising and falling like bowling pins, the erosion and decline of the Harappan civilization was unprecedented. Later Indo-European migrants into theHarappan regions left us historical and mythological writing indocuments called the Rig Veda. Interpretations of that ancientdocument (appearing in written form around 800 B.C.E.) suggestthat, along with the drying up of parts of the region, peoplewere driven to another land by disease. The likely disease ina region where standing water accompanied irrigation effortswould most likely have been malaria. In any case, historiansand archaeologists continue to sift through long-abandonedruins in search of answers as to the demise of the Harappancivilization.

Conflict on the Yellow River

Empires rise and fall. Thats the way of the world. By 1100 B.C.E,the extent and power of the Shang dynasty was fading. Aroundthis time, according to the evidence, the Zhou peoples, who firstappeared in the mountains of western China, were inspiredby Shang turtle-shell oracles to take up arms and pursueconquest. Zhou herders became warriors and defeated theShang dynasty in a single battle in 1045 B.C.E. The Zhouthen annexed the lands of Shang as a colony, swore nominalallegiance to the cultural values of Shang, and establishedtheir capital somewhat to the north.

Zhou dominance in China lasted from about 1000 to 700 B.C.E. Thereafter, they would be increasingly challengedby rival states. The Zhou invented the idea that Chinas

Lesson 1 31

hegemony was decreed by a Mandate of Heaven. Even thoughChina would be convulsed by warring states and politicalrivalries over the centuries, the idea of China as a unitarydomain has remained.

State-Building in the Americas

In the Americas, empires arose following many of the samepatterns we see in the Old World. Along the Andean high-lands and in central Mexico, ambitious efforts were made toalter the natural environment in favor of a human vision.Trade was a foundation of empire building.

In the Andean regions, various experiments in state-buildingamong culturally diverse peoples tended to be short-lived.However, what these peoples achieved with regard to civilengineering, urban design, and building construction isremarkable. The city complex of Chavn de Huantar is offeredas an example and is described on page 89 of your textbook.All along the Andesfrom Colombia to Bolivia and beyondone finds remarkable ruins of complex societies.

Map 4.3 on page 90 of your textbook will help you visualizethe extent of Andean and Olmec civilizations. It will also giveyou some understanding of why changes in Pacific Oceancoastal currents, wrought by El Nio once or twice eachdecade, created periods of torrential rains that posed seriousenvironment problems for Andean societies.

In Mesoamerica, in the region we now call Mexico, the OlmecEmpire arose along the swampy coastal areas west of theYucatan Peninsula during the second millennium. Around1200 B.C.E., monumental stone buildings were appearing onagricultural mounds built in drained areas of the wetlands.These became the centers of urbanized regions with relativelydense populations and sophisticated civil engineering thatincluded sewage systems, canals, and stone-paved plazasand avenues.

World History32

Characteristics of Olmec culture would appear in laterMesoamerican states and empires. These included

n Intensive cultivation of maize, squash, and beans

n Imperial or expansionist agendas formulated by way ofshamanic rituals that guided the decisions of powerelites

n Powerful similarities in art and architecture.

Assessing the Damage

By around 1000 B.C.E., the Minoan and Mycenaean civiliza-tions were gone. The Hittites were no more. Harappan societyhad vanished. In Mesopotamia, the Sumerian peoples of Urand other sites closer to the Persian Gulf had fallen underthe sway to the Akkadian peoples of the upper regions of theTigris and Euphrates. The Akkadian language became dominant, and the Sumerian language began to fade intoobscurity.

Egypt, in contrast, was a survivor. The Hyksos were driven fromEgypt at around the same time that Biblical accounts record theemigration of Moses and the Hebrew tribes across the Sinai andonward to regions of the eastern Mediterranean. The Sea Peopleswere finally defeated. However, Egypts empire was weakened.Around 2000 B.C.E., Nubia was an independent state, althoughits customs, architecture, and culture were essentially Egyptian.Nubia was a source of trade, wealth, tribute, and mercenaries.However, after 1000 B.C.E., records of Nubia vanish. TheEgyptian empire, weakened by invasions, had contracted.

Be sure to spend some time studying the Making Conn-ections feature on page 93 of your textbook to consider theinstabilities that led to the downfall of kingdoms between 2000 and 1000 B.C.E. Also review the Chronology sidebar on page 94 of your textbook.

