Download Chapter 3 Notes With the adoption of agriculture, human cultures

Chapter 3 Notes
With the adoption of agriculture, human cultures began to diverge from one another at an
increasingly faster pace. Agricultural societies developed growing populations, cities,
monumental arts, and new technologies. Historians look for models that can describe these
changes. In the Great River valleys of the Nile, Mesopotamia, the Indus, and the Yangtze and
Yellow Rivers, some of the earliest of these complex societies may be observed.
I. Growing Communities, Divergent Cultures (page 62)
The earliest farming communities were likely little different from their foraging predecessors:
relatively small and closely connected through kinship ties. As populations grew, communities
became more complex. While new technologies appeared in the growing towns, it is important to
note that metal-working was known among nomadic herders, and the earliest known pottery was
made by the hunter-gatherer Jomon peoples of Japan. This said, growing agricultural
communities developed new levels of economic specialization and “horizontal” classes that
divided people according to power, prosperity, and privilege. “Vertical” classes also linked
people by their place of origin, locality, common ancestry, cult rites, family, or shared beliefs.
A. Intensified Settlement and Its Effects
1. In the Americas, differences between North and South were dramatic. Not
until 2000 B.C.E. did large cities begin to appear in the North; however, in the
Andes of South America, evidence of social classes and dramatic inequality of
wealth appear much earlier, and in coastal Peru there was a large settlement at
Aspero that dates to 2,500 B.C.E.
2. Early settlements in Eastern Europe dating back to 5,000 B.C.E. are
comparable along the banks of the middle Danube River. These early villages
were focused on mining and metalworking, as were those at Tisza in modern
Hungary and Varna on the Black Sea. Along the banks of the middle Dnieper
River is the earliest evidence for the domestication of the horse (around 5,000
B.C.E.) and in the same area is found evidence of wheeled wagons (around
3,500 B.C.E.).
It is on the thin-soiled island of Malta that the earliest monumental architecture is found (4th to
3rd millennium B.C.E.) in a series of temple complexes. Social changes begin to appear even
farther away with the building of megaliths in the Orkneys (around 5,500 years ago).
II. The Ecology of Civilization
Four major regions stand out during this period for the dramatic changes that occurred: the Nile
River in Egypt, the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Mesopotamia, the Indus and Saraswati Rivers
mainly in modern Pakistan, and the Yellow River in China. It is in these four areas that we see
societies that engaged “ambitiously with [their] environment, seeking to remodel the rest of
nature to suit human purposes.”
III. The Great Floodplains
In all four regions, the environment includes a gradually warm and dry climate, relatively dry
soil, seasonal flooding, and irrigation.
A. The Ecology of Egypt
1. The Nile River defines Egypt. In the North is Lower Egypt, where the alluvial
plain formed as the river emptied into the Mediterranean Sea and provided
land rich for agriculture and in game.
2. Most of Egypt lay to the South in Upper Egypt. Here, agriculture and
therefore life depends on the annual flooding of the Nile that leaves behind a
rich “black” earth (as opposed to the “red” earth of the surrounding deserts).
Little rain falls in the region. Flooding is the result of melting snows in
Central Africa that swell the river in September to October.
3. Irrigation supplemented this flooding and made Egypt a breadbasket of the
ancient Mediterranean world. Most of the population subsisted on bread and
wheat beer, and the state gathered and guarded the surplus. This surplus was
key in trade for timber and luxury goods.
B. Shifting Rivers of the Indus Valley
1. Harappan society was defined by the Indus and Saraswati Rivers that flooded
twice a year (thus two crops annually of rice and millet) and covered over
500,000 square miles. Little is known about this civilization as its language
has yet to be deciphered, but Harappan art presents intriguing images that
often violate reality and create perplexing scenes.
C. Fierce Nature in Early Mesopotamia
1. The climate and the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers are far more unreliable and
prone to destructive storms and flooding than is the case in Egypt or along the
Indus. As a result, Mesopotamians viewed their gods as capricious and relied
more on hardier grains such as barley.
D. The Good Earth of Early China
While it is known that Egypt and Mesopotamia traded and had dealings with one another and
that Mesopotamians at least traded with the people of Harappa, China was too far away and too
cut off by deserts and mountain ranges for early contact. The Yellow River takes its name from
the crumbly yellow soil (called “loess”) that is blown into it from the northern Mongolian desert.
