Core/ Foundational Civilizations And The First States

• Mesopotamia

  • A greek term meaning “land between the waters”

  • Tigris and Euphrates rivers

  • Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrian writing systems

  • small ruling class of priests

  • individual city-states

  • cuneiform: the first written script

  • Created the Code Of Hammurabi

  • ziggurats: terrace-stepped temples that honored polytheistic gods

  • base-60 number system: measured time and navigational calculations

  • Mesopotamia traded with Egypt over the Red Sea

  • Mesopotamia Indus trade: involved boat travel along the Indian Ocean coastline

  • Hitties: conquered Mesopotamia from 1300s and 1200 B.C.E

    • adept at chariot warfare

    • used iron weapons

• Egypt

  • Nile

  • Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom: basic social and political features took place

  • Middle Kingdom: Hyksos invaded

    • armed with chariots and compound bows

  • New Kingdom: independence until 1070 BCE

  • The pharaoh: the monarch, or the living incarnation of the sun god

  • Egyptian- Nubian Trade: bought gold to Egypt

  • Egyptian- Mesopotamian Trade

  • The Egyptians had an elaborate polytheistic religion

    • Egyptian Book of The Dead: principal religious text

    • pyramids: provided resting places for pharaohs after they died

  • hieroglyphics: written characters

  • papyrus: plant-based, paper-like substance used to create documents

  • Egyptians devised the 365 days calendar

• The Indus River Valley

  • The Indus River civilization

  • Formed in Pakistan and northwestern India

  • Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa: largest cities

  • Mesopotamian- Indus Trade

• Early China and the Shang Dynasty

  • Emerged in China, along the Huang He, or Yellow River

  • commodities such as jade and silk

  • Used pictographs as their writing system

  • divination, fortune telling

  • ancestor veneration

  • Zhou: China’s second dynasty

  • Relied on feudalism: a form of rulership in which a weak monarch loosely governs a number of decentralized and militarized political units

  • learned to make iron weapons and tools

  • used an effective form of bureaucracy

  • Mandate Of Heaven: as long as a leader governed wisely, he could claim a divine right to rule

• The Olmecs

  • oldest and most significant civilization that appeared in the Americas

  • probably practiced human sacrifice

• Andean culture and the Chavin

  • civilizations from northwestern South America

  • skilled at weaving and metalworking

  • Chavin: emerged and dominated the coastal plain and Andean foothills of modern day Peru

  • worshipped a variety of polytheistic gods

  • known for their elaborate textiles

• Other Cultures and Civilizations

  • Nubia: located to the south of Egypt along the Nile River

  • Hebrews: gained a homeland in Israel

    • developed the first monotheistic religion, Judaism

  • Phoenicians: a maritime culture that traded and colonized widely throughout the Mediterranean between 1550 and 300 B.C.E

    • their main legacy is the alphabet: a written script in which sign represents a sound rather than a concept or object

• Society, Trade, And Economics

  • class distinction: people are defined by wealth, ancestory, or occupation

  • specialization of labor: specialized occupations

  • monarchy: rule by a single person, most often by divine will or to embody a deity

    • ruled with an elite class, or nobility, or aristocracy

  • oligarchy: rule by the few

  • theocracy: government dominated by a religious elite

  • social stratification: roles within a society

    • hierarchy: ranking social class

    • social mobility: deciding how difficult it is to move from one class to another

    • caste system: strict hierarchies, in which movement between classes is almost impossible

    • patriarchal societies: leadership roles, as well as important social functions, have been dominated by men

  • Slavery: forced labor, located the bottom of any hierarchy

  • Debt slavery and indentured servitude: put people to work for owners who had paid money or taxes they owed

  • Serfdom: similar to slavery

    • compelled peasants for the owners of the land they lived on

  • Prison or convict labor: involved backbreaking tasks to be completed by prisoners

Society, Trade, And Economics

• took place on barter, or individual basis

  • led to marketplaces: local, regional, and transregional trade

  • marketplaces strengthened contact amongst villages, cities, and rural communities

  • helped spread ideas, beliefs, and technologies over great distances

  • motivated the development of water and overland transport, including caravans

  • enabled the Egyptian- Mesopotamian trade and the Egyptian-Nubian trade

  • North African and Middle East trade was connected through the Mediterranean

  • Mesopotamian-Indus trade was connected through the Middle East and Indian Ocean through boats

• Culture, Thought, and Religion

  • monumental architecture: religion, defense, entertainment, and the public display of public power

    • pyramids

    • Mesopotamia’s ziggurats

    • palace of Babylon

  • cities were created through urban planning

    • city walls, paved streets and roads, sewage and water systems

  • writing systems: allowed for complex record keeping snd the efficient storage and transfer of ideas and information

    • cuneiform: use symbols to represent concepts and objects

    • Egyptian hieroglyphics

    • Chine pictographs

    • Phoenician alphabet: represented sounds, not concepts and allowed the formation of any word from a small set of memorized symbols

    • Quipu: “talking knots”, a form of record keeping by which information was represented by knots tied in strings, with extra meaning by various color combinations

    • emerged in the Incas in the 1500s C.E

  • Literary Books

    • Mesopotamia’s Gilgamesh Epic

    • Egyptian Book Of The Dead: describes the judgement of souls after death and advises readers on how to ensure a happy afterlife

    • India’s Rig Veda: a collection of Vedic hymns composed in Sanskrit between `700 and 1100 B.C.E, one of the earliest Hindu sacred texts

    • Homeric epics, the Iliad and Odyssey: written by the early Greeks

      • Homeric epics: fictionalized account of the Trojan War, with roles for the Greek gods

    • Iliad and Odyssey: describes the adventures of the warrior Odysseus as he returns home from the war

  • Religions

    • Religion: developed by all societies to address the questions of ethics and morality, the possibility of an afterlife, and humanity’s place in the universe

    • spread through trade, missionary activity, or forced conversion

    • most advanced societies followed polytheism

    • Vedism: bought to India by Indo-European traders around the 1500 B.C.E

      • Followed the Rig Veda

      • set a rigid caste system in place

        • Brahmins were at the top, followed by warriors and political rulers, then traders, peasants and artisans, then servants and laborers

      • Karma and reincarnation

    • Judaism: originated by the Hebrews in the time of Abraham

      • the first monotheistic religion

      • migrated to Egypt, then enslaved but escaped under the leadership of Moses

        • Celebrated under the days of Passover

        • Handed down the Ten Commandments and the Torah

    • Zoroastrianism: a major religion that emerged in Persia by Darius The Great

      • A monotheistic religion, venerating a single god; Ahura Mazda