Download Prehistory Historians rely mostly on documents, or written records, to

Prehistory
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Historians rely mostly on documents, or written records, to create their pictures of
the past. However, no written records exist for the prehistory of humankind. In fact,
prehistory means the period before writing was developed.
Because prehistoric people had no written records, historians must study them by
looking at the things they left behind. Archaeology is the study of past societies through
an analysis of what people have left behind. Archaeologists dig up and examine artifactstools, pottery, paintings, weapons, buildings, and household items- of early peoples.
Anthropology is the study of human life and culture. Anthropologists use artifacts and
the remains of humans- human fossils- to determine how people lived their lives.
Although modern science has given us more precise methods for examining the
prehistory of humankind than we have ever had before, much of our understanding of
early humans still depends on guesswork.
The earliest humanlike creatures lived in Africa as long as 3 to 4 million years ago.
Called australopithecines, or "southern apes," by their discoverer, Donald Johanson, they
flourished in eastern and southern Africa. They were the first hominids (humans and
other creatures that walk upright) to make simple stone tools.
A second stage in early human development occurred with the appearance of
Homo erectus ("upright human being"), a species that emerged around 1.5 million years
ago. Homo erectus made use of larger and more varied tools. These hominids were the
first to leave Africa and move into both Europe and Asia. They were able to do so in part
because they learned to use fire to keep warm.
Around 250,000 years ago, a third- and crucial- stage in human development began
with the emergence of a new species, Homo sapiens ("wise human being"). Two distinct
subgroups, Neanderthals and Homo sapiens sapiens, both developed from Homo sapiens.
The first modern humans (people who looked like us), known as Homo sapiens sapiens
("wise, wise human being"), appeared in Africa between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago.
Recent evidence indicates that they began to spread outside Africa around 100,000 years
ago.
The spread of these first modern humans was a slow process. Groups of people,
probably in search of food, moved beyond their old hunting grounds at a rate of only two
to three miles per generation. This was enough, however, to populate the world over tens
of thousands of years. By 10,000 B.C., humans could be found throughout the world.
Just as people do today prehistoric peoples used technology to change their
physical environment. One of the basic distinguishing features of the human species is
our ability to make tools. The earliest tools were made of stone. The term Paleolithic
Age is used to designate the early period of human history (approximately 2,500,000 to
10,000 B.C.) in which humans used simple stone tools. Paleolithic is Greek for "Old
Stone," and the Paleolithic Age is called the Old Stone Age.
For hundreds of thousands of years, humans relied on hunting and gathering for
their daily food. Paleolithic peoples had a close relationship with the world around them.
They came to know what animals to hunt and what plants to eat. They gathered nuts,
berries, fruits, grains, and green plants. Around the world, they hunted and ate various
animals, including buffalo, horses, bison, and reindeer. In coastal areas, fish provided a
rich source of food.
Over the years, Paleolithic hunters developed better tools. The invention of the
spear, and later the bow and arrow, made hunting much easier. Fishhooks made of bone
increased the catch of fish.
The hunting of animals and the gathering of wild food no doubt led to certain
patterns of living. Paleolithic people were nomads (people who moved from place to
place), because they had no choice but to follow animal migrations and vegetation cycles.
It is probable that both men and women were responsible for finding food.
Because women gave birth to and raised the children, they likely stayed close to their
camps. There, they played an important role in acquiring food by gathering berries, nuts,
and grains. Men did most of the hunting of large animals, which might take place far
from camp. Still, both the men and the women were responsible for finding and
acquiring the food needed to sustain life.
Because both men and women played important roles in providing for the group's
survival, some scientists have argued that a rough equality existed between men and
women. It is likely that both men and women made decisions that affected the activities
of the Paleolithic group.
Paleolithic peoples, especially those who lived in cold climates, found shelter in
caves. Over time, they created new types of shelter. Perhaps most common was a simple
structure of wood poles or sticks covered with animal hides. Where wood was scarce,
they might use the bones of large animals to build frames, which were then covered by
hides.
As early humans moved from the tropics into colder regions, they needed to adjust
to new, often harsh, conditions. Perhaps most important to their ability to adapt was the
use of fire. Archaeologists have discovered the piled remains of ashes in caves that prove
that Paleolithic people used fire as long ago as five hundred thousand years.
Fire gave warmth and undoubtedly encourage a sense of community for the groups
of people gathered around it. Fire also protected early humans by enabling them to scare
away wild animals. In addition, food could be cooked with fire, making it better tasting,
longer lasting, and easier to chew and digest.
Having fire to create a source of heat was especially important when Ice Age
conditions descended on the Paleolithic world. The most recent Ice Age began about
100,000 B.C. and ended in about 8000 B.C. During this time, sheets of thick ice covered
large parts of Europe, Asia, and North America. Ice Age conditions posed a serious
threat to human life, and the ability to adapt was crucial to human survival.
The use of fire, for example, reminds us that early humans sometimes adapted not
by changing themselves to better fit their environment but by changing the environment.
Agricultural Revolution
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In prehistoric times, people were hunter-gatherers. For thousands upon thousands
of years, humans survived by hunting animals and gathering edible plants. The men
almost certainly did the hunting. Women remained near the campsite to care for children,
and women also gathered fruits, berries, roots, and grasses. Humans were nomadic,
wandering from place to place in search of food.
Then about 10,000 years ago, some of the women may have scattered seeds near a
regular campsite. When they returned the next season, they may have found new crops
growing. The knowledge that grains and other plants grew from seeds was a major
breakthrough in human progress. This discovery would lead to the Neolithic or the
Agricultural Revolution.
The end of the last Ice Age was followed by the Neolithic Revolution- that is, the
revolution that occurred in the Neolithic Age, the period of human history from 10,000 to
4000 B.C. The word neolithic is Greek for "new stone." The real change in the
Neolithic or Agricultural Revolution was the shift from the hunting of animals and the
gathering of food to the keeping of animals and the growing of food on a regular basis.
Despite all of our technological progress, human survival depends on the systematic
growing and storing of food, an achievement of people in the Neolithic Age.
No one really knows when and how people began to plant seeds for food. Some
scholars think that farming started in the Middle East and then spread. Others argue that
farming developed independently in different regions. No matter which way it occurred,
the change had such dramatic effects that historians call it the Neolithic or Agricultural
Revolution. This shift represents one of the great breakthroughs in history. No greater
change in the way people lived took place until the Industrial Revolution, which began in
the late 1700s.
Scientists do not know exactly why the Neolithic Revolution occurred during this
period. Change in climate was probably a key factor. Rising temperatures worldwide
provided longer growing seasons and drier land for cultivating wild grasses. Perhaps if
animals were scarce, a band might camp at a place where plants grew and might begin
cultivating them season after season. A rich supply of grain helped support a small
population boom. As populations slowly rose, hunter-gatherers felt pressure to find new
food sources. Farming offered an attractive alternative. Unlike hunting, the planting of
grains and vegetables provided a regular or steady supply of food.
Over time people learned to grow wheat, barley, rice, and millet. They learned to
make furrows in the earth in which to plant seeds. The invention of the plow and the use
of fertilizer marked major steps in the human record.
The Neolithic Revolution included a second feature. Food gatherers'
understanding of plants probably spurred the development of farming. Meanwhile,
hunters' expert knowledge of wild animals likely played a key role in the domestication
of animals. People learned to domesticate, or tame, some of the animals they had once
hunted. They tamed cattle, horses, dogs, goats, and pigs.
Rather than wait for migrating animals to return each year, hunters rounded them up.
Then they herded the animals to good grasslands or fenced them in. The domestication
of animals added a steady or constant source of meat, milk, and wool. Animals could
also be used to do work.
Not only farmers domesticated animals. Pastoral nomads, or wandering herders,
tended sheep, goats, and camels. These herders moved their animals to new pastures and
watering places also.
Change is revolutionary when it is dramatic and requires great effort. The
Neolithic Revolution marked a revolutionary change. The ability to get food on a regular
basis gave humans greater control over their environment. It also meant they could give
up their nomadic ways of life and begin to live in settled communities.
Farmers settled into permanent villages and developed a whole new range of skills
and tools. As people gradually developed the technology to control their natural
environment, they had larger harvests. Settlements with a plentiful supply of food could
support more heavily populated communities. More food led to a growth in population,
which in turn led to more interaction among human communities.
The Neolithic Revolution had far-reaching consequences. The dramatic changes
that took place during this period led to further changes, affecting the way that people
would live for thousands of years. For example, once people began settling in villages or
towns, they had a need to build houses for protection and other structures for the storage
of goods. These organized communities stored food and other material goods, which
encouraged the development of trade. The trading of goods caused people to begin
specializing in certain crafts, and a division of labor developed. Eventually, many of the
food plants still in use today began to be grown. In addition, fibers from such plants as
flax and cotton were used to spin yarn that was woven into cloth.
How did the lives of Neolithic farmers differ from those of Paleolithic hunters and
gatherers? They probably divided up the work much as their ancestors had done, by
gender and age. Still, important differences began to emerge. The change to systematic
agriculture had consequences for the relationship between men and women. Men became
more active in farming and herding animals, jobs that took them away from the
settlement. Women remained behind, caring for children and taking responsibility for
weaving cloth, turning milk into cheese, and performing other tasks that required much
labor in one place. As men took on more and more of the responsibility for obtaining
food and protecting the settlement, they came to play a more dominant role. In settled
farming communities, the status of women declined as men came to dominate family,
economic, and political life, a basic pattern that would remain until our own times.
Between 4000 and 3000 B.C., new developments began to affect some Neolithic
towns. The use of metals marked a new level of human control over the environment.
The widespread use of bronze has led historians to speak of a Bronze Age from around
3000 to 1200 B.C.
By the beginning of the Bronze Age, large numbers of people were concentrated in
the river valleys of Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China. This would lead to a whole
new pattern for human life- the birth of civilizations.
Birth of Civilization
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In general terms, the culture of a people is the way of life that they follow. As
human societies grew and became more complex, a new form of human existence- called
civilization- came into being.
Civilizations first developed in the following four river valleys: the valley of the
Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, the Nile River valley, the Indus River valley, and the Huang,
or Yellow, River valley.
A civilization is a complex culture in which large numbers of human beings share
a number of common elements. Historians have identified the basic characteristics of
civilizations. These eight characteristics are (1) cities, (2) governments, (3) religions, (4)
job specialization, (5) social classes, (6) arts and architecture, (7) advanced technology,
and (8) writing or record keeping.
The Rise of Cities
Cities were the birthplaces of the first civilizations. The first civilizations
developed in river valleys, where people could carry on the large-scale farming that was
needed to feed large populations. Farmers began cultivating the fertile lands along river
valleys. To get water to their crops, farmers learned to dig ditches and canals to move
water from the river to their fields. Thus they developed the first systems of irrigation.
Farmers also built dikes to keep the rivers within their banks during the rainy season.
These improved farming techniques led to more and better food, which then led to
increases in population. As the population grew, some of the villages swelled into the
first cities.
A city is more than a large group of people living together. One of the key
differences is that a city is also a center of trade. Like modern-day people, people in
ancient cities depended on trade. Farmers, merchants, and traders brought goods to
market in the cities. The cities themselves produced a variety of goods for exchange.