Lesson 1 33

ASSIGNMENT 5: REBUILDINGTHE WORLD: RECOVERIES, NEWINITIATIVES, AND THEIR LIMITS Read this assignment. Then read Chapter 5, pages 96121, inthe textbook.

The end of the second millennium was marked by fadingempires and what amounted to dark ages in areas wherethe quality of life regressed or became stagnant. In this chap-ter, youll be challenged to think about how the parts andpieces of earlier cultures and empires were reassembled toaid new experiments in empire-building. Youve already seenthat trade is a primary foundation of empire. In that context,keep in mind that during first millennium the main approachto trading with neighboring states was to colonize them.

Trade and Recovery in the Middle East

Phoenicia

By around 1000 B.C.E., Phoenician ships were traveling, tradingwith, and/or colonizing sites around the Mediterranean.Phoenicias heartland consisted of ports at Byblos and othercities in what is present-day Lebanon. In those days, thefabled cedars of Lebanon still existed in abundance. Theirtimber provided raw materials for Phoenicias seaworthyships as well as a vital trade commodity.

Around 500 B.C.E., a Phoenician bid for empire centered onits resource-rich colony at Carthage, in North Africa. However,the Phoenicians also had colonies in present-day Spain,Sardinia, Sicily, and even West Africa. The Carthaginian bidfor empire would peak with the fabled assault on Rome by a Carthaginian general named Hannibal. After three majorwars, Rome defeated Carthage in 146 B.C.E., and that was the bitter end of Phoenicia. Well, almost. The Phoeniciansinvented the alphabet. The Greeks, Romans, and others

World History34

adopted this novel approach to writing. Today, the wordsyoure reading are one result of what Phoenicia left to theworld.

Assyria

The wealth of the Kings of Assur came largely from raiding,looting, and pillaging. With the decline of Hatti, new conquestopportunities presented themselves. By around 1000 B.C.E.,Assyrian kings had forged a state along the upper Tigris. By750 B.C.E., these kings were replacing local governors, ineffect building an empire based on domination.

The massive, monumental character of Assyrian buildingsand statuary aimed at intimidation. Assyrian rulers, as illustrated by King Ashurbanipal, were self-aggrandizingimperialists who presented themselves as intimates of thegods and entitled lords of the world.

Babylon

Ancient Babylon was located on the banks of the EuphratesRiver in Mesopotamia. It was a center of trade and politicalpower that became a prized part of the Assyrian Empire.However, the people of Babylon rebelled on a regular basis.The Assyrian kings Sennacherib and Ashurbanipal, in partic-ular, responded with massacres, massive deportations, andall kinds of destruction wrought on the cityscape. But, a bitlike Lexington and Concord during the American Revolution,the name of Babylon became a rallying cry for insurgentsagainst Assyrian domination.

By the seventh century B.C.E., the Assyrian Empire wasoverextended and running low on resources. A leader by thename of Nabopolasar took advantage of that situation tomastermind a Babylonian revival. As a result, Babylonbecame an independent metropolis and reached the height of its power under the fabled king Nebuchadnezzar (605562 B.C.E.). Nebuchadnezzar was heavily invested in restoringthe ziggurats and other monumental architecture of ancientMesopotamia. Among his achievements was one of theancient wonders of the worldthe Hanging Gardens ofBabylon.

Lesson 1 35

Greece and Beyond

Early in the first millennium, at about the same time as theSea People were terrorizing the Mediterranean, migrants fromthe north poured into Greece, devastating the literate culturethat may have been the heirs of Mycenaean culture. Emergingfrom a dark age, when most Greeks were goat herders andmarginal farmers, city states arose at places like Athens andCorinth.

These cities became centers of seaborne commerce basedlargely on olives and olive oil that gave rise to a swarm oftrade-based Greek colonies around the Aegean Sea, the BlackSea, and across the Mediterranean in parts of Italy, Spain,Southern France, Cyprus, and the North Africa. Whereverthere was Greek colonialism, there were ports and settle-ments devoted to seaborne trade and impacts from Greek art,science, and culture.

Map 5.1 on pages 100101 of your textbook depicts the MiddleEast and the Mediterranean between 1000 and 500 B.C.E.Spend as much time as you need with this map. Locate theextents of successive empires and the locations of colonies.Pay attention to trade routes. Note the locations of copper, tin,and gold mining.

Early Greek Society

Ancient Greeks declared their culture, their values and cus-toms, to be unique. Outsiders were barbarians. However,Greek culture was assembled from influences and outrightimitation of Near Eastern (Asian) and even Egyptian cultures.As a result, the long-treasured idea that the Greeks gavebirth to Western civilization is looked on more skepticallythan once it was.

