Ways of the World Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Commonalities and Variations in Africa, the Americas, and Pacific Oceania (600 B.C.E. - 1200 C.E.)

Continental Comparisons

Civilizations of Africa

• Meroë: Continuing a Nile Valley Civilization

• Axum: The Making of a Christian Kingdom

• Along the Niger River: Cities without States

Civilizations of Mesoamerica

• The Maya: Writing and Warfare

• Teotihuacán: The Americas' Greatest City

Civilizations of the Andes

• Chavín: A Pan-Andean Religious Movement

• Moche: A Civilization of the Coast

• Wari and Tiwanaku: Empires of the Interior

Alternatives to Civilization

• Bantu Africa: Cultural Encounters and Social Variation

• North America: Ancestral Pueblo and Mound Builders

• Pacific Oceania: Peoples of the Sea

Connecting Past and Present

• Evo Morales, a Native American president of Bolivia, linked himself to the ancient culture of Tiwanaku for political support.

• The second-wave era evokes memories of Eurasian civilizations, but civilizations also flourished in the Americas and sub-Saharan Africa.

• Peoples who did not organize around cities or states also had significant histories.

• This chapter explores the histories of various peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Pacific Oceania.

• These histories extend beyond the chronological boundaries of the second-wave era in Eurasia.

• The peoples in this chapter participated in global patterns of change while creating distinct historical paths.

Seeking the Main Point

• To what extent did the histories of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas parallel those of Eurasia?

• In what ways did they forge new or different paths?

Landmarks for Chapter 6

• Africa

  • 730 B.C.E.: Nubian conquest of Egypt

  • 300 B.C.E. - 900 C.E.: Niger Valley civilization in West Africa

  • 300 B.C.E. - 100 C.E.: Kingdom of Meroë in upper Nile Valley

  • 4th century C.E.: Introduction of Christianity to Axum

  • ca. 400 C.E.: Bantu-speaking peoples established in southern Africa

• North America

  • 200 B.C.E. - 400 C.E.: Hopewell mound-building culture

  • ca. 860-1130 C.E.: Chaco Phenomenon

  • ca. 900-1250 C.E.: Cahokia

  • ca. 1200-1400 C.E.: Southeast Ceremonial Complex

• Central and South America

  • 900-200 B.C.E.: Chavín movement

  • 100-800 C.E.: Moche civilization in Peru

  • 250-900 C.E.: Maya civilization

  • 300-650 C.E.: Teotihuacán

  • 400-1000 C.E.: Wari and Tiwanaku in the Andes

• Oceania

  • 1400-800 B.C.E.: Lapita culture

  • 1100-1600 C.E.: Saudeleur dynasty on Pohnpei

  • ca. 1000 C.E.: Tongan trading network

  • 1200 C.E.: Initial settlement of New Zealand

Continental Population in the Second-Wave Era and Beyond

Civilizations of Africa

• Historians refer to "Africa" as a geographic concept, not a cultural identity.

• Africa hosted numerous separate societies, cultures, and civilizations with differences and interactions.

• These differences grew out of continent’s environmental variations (Mediterranean climate, deserts, savanna, rainforest, highlands).

• Africa is the most tropical of the world's three supercontinents.

• Some regions had productive agriculture, while others faced lower crop yields and soil fertility issues.

• Climatic conditions also spawned insects and parasites, creating health problems.

• Small civilizations flourished in the upper Nile Valley, northern Ethiopia/Eritrea, and the Niger River valley.

• A further African civilization grew up along the East African coast with Indian Ocean commerce.

Meroë: Continuing a Nile Valley Civilization

• Nubian civilization was located in the Nile Valley south of Egypt.

• Nubians traded and fought with Egypt, and the Kingdom of Kush conquered Egypt in 730 B.C.E.

• Nubia remained a distinct civilization while borrowing from Egypt.

• Nubian civilization centered on Meroë (300 B.C.E. - 100 C.E.) as Egypt fell under foreign control.

• Meroë was governed by a sacred monarch, sometimes a woman with equivalent power to male counterparts.

• Rulers were buried with sacrificial victims.

• Meroë had urban centers with economic specialties, including merchants, weavers, potters, masons, and iron production.

• Rural areas practiced herding and farming and paid tribute to the ruler.

• Rainfall-based agriculture meant farmers were less dependent on irrigation.

• Meroë's wealth derived from long-distance trade connections.

• They traded iron weapons and cotton cloth for gold, ivory, tortoiseshells, and ostrich feathers.

• Meroë had contact with the Mediterranean world, as evidenced by the discovery of a statue of Roman Emperor Augustus.

• Culturally, Meroë moved away from Egyptian influence.

