McDougal Littell World History: Patterns of Interaction 

Chapter 3: People and Ideas on the Move, 2000 B.C-250 B.C. 

Chapter 3.1: The Indo-Europeans 

• Indo-Europeans: a group of nomadic peoples who may have come from the steppes 

• Steppes: dry grasslands that stretched north of the Caucasus
• These primarily pastoral people herded cattle, sheep, and goats.
• They tamed horses and rode into battle in light, two-wheeled chariots. 
• They lived in tribes that spoke forms of a language that we call Indo-European.

• The languages of the Indo-europeans were the ancestors of many of the modern languages of Europe, Southwest Asia, and South Asia. 

• Indo-European nomads began to migrate outward in all direction between 1700 and 1200 B.C. 
• By around 2000 B.C. the Hittites occupied anatolia. 

• Anatolia is a huge peninsula in modern-day Turkey. 

• It is a high rocky plateau, rich in timber and agriculture. 

• Separate Hittitie city-states came together to form an empire there around 1650 B.C. 

• The city of Hattusas was its capital. 

• The Hittite empire went on to dominate southwest Asia for 450 years. 

• They struggled for control of northern Syria against Egypt. 

• The two had signed a peace treaty and pledged to help each other fight off future invaders. 

• The Hittities used their own Indo-european languages with one another. 

• For international use, they adopted Akkadian which is the language of the Babylonian they had conquered. 
• They borrowed ideas about literature, art, politics, and law from the Mesopotamians. 

• The Hittities excelled in the technology of war. 

• They had superior weapons and chariots to their counterparts which led them to victory in war. 

• The war chariot was light and easy to maneuver. 

• It had two wheels and a wooden frame covered with leather and pulled by 2-4 horses. 

• They had iron weapons, and iron was much stronger than bronze. 
• Around 1500 B.C. the Hitties were the first in Southwest Asia to work with iron and harden it into weapons. 

• The hittite empire fell suddenly around the year 1190 B.C. as the tribe attacked from the north and burned the capital city. 
• Before 2000 B.C the Aryans crossed over the northwest mountain passes into the Indus River valley of India. 

• The Aryans barely left any archaeological record.  

• Vedas: four collections of prayers, magical spells, and instructions for performing rituals. 
• The most important of the collections is the Rig Veda. 

• It contains 1,028 hymns to Aryan gods. 
• Still to this day no written form of the Vedas existed. 

• The elders of one generation passed on this tradition orally to the next generation. 

• The Aryans fought their enemies, known as the dasas. 

• Aryans were taller and lighter in color and they spoke a different language.
• The Aryans had not developed a writing system.  
• They were pastoral people who counted their wealth in cows.
• The dasas were town dwellers who lived in communities protected by walls. 

• The Aryans were organized into 4 groups based on occupation. 

• Brahmins: priests 
• Warriors 
• Traders and landowners 
• Peasants or traders 
• The group that the Aryan belonged to determined their role in society. 

• Shudras were laborers who did work that Aryans did not want to do.

• Varna: skin color was a distinguishing feature of this system 

• In the 15th century explorers from Portugal encountered this social system and called these groups castes. 
• The castes became more complex as time went on.

• Classical texts state that casts should not be determined by birth. 

• Over time some communities developed a system in which people were born into their caste. 

• Caste membership determined the work that they did, who they could marry, and who they could eat with. 

• Those considered the most impure because of their work lived outside the caste structure. 

• They were known as the untouchables 

• Over the next few centuries the Aryan extended their settlements east along the Ganges and Yamuna river valleys. 

• When they first arrived in India the chiefs were elected by the entire tribe. 

Chapter 3.2: Hinduism and Buddhism Develop 

• Hinduism: a collection of religious beliefs that developed slowly over a long period of time. 

• Hinduism cannot be traced back to one founder with a single set of ideas. 
• Hindus share a common worldview as they see religion as a way of liberating the soul from the illusions, disappointments, and mistakes of everyday existence. 
• Hindu teachers tried to interpret the hidden meaning of the Vedic hymns. 

• The teacher’s comments were later written down and became known as the Upanishads. 

• Upanishads are written as dialogues, the two explore how a person can achieve liberation from desires and suffering.

• This is described as moksha, a state of perfect understanding of all things. 

• The teacher distinguishes between atman, the individual soul of a living being, and Brahman the world soul that contains and unites all atmans. 

• Reincarnation: an individual soul or spirit is born again and again until moksha is achieved. 
• Karma: influences specific life circumstances, such as the caste one is born into one’s state of health, wealth or poverty, etc. 
• The world soul, Brahman was sometimes seen as having the personalities of three gods.         

