Chapter 1: The First Civilizations

• Civilization first appeared approximately 3500 years before the Common Era
  • Common Era: period following the traditional date of the birth of Jesus
• The first human-like creatures whose remains have been discovered date back to around six and a half million years
• Varieties of the modern species of humans appeared around 100,000 years ago
  • Spread across the Eurasian landmass and Africa
  • Earliest humans: Neanderthals
• Some historians believe that the Paleolithic era was a peaceful golden age in which women had a dominant role in social organizations despite having no evidence backing their claim
• Culture was increasingly determinant in human life during upper Paleolithic era
  • (ca. 35,000-10,000 B.C.E..)
• Paleolithic people developed speech, religion, and artistic expression
  • Abstract and symbolic thought was represented by wall paintings, small clay and stone figurines of women, and decorated stone and bone tools
  • Hunters might have painted images of animals to make sure such species would be plentiful
  • Figurines of women might reflect concern about human and animal fertility
• Sedentarization and the agricultural revolution were fundamental changes in human culture
  • Began independently
  • Continued for roughly 5000 years
• Broad-Spectrum Gathering
  • People stayed put and exploited the seasonal sources of food instead of constantly traveling in search of food
  • Fish, wild grains, fruits, and game
• People in the Jericho community built and rebuilt their mud brick and stone huts over generations
• It is unknown why settlement lead to agriculture which was riskier than hunting and gathering
  • Specialization in few species of plants or animals could lead to starvation due to severe weather or diseases
• Infant mortality decreased and life expectancy rose in settled communities
  • Young and old members of the tribe or community were useful with simple agriculture tasks
• Population growth put pressure on the local food supply
  • Gathering activities demanded formal coordination and organization
  • Led to the development of political leadership
  • Leadership and perception of safety prevented the traditional breaking away to form other similar communities
• Settlement started to encourage cultivation of plants and domestication of animals
  • Plants: barley and lentils
  • Animals: pigs, sheep, and goats
• Expansion of food supply allowed for development of sedentary communities
• The people of the Neolithic era (New Stone Age) organized sizable villages
• Agriculture was portable
• In large communities, bonds of kinship that united small hunter-gatherer bands were supplemented by religious organizations
  • Helped control and regulate social behavior
• Innovations such as the chariot were used for transport and aggressive warfare
  • Symbolic of the culture of the early civilizations (first civilizations in western Eurasia)
• Upland regions of the north received the most rainfall
  • Soil is thin and poor
• Rainfall is nonexistent in the south
  • Soil is fertile
• Survival in region needed planning and mobilization of manpower which was possible through centralization
• Driven by need, a new civilization was created
• Small settlements became common
  • Towns such as Eridu and Uruk, in what is today Iraq
• Cities supplemented their resources by raiding their more prosperous neighbors
  • Populations of the towns rose
• Men and Women developed new technologies and new social and political structures in cities
  • Created cultural traditions like writing and literature
  • Epic of Gilgamesh (first great heroic poem, composed before 2000 B.C.)
• Archaeologists uncovered remains of the ramparts of Uruk
  • Stretch over five miles
  • Protected by 900 semicircular towers
  • Surpassed the great medieval walls of Paris in size and complexity, built 4000 years later
  • Protective walls enclosed around two square miles of houses, palaces, workshops, and temples
  • A true urban environment with first city being Uruk
• Urban immigration increased the power, wealth, and status of two groups
  • First group were religious authorities responsible for the temples
  • Second group was the emerging military and administrative elites
  • The decision to enter the city wasn’t always voluntary and was usually forced by the ruling classes
• Mesopotamians formed a highly stratified society
  • Various groups shared unequally in the benefits of civilizations
  • Slaves were the primary victims of civilization (prisoners of war)
  • Peasants lived little better lives than slaves with them having lost their freedom to the religious or military elite
  • Soldiers, merchants, and workers and artisans who served the temple or palace were better off
  • Net level in hierarchy were the landowning ree persons
  • Avoe all of these were the priests
  • Kings were powerful and feared; seen as representatives of the Gods
• Urban life redefined the role and status of women who had had roughly the same roles and status as men in the Neolithic period
  • Women exercised private authority over children and servants within the household in the cities
  • Men controlled the household and dealt with the wider world
• Trade networks were extended into Syria, the Arabian Peninsula, and India for metal and stone
• The pattern of patriarchal households predominated by 1500 B.C.E.