The Growth of Governments
The soaring populations of early cities made government, or a system of ruling,
necessary. Growing numbers of people, the need to maintain the food supply and oversee
irrigation projects, and the need to build walls for defense led to the growth of
governments. Governments organize and regulate human activity. They also provide for
smooth interaction between individuals and groups.
Cities rose independently in a number of river valleys. Conditions in these river
valleys favored farming. Flood waters spread silt across the valleys, renewing the soil
and keeping it fertile. But rivers also posed challenges. Farmers had to control flooding
and channel waters to the fields. To meet these challenges, cooperation was needed.
Early farmers worked together to build dikes, dig canals, and carve out irrigation ditches.
Such large-scale projects such as irrigation and flood-control systems required a high
level of cooperation, leadership and a well-organized government.
At first, priests probably had the greatest power. In time, warrior kings emerged as
the political leaders. They set themselves up as hereditary rulers who passed power from
father to son. Almost always, rulers claimed that their right to rule came from the gods.
Governments became more complex as rulers issued laws to maintain order and
regulate people's lives, collected taxes, and organized the city's defense. To enforce
order, rulers relied on officials. Over time, government bureaucracies developed. A
bureaucracy is a system of managing government through departments run by appointed
officials. Separate departments oversaw tax collection, irrigation projects, or the military.
The Role of Religion
Important religious developments also characterized the new urban civilizations.
All of them developed religions to explain the working of the forces of nature and the fact
of their own existence.
Like their Stone Age ancestors, most ancient people were polytheistic. That is,
they believed in many gods. Gods and goddesses were often believed to be crucial to a
community's success. People worshipped sun gods, river goddesses, and other spirits that
they believed controlled natural forces. Other gods were thought to control human
activities such as birth, trade, or war.
To win their favor, priests supervised rituals- such as ceremonies, dances, prayers,
and hymns- aimed at pleasing them. This gave the priests power and made them very
important people. To ensure divine help, people built temples and sacrificed animals,
crops, or sometimes other humans to the gods.
Job Specialization
The lives of city dwellers differed from those of their prehistoric ancestors. As
methods of farming improved, fewer people had to work the fields. Food surpluses
provided the opportunity for job specialization- the development of skills in a specific
kind of work. An abundant food supply allowed some people to become expert at jobs
besides farming.
Urban people developed so many new crafts that a single individual could no
longer master all the skills needed to make tools, weapons, or other goods. For the first
time, individuals began to specialize in certain jobs. In other words, there was a division
of labor.
Some became artisans, or skilled craftworkers, who made pottery or finely carved
or woven goods. Among the crafts that developed in cities, metalworking was
particularly important. People learned to make tools and weapons, first out of copper,
then later out of bronze.
Cities had other specialists, too. Bricklayers built city walls. Soldiers defended
them. Merchants made their living by buying goods from farmers or artisans and then
selling them in the marketplace. Singers, dancers, and storytellers entertained on public
occasions. Such specialization made people dependent on others for their various needs.
The demand of the upper class for luxury items encouraged artisans and
craftspeople to create new products. The wide range of crafts that artisans produced
helped cities become thriving centers of trade.
Social Classes
A new social structure based on economic power also arose. People were ranked
according to their jobs. Such ranking led to the growth of social classes.
Rulers and an upper class of priests, government officials, and warriors dominated
the society. Next came a small class of wealthy merchants, followed by humbler artisans
or craftsmen. Below them stood the vast majority of people- peasant farmers who lived
in the surrounding villages and produced food for the city. At the bottom was a slave
class. Slaves sometimes came from poor families who sold themselves into slavery to
pay their debts. Others were prisoners captured in war.
Arts and Architecture
Significant artistic activity was another feature of the new civilizations. Temples
and pyramids were built as places for worship, sacrifice, or burial of kings and other
important people. Temples and palaces dominated the city. Such buildings reassured
people of the strength and power of their government and religion.
Closely linked to temples and palaces were vast public works that strong rulers
ordered built. Such projects included irrigation systems, roads, bridges, and defensive
walls. Although they were costly in human labor and even lives, such projects were
meant to benefit the city, protecting it from attack and ensuring its food supply.
Advanced Technology
New tools and techniques are always needed to solve the problems that develop
when large groups of people live together. Artisans relied on new technology to make
their tasks easier. Around 3500 B.C., Sumerian artisans first used the potter's wheel to
shape jugs, plates, and bowls. Sumerian metalworkers discovered that melting together
certain amounts of copper and tin made bronze. The period called the Bronze Age refers
to the time when people began using bronze, rather than copper and stone, to make tools
and weapons.
Writing
A critical new skill developed by the earliest civilizations was writing. Above all,
rulers, priests, merchants, and artisans used writing to keep accurate records. In early
civilizations, government officials had to record tax collections, the passage of laws, and
the storage of grain. Priests needed some way to keep track of the yearly calendar and
important rituals. Merchants had to record accounts of debts and payments.
Around 3000 B.C., Sumerian scribes- or professional record keepers- invented a
system of writing called cuneiform, which means "wedge-shaped." Early writing was
made up of pictograms, or simple drawings to show the words represented. In time,
symbols were added. They might stand for sounds of words or for ideas that could not be
expressed easily in pictures.
Eventually, all of the first civilizations used writing as a means of creative
expression as well as for record keeping. They also wrote about their cities' dramatic
events- wars, natural disasters, the reign of kings. Thus, the beginning of civilization in
Sumer also signaled the beginning of written history.
Mesopotamia
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The valley between the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers is called Mesopotamia.
Mesopotamia means the land “between the rivers.” It is at the eastern end of the Fertile
Crescent. The Fertile Crescent is an area stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the
Persian Gulf. Early civilization began in this area because of the land's rich soil. The soil
was rich because of the two rivers. Each spring, these rivers overflowed their banks. The
floods left layers of silt, a fertile material deposited by the rivers. The people of
Mesopotamia learned how to control the flow of the rivers. They created irrigation and
drainage ditches. This made it possible for them to grow crops on a regular basis. They
were able to grow an abundance of food, which allowed people to live together in cities.
The Sumerians were the creators of the first Mesopotamian civilization. By 3000
B.C., the Sumerians had started several cities in southern Mesopotamia. Three of these
cities were Eridu, Ur and Uruk. A city-state is a city and the farmland that surrounds it.
Each one was like its own country, and the city-states were often at war with each other.
These city-states were the basic units of Sumerian civilization. Walls made out of mud
bricks surrounded the cities. The Sumerian people also used mud bricks to build houses.
The most important building in a Sumerian city was the temple. The temple was
dedicated to the chief god or goddess of the city. The temple was often built on top of a
ziggurat. A ziggurat is a massive stepped tower. Priests and priestesses supervised the
temples, so they had a great deal of power. The Sumerians believed that the gods ruled
their cities. This made their city-states theocracies. A theocracy is a government by
divine authority. Eventually, kings began to rule the Sumerian city-states. The
Sumerians believed that kings got their power from the gods. Kings led armies and
supervised building and irrigation projects.
Most of the Sumerians were farmers, but the Sumerians also learned how to make
metal goods, pottery, and wool cloth. The Sumerians began to trade their goods for
copper, tin and timber. The invention of the wheel around 3000 B.C. made it easier to
take goods from place to place. Sumerian city-states had three major social groups:
nobles, commoners and slaves. The nobles were the rulers and priests. Commoners
included farmers, fishers, merchants and craftspeople. Slaves belonged to palace and
temple officials. Rich landowners also used slaves to farm their lands.
The Sumerians invented many things that still affect our lives today. Perhaps their
greatest invention was their writing. Their writing system was called cuneiform
(“wedge-shaped”). They made wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets. The tablets were
then baked or dried in the sun. These tablets could last a long time- many have lasted
until modern times and have been found by archaeologists. Writing allowed people to
pass knowledge from person to person and generation to generation.
The Sumerians also invented devices to help them in their daily lives. The potter’s
wheel and the sundial are other examples of Sumerian inventions. The Sumerians were
also the first people to make bronze out of copper and tin. They had outstanding
achievements in math and astronomy. They also invented the arch and the dome.
City-states fought other city-states for control of land and water. Other peoples
also invaded. The land of Mesopotamia was very flat, so it was easy to invade. To the
north of the Sumerian city-states were people called the Akkadians. Their leader’s name
was Sargon. Around 2340 B.C., the Akkadians overran the Sumerian city-states. They
setup the first empire in world history. An empire brings several peoples, nations, or
independent states together under the control of one ruler.
People from the neighboring hills eventually attacked the Akkadian Empire, which
came to an end about 2100 B.C. In 1792 B.C., a new empire began to control much of
Mesopotamia. The leadership of this empire came from Babylon. The king of Babylon
was Hammurabi. He gained control of both Sumer and Akkad.
Hammurabi, who ruled from 1792 B.C. to 1750 B.C., was the Babylonian Empire's
greatest ruler. He brought all the people in his empire together under one set of laws. It
was the first set of laws to be written down. This set of 282 laws is called the Code of
Hammurabi. The laws covered family issues, business conduct, and crime. Copies
were carved in stone and placed all over the empire for people to read.
Hammurabi's Code followed the idea of retaliation: an eye for an eye and a tooth
for a tooth. For example, one of the laws reads as follows: "If a man put out the eye of
another man, his eye shall be put out." Everyone had to follow the laws. However,
punishments for breaking them were different for the rich and the poor, and for men and
women. By today's standards, Hammurabi's Code was very strict and punishments for
breaking the law were severe. However, by giving specific penalties for specific crimes,
Hammurabi's Code established social order. If a person was wronged, the state punished
the offender for breaking the law. This stopped people from getting revenge by taking
the law into their own hands.
Historians have learned a lot about the Babylonian Empire by studying the laws of
Hammurabi's Code. For example, laws about marriage and family show that men were
superior to women in Mesopotamian society. The Babylonian Empire reached its peak
during Hammurabi's rule. After he died, weaker kings were unable to keep the
Babylonian Empire united, and it finally fell to new invaders.
The Assyrians exploited the use of new iron weapons to establish an empire by 700
B.C. The Assyrian Empire included Mesopotamia, parts of Iran and Turkey, Syria,
Palestine, and Egypt.
The Assyrians were good at conquering others. The Assyrian army was large, well
organized, and disciplined. A force of infantrymen was its core, joined by cavalrymen
and horse-drawn war chariots. The Assyrians used terror as an instrument of warfare.
The Assyrians were especially known for committing atrocities on their captives.
At its height, the Assyrian Empire was ruled by kings whose power was seen as
absolute. Within less than a hundred years, however, internal conflict and resentment of
Assyrian rule began to tear the empire apart.
After the collapse of the Assyrian Empire, the Chaldeans, under their king
Nebuchadnezzar II, made Babylonia the leading state again. Nebuchadnezzar rebuilt
Babylon as the center of his empire and made it one of the greatest cities of the ancient
world. However, the empire proved to be short-lived. It fell to the Persians in 539 B.C.
Egypt
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We have learned about the ancient Egyptians by the things they left behind. The
most famous reminders of ancient Egypt are the pyramids built during Egypt's Old
Kingdom. Three pyramids were built at Giza on a plateau on the west bank of the Nile
River. Egypt was described by an ancient historian as "the gift of the Nile." Egypt got
this nickname because the Nile's fertile banks were home to the first Egyptian farmers.