In part, this is the case because the West would be influ-enced by Greek intellectual elites, such as Plato andAristotle, when in fact the ideals and customs of ordinaryGreeks were largely formed by myths and superstitions sur-rounding their ideas of the gods as little better thansquabbling, jealous, vengeful sociopaths. Further, eventhough Athenians did invent governance based on their ideaof democracy, Greek society was anything but liberal. Only

World History36

privileged males were citizens. The 40 percent of Athenianswho were slaves had no voice and no choice. At the sametime, women were typically treated as little more than compli-ant property.

The Spread of State-Building and City-Building

Historical interpretation tends to be selective. Schoolchildrenlearn all about the Greeks but little or nothing about the peoplesof Thrace, Illyria, or North Africa or the fertile civilization ofthe Etruscans of central Italy. On pages 106 and 108109 ofyour textbook, youll learn a bit about these vibrant culturalareas. But the main point is this: Phoenician and Greek colo-nization turned the entire Mediterranean into a highway ofcultural exchange. The sharing of wealth and ideas led tostate- and city-building all around the Mediterranean.

Study the Making Connections feature on page 103 of yourtextbook to compare conditions in Phoenicia, Assyria, andBabylon that led to recovery in the Middle East and theMediterranean.

Empires and Recovery in China and South Asia

In China, the realm of the Zhou became increasingly decen-tralized. Zhou rulers seemed more concerned with rituals andappeasing the gods than practical governance. As a result,subordinate kingdoms became insubordinate. Meanwhile,nomadic peoples from the western mountains continued toapply pressure along Chinas northern borders.

The Zhou moved eastward into a region that had been centralto the Shang, but which now consisted of 148 Zhou relativesor nominees. That number was reduced by reconfigurationand consolidation, but by the sixth century B.C.E. China wasa hodge-podge of jostling states in an era called the Period ofWarring States. Those years were marked by more or lesscontinuous warfare between states and violent political instability within states.

In India, along the lush valley of the Ganges River, a distinc-tive cultural region was present from about 1000 B.C.E. Thesepeople seem not to have been successors of Harappan civi-lization. Yet, as in the case of Harappa, very little is known

Lesson 1 37

about the customs, economy, or governance of the Gangespeoples. However, the surviving literature of sages is bothabundant and remarkable. Among these, the Upanishadsrecount oral traditions and wisdom that appears to have originated long before they were written down around thebeginning of the first millennium.

The religious and philosophical ideas found in the Upanishadsare unique. They include a mystical belief in the unity of allbeing under a primary deity called Brahman, the illusorynature of sensory reality, and a doctrine of reincarnation. The concept of reincarnation is that people progress throughmany lifetimes to acquire virtues, gain enlightenment, andreturn to the embrace of Brahman.

To the south on the Indian Ocean, a people called theSinhalese established an urbanized trade and shipbuildingsociety covering much of the present-day island nation of SriLanka.

Study Map 5.2 on page 110 of your textbook to locate Chinaduring the Warring States Period, the area of barbarian intru-sions, the settled area of the Ganges Valley in India, and theancient Sinhalese cultural area on Sri Lanka.

The Frustrations of Isolation

Technological and cultural innovations spread across Eurasiaand around the Mediterranean because trade and culturalcontact was facilitated by similar kinds of climates, estab-lished trade routes, and navigable sea lanes and rivers. Bycontrast, radical variations in climate zones, natural barrierssuch as the Sahara Desert, and sheer distance greatlyrestricted cultural exchange in the Americas, much of Africa,and Australia.

Innovative cultural developments in North America werefound among the ancient Dorset culture that thrived in Arctic environments, the Poverty Point people of the lowerMississippi, the mound-builder culture of the Ohio Valley,and in the present-day American Southwest, where maize-bean-squash farming techniques of the Olmec were adopted.

World History38

In Africa, we find several ancient areas of cultural innovationand development. Nubia, located in the present-day Sudan,abandoned the Egyptian language, adopting a Nubian lan-guage around 750 B.C.E. The Nubian cities of Meroe andNapata were centers of independently developed and sophisti-cated iron smelting and fabrication.

By 1000 B.C.E., the Bantu-speaking farmers of central Africawere expanding southward. Their agricultural productivityprovided surpluses that allowed them to trade with Nubia.

