Week Five: Due September 26

DUE SEPTEMBER 26:  READ & BLOG ON Intro to Part Two & Ch 3 (State & Empire)

Part Two: Second Wave Civilizations in World History 

The Big Picture: After the First Civilizations: What Changed and What Didn't?

• The entire age of agricultural civilizations 
• Civilization as a form of human community proved durable and resilient as well as periodically fragile

Continuities in Civilization 

• States and empires rose and expanded 
• No technological or economic breakthrough occurred to create new kinds of human societies 
• Many fluctuations, repetitive cycles, and minor changes characterized this long era of agricultural civilization, but no fundamental or revolutionary transformations of social or economic life took place

Changes in Civilization

• Population grew more rapidly 
• The rate of growth, though rapid in comparison to recent centuries, was quite slow if we measure it against the expansion of recent centuries
• The rise and Fall of these empires represented very consequential changes to the people who experienced them

Chapter Three: State and Empire in Eurasia/North America

• The United States' enormous multicultural society, its technological achievements, its economically draining and overstretched armed forces, its sense of itself as unique and endowed with a global mission, its concern about foreigners penetrating its borders, its apparent determination to maintain military superiority - all of this invited comparison with the Roman empire

Empires and Civilizations in Collision: The Persians and the Greeks

• These distant civilizations did not directly encounter one another, as each established its own political system, cultural values, and ways of organizing society
• Emerging Personal Empire and Greek civilization, physically adjacent to each other, experienced a centuries long interaction and clash

The Persian Empire

• Persian conquests quickly reached reached from Egypt to India, encompassing in a single state some 35 to 50 million people, an immediately diverse realm containing dozens of people, states, languages, and cultural traditions
• The Persian Empire centered on an elaborate cult of kingship in which the monarch, secluded in royal magnificence, could be approached only through an elaborate ritual 
• Persians were expected to shave their head in mourning
• Kings were absolute monarchs, more than willing to crush rebellious regions or officials 
• An effective administrative system placed Persian governors in each of the empire's twenty-three provinces, while lower level officials were drawn from local authorities 
• The infrastructure of empire included a system of standardized coinage, predicable taxes levied on each province, and a newly dug canal

The Greeks

• Small competing city states of Greece, which allowed varying degrees of popular participation in political life 
• The Greeks created a civilization that was distinctive in many ways, particularly in comparison with the Persians
• Greek civilization took shape on a small peninsula deeply divided by steep mountains and valleys
• Even though intense conflict with neighbors they put them aside every few years for olympics
• The Greeks were expansive people, but there expansion took the form of settlement in distant places rather than conquest and empire 
• Greatest contrast with Persia, lay in the extent of popular participation in political life that occurred with at least some of the city states
• Compared to the rigid hierarchies, inequalities, and absolute monarchies of Persia and other ancient civilizations, the Athenian experiment was remarkable 
• Athenian democracy was different from modern democracy. It was direct, rather than representative, democracy, and it was distinctly limited

Collision: The Greco-Persian Wars

• If there was ever an unequal conflict between civilizations, it was the collision of the Greeks and Persians 
• From the respective patterns of expansion 
• Outraged by the assault from remote and upstart Greeks, the Persians, twice in ten years, launched major military expeditions to punish the greeks in general and Athens in particular. Against all odds and all expectations, the Greeks held them off, defeating the Persians on both land and sea.
• The Greek victory also radicalized Athenian democracy, for it had been men of the poorer classes who had rowed their ships to victory and who were now in position to insist on full citizenship
• Civil War with Sparta - Athens was defeated, while the Greeks exhausted themselves and magnified their distrust for one another

Collision: Alexander and the Hellenistic Era

• Served to unify the fractions Greek in a war against their common enemy - Persia 
• Ten-year expedition, accomplished while Alexander was in his twenties
• Alexander was hailed as the King of Asia. In Egypt Alexander, 24, was celebrated as a liberator from Persian domination, was anointed as Pharaoh, and was declared by Egyptian priests to be son of the Gods 
• Periodic rebellions expressed resentment at Greek arrogance, condescension, and exploitation 
• Much of this Greek cultural influence faded as the Hellenistic kingdom that had promoted it weakened and vanished by the first century 