Ancient Egypt's history is divided into three time periods: the Old Kingdom, the
Middle Kingdom, and the New Kingdom. These were periods of long-term stability
marked by strong leadership, freedom from invasion, the building of temples and
pyramids, and considerable intellectual and cultural activity. Between the periods of
stability were ages of political chaos and invasion.
The history of Egypt begins around 3100 B.C., when Menes the king united the
villages of Upper (southern) and Lower (northern) Egypt into a single kingdom and
created the first Egyptian royal dynasty. A dynasty is a family of rulers whose right to
rule is passed on within the family.
The Old Kingdom lasted from about 2700 B.C. until 2200 B.C. During this time,
Egyptian rulers created a strong central government. They brought all the small farming
villages around the Nile under their absolute control. Egyptian leaders were called
pharaohs (originally meaning "great house" or "palace"), and they had total power over
the kingdom of Egypt.
The Egyptians believed that their pharaohs were living gods. They also felt that
the pharaohs continued to rule even after they died. Egyptian religion said that a person
had a spiritual body, called the ka, and a physical body. When a person died, the physical
body had to be properly preserved. Bodies were preserved after death by
mummification, or drying the body to stop it from decaying. Then, the ka could
continue its life forever, even though the physical body had died. For this reason,
pharaohs' tombs were more important than their palaces. The person's tomb had to have
the same things a living person needed. Tombs were filled with supplies for the dead,
like chairs, weapons, foods, clothing and even pets.
One of the great achievements of Egyptian civilization, the building of pyramids,
occurred in the time of the Old Kingdom. Pyramids were tombs for the mummified
bodies of pharaohs. Historians and archaeologists do not know for sure how the
pyramids were built. Egyptian workers moved millions of limestone blocks to build the
pyramids. Somehow, the enormous stones for a pyramid were cut, moved to the site, and
put together. The stones were very heavy, and the pyramids were built before the pulley
or vehicles with wheels were invented.
The largest of the three pyramids was built by King Khufu around 2540 B.C.
Khufu's tomb, the Great Pyramid, covers 13 acres and stands 481 feet tall. The ancient
Greek historian Herodotus reported that 100,000 Egyptians spent 20 years building the
Great Pyramid. Guarding the pyramids at Giza is a huge statue carved from rock, known
as the Great Sphinx. This colossal statue has the body of a lion and a human head.
A pyramid was not only the pharaoh's tomb. It was also an important symbol of
power during the pharaoh's life. The pyramid could be seen for miles and reminded
everyone how rich and powerful the pharaoh was. Although the Old Kingdom's
government collapsed, the pyramids stand as a symbol of the pharaohs' power
The Old Kingdom was followed by a period of chaos that lasted about 150 years.
Finally, a new royal dynasty gained control of all Egypt and began the Middle Kingdom,
a period of stability lasting from about 2050 to 1652 B.C. The Middle Kingdom came to
an end with the invasion of Egypt by a group of people from western Asia known as the
Hyksos.
Eventually, a new dynasty of pharaohs drove the Hyksos out and reunited Egypt.
The New Kingdom was established and lasted approximately from 1567 to 1085 B.C.
During this period, Egypt created an empire and became the most powerful state in
Southwest Asia. Massive wealth boosted the power of the New Kingdom pharaohs. The
Egyptian rulers showed their wealth by building new temples.
The New Kingdom was not without troubles, however. The pharaoh Amenhotep
IV introduced the worship of Aton, god of the sun disk, as the sole god. Amenhotep
changed his own name to Akhenaton ("It is well with Aton") and closed the temples of
other gods. In a society that had always believed in many gods, Akhenaton's actions in
destroying the old gods meant to many the destruction of Egypt itself. Akhenaton's
changes were soon undone after his death by the boy-pharaoh Tutankhamen (King Tut),
who restored the old gods. However, the upheavals associated with Amenhotep's
religious revolution led to the loss of Egypt's empire.
For the next thousand years, following the collapse of the New Kingdom, Egypt
was dominated by Libyans, Nubians, Persians, and finally Macedonians after the
conquest of Alexander the Great, before falling to the Romans under Caesar Augustus.
Writing in Egypt emerged around 3000 B.C. The Greeks later called this earliest
Egyptian writing hieroglyphics, meaning "priest-carvings" or "sacred writings." The
hieroglyphic system of writing, which used both pictures and more abstract forms, was
complex. Learning and practicing it took much time and skill. Hieroglyphic script was
used for writing on temple walls and in tombs. A highly simplified version of
hieroglyphics, known as hieratic script, was used for business transactions, record
keeping, and the general needs of daily life.
Egyptian hieroglyphs were at first carved in stone. Later, hieratic script was
written on papyrus, a paper made from the papyrus reed that grew along the Nile. Most
of the ancient Egyptian literature that has come down to us was written on rolls of
papyrus.
Pyramids, temples, and other monuments bear witness to the architectural and
artistic achievements of the Egyptians. Artists and sculptors were expected to follow
particular formulas in style. This gave Egyptian art a distinctive look for thousands of
years. For example, the human body was often portrayed as a combination of profile,
semiprofile, and frontal view to accurately represent each part.
India's Caste System
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Civilization in India began in the Indus River Valley. Settlements developed as
farmers raised crops in the rich soil left behind by the river's yearly floods. The small
farming communities grew into large cities like Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro. An
advanced civilization flourished in these cities for hundreds of years. Historians call it
the Harappan or Indus civilization.
As in Egypt and Mesopotamia, Harappan rulers based their power on a belief in
divine assistance. Religion and political power were closely linked. Like those in
Mesopotamia and along the Nile, the Harappan economy was based primarily on
farming. This civilization also carried on extensive trade with city-states in
Mesopotamia.
The Indus River Valley civilization did well until invaders from central Asia took
over around 1500 B.C. A group of nomads, called the Aryans, eventually took over all
of India. Like other nomadic peoples, the Aryans excelled at war. Between 1500 and
1000 B.C., the Aryan peoples gradually moved eastward from the Indus Valley, across
the fertile plain of the Ganges River. Later they moved southward into the Deccan
Plateau. After settling in India, the Aryans gave up the pastoral life for regular farming.
The Aryans looked down on the Indians over whom they ruled. A set of four main
class divisions, called the caste system, developed in India. The caste system was based
in part upon skin color. Aryans had lighter skin than the Indians. A person's position in
society depended on which class or caste he or she belonged to. People were born into
their caste for life. Caste membership determined what kind of job a person could have.
It also decided who a person could marry.
Brahmins, or priests, led religious ceremonies, and the Aryans thought religion was
very important. Therefore, Brahmins made up the highest class in the caste system.
Below the Brahmins were the Kshatriyas, or warriors, and below them were the Vaisyas,
who were peasants or merchants. A fourth group of non-Aryan workers or laborers,
called the Sudras, eventually formed.
At the bottom of the caste system were the Untouchables. Members of the four
castes thought the untouchables were not even human. The untouchables were
considered to be impure, or "dirty," by the other groups. It was important to be
spiritually pure, so the untouchables did the jobs that were considered impure. For
example, untouchables worked as butchers, gravediggers, and garbage collectors.
To touch or even talk to an untouchable was thought to hurt a person's spiritual
purity. Purity was so important that untouchables were forced to warn others that they
were coming near. They had to ring a bell, tap two sticks together, or make some other
warning noise.
As time passed, the four castes became more complex. Hundreds of subdivisionscalled jatis- developed. India's caste system lasted from 1500 B.C. until less than a
hundred years ago. Discrimination based on the caste system was finally outlawed in
India in the 1950s A.D.
Hinduism & Buddhism
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Hinduism is the world's oldest organized religion, starting in India about 1500 B.C.
It had no single founder. Hinduism had its start in the religious beliefs of the Aryan
peoples who settled there.
Hindus believe in the existence of a single force in the universe, a form of ultimate
reality, called Brahman. It was the duty of the individual self- called the atman- to seek
to know this ultimate reality. By doing so, the self would merge with Brahman after
death.
By the sixth century B.C., the idea of reincarnation had appeared in Hinduism.
Reincarnation is the belief that the individual soul is reborn in a different form after
death. Life is a cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. After a number of existences in the
earthly world, the soul reaches its final goal in a union with Brahman. According to
Hinduism, all living beings seek to achieve this goal.
Important to this process is the idea of karma, the force created by a person's good
or bad actions that determines how they will be reborn in the next life. According to this
idea, what people do in their current lives determines what they will be in their next lives.
In the same way, a person's current status (caste) is not simply an accident. It is a result
of the person's actions in a past life.
The concept of karma is ruled by the dharma, or the divine law. The law requires
all people to do their duty. However, people's duties vary, depending on their status
(caste) in society. More is expected of those high on the social scale, such as the
Brahmans, than of the lower castes.
The system of reincarnation provided a religious basis for the rigid class divisions
in Indian society. It justified the privileges of those at the top. After all, they would not
have those privileges if they were not deserving. At the same time, the concept of
reincarnation gave hope to those lower down on the social ladder. The poor, for example,
could hope that if they behaved properly in this life, they would improve their condition
in the next.
There are hundreds of deities (gods or goddesses) in the Hindu religion, including
three chief ones: Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Siva the Destroyer.
Many Hindus regard the number of gods as simply different expressions of the one
ultimate reality, Brahman. However, the various gods and goddesses give ordinary
Indians a way to express their religious feelings. Through devotion at a Hindu temple,
they seek not only salvation but also a means of gaining the ordinary things they need in
life. Today, Hinduism is the religion of the vast majority of the Indian people and has
had some influence on Southeast Asia.
Hindus have not one "Holy Book", but many sources of knowledge. They include
the four Vedas, the Upanishads, and epics like the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. The
Bhagavad Gita, or "Song of God", is a source of inspiration and comfort for many
Hindus. The Gita is as important as the Bible is to Jews & Christians and as the Qur'an is
to Muslims.
Buddhism grew out of the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, who lived north of
India, in what is now Nepal, between 563 BCE and 483 BCE. He was raised as a prince
in a small state. He was born into luxury and privilege, but became aware of old age,
disease, and death- i.e. suffering. After living a sheltered life, he left the palace in search
of answers to the question: “Why is there so much suffering in the world?” After
meditating under a bodhi tree, Siddhartha reached enlightenment and became known as
the Buddha (Enlightened One).
At the Deer Park in Varanasi (Benares) in 531 BC, the Buddha began his teaching
career by preaching his first sermon. He remained a traveling preacher for the rest of his
life- another 45 years. He died in 486 BC when he was around 80 years old. The
Buddha taught that there were Four Noble Truths:
1. All life is full of suffering
2. This suffering is caused by desire.
3. The way to end suffering is to end desire.
4. The way to end desire is to follow the Middle Way or Eightfold Path which
will lead to nirvana.
The Eightfold Path includes right understanding, right purpose, right speech, right
conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right awareness, and right concentration. The idea
was that if you want to stop suffering, you must stop desiring. The ultimate goal for
Buddhists is to reach nirvana, which is a release from the cycle of reincarnation and
union with the universe.
The Buddha accepted the idea of reincarnation and karma. However, according to
Buddhists, people did not need to follow the rituals of the Brahmins (Hindus priests) and
gods are not necessary. Everyone can seek enlightenment on their own, and no one is an
outcast by birth. Buddhism rejected the caste system and thus was appealing to members
of the lower castes and untouchables.