  • Public control of the house, family, city, and state was largely in male hands
• Major technological and conceptual discoveries took place due to the need to feed, clothe, protect,and govern growing urban populations
• The greatest invention of the early cities was probably writing
• By 3500 B.C.E. government and temple administrators used simplified drawings
  • Pictograms
  • Thousands of pictograms survived in the ruins of Mesopotamian cities
• The first tablets were written in Sumerian
• Each pictogram represented a single sound which corresponded to a single object or idea
  • Pictograms developed into a true system of writing
  • The writing took on its characteristic wedge (cuneiform)
  • Scribes began to use cuneiform characters to represent concepts
  • Such developments were revolutionary
• Scribes used the same symbols to write in Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, and Persian
• Tablets were later used to preserve contracts, maintain administrative records, and record significant events, prayers, myths, and proverbs
• Writing allowed for those who mastered it to achieve greater centralization and control of the government
  • Reinforced memory, consolidating, and expanding the achievements of the first civilizations and transporting them to the future
  • Writing was power
  • Writing served to increase the strength of the king in Mesopotamia
• Mesopotamian gods had the physical appearance and personalities of humans and human virtues and vices
• Great gods included Nanna and Ufu who were protectors of Ur and Sippar
• The gods of the sky, the air, and the rivers were at the top of the pantheon
• Mesopotamians believed that the role of mortals was to serve the gods and feed them through sacrifice
• They assumed that the gods lived in a structured world that operated rationally
• The king was the ruler and highest judge as the was the representative of the city’s god
• King’s held privileges and responsibilities appropriate to his position
  • Responsible for the construction and maintenance of religious buildings and the complex system of canals
  • Commanded the army
• The rulers of Ur, Lagash, Uruk, and Umma fought amongst themselves for control of Sumer from 3000 B.C.E. until 2300 B.C.E.
• Sargon, King of Akkad was the most important figure in Mesoptamian history
  • Built on conquests and confederacies of the past to unite, transform, and expand Mesoptamian civilization
  • Son of a priestess
  • Conquered Ur, Lagash, and Umma
  • Spread the achievements of Sumerian civilization
• From 2000 B.C.E. on, the political and economic centers of Mesopotamia were in Babylonia and Assyria
• Hammurabi expanded his state through arms and diplomacy
  • Expanded his power south as far as uruka nd north as far as Assyria
• The king was responsible for regulating all aspects of Babylonian life
  • Dowries, contracts, agricultural prices, wages commercy, money lending, and professional standards for physicians and architects
• Each social group had its own rights and obligations in proportion to its status
  • Husbands ruled their households but didn't’ have unlimited authority over their wives
  • Women could initiate their own court cases, practice trades, and hold public positions
• The Law Code held veterinarians, architects, physicians, and boat builders to the standards of professional behavior
• Babylonians developed the most sophisticated mathematical system known prior to the 15th century C.E. to handle the economics of business and government administration
• Hammurabi’s kingdom fell to the Hittites
  • An Indo-European people, speaking a language that was a part of linguistic family that included most modern European languages
• Near the Mediterranean in Lower Egypt, the Nile spread across a mashy delta more than 100 miles wide
• The earliest sedentary communities in Nile Valley appeared on the western margin of the Nile Delta around 4000 B.C.E.
• Ancient Egyptian history is divided into 31 dynasties, regrouped in turn into 4 periods of political centralization
  • Pre and Early dynastic Egypt (ca. 3150-2770 B.C.E.)