• The local lion god Apedemek grew prominent, and Meroitic script replaced Egyptian-style writing.

• The Kingdom of Meroë declined due to deforestation and a shift in trade routes to the Red Sea.

• The state weakened, and Axum conquered the kingdom in the 340s C.E.

• Three separate Nubian states emerged, and Coptic Christianity penetrated the region.

• Nubia was a Christian civilization for almost 1,000 years, with churches constructed in Coptic or Byzantine fashion.

• Political division, Arab immigration, and the penetration of Islam eroded Christian civilization, and Nubia became part of the world of Islam.

Axum: The Making of a Christian Kingdom

• Axum marked the emergence of a new African civilization in the Horn of Africa (Eritrea and northern Ethiopia).

• Its economic foundation was highly productive agriculture with a plow-based farming system.

• They grew wheat, barley, millet, and teff.

• A substantial state emerged, stimulated by Red Sea and Indian Ocean commerce.

• Adulis was the largest port on the East African coast.

• Merchants sought animal hides, rhinoceros horn, ivory, obsidian, tortoiseshells, and enslaved people.

• Taxes on trade provided revenue for the Axumite state.

• The interior capital city was a center of monumental building and royal patronage for the arts.

• The most famous structures were huge stone obelisks marking royal graves.

• The language used at court was Ge'ez, written in a script derived from South Arabia.

• The Axumite state controlled Agaw-speaking people through tribute payments.

• Axum was introduced to Christianity in the fourth century C.E.

• King Ezana adopted Christianity around the same time as Constantine in the Roman Empire.

• Early coins featured images of gods derived from southern Arabia, but later coins had crosses.

• Christianity took root in Axum, linking the kingdom with Christian Egypt.

• Christianity maintained a dominant position in highland Ethiopia.

• Axum mounted a campaign of imperial expansion in the fourth through sixth centuries C.E., taking forces into Meroë and Yemen.

• An Axumite army reached the gates of Mecca in 571.

• The state declined due to environmental changes and the rise of Islam, which altered trade routes.

• The state revived centuries later, centered farther south on the Ethiopian plateau.

Along the Niger River: Cities without States

• The middle stretches of the Niger River in West Africa witnessed the emergence of urbanization.

• A dry period after 500 B.C.E. brought people from the southern Sahara into the Niger floodplain.

• Urban clusters grew up along the middle Niger from 300 B.C.E. to 900 C.E.

• Jenne-jeno was the most fully studied city, housing over 40,000 people at its height.

• The Niger Valley civilization lacked a corresponding state structure.

• Unlike cities in Egypt, China, or the Roman Empire, these Niger urban centers were not encompassed within some larger imperial system.

• Historians describe them as "cities without citadels," operating without coercive authority.

• Archeologists have found few signs of despotic power, widespread warfare, or deep social inequalities.

• Jenne-jeno and other cities emerged as clusters of economically specialized settlements surrounding a larger central town.

• The earliest specialized occupation was iron smithing.

• Villages of cotton weavers, potters, leather workers, and griots grew up around the central towns.

• These artisan communities became occupational castes.

• Farmers tilled the soil and raised animals in the surrounding rural areas.

• The middle Niger cities represented an African alternative to an oppressive state.

• Specialized economic groups shared authority and voluntarily used one another's services, maintaining their own identities through separation.

• A growing network of indigenous West African commerce accompanied this urbanization.

• The middle Niger floodplain supported agriculture and pottery but lacked stone, iron ore, salt, and fuel, creating a basis for long-distance commerce.

• Jenne-jeno was an important transshipment point.

• By the 500s C.E., there is evidence of commerce from Mauritania to present-day Mali and Burkina Faso.

• In the second millennium C.E., large-scale states or empires emerged in the region (Ghana, Mali, and Songhay).

• This development was partially due to camel-borne trans-Saharan commerce.

• West Africa became more firmly connected to North Africa and the Mediterranean, and Islam penetrated the region.

• The decentralized city life of the Niger Valley was submerged, but not completely eliminated.

Civilizations of Mesoamerica

• Mesoamerica and the Andes housed the majority of the population of the Americas.

• These civilizations had little if any direct contact with each other.

• They shared a rugged mountainous terrain with a diverse range of microclimates and ecological environments.

• Such conditions contributed to linguistic and ethnic diversity and to the development of many distinct and competing cities, chiefdoms, and states.

• States sought vertical integration to control a variety of ecological zones where different crops and animals could flourish.

• The achievements of these civilizations occurred without large domesticated animals or ironworking technologies.

• Mesoamerican civilizations stretched from central Mexico to northern Central America.

