Introduction

• Around 100,000 years ago, when people began to spread throughout Europe and Asia, the first migration took place from Africa to the Near East.

• Parts of Oceania (60,000 BCE) and North America (14,000 BCE) were accessible via land bridges built during the ice ages.

• The "cradles of civilization" were not as remote as archaeology has revealed. Even the most advanced empires interacted with nations and populations that they regarded as inferior and foreign.

• In addition to the movement of goods among the ancient cities in the river valleys of Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China, there were also movements of people and tribes that had an impact on the balance of power and development.

• The expansion of Indo-European peoples from their homeland between the Black and Caspian Seas around 1600 BCE was one of the most significant migrations for later language and cultural development.

• By 500 BCE, these Aryans' descendants, led by Cyrus the Great, had taken control of the biggest empire the world had ever known.

• The city-states of the Indus River valley were replaced in India by these hierarchical foreigners.

• The natives' religion was replaced by one based on the Vedic scriptures in the new society, which spoke Sanskrit, an Indo-European language.

Cultural Penetration and Subversion

• The Indo-European contact with the Indian people led to all of these significant changes, which also led to the emergence of numerous great religions.

  • The Indo-Europeans left their original region and migrated to the south and west.

• Around 1600 BCE, they marched into Mesopotamia and established the Hittite Empire, but they were unable to maintain control over the region's shifting network of native city-states.

  • All that was left of the Hittite civilization were their iron weapons, chariots, and war horses.

• By supplanting the dominant Minoan culture of Crete with their Mycenaean culture, they had a significant impact in the West on the Mediterranean region.

• The merging of the Mycenaeans and later immigrants known as Dorians and Ionians resulted in the Greek language, writings, and ethnic identity.

• The foundation of contemporary Western civilization is the Indo-European Greek culture.

• The Romans were fascinated by Greek culture. The Romans conquered the Greeks, only to be defeated by a higher Greek civilization.

• Roman nobility insisted on having their sons educated by Greek tutors or sending them to Athens for education.

• Modern Romance languages such as French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese descended Latin-Greek-Indo-European family language.

• Phoenicians: A seafaring and fearless people from modern-day Lebanon who colonized as far as Britain and even managed to circumnavigate the Horn of Africa.

  • The alphabet was one of their greatest contributions to world progress.

  • Phoenician Script: It contains an alphabet of 24 letters; it was adopted by the Greeks who added vowels to it.

Religious Exchanges

• Three exchanges involved religions rather than products or people:

  • Christian influence on Rome,

  • Jewish influence on Islam, and

  • Islamic influence on Europe.

• The highlands of Galilee and Judaea are where Christianity first emerged.

• By 310 CE, the Christian message had even reached the emperor Constantine, who became a Christian, ushering in a period of Christian growth.

• The early zeal of the Christian preachers had already extended outside the traditional sphere of the Diaspora Jews, and India claims to have made contact with the:

  • Apostle Thomas by 50 CE,

  • Armenia by 325 CE,

  • Axum in Africa by 350 CE,

  • Persia by 488 CE, and

  • Western Europe by 600 CE.

• When Roman conquests drove Jews from their homeland, they frequently fled to the East rather than the West.

• Mecca (500 CE), a trading and religious hub located midway between Yemen and Egypt and at the hub of the trade from the Persian Gulf, was one of the locations the Jews gathered.

  • Here, they founded synagogues and engaged in conversation with their Arab hosts, among whom Muhammad is mentioned in the Qur'an.

  • The stories and concepts of the Jewish Bible are presupposed in much of the Qur'an.

Exchange by Conquest

• Around 330 BCE, Alexander the Great led a campaign against the Persians.

  • Alexander was shaped by the Greek worldview as a result of his imprisonment in Greece, his adherence to Greek social norms and lifestyle, his education by the iconic Greek philosopher Aristotle, and his personal mission to spread Hellenism throughout the world.

  • After his quick conquest of the world, he started to establish Greek institutions across his empire, insisting on Greek as the lingua franca and forcibly suppressing some native religions.

  • He started to act like a Persian ruler and demand divine worship.

  • He emphasized being an "imperial citizen" while downplaying the significance of Greek city-states.

  • He significantly increased trade between Asia and the Mediterranean.

  • His military domination resulted in deep cultural hybridization.

• Since the third century BCE, with the sedentary Chinese, Xiongnu had engaged in raiding and combat.

  • After 100 BCE, Chinese conquests and growth drove the Xiongnu westward, which had a snowball effect on the Gothic peoples who had lived on Rome's periphery for decades.

  • In 376 CE, the Goths fled into the Roman Empire when Asian nomads surged across Hungary and into Roman frontier regions. Rome was originally captured by them in 410 CE.

  • In 441 CE, Attila the Hun launched a catastrophic invasion and made it to Rome — this led to the Dark Ages.

• At the end of the fourth century BCE, the Mauryan Empire ruled over the Indian subcontinent, but its cultural influence extended far beyond that.

  • Indian Buddhist missionaries started spreading Buddhism throughout Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Afghanistan, and Central Asia while also introducing Indian civilization.

  • In the 4th century CE, Indian trade and cultural identity didn’t only survived the downfall of the Maryan Empire, but they also grew bigger during the Gupta Empire.

  • Indianized Asia: A region formed from the strong impact of the Indians on Southeast Asia.

• China conquered East Asia politically and culturally.

  • The Yellow River valley served as the cradle of Chinese civilization.

  • The Han dynasty's succeeding emperors incorporated modern-day Vietnam and Korea into their Chinese empire.

  • They also overran remote regions of Central Asia, driving out or submitting nomadic tribes like the Xiongnu.

  • By the first century BCE, the two great empires of the Romans and Chinese had established their dominance over a large portion of the Eurasian continent and imposed the Pax Romana and the Pax Sinica, respectively.

  • The resulting trade and cultural exchanges along the Silk Road, which included Southeast Asia, Persia, and the Middle East and connected Chang'an and Rome by land and sea, would endure the fall of the Roman, Han, and Gupta Empires.

  • Also, missionaries were encouraged to travel abroad by new religions to spread their beliefs.

• There are physical artifacts of objects created in distant regions of the New World all over Central and South America dating from as early as 2000–1500 BCE, serving as proof of exchange.

  • By the year 1000 BCE, central and southern Mexico were connected by a network of pan-Mesoamerican communication that extended all the way to Nicaragua.

  • These connections helped farming innovations spread to new, nearby regions.

  • Teotihuacán (450 CE) in central Mexico became a hub for travel and trade.

  • Its road system connected the city to the Mayan highlands, the Southwest of North America, and the Pacific Ocean to the west.

• Connections between Africa and the outside world first developed during the rule of several Upper Nile pharaohs grew during the reigns of the Persian Empire and Ptolemaic dynasty and peaked under the Romans, who used North Africa as a breadbasket region.

  • Africa which had been romanized served as a base for Christian missionary work.

  • In actuality, Augustine, the most influential thinker in the early church, was born in Tunisia.

  • Between North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, ancient Egypt and later the kingdom of Axum served as crucial bridges for trade and the spread of ideas and technologies.