Buddhists are the followers of the Buddha and his teachings. But Buddhists do not
follow the Buddha in the same way as Christians follow Christ. He forbid his followers
to worship either his person or his image after his death. He did not teach his disciples a
way to God. Instead, the Buddha's teaching pointed to the truth (Dharma or Dhamma)
and Buddhists are practicing what the Buddha preached- truthful living. For that reason,
many Buddhists see Buddhism as a philosophy rather than as a religion.
Buddhism would eventually split over different interpretations of the Buddha's
teachings. One group believed that they were following the original teachings of the
Buddha. They called themselves the school of Theravada, "the Teachings of the
Elders." They see Buddhism as a way of life, not a religion that is centered on salvation.
Another view emerged that stressed that nirvana could be achieved through
devotion to the Buddha. This school, known as Mahayana or "Greater Vehicle", said
that the Buddha was not just a wise man, but a divine figure (god). Nirvana is not just a
release from the wheel of life, but a true heaven. Through devotion to the Buddha,
people can achieve salvation in this heaven after death.
In the end, neither Theravada nor Mahayana Buddhism remained popular in India.
But Buddhism spread and deeply influenced China, Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia.
Confucius
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Between 500 and 200 B.C., toward the end of the Zhou dynasty, three major
schools of thought about the nature of human beings and the universe emerged in ChinaConfucianism, Daoism, and Legalism. Chinese philosophers were concerned about the
world in which people lived and how to create a stable order in that world.
China's most influential philosopher, Confucius or Kongfuzi was born in 551 B.C.
Upset by the violence and moral decay of his age, Confucius traveled around China
trying to persuade political leaders to follow his ideas. Few listened, but a faithful band
of followers honored him as a great teacher, recorded his sayings in the Analects, and
spread his message.
Confucius lived at a time of great chaos in China, caused largely when the Zhou
Dynasty was being torn apart by warring lords. China was faced with one basic question:
How do we restore order to this society? Confucius provided a basic set of ideas that
eventually came to be widely accepted.
Confucius's interest in philosophy was political and ethical. He believed that it
was useless to wonder about spiritual questions. His concern was with human behavior
and he paid little attention to such matters as sin, salvation, and the soul. According to
Confucius, the key to proper behavior was to behave in accord with the Dao, or Way.
Two ideas stand out in Confucian thought: duty and humanity. The concept of
duty meant that all people had to subordinate their own interests to the needs of the
family and the community. Everyone should be governed by the Five Constant
Relationships: parent and child, husband and wife, older sibling and younger sibling,
older friend and younger friend, and ruler and subject. Each person in the relationship
had a duty to the other. Parents should be loving, and children should honor and respect
their parents. Husbands should fulfill their duties, and wives should be obedient. The
elder sibling (brother/sister) should be kind, and the younger sibling respectful. The
older friend should be considerate, and the younger friend deferential. Rulers should be
caring and subjects loyal.
Three of these five relationships concern the family, which shows the family's
importance to Confucius. "The duty of children to their parents is the foundation from
which all virtues spring." Confucius put filial piety, or respect for parents, above all
other duties, even loyalty to the state. The family was responsible for educating the child
to be a good member of society.
Confucius emphasized the importance of education, the aim of which is to turn
people into good family members, responsible members of society, and good subjects of
the emperor. "By nature, men are pretty much alike," he said. "It is learning and practice
that set them apart."
The Confucian concept of duty is often expressed in the form of a "work ethic."
According to Confucius, everyone had duties and responsibilities, depending on his or
her position. If each individual worked hard to fulfill his or her duties, then the society as
a whole would prosper as well. Correct behavior, Confucius believed, would bring order.
Above all, the ruler must set a good example. If the ruler followed the path of
goodness and the common good, then his subjects would respect him, and society would
prosper. "Lead the people by laws and regulate them by punishments, and the people will
simply try to keep out of jail, but will have no sense of shame. Lead the people by virtue
and they will have a sense of shame and moreover will become good." Government,
Confucius felt, was more than enforcing laws. Rulers must set a good example.
The second key idea in Confucian thought is the idea of humanity. This consists of
a sense of compassion and sympathy for others. It is similar in some ways to Christian
ideas. Christians are taught, "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you."
Confucius would say, "Do not do unto others what you would not wish done to yourself."
Confucius urged people to "measure the feelings of others by one's own," for "within the
four seas all men are brothers."
After his death in 479 B.C., his message spread throughout China. Confucius was
a harsh critic of his own times. He seemed to stress the need to return to the values of an
earlier age- the Golden Age of the early Zhou dynasty. He saw it as an age of perfection
that no longer existed. Confucius was not just living in the past, however. Many of his
key ideas looked forward rather than backward.
Perhaps Confucius' most striking idea was that the government should be open to
all men of superior talent, not just limited to those of noble birth. His ideas did not have
much effect in his lifetime, but this new idea would later see widespread use. This
concept became a crucial part of Chinese history after his death.
For the next 2,000 years Confucianism was the official philosophy of China. It
became the foundation for Chinese government and social order. Chinese rulers would
base their government on Confucian ideas, choosing Confucian scholars as officials. The
only way a person could achieve an important position in Chinese government or society
was by having a good knowledge of Confucianism. To become a government official it
was necessary to pass a difficult civil service examination based on the ideas of
Confucius. Thus, until the 20th century, almost every Chinese pupil studied his sayings.
Qin & Han China
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From about 400 to 200 B.C., there were civil wars in China. Powerful states
fought each other and ignored the Zhou kings. The Qin (221-206 B.C.) gradually
defeated the other states and reunited China. In 221 B.C., the Qin ruler started a new
dynasty. This ruler’s name was Qin Shihuangdi, which means “the First Qin Emperor.”
The Qin dynasty made many changes in Chinese government. Legalism was
adopted as its philosophy. Using rewards for merit and punishments for failure, he built a
strong, authoritarian government. Anyone who opposed the new government was
punished or executed.
The Qin dynasty was a highly centralized state. The bureaucracy was divided into
three parts: the civil division, the military division and the censorate. The censorate had
inspectors (censors) who checked on government officials to make sure they were doing
their jobs. This became standard procedure for future Chinese dynasties. Officials did
not inherit their positions but were appointed and dismissed by the emperor. The censors
kept a close watch over all officials and reported to the emperor. If the officials were
found guilty of wrongdoing, they were executed.
Qin Shihuangdi unified the Chinese world. He created a single monetary system
and built a system of roads throughout the entire empire. He also had scholars create a
single uniform system of writing. Under his rule, irrigation projects increased farm
production. But despite these advances, harsh taxes and repressive government made the
Qin government unpopular. Shi Huangdi had unified China at the expense of human
freedom.
Qin Shihuangdi moved harshly against critics. He jailed, tortured, and executed
many who opposed his rule. Hardest hit were the feudal nobles and Confucian scholars
who hated his laws. To silence criticism, the emperor murdered hundreds of Confucian
scholars. To end dissent, Shi Huangdi approved a ruthless campaign of book burning,
ordering the destruction of all works of literature and philosophy. Only books on
medicine and agriculture were spared.
His major concern was in the north. In the area of the Gobi Desert, there were
people known to the Chinese as the Xiongnu. They were nomadic people and fought on
horseback. The Xiongnu became a threat to the Chinese communities near the northern
frontier, so the Chinese began to build walls to keep them out. Qin Shihuangid added to
these walls. He connected the existing walls together to create “The Wall of Ten
Thousand Li.” This wall arose on the backs of hundreds of thousands of peasants. Many
of them died while working there and, according to legend, are now buried within the
wall. Today this wall is known as the Great Wall of China. Most of Qin Shihuangdi’s
walls were constructed of loose stone and sand and disappeared long ago. The Great
Wall that we see today was actually built 1,500 years later.
Qin Shihuangdi died in 210 B.C., and his dynasty was overthrown four years later.
The fall of the Qin dynasty was followed by a period of civil war. This period did not
last long, and was followed by a new dynasty.
Liu Bang founded the Han dynasty in 202 B.C. The Han dynasty was one of the
greatest and longest dynasties in Chinese history, ruling China from 206 B.C. to A.D.
220, more than 400 years. To win popular support, Liu Bang lowered taxes and
discarded the harsh policies of the Qin dynasty. Confucian principles, rather than
Legalism, became the philosophy of the new government.
China under the Han dynasty was a vast empire. The population increased rapidlyrising from about twenty million to over sixty million. The large population created a
growing need for a large and efficient bureaucracy to keep the state in proper working
order. The Han rulers continued the Qin system of choosing government officials on the
basis of merit rather than birth.
To find the most qualified officials, the Han dynasty introduced the civil service
examination. This method involved testing applicants' knowledge of Confucianism- the
teachings of Confucius. Confucius had taught that gentlemen should practice "reverence
[respect], generosity, truthfulness, diligence [hard work], and kindness." A scholarofficial was expected to match the Confucian ideal of a gentleman.
Because these were exactly the qualities he wanted his government officials to
have, Wudi set up a school where hopeful job applicants from all over China could come
to study Confucius's works. After their studies, job applicants took exams in history, law,
literature, and Confucianism. To pass, candidates studied the Confucian Classics, a
collection of histories, poems, and handbooks on customs that Confucius was said to
have compiled.
The civil service system begun by Wudi worked so well that it continued in China
until 1912. Han emperors had made Confucianism the official belief system of the state.
This system for bureaucrats influenced Chinese civilization for two thousand years. It
put men trained in Confucian thought at every level of government and created an
enduring system of values. Dynasties rose and fell, but Confucian influence survived.
Han emperors expanded the Chinese empire southward and westward. They also
had to deal with the Xiongnu, the nomads beyond the Great Wall to the north.
The Han period was a time of prosperity. Technological advances were made
during the Han era. Progress was made in textile (clothing) manufacturing, water mills
for grinding grain and iron casting. Iron casting led to the invention of steel. Paper was
also developed. The rudder and fore-and-aft rigging for ships were invented. Ships
could sail into the wind for the first time. This led to a major expansion of trade.
The Qin and Han dynasties were also known for their cultural achievements. The
main Confucian writings were made into a set of classics during this time. These
writings became required reading for generations of Chinese schoolchildren.
Perhaps the most remarkable achievement of the Qin period was discovered in
1974. Underground pits were found about a mile from the burial mound of the First Qin
Emperor. The contained a vast army made of terracotta (hardened clay). Archaeologists
believe it was a re-creation of Qin Shihuangdi's guard and was meant to be with the
emperor on his journey to the next world. There are more than six thousand figures in the
first pit alone, along with horses, chariots and seven thousand bronze weapons. The
terra-cotta figures are slightly larger than life-size.
The Persian Empire
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The Persians were an Indo-European people who lived in what is today Iran.
Primarily nomadic, the Persians, led by Cyrus, created a powerful Persian empire that
stretched from Asia Minor to western India, including what is today Turkey, Iraq, Iran,
Egypt, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
Cyrus ruled from 559 to 530 B.C. The people of his time called Cyrus "the Great."
Indeed, he must have been an unusual ruler for his time, a man who demonstrated much
wisdom and compassion in the conquest and organization of his empire. Unlike the
Assyrian rulers, Cyrus had a reputation for mercy. Medes, Babylonians, and Jews all
accepted him as their ruler. Cyrus had a genuine respect for the customs and religious
traditions of the diverse groups in his empire.
Cyrus's successors extended the territory of the Persian empire. His son Cambyses
successfully conquered Egypt. Darius, who ruled from 521 to 486 B.C., added new
conquests in the east extending the empire to the Indus River. He then moved west into
Europe, conquering Thrace and creating the largest empire the world had yet seen.