Comparing Empires: Roman and Chinese

• They were the giant empires of their time, shaping the lives of close to half of the worlds population  
• The Romans and the Chinese were only dimly aware of each other and had almost no direct contact 

Rome: From City-State to Empire 

• An empire that encompassed the entire Mediterranean basin and beyond
• The growth of the empire represented opportunity
• Drawing on the growing population of Italy, that army was often brutal in war
• A Roman woman could participate proudly in this warrior culture by bearing brave sons and inculcating this values in her offspring 
• Upper class Roman women had never been as secluded in the home as were their Greek counterparts, and now the legal authority of their husbands was curtailed by the intrusion of the state into what had been private life
• Roman women of the wealthier classes gained almost complete liberty in matters of property and marriage 
• Roman conquests brought many thousands of men and women into the empire as slaves, often brutally treated and subject to the whims of their masters 

China: From Warring States to Empire

• Shihuangdi launched a military campaign to unify China and in just ten years soundly defeated the other warring states
• He laid the foundations for a unified Chinese state, which has endured, with periodic interruptions, to the present
• Imposed a uniform system of weights, measures, and currency and standardized the length of axles for carts and the written form of the Chinese language 
•  It was Han dynasty rulers who consolidated China's imperial state and established the political patterns that lasted into the twentieth century

Consolidating the Roman and Chinese Empires

The Collapse of Empires

• Roman empire: The western half collapsed whereas the part maintained the tradition of imperial Rome
• They both got too big, too overextended, and too expansive to be sustained by the available resources, and no fundamental technological breakthrough was available to enlarge these resources
• The collapse of empire meant more than the disappearance of centralized government and endemic conflict
• Also meant the decline of of urban life, a contracting population, less area under cultivation, diminishing international trade, and vast insecurity for ordinary people 

Intermitten Empire: The Case of India

• Political fragmentation and vast cultural diversity
• A distinctive religious tradition, Hinduism, and a unique social organization, the caste system
• Despite there good intentions, these policies did not long preserve the empire, which broke apart soon after Ashoka's death 
• The Gupta era witnessed a flourishing of art, literature, temple building, science, mathematics, and medicine, and much of it patronized by rulers
• Its cotton textile industry long supplied cloth throughout the Afro Eurasian world

Week Four: Due September 19

DUE SEPTEMBER 19:   READ & BLOG ON Chapter 2 Documents – choose one introductory question in the Documents section and respond to it in your blog post
Documents: Considering the Evidence: Life and Afterlife in Mesopotamia and Egypt 
In Search of Eternal Life

• Epic of Gilgamesh best known writing from the First Civilizations 
• How would you define the Mesopotamian ideal of kingship? What is the basis of the monarch's legitimacy?
• The Mesopotamian ideal of kingship is that a king is supposed to be a shepherd to his people. He is supposed to treat all his people justly, including the servants.
• What understanding of afterlife does the epic suggest?
• The epic suggests that no matter how you were when living, it is how you acted and treated others that matters. There is no difference between a master and a servant. 
• What philosophy of life comes across in the Gilgamesh story? 
• How does the Epic of Gilgamesh portray the Gods and their relationship to humankind?

The Epic of Gilgamesh

On Kingship 

• Two-thirds God and one-third Man
• A king should be a shepherd to his people 
• Everlasting life is not your destiny 
• Deal justly with servants in the palace, deal justly before the sun 

On the Search for Immortality

• They who stood in the place of the Gods like Anu and Enlil, stood now life servants. 
• The house of Dust - everyone is in darkness
• What difference is there between master and servant when both have fulfilled their doom

On the Gods

• The Gods agreed to exterminate mankind
• Flood - A man could not see his brother nor could the people be seen from heaven 
• The Gods were even terrific doc the flood that they fled up to the heavens 
• The Gods of heaven and hell wept for they covered their mouths 

Week Three: Due September 14

Chapter 2: First Civilizations: Cities, States, and Unequal Societies (350 BCE - 500 BCE)
Something New: The Emergence of Civilizations

• Civilization was a global phenomenon
• Civilizations gradually absorbed, overran, or displaced people practicing other ways of living