• Mesoamerica was bound together by elements of a common culture: intensive agriculture, market exchange, a similar pantheon of deities, a cosmic cycle of creation and destruction, human sacrifice, monumental ceremonial centers, a ritual calendar, and hieroglyphic writing.

• During the first millennium B.C.E., the Olmec exchanged luxury goods used to display social status.

• Aspects of Olmec culture, such as artistic styles, temple pyramids, the calendar system, and rituals involving human sacrifice, spread widely and influenced many civilizations.

The Maya: Writing and Warfare

• Scholars have traced the beginnings of the Maya people to ceremonial centers as early as 2000 B.C.E.

• During the first millennium B.C.E., a number of substantial urban centers with monumental architecture had emerged in the region.

• Between 250 and 900 C.E, their most well-known cultural achievements emerged.

• Intellectuals developed a mathematical system that included the concept of zero and place notation and was capable of complex calculations.

• They combined this mathematical ability with careful observation of the night skies to plot the cycles of planets, to predict eclipses of the sun and the moon, to construct elaborate calendars, and to calculate accurately the length of the solar year.

• The distinctive art of the Maya elite was likewise impressive to later observers.

• Accompanying these intellectual and artistic achievements was the creation of the most elaborate writing system in the Americas, which used both pictographs and phonetic or syllabic elements.

• Mayan writing recorded historical events, astronomical data, and religious or mythological texts.

• Temples, pyramids, palaces, and public plazas abounded, graced with painted murals and endless stone carving.

• The economic foundations for these cultural achievements were embedded in an “almost totally engineered landscape.”

• The Maya drained swamps, terraced hillsides, flattened ridgetops, and constructed elaborate water-management systems.

• This supported a large population, substantial elite classes, specialized artisans, and a large labor force for public structures.

• Early scholars viewed Maya civilization somewhat romantically as a peaceful society led by gentle stargazing priest-kings devoted to temple building and intellectual pursuits.

• This view changed as scholars realized that its many achievements took place within a fragmented political system of city-states, local lords, and regional authority, with frequent warfare, and with the extensive capture of prisoners.

• The larger political units of Maya civilization were densely populated urban and ceremonial centers, ruled by powerful kings and, on a few occasions, queens.

• They were divine rulers or “state shamans" able to mediate between humankind and the supernatural.

• One of these cities, Tikal, contained perhaps 50,000 people.

• Some of these city-states had imperial ambitions.

• Various centers of Maya civilization rose and fell; fluctuating alliances among them alternated with periods of sporadic warfare; ruling families intermarried; the elite classes sought luxury goods from far away to bolster their authority and status.

• In its political dimensions, Maya civilization more closely resembled the competing city-states of ancient Mesopotamia or classical Greece than the imperial structures of Rome, Persia, or China.

• With a completeness and finality rare in world history, much of that imposing civilization collapsed.
  Rapid population growth, environmental pressures (deforestation, erosion), and climate change are all possible factors relating to the Maya’s demise.

Teotihuacán: The Americas' Greatest City

• At roughly the same time as the Maya flourished in the southern regions of Mesoamerica, the giant city of Teotihuacán was also emerging further north in the Valley of Mexico, where its control over important sources of green obsidian made it an increasingly important trading power in the region.

• Begun around 150 B.C.E. and apparently built to a plan rather than evolving haphazardly, the city by 550 C.E. had a population estimated at between 125,000 and 150,000.

• The city was replete with broad avenues, spacious plazas, huge monumental buildings, apartment complexes, slums, waterways, reservoirs, drainage systems, and colorful murals.

• Along the main north/south boulevard, now known as the Avenue of the Dead, Colorful murals show the grand homes of the elite, the headquarters of state authorities, many temples, and two giant pyramids.

• Buildings, both public and private, were decorated with mural paintings, sculptures, and carvings.

• These works of art display abstract geometric and stylized images.
  One set of murals shows happy people cavorting in a paradise of irrigated fields, playing games, singing, and chasing butterflies which were thought to represent the souls of the dead.

• Another however portrays dancing warriors carrying elaborate curved knives to which were attached bleeding human hearts.

Civilizations of the Andes

• Offshore waters of the Pacific Ocean provided marine life.

• Andean societies generally sought access to resources through colonization, conquest, or trade: Seafood, Maize/ cotton from lower altitudes, Potatoes/ pastureland for llamas in high planes, tropical fruits & coca leaves from tropical eastern slopes.

• no single civilization dominated the Andes region during the second-wave era, due to Inca Empire in the fifteenth century.
  First civilizations dating back to 3000 B.C.E.

• There were also coastal regions.

• the world's First Civilizations, known as Norte Chico (see