Darius's only failure, and that of his son, Xerxes, was his inability to conquer Greece.
The Persian king- the "Great King"- had absolute power- the power of life and
death. At its height, much of the power of the Persian Empire and its rulers depended
upon the military. The Persian kings had created a standing army of professional
soldiers. This army was composed of people from all over the empire. At its core was a
cavalry force of 10,000 and an elite infantry force of 10,000, known as the Immortals.
To govern this vast empire, Darius divided it into 20 provinces, called satrapies.
Each province was ruled by a governor, or satrap, literally a "protector of the kingdom."
Each satrap collected taxes, provided justice and security, and recruited soldiers for the
army. An efficient system of communication was crucial to sustaining the Persian
empire. Well-maintained roads made it easy for officials to travel through the empire.
The Royal Road stretched from Lydia to Susa, the chief capital of the empire, a distance
of 1,677 miles. Like the Assyrians, the Persians set up way stations that provided food
and shelter, as well as fresh horses, for the king's messengers.
After Darius, the Persian kings became more and more isolated at their courts,
surrounded by luxuries. As the Persian kings increased taxes to gain more wealth, loyalty
to the empire declined. Of the nine rulers after Darius, six were murdered. Over a period
of time, this bloody struggle for the throne weakened the empire and led to its conquest
by the Greek ruler Alexander the Great during the 330s B.C.
Of all the Persians' cultural contributions, the most original was their religion,
Zoroastrianism. The prophet Zoroaster held that the world had been created by
Ahuramazda, "the wise lord," but was threatened by Angra Mainyu, "the hostile spirit."
In the cosmic struggle between good and evil, humanity is a participant, and individuals
are rewarded or punished in the afterlife for their actions. Zoroastrianism preached belief
in one supreme deity, held humans to a high ethical standard, and promised salvation. It
may have exerted a major influence on Judaism and thus, indirectly, on Christianity.
Athens & Sparta
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Greece is made up of a small, mountainous peninsula on the Mediterranean Sea
and many small islands. The mountains and sea kept early Greek communities separate
from each other. For this reason, it was difficult to bring all the Greek people together
under one government.
By 750 B.C., Greek communities had grown into city-states. The Greek word for
city-state is polis. The polis was a town, city, or village and its surrounding countryside.
Athens and Sparta were the two most famous Greek city-states, and they were very
different.
Sparta
Sparta controlled the lives of its citizens from birth to death. All its rules had the
same basic goal- to make every adult male citizen part of a military machine designed to
control the helots (slaves) and extend Spartan power.
The development of this military machine began at birth when a group of city
officials examined newborn babies. Any baby who seemed weak, unhealthy, or
deformed in any way was either abandoned in the countryside or thrown off a cliff. At
the age of seven or eight, boys were taken from their mothers and went to live in military
barracks. Although they learned to read and write, military training formed the basis of
their education. It was a harsh education aimed at developing obedience, perseverance,
and victory in battle.
To build up their endurance, boys wore only a single piece of clothing, summer or
winter. They never wore shoes. Once a year there was a competition in which the boys
were beaten publicly to see who could bear the most pain without crying out. Some died
during this thrashing. To teach them to feed themselves in wartime, they were given very
little food. The boys were expected to steal food to keep from starving. Anyone caught
received a severe punishment- not for stealing, but for being clumsy enough to get
caught.
The citizen began his military service at the age of 20 and remained in the army
until the age of 60. At 30, a Spartan was expected to marry, but he had little family life.
He devoted most of his time to military training, eating his meals and spending his leisure
time in a military club. Only old men were allowed to live in their own homes.
The city did not allow citizens to engage in any trade, craft, or profession- except
that of arms- because business activities and the love of money interfered with military
discipline. Instead, each soldier was allocated land and helots (slaves) to work it by the
state. This left him free to pursue a military career. He supported his family and helped
to supply his barracks from the produce of his land.
While their husbands lived in the barracks, Spartan women lived at home. Because
of this separation, Spartan women had greater freedom of movement and greater power in
the household than was common elsewhere in Greece. Spartan girls and women were
expected to exercise and remain fit to bear and raise healthy children.
Many Spartan women upheld the strict Spartan values, expecting their husbands
and sons to be brave in war. The story is told of a Spartan woman who, as she was
handing her son his shield, told him to come back carrying his shield or being carried on
it. She meant either return alive and victorious or lying dead upon it after a fight to the
finish.
The strict discipline of Sparta did lead to efficient government and an almost
unconquerable army. The Spartans paid heavily for this military might, however. First,
they sacrificed individual freedom to the state. Individuals were trained to think of the
city-state above themselves. Second, their society produced nothing in art, literature,
philosophy, or science.
Athens
Athens was very different from Sparta. Their government went through a series of
changes from monarchy to aristocracy to tyranny and finally to democracy. In a
democracy, the citizens have the power and make government decisions by voting.
In the Age of Pericles, the Athenians became deeply attached to their democratic
system, which was a direct democracy. In a direct democracy, the people participate
directly in government decision making through mass meetings. In Athens, every citizen
participated in the governing assembly and voted on all major issues. The assembly
passed all laws, elected public officials, and made final decisions on war and foreign
policy. Anyone could speak, but usually only respected leaders did so.
However, by making lower class citizens eligible for public office and by paying
officeholders, Pericles made it possible for poor citizens to take part in public affairs.
Pericles believed that Athenians should be proud of their democracy.
Under Pericles, Athens became the center of Greek culture. Pericles set in motion
a massive rebuilding program. New temples and statues soon signified the greatness of
Athens. Art, architecture, literature, drama, and philosophy flourished. Pericles boasted
that Athens had become the "school of Greece."
Persian Wars
As the Greeks spread throughout the Mediterranean, they came in contact with the
Persian empire to the east. The Greek cities in western Asia Minor (modern day Turkey)
had fallen under the control of the Persian empire by the mid-sixth century B.C. In 499
B.C., an unsuccessful revolt by these Greek cities- assisted by the Athenian navy- led the
Persian ruler Darius to seek revenge.
In 490 B.C., the Persians landed on the plain of Marathon, only 26 miles from
Athens. There, an outnumbered Athenian army attacked and defeated the Persians
decisively. According to legend, news of Persia's defeat was brought by a runner named
Pheidippides who raced 26 miles from Marathon to Athens. With his last breath, he
announced, "Victory, we win," before dropping dead. Today's marathon race is based
on this heroic story.
After Darius died in 486 B.C., Xerxes became the new Persian monarch. Xerxes
vowed revenge and planned to invade Greece. In preparation for the attack, the
Athenians began building a navy of about two hundred vessels.
Xerxes led a massive invasion force into Greece. His forces included close to
150,000 troops, almost 700 naval ships, and hundreds of supply ships. The Greeks tried
to delay the Persians at the pass of Thermopylae. A Greek force of about nine thousand
held off the Persian army for two days. The 300 Spartans in the Greek army were
especially brave. When told that Persian arrows would darken the sky in battle, one
Spartan warrior responded, "That is good news. We will fight in the shade!"
Unfortunately for the Greeks, a traitor told the Persians how to use a mountain path
to outflank the Greek force. "Tell them in Lacedaemon, passer-by: That here, obedient to
their laws, we lie." These words are inscribed on a plaque set up to commemorate the
last stand of King Leonidas and 300 Spartans at Thermopylae. The Spartan sacrifice
allowed the rest of the Greek army to escape the Persians.
The Athenians, now threatened by the onslaught of the Persian forces, abandoned
their city. Near the island of Salamis, the Greek fleet, though outnumbered, managed to
outmaneuver the Persian fleet and defeat it. A few months later, early in 479 B.C., the
Greeks formed the largest Greek army up to that time and defeated the Persian army at
Plataea, northwest of Athens.
Although no one could imagine it at the time, the defeat of the Persians would
prove to be one of the most important turning points in world history. Had Darius or
Xerxes prevailed, Greece would have fallen under Persian influence. As a conquered
culture, the great flowering of Greek culture that was to come in the last half of the fifth
century would never have happened and the profound impact of Greek civilization on
Roman, and later European, cultures would never have occurred.
Peloponnesian War
After the defeat of the Persians, Athens took over the leadership of the Greek
world. Under Pericles, who was a dominant figure in Athenian politics between 461 and
429 B.C., Athens expanded its new empire abroad. At the same time, democracy
flourished at home. This period of Athenian and Greek history, which historians have
called the Age of Pericles, saw the height of Athenian power and brilliance.
Unfortunately, at the same time, the Greek world came to be divided into two
major camps: the Athenian empire and Sparta. Athens and Sparta had built two very
different kinds of societies, and neither state was able to tolerate the other. The Athenian
alliance included most of the island and coastal city-states. Sparta led most of the major
land powers of Greece. Therefore, Athens had a stronger navy and the Spartans had a
stronger army.
A series of disputes finally led to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in 431
B.C. The struggle would lasted for another 27 years. A crushing blow came in 405 B.C.,
when the Athenian fleet was destroyed at Aegospotami. Within the next year, Athens
surrendered. Its walls were torn down, its navy disbanded, and the Athenian empire
destroyed. The great war was finally over.
The Peloponnesian War weakened the major Greek states and ruined any
possibility of cooperation among them. During the next 70 years, Sparta, Athens, and
Thebes (a new Greek power) struggled to dominate Greek affairs, ignoring the growing
power of Macedonia to their north. This oversight would cost them their freedom.
The Golden Age of Greece
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Under Pericles, who was a dominant figure in Athenian politics between 461 and
429 B.C., Athens expanded its new empire abroad and democracy flourished at home.
This "Age of Pericles" saw the height of Athenian power and brilliance. Under Pericles,
Athens became the center of Greek culture. During Athens' Golden Age, drama,
sculpture, poetry, philosophy, architecture and science all reached new heights. For 50
years (480-430 B.C.), Athens experienced a growth in intellectual and artistic learning.
The artistic and literary legacies continue to inspire and instruct people around the
world.
Philosophy- Some Greek thinkers denied that events were caused by the whims of
the gods. Instead, they used observation and reason to find causes for what happened.
The Greeks called these thinkers philosophers, meaning "lovers of wisdom." In the 5th
and 4th centuries B.C., the philosophers- Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle- raised basic
questions that have been debated for two thousand years.
"The unexamined life is not worth living," declared Socrates (469-399 B.C.). He
encouraged those around him to question their deepest beliefs and ideas. He walked
around the marketplace, questioning fellow citizens. This questioning process is known
today as the Socratic method. To Socrates, it was a way to help others seek truth and
self-knowledge by using their own reason. This belief in the individual's ability to reason
was an important contribution of the Greeks.
Plato (427-347 B.C.) was a student of Socrates who wrote down Socrates'
conversations. Plato later set up an Academy, a school that survived for almost 900
years. There he taught and emphasized the importance of reason. Considered by many
the greatest philosopher of Western civilization, Plato's writings dominated philosophic
thought in Europe for nearly 1,500 years.
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) was Plato's most famous student. Aristotle promoted
reason as the guiding force for learning. Aristotle came close to summarizing all the
knowledge up to his time. When the first universities evolved in Europe some 1,500
years later, their courses were largely based on the works of Aristotle. Until the 17th
century, science in the Western world remained largely based on Aristotle's ideas.