Hard-iron technology appears in West Africa (along the NigerRiver) and then in the great lakes regions of Kenya around500 B.C.E. At that time trade routes existed across the Saharafrom the slave-trading Garamantes of Libya to West Africa,possibly laying a cultural framework for the development ofmedieval African states like Mali and Songhai that were firstencountered by Europeans more than a thousand years later.

The monsoon cycles of the Indian Ocean have encouragedtrade for a long time. Important trading centers were presentin the fertile regions of the Arabian Peninsula (in todaysYemen, Oman, and Bahrain) during the period of Assyrianand Babylonian power. Trade routes across the Indian Oceanto South Asia developed and evidence indicates that trade-centered cities were present in the Horn of Africa.

Be sure to study the Making Connections feature on page 118 of your textbook. It will help you to compare and con-trast cultural developments and achievements in the Americas,Africa, and across Eurasia. And, of course, spend some timewith the Chronology sidebar on page 119 of your textbook.

Now, review the material youve learned in this study guide as well as the assigned pages in your textbook forAssignments 15. Once you feel you understand the material,complete Self-Check 2. Then check your answers with thoseprovided at the end of this study guide. If youve missed any answers, or you feel unsure of the material, review theassigned pages in your textbook and this study guide. Whenyoure sure that you completely understand the informationpresented in Assignments 15, complete your examination for Lesson 1.

Lesson 1 39

Self-Check 2Indicate whether each of the following statements is True or False.

______ 1. In the fourth century B.C.E., Aristotle speculated that the state arose from a voluntary

alliance of families.

______ 2. Most Andean experiments in civilization didnt last very long.

______ 3. The rise of Mycenaean civilization preceded the rise of Minoan civilization on the island

of Crete.

______ 4. Through most of human history, societies were organized into social classes.

______ 5. The early Yellow Empire in China was capable of sustaining a rice-growing society.

______ 6. The common people of Egypt lived mainly on a diet of bread and grain-based beer that

provided nutrition levels only modestly above subsistence level.

______ 7. In the sixth century B.C.E., if you were a woman you would experience more advan-

tages in life if you were an Etruscan as opposed to a Greek or a Roman.

______ 8. The Harappan civilization was located in the region of modern-day Pakistan.

Fill in the blank with the correct term.

9. If legend can be credited, the first major _______ colony was at Carthage in North Africa.

10. The most famous relic of _______ literature is the Epic of Gilgamesh.

11. The Upanishads record how lesser gods challenged the supreme god called _______.

12. In the first millennium B.C.E., Phoenician and _______ colonization and trade turned theMediterranean into a highway of cultural exchange.

13. The Hyksos invasion of _______ around 1500 B.C.E. preceded the invasion of the mysteriousSea Peoples around 1190 B.C.E.

(Continued)

World History40

Self-Check 2Answer each question in not more than four complete sentences.

14. How did the Hittite kingdom manage to thrive in the rugged terrain of Anatolia?

__________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________

15. What are logograms?

__________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________

16. Describe the nature of oracles used in ancient Shang China.

__________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________

Check your answers with those on page 215.

The Axial Age and FitfulTransitions

THE AXIAL AGE

The first part of Lesson 2 covers Chapter 6, The GreatSchools, and Chapter 7, The Great Empires.

ASSIGNMENT 6: THE GREATSCHOOLSRead this assignment. Then read the Part 3 opening spread andChapter 6, pages 122149, in your textbook.

The axial age unfolded over a period of roughly 500 years. Its called axial because it marked a profound shift in humanperspectives on the nature of reality. Axial-age thought is associated with highly influential and innovative ideasexpressed though religious doctrines, innovative philosophies,and approaches to scientific-analytical thought. The majorplayers during the axial age lived in China, India, Greece, andsouthwest Asia (Tibet). They were linked to each other throughtrade and cultural exchange that included the exchange ofideas.

During the axial age, religious and creeds and practicesshifted from a focus on survival to beliefs and practicesfocused on salvation and acquiring spiritual virtues, such asselflessness and compassion. There was less focus on thisworld and more concern for transcending the limitations ofmortality.

The Thinkers of the Axial Age

The key religious thinkers of the axial age are discussed onpages 126127 and 130131 of your textbook. Youll learnabout Zoroaster and Zoroastrianism, Gautama Siddhartha

41

Le

ss

on

2L

es

so

n 2

World History42

and Buddhism, Confucius and Confucianism, Laozi (oftenwritten as Lao-Tzu) and Daoism (often written as Taoism),and Jesus and Christianity.