Introducing the First Civilizations

• Emerged in Three places - Southern Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Central Coast of Peru
• Unlike Egyptian and Mesopotamian societies, Peruvian civilization did not develop pottery or writing; and few sculptures, carvings, or drawings have been uncovered so far
• Indus Valley - heavy and eventually undermined its ecological foundations
• Olmec - based on agricultural economy of maize, beans, and squash; 
• Beyond the seven first civilizations, other, smaller civilizations also flourished

The Question of Origins

• How did it get Started?
• Civilizations had their roots in the Agricultural Revolution. That is the reason they appeared so late in the human story
• Not all agricultural societies or chiefdoms developed into civilization's
• A growing density of population, producing more congested and competitive societies, was a fundamental motor of change, and especially in areas where rich agricultural land was limited
• The first civilization, once established, represented a very different kind of human society than anything that came before 

An Urban Revolution

• Cities, then, were central to most of the first civilizations,though to varying degrees
• Political.Administrative capitals; they functioned as centers for the production for culture, including art, architecture, literature, ritual, and ceremony

The Erosion of Equality

• Scholars, Officials, merchants, priests, and artisans of all kinds

Hierarchies of Class

• As the first civilizations took shape, inequality, and hierarchy soon came to be regarded as normal and natural
• Class was distinguished by the clothing they wore, the houses they lived in, manner of there burial
• Class had  consequences
• Slaves - slavery and civilizations emerged together

Hierarchies of Gender

• Gender systems have been patriarchal, meaning that women have been subordinate to men in the family and in society generally
• Men had legal and property rights unknown too most women 
• Women required both the protection and control of men
• The growing population of civilizations meant that women were more often pregnant and thus more deeply involved in child care than before

Patriarchy in Practice

• Marked a gradual change from the more equal relationships of men and women within agricultural villages 
• Rape was a serious offense, but the injured party was primarily the father or husband of the victim
• Women were sometimes divided into two sharply distinguished categories 
• Expressions of Patriarchy varied among the first civilizations
• In Egypt, women were recognized as legal equals to men, able to down property and slave, to administer and sell land, to make their own wills, to sign their own marriage contracts, and to initiate divorce

The Rise of the State

• Early states were headed almost everywhere by kings, who employed a variety of ranked officials, exercised a measure of control over society, and defended against external enemies
• The power of central states in the First Civilization was limited and certainly not totalitarian 

Coercion and Consent

• Assisted in providing cohesion for the First Civilizations
• Recognition that the complexity of life in cities or densely populated territories required some authority to coordinate and regulate the community 
• Someone had to organize the irrigation system, direct efforts to defend the city and territory against aggressive outsiders
• The state, in short, solved certain widely shared problems and therefore had a measure of voluntary support among the population
• State authorities had the ability, and the willingness, to use force to compel obedience
• This capacity for violence violence and coercion marked off the states of the First Civilizations from earlier chiefdoms, whose leaders had only persuasion, prestige, and gifts to back up there authority
• If religion served most often to justify unequal power and privilege, it might also on occasion be used to restrain, or even undermine, the established order

Writing and Accounting

• A powerful and transforming innovation, regarded almost everywhere as a gift from the Gods, while people without writing often saw as something magical or supernatural 
• Literacy defined elite status and conveyed enormous prestige to those who possessed it
• Writing served as accounting function, recording who had paid their taxes, who owed what to the temple, and how much workers had earned 
• Writing, like religion, proved hard to control and operated as a wild card in human affairs
• Writing became a major arena for social and political conflict, and rulers always have sought to control it 

The Grandeur of Kings

• Lavish lifestyle of the elites, the impressive rituals they arranged, and the imposing structures they created 
• Their deaths triggered elaborate burials, of which the pyramids of the Egyptian pharaohs were perhaps the most ostentatious 
• Maya Temple of the Giant Jaguar was th most impressive among many temples, pyramids, and palaces

Environment and Culture

• Does the physical environment shape the human cultures that develop within it? Hard to deny some relationship between the physical setting and culture

Cities and States

• Cities in Egypt were less important than in Mesopotamia, although politically, capitals, market places, and major burials sites gave Egypt an urban presence as well 
• Nobles no longer sought to be buried near the pharaoh's pyramid but instead created their own more modest tombs in their own areas