Arts and Architecture- The arts of the Western world have been largely
dominated by the standards set by the Greeks. Classical Greek art was concerned with
expressing eternal ideals. The most famous building, regarded as the greatest example of
the classical Greek temple, was the Parthenon (built 447-432 B.C.). It was dedicated to
Athena, the patron goddess of Athens. The Parthenon shows the principles of classical
architecture: the search for calmness, clarity, and freedom from unnecessary detail.
Sculpture also flourished during the Hellenistic age. Rulers, wealthy merchants,
and cities all purchased statues to honor the gods, commemorate heroes, and portray
ordinary people in everyday situations. The only Greek paintings to survive are on
vases and other pottery. They offer intriguing views of Greek life.
Literature and Poetry- In literature, as in art, the ancient Greeks set the standard
for what later Europeans called the classic style. Ever since, writers and artists in the
western world have studied the elegance, harmony, and balance of Greek works. Greek
literature began with the epics of Homer, whose stirring tales inspired later writers.
Theater- Perhaps the most important Greek contribution to literature, though,
was in the field of drama. The Greeks invented drama and built the first theaters in the
west. Theatrical productions in Athens were both an expression of civic pride and a
tribute to the gods. Plays were performed outdoors in large theaters carved out of the
sides of hills. There was little or no scenery. Actors wore elaborate costumes and
stylized masks. A chorus responded to the action by singing or chanting commentary
between scenes. Greek dramas were often based on popular myths and legends.
Through these familiar stories, playwrights discussed moral and social issues or explored
the relationship between people and the gods.
The Greeks wrote two kinds of drama- tragedy and comedy. A tragedy was a
serious drama about common themes such as love, hate, war, or betrayal. They examined
such problems as the nature of good and evil, the rights of the individual, the nature of
divine forces, and the nature of human beings. The greatest Athenian playwrights were
Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.
In contrast to Greek tragedies, a comedy contained scenes filled with slap-stick
situations and crude humor. Playwrights often made fun of customs, politics, respected
people, or ideas of the time. Comedy tried to make a point, intending to both entertain
and provoke a reaction. Through ridicule, they criticized society, much as political
cartoons do today. Almost all surviving Greek comedies were written by Aristophanes.
History- The Greeks applied observation, reason, and logic to the study of history.
History as we know it- as a systematic analysis of past events- was created in the Western
world by the Greeks. Herodotus is often called the "Father of History." Herodotus was
the author of History of the Persian Wars, a work commonly regarded as the first real
history in Western civilization.
Math and Science- The Hellenistic age saw important advances in the sciences
and mathematics. Hellenistic thinkers built on earlier Greek, Babylonian, and Egyptian
knowledge. Astronomy and mathematics were two areas of progress. Euclid was a
highly regarded mathematician. His best-known book, the Elements, contained 465
carefully presented geometry propositions and proofs. Euclid's work is still the basis for
courses in geometry.
Pythagoras derived a formula (a2 + b2 = c2) that is still used to calculate the
relationship between the sides of a right triangle. The most famous Hellenistic scientist,
Archimedes of Syracuse, applied principles of physics to make practical inventions. He
mastered the use of the lever and the compound pulley to lift heavy objects. Archimedes
accurately estimated the value of pi- the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its
diameter.
Medicine- The Greek physician Hippocrates studied the cause of illnesses and
looked for cures. His Hippocratic oath set ethical standards for doctors. Doctors today
take a similar oath.
Alexander the Great
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Macedonia was a powerful kingdom north of Greece. During Phillip II's reign as
king, Macedonia took over Greece. Phillip had always dreamed of uniting Greece under
Macedonia because he admired Greek culture so much. After he took over Greece,
Phillip and the Greek states planned a war to conquer the Persian empire. But before
Phillip could invade Asia, he was assassinated. His son, Alexander, took the throne.
Alexander was only 20 years old when he became the king of Macedonia. His
father had taught him everything he needed to know about military strategy. Alexander
hurried to carry out his father's plan of invading the Persian empire. In 334 B.C.,
Alexander moved into Asia Minor with a large army of Macedonians and Greeks. By
331 B.C., Alexander had taken over the Persian empire, which included Syria, Palestine,
Egypt, and Babylon.
The young king wanted to conquer more than just the Persian empire. He decided
to take over India, too. Alexander led his troops into India, where they fought many
difficult battles in 326 B.C. The soldiers grew tired of fighting and refused to go any
further. Alexander agreed to go home, and the troops returned to Babylon. After a long
march home, Alexander died in Babylon at the age of 32 in 323 B.C. He suffered from
battle wounds, fever, and exhaustion.
What explains Alexander's extraordinary military success? No doubt, he was a
great military leader- a master of strategy and tactics, fighting in every kind of terrain and
facing every kind of opponent. Alexander was a brave and even reckless fighter who
was quite willing to lead his men into battle and risk his own life. His example
inspired his men to follow him into unknown lands and difficult situations.
Alexander accomplished a lot in his short life. In addition to conquering many
lands, he created a new age called the Hellenistic Era. Hellenistic means "to imitate
Greeks." As the army conquered areas, the Greeks built new cities and military
settlements. Thousands of Greek colonists moved to these cities and helped introduce
Greek culture to Asia. Greek culture, including language, architecture, literature, and art,
spread over a large area of the Asian continent. The cultural influences did not, however
flow in only one direction. The Greeks also absorbed aspects of Eastern culture.
The Hellenistic Era was a time of great cultural accomplishment. Alexander built
Alexandria, as the Greek capital of Egypt. The largest city in the Mediterranean region
by the first century B.C., it became home to poets, writers, philosophers, and scientists.
Holding more than 700,000 scrolls, the library in Alexandria was the largest of ancient
times. Great steps were made in science. The most famous scientist of the era was
Archimedes. He established the value of the mathematical constant pi and mastered the
use of the lever.
The united empire that Alexander created fell apart soon after he died.
Macedonian generals struggled for power, and several Hellenistic kingdoms emerged.
These kingdoms included Macedonia, Egypt, and the Syria. All were eventually
conquered by the Romans.
The Roman Republic
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In 509 B.C., the Romans overthrew the last Etruscan king who had ruled Rome for
years. Because their last king was a tyrant, Romans said they would never have a king
again. Instead, the Romans came up with a different kind of government. They started a
republic, a form of government in which citizens choose their leaders by voting. This
was the beginning of a new era in Rome's history.
Early Rome was divided into two groups, the patricians and the plebeians. Made
up of rich landowners, the patricians were Rome's ruling class. Craftspeople, merchants,
and farmers formed a larger group called the plebeians. Males in both groups were
citizens and could vote.
A select group of 300 patricians made up early Rome's Senate which helped run
the government. Membership was for life, and the Senate had the power to pass laws.
The Roman Republic had several people's assemblies in addition to the Senate. These
assemblies eventually gained the power to pass laws for all of Rome as well.
Instead of a king, the chief executives of the Roman Republic were consuls. Two
consuls, elected each year, ran the government and the army. The two consuls had to
agree on each decision they made. In times of war, the Senate could elect a dictator who
had complete control over the government and the army. A Roman dictator could rule
for six months. After that time, he had to give up his power.
One of Rome's greatest contributions to the world is its system of law. The Roman
Republic's first set of written laws was called the Twelve Tables. Laws were carved on
twelve stone tablets, or tables. The Romans established the idea that all free citizens had
the right to be protected by the law.
Under Roman law, a person was thought to be innocent until proven guilty. People
accused of crimes could defend themselves in front of a judge. A judge was expected to
think carefully about evidence before making a decision in a case. These ideas continued
long after the end of the Roman Republic. Many of today's standards of justice were
established in early Rome.
Roman law is not the only thing that was passed down through the centuries. The
Roman Republic itself set an example for later governments in Europe and the Americas.
For example, the United States and the Roman Republic share some characteristics. Both
governments have elected officials, branches of government, and a basic law that governs
the land
At the beginning of the republic, Rome was surrounded by enemies. For the rest of
its history, Rome was engaged in almost continuous warfare. By 264 B.C., they had
conquered virtually all of Italy. Why was Rome successful? First, the Romans were
good diplomats. They were shrewd in extending Roman citizenship and allowing states
to run their own internal affairs. Second, the Romans excelled in military matters. They
were not only accomplished soldiers but also persistent ones. Finally, in law and politics,
as in conquest, the Romans were practical.
From 264 to 146 B.C., Rome and Carthage fought a series of three wars known as
the Punic Wars in which Rome was ultimately victorious. Carthage was a powerful and
rich trading center started by the Phoenicians. It was located in North Africa along the
Mediterranean Sea. By the middle of the third century B.C., it was the only remaining
threat to Roman supremacy in the western Mediterranean. During the First Punic War,
Rome built a powerful navy and destroyed the great sea power of Carthage. In the
Second Punic War, Hannibal, the Carthaginian military genius, invaded the Italian
peninsula. After several victories, though, he was defeated. However, the Carthaginians
did not give up. In 150 B.C., they attacked a Roman ally. In response, Rome invaded
North Africa and laid siege to Carthage. Most of the city's people starved to death.
Rome sold the rest into slavery and burned the city.
By the second century B.C., Rome had many economic and social problems. The
government was run by the leading wealthy families of Rome for their own benefit. Two
brothers, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus (known together as the Gracchi brothers), tried but
eventually failed to help the poor people of Rome.
Changes in the Roman army soon brought even worse problems. A Roman
general named Marius began to recruit his armies in a new way. Marius created a new
type of army that was not under government control. Sulla was the next general to take
advantage of this new military system. His example of using an army to seize power
would prove most attractive to ambitious men. For the next 50 years (82-31 B.C.),
Roman history was characterized by civil wars as a number of individuals competed for
power. Three men- Crassus, Pompey, and Julius Caesar- emerged as victors.
Julius Caesar was a great military leader and one of Rome's most famous rulers.
He was the brilliant general who conquered parts of Gaul (France) and crossed the
English Channel into Britain. He hoped that his military successes would someday make
him ruler of Rome. Beginning in 60 B.C., Rome was ruled by the First Triumvirate.
This was a partnership of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus. Envious of Caesar's conquests
and suspicious of his intentions, Pompey discredited Caesar by turning the Roman Senate
against him. Caesar, in turn, declared war on Pompey and the Senate and quickly took
control. With Crassus already dead, Caesar then had himself named dictator for life.
During his short two-year rule, Caesar showed his great political abilities by
beginning many reforms. However, his trappings of monarchy angered many people.
Finally, on March 15, 44 B.C., a group of senators stabbed Caesar to death on the floor of
the Senate. A new struggle for power followed Caesar's death.
Three men- Octavian, Antony, and Lepidus - joined forces to form the Second
Triumvirate. Within a few years after Caesar's death, however, only two men divided the
Roman world between them. Octavian took the west; Antony, the east. The empire of
the Romans, large as it was, was still too small for two masters. Octavian and Antony
soon came into conflict. Antony allied himself with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. At
the Battle of Actium in Greece in 31 B.C., Octavian's forces smashed the army and navy
of Antony and Cleopatra. Both fled to Egypt, where they committed suicide a year later.
Octavian, at the age of 32, stood supreme over the Roman world. The civil wars
had ended. So too had the republic.