Innovators of what we would now call secular thought, thoughtbased on critical reason and analysis, appeared in all the regionsof the axial age, including China and India. However, forWestern Civilization, the cradle of philosophyand of scienceisancient Greece. Among the many innovative Greek thinkers,the most imposing figures are Aristotle and his teacher Plato.The quip that all Western philosophy amounts to footnoteson Plato contains more than a grain of truth. However,Aristotles writings, when recovered in Western Europe centuries later,would have the greater initial impact on European andWestern thought.

The Thoughts of the Axial Age

Religious Thinking

The axial age produced influential ideas about the concept ofdivinity. Your textbook details the idea of a divine creator, theidea of a single god, and the idea of an involved god, who wasengaged in the world.

n Creation: Early cosmic myths, like those of many tribalpeoples, tended to explain how the world came to be as it is. The axial age abounded in mythological narrativeattempting to explain the creation of the world. The Genesisstory, wherein the Creator said, Let there be light, pro-posed a divine entity who had always existed and whoproduced the universe by an act of divine mind.

n Monotheism: The idea that theres a primary, unique, andeternal God existed in many places. However, Judaism wasrather unique in proposing a single god, Yahweh, whichbasically means the unnamable god. The monotheisticidea would be absorbed into all the so-called religions ofthe bookJudaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Lesson 2 43

Look at Figure 6.1 on page 133 to think about the Abrahamictradition as it originated and was then adopted by Islam andChristianity.

n Divine love: The image of divine loveGods love for hishuman creatureswas formulated late in the axial age by Judaic thinkers, mainly based on the assumption thatGod made man in his own image to serve as stewards ofHis Creation. This idea would impact the theologies ofChristianity and Islam. Similar ideas would appear inChina and by way of Greek philosophy. However, theJain sect of India declared all life sacred and all crea-tures brethren, and for Buddhists, respect for all lifedidnt involve a god concept.

New Political Thinking

All through history there have been two opposing views ofhuman nature. Some thinkers have viewed humankind asinherently evil. Others have proposed, like Anne Frank, thatpeople are good at heart. And, of course, these two opposedpoints of view encourage rather distinct ideas about the role of governance and the proper ordering of society.Justifications for both points of view were sharpened duringthe axial age. Pages 134137 of the textbook discusses thepolitical developments in light of these two viewspoliticalpessimism and political optimismin the axial age.

Challenging Illusion

The most striking feature of axial age thought all acrossEurasia was the recognition that what we know through ourphysical senses enslaves us by way of false assumptions.Youve already seen that the sacred literature of Indiadeclared the world a dance of illusion. In the West, Platoexpressed this idea in The Republic with his famous parableof the cave. Shackled in a cave of sensory illusion, we knownot the source of true light beyond our cave. We imagine reality to consist of the play of shadows across the cavewalls. So, in effect, reality is hidden behind our illusory imaginings.

World History44

Mathematics

Early concepts of numeration and ratios seems first to havedeveloped as ancient sages learned to measure the periodici-ties of celestial bodiesparticularly the seasonal cycles of thesun and roughly monthly cycles of the moon. During theaxial age, however, sages began to explore the concepts ofnumber and ratio as clues to the nature of the cosmos itself.Hindu sages devised the idea of cosmic cycles covering thousands of years. In the West, during the sixth centuryB.C.E. the Greek genius Pythagoras established basic con-cepts of geometry and proposed that numbers and ratios arereal in themselves as well as keys to the structure of the cos-mos. In short, the language of the invisible cosmos was tobe found in mathematics.

Reason

A major outcome of thinking about numbers and ratios wasrationalism. Rationalism is the doctrine that unaided reasoncan identify and establish truths. This section is a mind-bender. Youll need to study and reflect on the ideas youencounter here. The Greek sage Parmenides (fifth centuryB.C.E.) proposed that just as the idea of a perfect triangle canexist only in the mind, the same principle applies to anythingat all perceived by the senses. What is real for us is actuallyan interpretive construction of the mind.

Greek, South Indian, and Chinese sages proposed concepts of logic. Logic is the proper use of reason. All sound arguments,such as those presented by prosecutor in a court of law,depend on logic. For the West, Aristotles concept of argu-ment through syllogisms is the paramount example of logicalrigor. Reflect on this famous syllogism:

All men are mortal Socrates is a man.Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

Try creating a few syllogisms from any first premises you like.Can you come up with an invalid syllogismone in which theconclusion doesnt follow from the primary or derivative prem-ise?