Interaction and Exchange

• M and E interacted frequently with each other and with both near and more distant neighbors. Even in these ancient times, FC were embedded in larger networks of commerce, culture, and power

Week Two: Due September 7

Chapter One: First Peoples; First Farmers
Breakthroughs to Agriculture

• The terms "Neolithic (New Stone Age) Revolution" to "Agricultural Revolution" refer to the deliberate cultivation of particular plants as well as the taming and breeding of particular animals
• There was a new relationship between humankind and other living things, for now men and women were not simply using what they found in nature but were actively changing nature as well
• Domestication - the taming, and the changing of nature for the benefit of humankind 
• Domestication created a new type of mutual dependence
• Plants and animals could no longer survive in the wild - similarly the people had lost the gatherer hunter skills
• Intensification - getting more for less 
• More food or resources 
• More food more people 

Common Patterns

• The end of the last ice age coincided with the migration of homo sapiens across the planet and created new conditions that made agriculture more possible
• The climate change in some areas helped to push into extinction various species of large mammals on which Paleolithic people had depended 
• The warmer, wetter, and more stable conditions permitted the flourishing of more wild plants, especially cereal grasses
• Many of the breakthroughs to agriculture occurred only after gathering and hunting peoples had already green substantially in numbers and had established a sedentary way of life
• New opportunities appeared with the improved climatic conditions at the end of the ice age.
• The disappearance of many large mammals, growing populations, newly settled ways of life, and fluctuations in the process of global warmed - represented the pressures  or incentives to increase food production and minimize the risks of life in a new era 

Variations

• Everyone initially started with a simple tool - the digging stick or hoe(horticulture) - Plows were developed much later 
• The kind of Agricultural Revolution that unfolded in particular places depended very much on what happened to be available locally, and that in turn depended on sheer luck
• Yet another pattern of agricultural development took shape in the Americas - the domestication of plants in the Americas occur separately in a number of locations - its most distinctive feature lay in the absence of animals that could be domesticated
•  Without goats, sheep, pigs, cattle, or horses the peoples of the americas lacked sources of proteins, manure, and power

The Globalization of Agriculture

• The extension of farming occurred in two ways
• Diffusion - gradual spread of agricultural techniques but without the movement of the people
• Slow colonization or migration of agricultural peoples as growing populations pushed them outward

Triumph and Resistance

• Combination of diffusion and migration took over original agricultural package
• Within Africa, the development of agricultural studies societies in the southern half of the continent is associated with the migration of the peoples speaking one or another of the languages
• The globalization of agriculture was a prolonged process, lasting 10,000 years of more after its first emergence in the Fertile Crescent 
• Some of the few who resisted the swelling tide of agriculture lived in areas unsuitable to farming, such as harsh desert or arctic environments
• Nevertheless, by the beginning of the common era, the global spread of agriculture had reduced gathering and hunting peoples to a small and dwindling minority of humankind 
• After the Agricultural Revolution, the future, almost everywhere, lay with the farmers and herders and with the distinctive societies that they created

The Culture of Agriculture

• The agricultural Revolution led to an increase in human population, as the greater productivity of agriculture was able to support much larger numbers
• Here was the beginning of human dominance over other forms of life on the planet
• The dominance was reflected in major environmental transformations - in a growing number of places, forests, and grasslands became cultivated fields and grazing lands
• Human life too changed dramatically in farming communities, and not necessarily for the better
• The remaining early agricultural people show some deteriorating health - more tooth decay, malnutrition, anemia, a shorter physical stature, and diminished life expectancy 
• Living in larger communities generated epidemics for the first time
• Agriculture also imposed constraints on human communities 
• A large central space suggests an area for public religious or political activity, and a trench surrounding the village indicates some common effort to defend the community
• Metallurgy - the working of gold and silver, then bronze, and later iron 
• Weaving  - textiles
• Secondary products revolution - new uses for domesticated animals, beyond their meat and hides
• Milk their animals, harvest their wool, enrich the soil with manure
• Ride horses and camels and to hitch various animals to plows and carts
• Wine and beer - beer was regarded as a gift from the Gods - could turn a savage into a civilized person