The Roman Empire
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In 27 B.C., Octavian proclaimed the "restoration of the Republic." However, he
was aware that the republic could not be fully restored. Although he gave some power to
the Senate, Octavian in fact became the first Roman emperor. In 27 B.C., the Senate
awarded him the title of Augustus- "the revered one," a fitting title in view of his power.
Augustus proved to be highly popular, but his continuing control of the army was
the chief source of his power. The Senate gave Augustus the title imperator, or
commander in chief. Imperator gave us our word emperor. Augustus maintained a
standing army of 28 legions, or about 150,000 men.
Augustus's new political system allowed the emperor to select his successor from
his natural or adopted family. The first four emperors after Augustus came from his
family. They were Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. During their reigns, these
emperors took over more of the responsibilities that Augustus had given to the Senate.
At the same time, as the emperors grew more powerful, they became more corrupt.
At the beginning of the second century, a series of five so-called "good emperors"
came to power. They were Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus
Aurelius. These emperors created a period of peace and prosperity known as the Pax
Romana- the "Roman Peace." The Pax Romana lasted for almost a hundred years from
96 to 180 A.D. These emperors made good the idea that a single dedicated individual,
with unlimited government power, could make positive reforms in the vast, diverse
peoples and territory ruled by Rome. This has led some historians, such as Edward
Gibbon, to call the Pax Romana "the period in the history of the world during which the
condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous."
These emperors usually kept ambitious generals under control and minimized new
territorial expansion. Thus, the Pax Romana was an era of peace compared to the years
of military expansion that came before it, and the civil wars and invasions that came after
200 C.E. The movement of people and trade goods along Roman roads and across safe
seas allowed for the spread of culture, trade, technology and religious ideas. This was
when Christianity became an international religion.
At its height in the second century, the Roman empire was one of the greatest
states the world had ever seen. It covered about three and a half million square miles and
had a population that has been estimated at more than fifty million. The government
encouraged trade. Roman commerce thrived. Great public works, such as roads, bridges,
and aqueducts were built. The frontiers were guarded by well-trained armies. Cities
grew greatly in both size and number. While the emperors and the imperial government
provided a degree of unity, much leeway was given to local customs, and the privileges
of Roman citizenship were granted to many people throughout the empire.
Cities were important in the spread of Roman culture, Roman law, and the Latin
language. Latin was the language of the western part of the empire, whereas Greek was
used in the east. Roman culture spread to all parts of the empire and freely mixed with
Greek culture. The result has been called Greco-Roman civilization.
The Romans excelled in architecture. Although they continued to use Greek styles
such as colonnades and rectangular buildings, the Romans also used forms based on
curved lines: the arch, vault, and dome. The Romans were the first people in antiquity to
use concrete on a massive scale. Using concrete along with the new architectural forms
made it possible for the Romans to construct huge buildings undreamed of by the Greeks.
One of the most famous public buildings is the Colosseum in Rome. This amphitheater
could seat about 45,000 people to watch animal hunts and gladiator fights.
The remarkable engineering skills of the Romans were also put to use in
constructing roads, bridges, and aqueducts. The Romans built a network of some 50,000
miles of roads throughout the empire. Until the 1800s, the old Roman roads were the
best highways in Europe. In Rome, almost a dozen aqueducts kept a population of one
million supplied with water.
Rome boasted public buildings unequaled anywhere in the empire. Its temples,
markets, baths, theaters, government buildings, and amphitheaters gave parts of the city
an appearance of grandeur and magnificence. Although it was the center of a great
empire, Rome had serious problems too. The poor of the city lived in crowded slums.
Their tenements (apartment buildings) were subject to frequent fires and must have been
damp, dark and smelly, with few furnishings. Beginning with Augustus, the emperors
provided food for the city poor. Even so, conditions remained grim for the poor.
Entertainment was provided on a grand scale for the inhabitants of Rome. The
poet Juvenal said of the Roman masses, "But nowadays, with no vote ... there's only two
things that concern them: Bread and Circuses." Public spectacles were provided by the
emperor. The games served to keep the minds of the idle masses off any political unrest.
These festivals included three major types of entertainment. At the Circus
Maximus, horse and chariot races attracted hundreds of thousands. Dramatic
performances were held in theaters. The most famous of all the public spectacles,
however, were the gladiatorial shows.
Gladiatorial shows were an important part of Roman society. They took place in
amphitheaters (similar in appearance to our modern football stadiums). Contests between
trained fighters, or gladiators, formed the central focus of these games. Most gladiators
were slaves or condemned criminals who had been trained for combat in special schools.
Gladiatorial games included other forms of entertainment as well. Criminals of all ages
and both sexes were sent into the arena without weapons to face certain death from wild
animals. Numerous kinds of animal hunts were also held.
The achievement of the Romans in the ancient world was truly remarkable, but
their Empire could not last forever. Eventually the pressure of attack from hordes of
barbarian invaders from the east and the north, as well as weaknesses within the system
of government, caused it to collapse.
The modern world owes a great deal to the world of Rome, for so much of its law,
politics, architecture, art and literature is rooted there. One of the enduring consequences
of this empire was the spread of the Roman language, Latin. The language of the
conquerors was gradually taken on by people in the conquered provinces in the form of
modern Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, and Romanian.
Judaism & Christianity
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The Roman empire had an official religion that focused on the worship of several
gods and goddesses. As the Roman empire conquered its neighbors, it took over the
lands of people with different religions. At the time, most religions had more than one
god. Many conquered peoples did not mind honoring Roman gods along with their own.
However, in one of the conquered areas, Judea, Jewish people refused to follow Rome's
religion. It was against their religion to worship many gods.
Judaism was the first monotheistic religion- the Jews believe in only one God.
According to Jewish beliefs, there is but one God, called Yahweh, the Creator of the
world and everything in it. God was just and good, and he expected goodness from his
people. If they did not obey his will, they would be punished. However, he was also a
God of mercy and love. Each person could have a personal relationship with this
powerful being.
The covenant, law, and prophets were three aspects of the Jewish religious
tradition. The Jews believed that during the exodus from Egypt, when Moses led his
people out of slavery, toward the promised land, God made a covenant, or contract, with
them. Yahweh promised to guide them if they obeyed the law of God stated in the Ten
Commandments. According to the Bible, Yahweh gave these commandments to Moses
on Mount Sinai.
The Jews believed that certain religious teachers, called prophets, were sent by
God to serve as his voice to his people. The prophets also cried out against social
injustice. They condemned the rich for causing the poor to suffer. They denounced
luxuries as worthless, and they threatened Israel with prophecies of dire punishments for
these sins. They said that God's command was to live justly, share with one's neighbors,
care for the poor and the unfortunate, and act with compassion.
In the Jewish tradition, God's wishes, though communicated to the people through
prophets, had all been written down. No spiritual leader could claim that he alone knew
God's will. This knowledge was open to anyone who could read the Torah (the
Pentateuch), the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.
A Jewish man named Jesus traveled and preached about God in Judea and Galilee.
Jesus said that believing in God would bring eternal life. He told people that they should
show sympathy and mercy to the poor and helpless. According to Jesus, what was
important was not strict obedience to the letter of the law but the transformation of the
inner person: "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for
this sums up the Law and the Prophets."
God's command was to love God and one another. Jesus said, "Love the Lord your
God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your
strength. This is the first commandment. The second is this: Love your neighbor as
yourself." Jesus voiced the ethical concepts- humility, charity, and love toward othersthat would later shape the values of Western civilization.
Eventually, his speeches made Roman leaders angry. They thought Jesus might
lead a Jewish political revolt against Rome. The Roman government ordered Jesus to be
put to death. After Jesus' crucifixion, his followers said that Jesus had risen from the
dead and appeared to them. They believed that Jesus was their savior. Christianity, a
religion based on Jesus' teachings, began to spread.
After Jesus' death, Christian leaders took up where Jesus left off and continued to
preach his message. Peter was recognized as the leader of the apostles. Another apostle,
Paul, took the message of Jesus to Gentiles (non-Jews) as well as to Jews. He founded
Christian communities throughout Asia Minor and along the shores of the Aegean Sea.
At the center of Paul's message was the belief that Jesus was the Savior, the Son of God
who had come to Earth to save humanity. Paul taught that Jesus' death made up for the
sins of all humans. By accepting Jesus as Christ (from Christos, the Greek term for
Messiah) and Savior, people could be saved from sin and reconciled to God. By 100
A.D., Christian churches had been set up in most major cities in the Roman Empire.
The teachings of early Christianity were passed on orally. Written materials also
appeared, however. Paul and other followers of Jesus had written letters, or epistles,
outlining Christian beliefs for communities they had helped found around the eastern
Mediterranean. Also, some of Jesus' disciples, or followers, may have preserved some of
the sayings of Jesus in writing and passed on personal memories. Later, between A.D. 40
and 100, these accounts became the basis of the written Gospels- the "good news"
concerning Jesus. These writings give a record of Jesus' life and teachings, and they form
the core of the New Testament, the second part of the Christian Bible.
The Roman empire let people practice other religions as long as they did not cause
any trouble. However, Roman officials decided that Christianity was harmful because
Christians refused to worship state gods. Government leaders saw this as treason, or
political disloyalty. The punishment for treason was death.
The Roman government began to persecute Christians, or make them suffer. Many
Christians were killed for their beliefs. The persecution in the first and second centuries
did not stop the growth of Christianity. Christianity was appealing to many people,
especially the poor and powerless, so the religion grew.
Christianity proved attractive to all classes, but especially to the poor and
powerless. Eternal life was promised to all- rich, poor, aristocrats, slaves, men, and
women. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither
male nor female, for you are all one in Jesus Christ." Although Christianity did not call
for revolution, it stressed a sense of spiritual equality for all people, which was a
revolutionary idea.
After years of persecution, Roman officials eventually understood that Christianity
could not be destroyed by force. In the fourth century, Constantine became the first
Christian emperor of Rome. One legend says that before a victorious battle in 312 A.D.,
Constantine had a vision. The vision told him to fight under the sign of the cross, which
he did. Believing this to be a sign from God, Constantine became a Christian. In 313
A.D., he passed the Edict of Milan, which allowed Christianity. Less than 80 years later,
under Theodosius the Great, Christianity became Rome's official religion.
Decline and Fall of Rome
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More than 1,500 years ago, the western half of the Roman empire crumbled into
ruin. Ever since, people have tried to understand why. At the time, the spectacle of
decay and defeat left Romans stunned. "Who would believe ... that Rome, built upon the
conquest of the whole world, would itself fall to the ground?" The end of greatness was a
catastrophe for Romans, but it did not happen overnight. Decay had set in centuries
before the final fall.
Historians generally agree that the Roman empire began its decline at the end of
the reign of the last of the Five Good Emperors, Marcus Aurelius. The rulers that
followed in the next century had little or no idea of how to deal with the problems facing
the empire. Most were brutal and incompetent. They left the empire greatly weakened.
Throughout this period invaders threatened the borders and civil war tore at the empire.
Political Weakness
During most of the A.D. 200s, the empire experienced dreadful confusion and civil
war. The army contributed to the decline by interfering with the choice of emperor and
making the government unstable. Ambitious generals often seized control, assassinated
the emperor, and assumed the throne. Only to rule for a few months or years, before
being overthrown by a rival commander. During the fifty years, from 235 to 284, armies
in the provinces and in Rome proclaimed 50 generals to be emperors . Of these "barracks
emperors," 26 briefly reigned; 25 died violently.