  • The Old Kingdom (ca. 2770-2200 B.C.E.)
  • The Middle Kingdom (ca. 2050-1786 B.C.E.)
  • The New Kingdom (ca. 1560-1087 B.C.E.)
  • Time gaps between the periods were full of disruption and political confusion called intermediate periods
• Divine kingship was the cornerstone of Egyptian life
  • Initially, the King was an incarnation of Hours (sky and falcon god)
  • Later, the king was identified with the sun god Ra and Osiris the god of the dead
  • The King was obliged above all else to care for his people
  • The King’s commands preserved maat which was the ideal state of the universe and society (condition of harmony and justice)
• The Kings of the Old Kingdom were divine administrators
• Women of ancient Egypt were more independent and more involved in public life when compared with those of Mesopotamia
  • Egyptian women owned property, entered legal contracts, conducted their own business, and brought lawsuits
  • Had an integral part in religious rights
  • Weren’t segregated from men in their daily activities
  • Shared in the economic and professional life of the country except for them being excluded from education
• The role of bureaucracy was ato administer estates, channel revenues and labor towards vast public works projects, and administer estates
• King Zoser, founder of the Old Kingdom built the first of the pyramid temples
  • Step Pyramid at Sakkara
• Egypt’s material and human resources were transformed and focused due to building and equipping the pyramids
  • Artisans were trained
  • Engineering and transportation conflicts solved
  • Quarrying and stone-working techniques perfected
  • Laborers recruited
  • More than 70,000 workers from the Old Kingdom were employed in building the great temple-tombs
• Feeding the pyramid laborers drained most of the country’s agricultural surplus
• All resources of the kingdom went to regulating existing cults and establishing new ones
  • All wealth, labor, and expertise was spent on the temples, reinforcing hethe position of the king
• The absolute power of the king declined
  • Demand for consumption by court and cults forced agricultural expansion into areas with poor returns (decreased flow of wealth)
  • Egyptian royal authority collapsed entirely by around 2200 B.C.E.
• Foreigners along with Egyptians benefited from the greater access to power and privilege in the Middle Kingdom
  • Hyksos adopted the traditions of Egyptian kingship and continued the tradition of divine rule
• Hyksos kings introduced military technology and organization into Egypt
  • Egyptian military tactics were transformed
• Ahmose I forged an empire
  • Him and his successors extend the frontiers of Egypt with their newfound military
• Despite Hatshepsut and her successors’ attempts, the Egyptian Empire was never as grand as its kings claimed it to be
• Expanded political frontiers meant increased trade and interaction with the rest of the ancient world
• Religion was the heart of royal power and the the only limiting force
• Amenhotep IV was the most controversial ruler of the New Kingdom
  • Attempted to abolish the cult of Amen-Ra along with all the other traditional gods, priesthoods, and their festivals
  • Moved his capital from Thebes to Akhetaten
  • Changed his own name to Akhenaten
• Akenaten temporarily transformed the aesthetic of Egyptian court life while trying to reestablish royal divinity
• Akenaten could command acceptance of his radical break with Egyptian stability
  • His innovations annoyed Egyptian elites
• Dynastic continuity ended after Tutankhamen
  • New military dynasty seized throne
  • Internal issues allowed Hittites to expand south at Egypt’s expense
• Sargon’s Semitic Akkadians and hammurabi’s Amorites created Mesopotamian states
  • Adopted the ancient Sumerican cultural traditions
• Majority of Semitic people lived a life radically different from those of the floodplain civilizations
• After 2000 B.C.E. small Semitic bands spread into what is today Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine
  • Done under patriarchal chieftains
  • Lived on the edge of civilization
  • Occasionally participated in the trade that united Mesopotamia and the towns of the Mediterranean coast
• Hebrew history recorded Msopotamian traditions as the stories of the flood, legal traditions strongly reminiscent of those of Hammurabi, and the worship of gods in high places
• Women were treated as distinct inferiors (basically as property) in Abramhams’ clan
• A small band of Smitic slaves left Egypt for Sinai and Canaan in the thirteenth century B.C.E.