Lesson 2 45

Science

An interesting development during the axial age was a newtendency to distinguish between the natural and the super-natural. Prior to that sort of thinking, what we might think of as natural or healing sciences were seen as magical innature. The new distinction plus the ideas that reason isfooled by the senses and that truth can result from carefulobservation and numerically accurate measurement led tothe advent of science.

In China, a prototype of scientific thinking appears to havederived from Taoist teachings. Chinese science tended to beweak on theory while being strong on practical technology.

In the West, the rise of science was a remarkable counter-current to popular culture that placated whimsical gods andassumed the existence of sprites, trolls, and nature spirits. Inthis setting, Aristotle set standards that would guide Westernscience for a very long time. For Aristotle, science was allabout gathering facts, connecting dots, and applying reasonin order to understand what can be observed.

Medicine

The notions that diseases, especially mental disorders,resulted from demonic possession, witchcraft, and the like would persist well into the eighteenth century, C.E.Nevertheless, the scientific mode of thought gained ground in the sphere of medicine during the axial age. In Greece inthe late fifth century B.C.E., followers of Hippocrates (calledHippocratics) proposed that human disease and illness resultfrom an imbalance of the vital fluids. The theory was wrong,but at least it was based on empirical observation. In India,Susutra (sixth century B.C.E.), developed a system of medicinebased on diet and drugs. In China, Xunzi (d. 235 B.C.E.) main-tained that illnesses and diseases resulted from naturalisticcauses.

World History46

Skepticism

An outgrowth of scientific thinking led to the markedlyuncomfortable idea that the world and the universe itself aremeaningless; theres no cosmic purpose. Several examples ofsages who espoused such views include the Greek philoso-pher Epicurus (d. 270 B.C.E.) and the first-century Chinesesage Wangchong. Epicurus was a strict materialist. The worldas he saw it was composed of nothing but impermanent partsand pieces (atoms) that move about in random ways. Sucha cosmos has no place for eternal spirits or immortal souls,much less divine purpose. For Wangchong, humans are para-sitic vermin who imagine a supernatural realm to givethemselves a cosmic significance that doesnt exist.

Skeptical philosophies that werent based in strict material-ism included those emerging from Buddhism and Taoism inthe East and from the Greek philosopher Zeno of Citium wholived and taught the Stoic philosophy in Athens in the fourthcentury B.C.E. All of these doctrines proposed that some senseof grace and integrity required detachment or indifference tothe slings and arrows of mortal life. Stoicism was widelyadopted in Roman times. A basic Stoic idea is that nature ismorally neutral. Only human acts can be thought of as eithergood or evil. How we act determines who we are. And thoseideas would continue to influence Western elites to this day.

Axial Age-Axial Area: the Structuresof the Axial Age

Schools and sages of the axial age fell into four general, oftenoverlapping, categories:

n Professional intellectuals who sold their services asteachers, often in the context of aspiring to public or pro-fessional positions, but also to offer comfort or advice topeople in search of wealth, health and happiness

n Intellectuals who sought the patronage of monarchs andelites, often in the capacity of political advisors (forexample, Aristotle)

Lesson 2 47

n Prophets or holy men who emerged from ascetic liveswith inspired messages for society

n Charismatic sages, who sought advocates for a visionarypolitical agenda that could either attract followers or beimposed on a populace

Probably the main idea youll want to draw from this section isthat innovative thought happened in a dynamic context. Sagesdisputed with each other even as their disputes inspired newinsights. Teachers gathered students into schools; studentsquestioned teachers. Some graduates formed new schools.Intellectual advisors to kings and princes crafted clever argu-ments to sway the thought of ambassadors, wealthy merchants,and royal ministers. Its instructive that, for the most part,Plato expressed his insights and ideas through writing out dialogues. Platonic dialogues like the Symposium read a bit like a script for a stage play.

We tend to think of schools as buildings. Actually, its bestto think of schools of thought as virtual pools of discoursechat rooms without computers. Wealthy thinkers like Platofounded academies that included boarding for students. Butmore often than not, ideas were bought, sold, or repudiatedat dinner parties, in marketplaces, or in a public commonssuch as the famed Agora of Athens. The word college comes from the Latin collegium, referring to an association of academiccolleagues.