The river itself is often unpredictable and requires careful management, but provides—along
with the Yangtze to the south—food resources that have for thousands of years made East Asia
one of the most densely populated areas in the world.
IV. Configurations of Society
A. Patterns of Settlement and Labor
1. Egypt lacked large cities and instead spread its population along the banks of
the Nile.
2. Mesopotamia was a collection of independent city-states, each with its own
king and tutelary deity. Enormous ziggurats (terraced mounds of mud brick)
were built in honor of their gods.
3. China also developed an urban culture by 2,000 B.C.E. with enormous homes
for the ruling class.
4. Urban society was perhaps most remarkable at this early date with cities laid
out in grid patterns, homes made of uniformly-sized brick, and complex
systems of water delivery and sewage.
5. Within all these societies, people specialized in certain crafts, and women
tended to be subordinate to men. This may have been because the population
explosion increasingly tied women to the home, whereas men engaged more
in agriculture and building. While males tended to be privileged, women were
engaged in textile manufacture and were employed as priestesses and even
sometimes as rulers.
B. Politics
1. Across all of these early societies, sacred kingship, social hierarchy, and the
devotion of the lives of subjects to the state were practiced. The desire of
those in power for greater surplus may have driven increasingly intensified
agriculture.
C. The Egyptian State
1. Kings are commonly depicted as herdsmen caring for their flocks. In ancient
Egypt, the state stockpiled and guarded vast quantities of food against possible
famine. For the ancient Egyptians, their kings were living gods whose word
was law. Religion became a moral code that could affect one’s place in the
afterlife.
D. Statecraft in Mesopotamia
1. Mesopotamian kings were not gods, and it was from these early city-states
that some of the world’s earliest law codes regulated conduct. Punishments
were severe by modern standards.
E. Oracles
1. A desire for knowledge of the future and the means to gain that knowledge
were often jealously controlled by kings. Whether through the livers of
sacrificial sheep, smoke from incense, dreams, or the movements of the stars,
predictions of the future were common. Mediation between this world and the
world of the gods was key for rulers.
F. The First Documented Chinese State
1. Royal status in China was also connected with building cities, distributing
food, and management of water resources. Moreover, the earliest
contemporary evidence that we have for a unitary state in East Asia is in the
form of inscribed oracle bones from the Shang dynasty. These bones provide
rich insights into court life and religious practice during this period. Control
over these oracles gave early Chinese kings great power as an intermediary
with the spirit world.
G. Ruling the Harappan World
Living spaces in many cities reveal a strict hierarchy, but others may have been less stratified
societies. Our inability to read their surviving texts hinders further understanding.
H. The Politics of Expansion
1. Despite our ignorance of their political life, the stretch of their culture through
trade into Central Asia is without question. In a similar fashion (though
clearly conquest was at work here), Egyptian civilization stretched along the
long spine of the Nile. Mesopotamia was less easily controlled, lacking as the
region is in natural boundaries against invaders, but that did not discourage
repeated attempts at empire building. The expansion of China in East Asia
appears to have been gradual and created a relatively stable and wealthy state.
The depth of this stability and wealth may be seen in the concept of the
“mandate of heaven” (developed during the succeeding Zhou dynasty), a
notion that the divine sky grants the ruler his right to rule.
I. Literate Culture
1. Mesopotamian civilization developed cuneiform, the Egyptians hieroglyphs,
and the Chinese a complex set of characters to record their accounts, myths,
oracles, laws, and literature. Harappan culture produced writing that has
defied decipherment. Only Chinese remains in use.
Greater knowledge of the antiquity and variety of writing systems has made its chronology and
definition problematic. Furthermore, considering writing special tends to ignore or denigrate the
place of oral tradition.
V. In Perspective: What Made the Great River Valleys Different?
A. Environment and Interaction
1. River valleys provided large areas of fertile soil that could provide surpluses
to support large, growing populations. Greater interaction led to more activity,
isolation to less.
B. Challenges
Threats from invaders, changing climates, growing populations, and internal stresses created
challenges for all of the early river valley civilizations.