  • Exodus
  • Became the formative experience of the descendants who had taken apart and those later joined them
• Hebrew tradition of Exodus embodied two themes
• Israelites swept into Canaan, took advantage of the vacuum of power left by the Hittite-Egyptian standoff and then destroyed or captured the cities of the region
  • Some local populations welcomed the Israelites
  • In some places indigenous people were slaughtered
• Israel was a loosely organized confederation of tribes during its first centuries
  • Focal point was religious shrine at Shiloh
  • Shrine housed only a chest known as the Ark of Covenant which contained law of Moses and mementos of the Exodus
• Isrealites’ disorganized political tradition placed them at a disadvantage when fighting their neighbors
• Philistines defeated Israelites
  • Captured Ark of Covenant
  • Occupied most of their territory
• Isrealite religious leaders reluctantly established a kingdom to consolidate their forces
  • First king was Saul and second was David
• Religious leaders known as prophets called upon rulers and people to reform their lives and return to Yahweh
  • Some prophets were killed
  • Established a tradition of religious opposition to royal absolutism
• United Kingdom did not survive Solomon’s death
  • Northern region broke off to become the kingdom of Israel
• Starting in the 9th century B.C.E. a new Mesoptamian power (Assyrians) began a campaign of conquest and unprecedented brutality
  • Hebrew Kingdoms were one of many victims
  • Assyrians destroyed kingdom of Israel and deportant thousands of its people to upper Mesopotamia
• Isaelites replaced temple worship with study of the Toray during their exile
  • Yahweh was understood to not be just one god among many but the one universal God, creator, and ruler of the universe
• Peresians allowed people of Judah to return to their homeland and rebuild their temple
• The hope for a Davidic messiah was more universal
• Assyrian state that destroyed Israel tied together the floodplain civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt
• Assyrian Empire was an integrated state
  • Conquered regions were reorganized and remade on the model of the central government
• Assyrian plain north of Babyloniah ad been the site of a small Mesopotamian state threatened by semi-nomads and great powers like the Babyylonains and later the Hittites
• Early expansion gave rise to internal revolt and external threats
  • Revolt made way for ascension of Tiglath-pilser III (greatest empire builder of Mesopotamia since Sargon)
• Tiglath-pilser and successors transformed structure of Assyrian state and expanded its empire
  • Created model for empire that would later be copied by Persi and macedonia
  • Theirs was the first true empire
  • Combined all traditional elements of Mesopotamian statecraft with new religious ideology and social system to create framework for lasting multiethnic imperial system
  • Created most developed military-religious ideology of any ancient people
  • Restructured his empire
  • Deported and resettled separatist movements
  • Maintained control of conquered people through policy of unprecedented cruelty and brutality
• Imperial military and administrative system created by Assyrians became blueprint for future empires
  • Hatred of system inspired brutality that lead to destruction of Assyrian Empire
• Babylonians joined forces with the Medes to attack and destroy nineveh
• Babylonians modeled their imperial system on that of their predecessors (Assyrians)
• Persian conquers were a lasting power in the Fertile Crescent
• Indo-European Persians and the Medes settled in Iranian plateau late in the second millennium
  • Initially dominated by Assyrian rulers seeking military support
  • Medes became major power in region after helping defeat Assyrians
• Zoroastriansim was a powerful element in Persian civilization
  • Monoestheistic religion founded by Zoroaster
  • Center of faith as worship of Ahura Mazda (“Lord of Wisdom”) from whom all good things in the universe derive
• Taxes extracted from far-flung Persian territories were relatively light
  • Persians normally protected local customs, religion, and society
• Legacy of first 3000 years of civilization is more than a tradition of imperial conquest, exploitation, and cruelty
• Said legacy includes basic structure of Western civilization

\