Wrap up your study of this chapter with a careful study of the Making Connections feature on page 146 and theChronology sidebar on page 147 of your textbook.

World History48

ASSIGNMENT 7: THE GREATEMPIRESRead this assignment. Then read Chapter 7, pages 150177, inyour textbook.

Routes that Drew the Old World Together

Sea lanes of the Mediterranean were relatively short, andshore-hopping was relatively easy. But the Greeks and thePhoenicians had to learn how to make headway by sailingagainst the wind in order to navigate the full length of theMediterranean. By contrast, the alternating monsoonal windcurrents of the Indian Ocean facilitated long-range naviga-tion. Mariners could sail to their destination and then getback home again. For this reason, during the period of theGreat Empires, the Indian Ocean was a vital highway of tradeand commerce from Arabia and Africa all the way to Chinaand ports of call in Southeast Asia.

In 111 B.C.E., a Chinese garrison established an outpostbeyond Chinas western borders. Poetically, this region wasreferred to as the throat of China, where trade routes to thewest gathered like veins gather in the neck of a beast or aperson. Collectively, roads branching out from this regionwere referred to as the Silk Roads. Trade along these routesgenerally passed through series of middlemen in market centers, like Baghdad or the Persian capital at Susa, finallyarriving in regions of the Near East and all around theMediterranean. The reference to Silk Roads reminds us thatevidence of long-distance trade included the appearance ofsilk in places like Egypt, Greece, and Roman Britain. Thequantity and bulk of goods transported by land was far lessthan what could be transported by sea. Nevertheless, eventhough sea routes were more important to global history,land routes were also vital to trade and cultural exchangeduring the axial age.

Lesson 2 49

The key to this section, beyond enjoying the textbook discus-sion, is Map 7.1 on pages 154155 of your textbook. Study itcarefully to understand prevailing wind currents and sea andland trade routes. Also, be sure to study the icons on the mapthat represent important trade goods. Use the map in conjunc-tion with the Making Connections feature on page 158 to geta good overview of trade routed and their connections.

The First Eurasian Empire: Persia

The founding of the Persian Empire is credited to Cyrus theGreat. In around the middle of the sixth century B.C.E., Cyruslaid the foundation of what would become the Persian Empireby conquering the land of the Medes, one of the larger suc-cessor kingdoms of the Assyrian Empire. Thereafter, theempire was built by way of conquest and assimilation, takingadvantage of Persias central location along the highways oftrade that connected east and west.

At its greatest extent, the Persian Empire, joined withMesopotamia, extended to the coast of the Aegean in thewest, across much of Egypt in the south, and onward intoparts of India beyond the Indus to the southeast. As with allempires, the lifeblood of Persia was trade and tribute. And in that regard, the Persians werent fools. Their 1,700 milesof roads and practices of wise governance tended to keepconquered states relatively comfortable with their Persianoverlords. For example, Cyrus the Great rebuilt the Jewishtemple at Jerusalem, garnering the gratitude of the Hebrews.

The Greeks versus the Persians: TheRise of Alexander the Great and theHellenic Empire

The Greeks looked down on the Persians, expressing con-tempt for their respect for women and the luxurious lifestyleof Persian elites. The Greeks were given to constant squab-bling among rival city states. However, they managed to unitelong enough to defeat Persian efforts to conquer Greece in490 and 489 B.C.E. The latter war featured the famous Stand

World History50

of the 100, wherein a handful of Spartans delayed thePersian advance out of Asia long enough for the Greeks to rally sufficient strength to defeat the Persians.

During the period of the Persian wars, Athens was, more orless, the dominant political player in Greek affairs. Thatended in 338 B.C.E. when King Phillip of Macedon unitednortheastern Greece, including Athens, through conquest.Phillips next plan involved pushing the Persians out of Asia,but when Phillip was assassinated and his 19-year-old sonAlexander ascended to power, the Persian agenda under-went radical change.

Alexander of Macedon is, without doubt, one of the most colorful and astonishing characters of the axial age. Hisambition had no bounds. Alexander and his Greeks conquered Persia in three short years. Wisely, he left the efficient, well-run state to continue to operate as it had.Persia was, in effect, assimilated, but under the rule ofAlexanders lieutenants. Alexander then moved on to conquerLower Egypt, Bactria, and various states and tribes in andaround modern-day Iran and Afghanistan. His efforts finallycame to a halt in India, at which point the Greeks were justabout ready to hang it up and go home. Also at that point,Alexander was suffering from delusions of grandeur, and hisrule had become cruel and arbitrary. Be that as it may, atage 32 Alexander was dead of unknown causes. Thereafter,Alexanders lieutenants would rule a loosely joined HellenicEmpire of mixed Asian and Greek influences. In Egypt, Hellenicand Egyptian influences fused under the long rule of Ptolemy(one of Alexanders lieutenants) and his successors, the lastof which was Cleopatra.

