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
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