Social Variations in the Age of Agriculture

• Opened up vast new positions for the construction of human societies 

Pastoral Societies

• Difference between the domestication of plants and animals - some people came to depend far more extensively on their animals, such as sheep, goats, cattle, horses, camels, or reindeer
• The relationship between nomadic herders and their farming neighbors has been one of the enduring themes of Afro-Eurasian history
• Relationship of conflict as pastoral peoples, unable to produce their own agricultural products, were attracted to the wealth and sophistication agrarian societies and sought to access their richer grazing lands as well as food crops and manufactured products
• Conflict between Cain and Abel

Agricultural Village Societies

• Many societies also retained much of their social and gender equality of gathering and hunting communities, as they continued without kings, chiefs, or aristocracies 
• Both men and women could carry out a series of roles and enjoy a range of positions, from making tools to grinding grains and baking to heading to a household
• Many village based agricultural societies flourished well into the modern era, usually organizing themselves in terms of kinship groups or lineages, which incorporated large numbers of people well beyond immediate or extended family
• Given the frequent oppressiveness of organized political power in human history, agricultural village societies represent an intriguing alternative to states, kingdoms, and empires
• Pioneered human settlement of vast areas; adapted to a variety of environments; maintained a substantial degree of social and gender equality; created numerous cultural, artistic, and religious traditions; and interacted continuously with their neighbors

Chiefdoms

• In other places, agricultural village societies came to be organized politically as chiefdoms, in which inherited positions of power and privilege introduced a more distinct element on inequality, but unlike later kings, chiefs could seldom use force to compel the obedience of their subjects
• Relied on the generosity or gift giving, their ritual status, or their personal charisma to persuade their followers
• Chiefdoms emerged everywhere in the Pacific Islands, which had been colonized by agricultural Polynesian peoples 
• Chiefs led important rituals and ceremonies, organized the community  for warfare, directed its economic life, and sought to resolve internal conflicts
• In North America as well a remarkable series of chiefdoms  emerged in eastern woodlands, where an extensive array of large earthen mounds testify to the organizational capacity of these early societies 
• The Agricultural Revolution radically transformed both the trajectory of the human journey and the evolution of life on the planet
• Agriculture provided humankind with the power to dominate nature; it also increasingly, enabled some people to dominate others
• Slowly, any of the resources released by the Agricultural Revolution accumulated in the hands of a few - rich and poor, chiefs and commoners, landowners and dependent peasants, rulers and subjects, dominate men and subordinate women, slaves and free people

Documents: Considering the Evidence: History before Writing: How Do We Even Know?

• The absence of written records for earlier phases of human history is one of the reasons many world historians have neglected or avoided the Paleolithic and Neolithic eras.
• Historial linguistics, rooted in the changes that languages undergo, has also aided in tracking human movement and defining the character of particular cultures by analyzing their vocabularies 
• Gatherers and hunters in recent times have often mixed and mingled with agricultural societies, or made contact with elements of modern civilization 

Document 1.1: A Paleolithic Woman in the Twentieth Century

• Fifty year old woman, Nisa
• Had interacted with neighboring cattle-keeping people and with Europeans
• Fully participated in the gathering and hunting culture of her ancestors

Nisa: The Life and Words of an !Kung Woman

Life in the Bush

• People would share what little they had; whether it be meat or honey, but there were also stingy people 

Marriage 

• Very simple - A husband was like a father or older brother who provided you food and took care of you 

Loss

• The amount of pain you feel is all equal when you lose them- Parents, husband, or children
• When they all die though, and you have no family left, you really feel the pain
• God is the one who destroys, not the people

Lovers

• Affairs are something that even people from a long time ago knew
• Picked up lovers - Having affairs are one thing that God gave us
• When you are a woman, you don't just sit still and do nothing - you take lovers
• You don't just sit with one man-one man can give you very little- when  you have lovers one brings you something and so does another
• You don't just sit with one man. Does one man have enough thoughts for you?

A Healing Ritual

• N/um
• The trance that in the healing power sitting inside the healers body starts to work
• Both men and women learn how to cure with it
• Learned form mother when young

What do you think of Nissa's account as a description of what Paleolithic peoples might have been like?
I think that Nissa's account as a description of what Paleolithic peoples might have been like is both interesting and makes a lot of sense. From both the text reading, and Nissa's account: the people were treated with equality, both male and females took lovers, and people would share what little they had.