The Rise of Rome

The history of the Roman Empire is, in effect, the history of the foundations of Western civilization. However, becausethe Romans annexed Greece and were heavily influenced byGreek thought, arts, and architecture, scholars often refer to Greco-Roman civilization. In any case, because Western civilization would come to dominate the globe, a student whowants to understand our world will make an effort to exploreall the things that made up the glory that was Rome.

Lesson 2 51

Rome started out as a provincial region of dirt farmers andgoat herders on the banks of the Tiber River, scattered overthe seven hills that would one day be covered by the monu-mental architecture that characterizes Rome to this day.Early Roman society no doubt borrowed some cultural elements from the Etruscans, but Roman culture had a distinct character based on martial virtues. The requiredlength of military commitment to Rome ranged from 16 to 25 years. In fact, as the Empire expanded to make theMediterranean a Roman pond, the retirement cities ofRoman legionaries (soldiers), scattered from Britain toAnatolia to Egypt to Palestine, became the templates forarchitecture and Roman (or Greek) ideas over the lands ruled directly or indirectly from the eternal city (Rome).Across the empire, the expression all roads lead to Romeheld more than a grain of truth.

A major tool of Roman expansion was civil engineering. TheRomans invented cement. Cement permitted the construction of such wonders as aqueducts, the ruins of which are yet seenall around the Mediterranean and as far west and north as thelands Romans called Gaul (France) and Britannia. The Romanlegionaries spent as much time building roads and bridges asthey did striking down foes on battlefields. Another major tool of Roman expansion was managed assimilation. Provinces wereallowed to follow their own customs and practice their local religions, under the sway of local Roman governors. Also,encouraging loyalty to Rome, people in conquered areas weregranted the rights and privileges of Roman citizenship.

Roman history can be roughly divided between republicanand imperial eras. The Republic featured elected consuls, an aristocratic assembly called the senate, and tribunes whorepresented ordinary citizens. However, Rome was an empirebased on conquest. Thus, central government by temporarywartime leaders called dictators resulted from the need forcentral command of the Roman legions. The dividing linebetween the Republic and the Empire was the electionAugustus in 27 B.C.E. He was to rule as princeps (chief) ofRome for life. In effect, Augustus was Romes first emperor.

World History52

The chronic insecurity of Rome was generated by its long andbarely manageable northern and eastern borders. Underthese conditions, the Romanizing of barbarian peoples wasa chancy game. After fierce resistance, the Celtic peoples ofGaul became enthusiastic participants in the expansion ofthe Roman Empire. By contrast, the Germanic peoples livingbeyond the Rhine River were left to fume, propagate, andeventually pose a lethal threat to the empire.

Study Map 7.3 on page 163 of your textbook in conjunctionwith the Roman Expansion chronology sidebar on page 165to get an overall sense of Roman wars and conquests over theperiod of imperial expansion.

The Beginning of Imperialism in India

As a response to the shock of Alexanders incursions into the Indus valleys, the states of the Ganges valley began toorganize into a defensive confederation. Available sourcesname a leader called Candragupta in regard to this politicaldevelopment. However, little is known about what was goingon in India up to the time that Asoka founded the MauryanEmpire in the 260s B.C.E.

Asokas roughly 45-year reign was remarkable by its resultsand by its unique character. Like other imperial monarchs,he expanded his empire over nearly most of the Indian sub-continent by way of conquest. Imperial governance includedefficiently organized trade, an extensive road network, andeffective irrigation and land management. His decrees wereinscribed on stone throughout the Ganges valley and onstone pillars in the Deccan. (The Deccan refers to the south-ern part of India.)

Empire management requires literate communication, typicallyorganized within state bureaucracies. In India, literacy wasmore or less the sole province of Buddhists priests andmonks. Therefore, Asoka had to rely on Buddhist scribes and clerks to get things done. But Asoka did more thanexplo

history- study guide

Documents

lesson assignments

muslim world

great world religions

islamic world

knowledge of history

great empires

axial age

imperial china