Something New: The Emergence of Civilizations
- Civilization was a global phenomenon
- Civilizations gradually absorbed, overran, or displaced people practicing other ways of living
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Scholars, Officials, merchants, priests, and artisans of all kinds
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Does the physical environment shape the human cultures that develop within it? Hard to deny some relationship between the physical setting and culture
- 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
- 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
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