• Brahma: the creator 
• Vishnu: the protector 
• Shiva: the destroyer

• Over the centuries, Brahma gradually faded into the background, while the many forms of Devi, a great Mother Goddess, grew in importance. 
• Hindus today are free to choose the deity they worship or to choose none at all. 

• Most follow a family tradition that may go back centuries, or they choose their own path

• Hindu ideas about karma and reincarnation strengthened the caste system. 

• If a person was born as an upper-caste male a Brahmin warrior or merchant, his good fortune was said to come from good karma earned in a former life. 

• Mahavira was the founder of Jainism. 

• He was born around 599 B.C. and he died in 527 B.C. 
• He believed that everything in the universe has a soul and so should not be harmed. 

• Jain monks carry the doctrine of nonviolence to its logical conclusion. 
• They sweep ants off their path, and wear gauze masks over their mouths to avoid breathing in insects. 
• Followers of Jainism looked for occupations that would not harm any creature. 

• They mainly worked in trade and commerce. 
• They make up one of the wealthiest communities in India. 

• Siddhartha Gautama was the founder of Buddhism.

• He spent his life searching for a religious truth and an end to life’s suffering. 
• Enlightenment: wisdom 
• He was known as the Buddha, meaning “the enlightened one” 

• The Buddha preached his first sermon to 5 companions who had accompanied him on his wanderings. 
• The first sermon became a landmark in the history of the world’s . religions 

• In it, he laid out the four main ideas that he had come to understand in his enlightenment. These were called the Four Noble Truths. 

• Life is filled with suffering and sorrow
• The cause of all suffering is people’s selfish desire for the temporary pleasures of this world 
• The way to end all suffering is to end all desires 
• The way to overcome such desires and attain enlightenment is to follow the Eightfold Path, which is called the Middle Way between desires and self-denial.

• By following th eEightfold path, anyone could reach nirvana. 

• Buddha rejected the many gods of Hinduism, and rejected the caste system. 
• The five disciples who heard the Buddha’s first sermon were the first monks admitted to the sangha, or Buddhit religious order.

• At first sangha was a community of Buddhist monks and nuns. Eventually referred to the entire religious community. 

• Budhist early followers included laborers and craftspeople
• He had a large following in northeast India, here the Aryans had less influence. 

• Monks and nuns took vows to live a life of provertu, to be nonviolent, and not to marry. 

• They wandered throughout India spreading the Buddha's teachings. 
• Missionaries carried a begging bowl to receive daily charity offerings from people. 

• Buddhist sacred literature includes commentaries, rules about monastic life, manuals on how to meditate, and legends about the Buddha’s previous reincarnations. 
• Missionaries were able to spread his faith over large parts of Asia.

• Buddhist missionaries went to Sri Lanka and 

Southeast Asia in the third century B.C. 

• From China they traveled all the way to Korea, and then all the way to Japan. 

• It was the most widespread religion of East Asia.

Chapter 3.3: Seafaring Traders

• Minoans: powerful seafaring people that dominated trade in the eastern Mediterranean from about 2000 to 1400 B.C> 

• Lived on crete, a large island on the southern edge of the Aegean Sea. 
• They produced some of the finest painted pottery of the time. 
• They traded pottery, swords, figurines, and vessels of precious metals over a large area. 
• Their culture had a major influence on Greece. 

• Knossos: the minoan capital city

• There was an advanced and thriving culture remains . 
• Its painted walls provided information about the minoans. 

• The paintings show the Minoans as graceful, athletic people who loved nature and beautiful objects. 
• They enjoyed sports such as boxing, wrestling and bull leaping. 
• Artworks depict women and their role in religious ceremonies 

• Art suggests that women held a higher rank than in most neighboring cultures

• A great Mother Earth Goddess seems to have ruled over the other gods of Crete. 
• Priestesses took charge of some shrines, aded by male assistants.

• They sacrifice bulls and other animals to their gods. 
• The end of the Minoan civilization ended about 1200 B.C. 

• In about 1700 B.C. a great disaster destroyed most Minoan towns and cities. 
• They rebuilt them with equal richness 
• Then again there was another earthquake followed by a volcanic eruption in 1470 B.C.

• They were not able to recover again, but their civilization did linger for about 300 years.
• Invaders from Greece may have taken advantage of their weakened condition to destroy them.
• Some fled to the mountains to escape the ruin of the kingdom. 

• About 1100 B.C. after the decline of Crete the most powerful traders along the Meditteranean were the Phoenicians. 

• They never united into a country. 
• They founded a number of wealthy city states around the Meditteranean that competed with each other.

• The first cities in Phoenicia were Byblos, Tyre, and Sidon which were important trading centers. 

