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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.