• Sidon and Tyre were known for their production of red-purple dye
• Byblos was a trading center for papyrus. 

• They were remarkable shipbuilders and seafarers. 
• They were the first Mediterranen people to venture beyond the Strait of Gibraltar.
• They built colonies along the northern coast of Africa and the coasts of Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain.

• The greatest Phoenecian colony was at Carthage in North Africa. 

• It was founded in 814 B.C. 

• They were known as superb craftspeople who worked in wood, metal, glass, and ivory, and slaves. 
• Their purple red dye was produced from the murex, a small snail that lived in the waters off Sidon and Tyre. 
• Phoenicians developed a writing system that used symbols to represent sounds. 

• Most writings were on papyrs 

• Phonician trade was upset when their eastern cities were captured by Assyrians in 842 B.C.

Chapter 3.4: The Origins of Judaism 

• Ancient Palestine’s location made it a cultural crossroads of the ancient world. 

• Its seaports opened onto the two most important waterways of that time: the Mediterranean and the Red seas. 
• Torah: the first five books of the Hebrew bible

• They are considered the most sacred writings in their tradition. 
• Christians respect them as part of the Old Testament. 
• God chose Abraham to be the father of the Hebrew people. 

• Abraham was a shepherd who lived in the city of Ur in Mesopotamia.
• The book of Genesis tells that God commanded him to move his people to Canaan. 
• Around 1800 B.C. the descendants of Abraham moved to Egypt.

• The hebrews were montheists. 

• Monotheism: a belief in a single god
• The hebrews proclaimed Yahweh as the one and only god 
• In their eyes, Yahweh had power over all peoples, everywhere. 
• To them God was not a physical being, and no physical images were to be made of him. 
• The hebrews asked God for protection from their enemies, just as other people prayed to their gods to defend them.

• The bible says the Hebrews migrated to Egypt because of a drought and threat of a famine. 
• The Hebrews fled Egypt between 1300-1200 B.C. Jews call this event “the Exodus” 
• The Torah says that the man who led Hebrews out of slavery was named Moses. 

• Moses delivered the 10 commandments to his people which became the basis for the civil and religious laws of Judaism. 

• They believed that these laws formed a new covenant between God and the Hebrew people. 

• The Hebrews made a change from a nomadic, tribal society to settled herders,farmers, and city dwellers. 

• The roles of men and women were quite separate in hewbrew society. 

• Women could not officiate at religious ceremonies 
• A woman’s most important duty was to raise her children and provide moral leadership for them. 

• The ten commandments included rules regulating social and religious behavior 

• This was later interpreted by religious teachers, called prophets.
• The prophets taught the Hebrews had a duty to worship God and live justly with one another. 

• From 1020-920 B.C. the Hebrews united under three able kings: Saul, David, and Solomon. 

• The new kingdom was called israel 
• For 100 years, it enjoyed its greatest period of power and independence
• Saul is portrayed in the bible as a tragic man , who was given bouts of jealousy. 
• David was a popular leader, he united the tribes, established Jerusalem as the capital, and founded a dynasty. 
• Solomon was the most powerful of the Hebrew kings . 

• He built a trading empire with the help of his friend Hiram, the king of the Phoenician city of Tyre. 
• He beautified the capital city of Jerusalem. 

• It was a great temple, which he built to glorify God. 

• It was a permanent home for the Ark of the Covenant, which contained the tablets of Moses’ law.
• It was not arge, but it was valuable. 

• Solomon’s building projects required high taxes and badly strained the kingdom’s finances. 

• In 738 B.C. both Israel and Judah began paying tribute to Assyria.

• Tribute: peace money paid by a weaker power to a stronger one. 
• Both hoped to ensure that the mighty Assyrian empire would not attack due to them paying tribute. 

• These tributes were not enough and in 725 B.C. the Assyrians began a relentless siege of Samaria, the capital of Isreal. 
• In 722 B.C. the whole northern kingdom had fallen to the Assyrians. 

• The Southern kingdom of Judah resisted for another 150 years before it was destroyed.

• It was destroyed by the Babylonians. 
• After conquering Israel the Assyrians lost their power to the babylonian empire. 

• The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar ran the Egyptians out of Syria and ancient Palestine, and he twice attacked Jerusalem. 

• The city fell in 586 B.C. Solomon’s temple was destroyed 
• Many of the survivors were exiled to Babylon. 

• 50 years after the fall of Judah, another change in fortune occurred: in 539 B.C. the Persian king Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon. 

• Cyrus allowed some 40,000 exiles to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple. 
• The work on the second temple was completed in 515 B.C. 
• The wall of Jerusalem were rebuilt in 445 B.C. 

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