Oppressive public service added to the problem. As the government became more
authoritarian, it lost the support of the people. Growing numbers of corrupt officials
undermined loyalty, too. Perhaps most important, dividing the empire in 395 at a time
when it was under attack may have weakened it beyond repair.
Military Weaknesses
The most obvious cause of Rome's collapse was the Germanic invasions in the
300-400s. However, tribes of barbarians had lived on the frontiers throughout the time of
both the Republic and the Empire. Their numbers were small compared to the millions of
people who lived within the empire. Not until the empire had declined were the mass of
barbarians able to break through the frontiers.
The barbarian invasions were successful in part because Roman legions of the late
empire lacked the discipline and training of past Roman armies. Soldiers gave their
loyalty not to Rome but to their commanders, who fought among themselves for the
throne. The common soldiers lost a sense of loyalty to Rome and instead served anyone
who could pay them more.
To defend against the increasing threats to the empire, armies were needed more
than ever, but financial strains made it difficult to pay and enlist more soldiers. To meet
its need for soldiers, Rome hired mercenaries, or foreign soldiers (usually German
barbarians) serving for pay, to defend its borders. While mercenaries would accept lower
pay, they felt little sense of loyalty to the empire.
Economic Decline
Barbarian invasions, civil wars, and plague came close to causing an economic
collapse of the Roman Empire in the third century. During the Pax Romana, bustling
trade flowed over routes patrolled by Roman legions and ships. Rome's treasuries were
enriched by gold and silver taken from conquered territories. Most important of all, the
empire's farms grew enough grain to feed the population of the cities. During the third
century A.D., all three sources of prosperity evaporated.
There was a noticeable decline in trade. Travel became unsafe, and merchants
hesitated to send goods by land or sea. Frequent wars were costly. The wealthy spent
money on luxury goods from China, India, and Arabia. This spending drained the empire
of gold and silver. The defense and maintenance of the empire was very expensive. The
problem was made worse once the empire stopped expanding, since there were no new
sources of precious metals.
Desperate to pay its mounting expenses, including the rising cost of defense, the
government raised taxes. Heavy taxes crushed the people. But even heavy taxes could
not provide enough money.
To maintain the money supply, emperors minted coins that contained less and less
silver. It hoped to create more money with the same amount of precious metal. By 270 a
silver coin contained little actual silver. To receive the same amount of silver as before,
merchants raised their prices. A rise in prices caused by a decrease in the value of money
is called inflation. Inflation became so severe in some parts of the empire that people
stopped using money and reverted to barter.
When trade declined, manufacturing suffered and both eventually disappeared.
Agriculture suffered the same fate as trade and commerce. Harvests in western Europe
became increasingly small because the overworked soil had lost its fertility. Farm
production declined as fields were ravaged by invaders or, even more often, by the
defending Roman armies. The rural population grew even poorer than before.
Small farmers- once the strength of the empire- gradually lost their lands to a few
very powerful landowners. The higher taxes imposed by the government to support the
army and the bureaucracy caused many poor farmers to abandon their lands. As poor
farmers left their land, they sought the protection of wealthy landowners. Living on large
estates, they worked for the landowner and farmed a small plot for themselves. Although
technically free, they were not allowed to leave the land.
Serious food shortages resulted for all of these reasons. Eventually, disease spread
and the population declined. With the decline in population, a danger that there might
not be enough farmers arose. The emperor refused to permit farmers who inherited their
land to leave it. The people in the cities fared no better. Many artisans or craftsmen tried
to leave their jobs in the cities to find work in the country. To prevent this the
government made craftwork not only compulsory but also hereditary.
Population decreased throughout the empire, partly because a great plague spread
through the provinces and caused several million deaths. Plague wiped out one-tenth of
the population. A labor shortage created by plague affected both military recruitment and
the economy.
Economically, the empire suffered as heavier and heavier taxes were required to
support the vast government bureaucracy and huge military. The wealth of the empire
itself dwindled as farmers abandoned their land and the middle classes sank into poverty.
The Roman economy did not produce enough wealth to support a great civilization
permanently. Wealth was concentrated in too few hands, and poverty steadily increased.
Social Decay
For centuries, worried Romans pointed to the decline in values such as patriotism,
discipline, and devotion to duty on which the empire was built. Most took little interest
in the government. They became apathetic to the empire's fate.
When the barbarians invaded the empire, Roman armies fought heroically, but
when they lost, the empire lacked the leadership to recover. Moreover, morale collapsed
because of the grinding oppression of the government. Taxes and public service crushed
the urban middle class. The farmers paid heavy taxes, while the great landowners did not
pay their share. Yet the government seemed to be unable to change.
The Reforms
The Roman empire would probably have collapsed in the late A. D. 200s except
for the efforts of two able emperors, Diocletian and Constantine. Their reforms slowed
the empire's decline and postponed the collapse for nearly 200 years. The Roman empire
had gained a new lease on life; however, the empire was changed. It had a new
governmental structure, a rigid economic and social system, and a new state religionChristianity. Still, the reforms failed to stop the long-term decline.
After Constantine's death in A. D. 337, the empire enjoyed some 50 years of
stability. However, inefficiency and corruption continued to plague the government, and
the poor suffered greatly. By A.D. 400, two empires existed, one in the West and one in
the East. The East would survive; the West would fall.
The Fall
It might seem that the western Roman Empire would have fallen apart from inner
weaknesses alone. However, pressures from the outside also mounted.
Wars in East Asia set off a chain of events that would eventually overwhelm
Rome, thousands of miles to the west. Those wars sent the Huns, a nomadic people,
migrating across Central Asia. By 350, the Huns reached eastern Europe. The nomadic
Huns lived by raiding and plundering, and their fierceness terrified the people of Europe.
Pressure by the Huns pushed many German tribes into the empire in 376.
Increasing numbers of Germans now crossed the frontiers and occupied large parts
of the western Roman empire. In 476, the western emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was
overthrown by the Germanic leader of the army, Odoacer. Because of this event, people
sometimes refer to the "fall" of the Roman Empire as being in 476. The Western Empire
broke into separate states that were ruled by many different German tribes.
Although we talk of the "fall" of Rome, the Roman empire did not disappear from
the map. An emperor in Constantinople still ruled the Eastern Roman empire, which later
became known as the Byzantine empire, and lasted for another 1,000 years until 1453.
Islam
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The Arabs were nomadic people who lived in the Arabian Peninsula. By the 600s
A.D., communities began to grow as trade increased. The city of Mecca became an
important stop on a trade route. A mix of people, including Christians and Jews, lived in
Mecca. The idea of believing in one God, who was called Allah in Arabic, was not new
to Arabia. Mecca was a mixed religious environment around 570, when Muhammad was
born.
Muhammad had a great interest in religion. He often spent time alone praying or
meditating. When Muhammad was about 40 years old, he went to the hills to meditate.
Muhammad said that while he was meditating, Allah sent him a message. In this
message, Allah told Muhammad that Allah was the one and only God. He said that
people should abandon all other gods and worship only Allah.
Muhammad came to believe that Allah had already revealed himself in part
through Moses and Jesus- and thus through the Hebrew and Christian traditions. He
believed, however, that the final revelations of Allah were now being given to him. Out
of these revelations, which were written down, came the Quran, the holy book of the
religion of Islam. The Quran contains the ethical guidelines and laws by which the
followers of Allah are to live.
Muhammad came back from the hills and said he was a prophet of Allah. He
began to preach that everyone should follow him and convert to Islam. "Islam" means
"submission to the will of Allah." Followers of Islam are called Muslims.
Some people did not like Muhammad's beliefs and acted violently toward him and
his followers. Muhammad became discouraged by the persecution of his followers, as
well as by the failure of the Meccans to accept his message. He and some of his closest
supporters left Mecca and moved north to Yathrib, later renamed Medina (city of the
prophet), in 622. This journey is known as the Hijrah.
As he gathered more followers, Muhammad became both a religious and a political
leader. Muhammad also built an army to defend his followers. The Muslims took over
Mecca in 630, and most of its people converted to Islam. During a visit to the Kaaba,
Muhammad declared it a sacred shrine of Islam. Two years later, as Islam began to
spread throughout the Arabian Peninsula, Muhammad died.
Islam is a direct and simple faith, stressing the need to obey the will of Allah. This
means practicing acts of worship known as the Five Pillars of Islam. The faithful who
follow the law are guaranteed a place in an eternal paradise.
1. Belief- Believing there is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger
2. Prayer- Performing the prescribed prayers five times a day
3. Charity- Giving part of one's wealth to the poor
4. Fasting- Not eating or drinking from dawn to sunset during the month of
Ramadan
5. Pilgrimage- Making a pilgrimage to Mecca once in a lifetime.
After Muhammad's death, the Arabs were left with a problem. Muhammad had not
said who should take over after him. His father-in-law, Abu Bakr, was chosen to be the
new leader. He was named caliph, or successor to Muhammad. Under Abu Bakr, the
Muslims expanded throughout Arabia and beyond.
The Muslims defeated the Byzantine army and took control of Syria. They then
took Egypt. By 650, the Arabs had conquered the entire Persian empire. The Arabs, led
by a series of brilliant generals, had put together a large, dedicated army. The courage of
the Arab soldiers was enhanced by the belief that Muslim warriors were assured a place
in Paradise if they died in battle.
Early caliphs ruled their far-flung empire from Medina. After Abu Bakr died,
problems arose over who should become the next caliph. There were no clear successors,
and the first two caliphs to rule after his death were assassinated. In 656, Ali,
Muhammad's son-in-law, was chosen to be caliph, but he too was assassinated.
In 661, the general Mu'awiyah, one of Ali's chief rivals, became caliph. He moved
quickly to make the caliphate hereditary in his own family. In doing this, he established
the Umayyad dynasty. He then moved the capital of the Arab Empire from Medina to
Damascus, in Syria. North Africa and Spain were brought under Arab rule during the
Umayyad dynasty.
In spite of Umayyad successes, internal struggles threatened the empire's stability.
Many Muslims of non-Arab background did not like the way the government favored the
Arabs. An important revolt took place in present-day Iraq in 680. It was led by Hussein,
second son of Ali- the son-in-law of Muhammad. Hussein's tiny force fought
courageously, but all died. This struggle led to a split of Islam into two groups. The
Shiite Muslims accept only the descendants of Ali as the true rulers of Islam. The Sunni
Muslims accepted the Umayyads as rulers. This political split led to the development of
two branches of Muslims that remains to the present. The Sunnis are a majority in the
Muslim world, but most of the people in Iraq and Iran consider themselves to be Shiites.
Resentment against Umayyad rule grew. The Umayyads also helped bring about
their own end by their corrupt behavior. In 750, Abu al-Abbas, a descendant of
Muhammad's uncle, overthrew the Umayyads and set up the Abbasid dynasty, which
lasted until 1258. In 762, the Abbasids built a new capital city at Baghdad, on the Tigris
River. The new capital was well placed. It took advantage of river traffic to the Persian
Gulf and was located on the caravan route from the Mediterranean to central Asia.
The Abbasid dynasty experienced a period of splendid rule during the ninth
century. Best known of the caliphs of the time was Harun al-Rashid, whose reign is often
described as the golden age of the Abbasid caliphate. This was also a period of growing
prosperity. The Arabs had conquered many of the richest provinces of the Roman
empire, and they now controlled the trade routes to the East. Baghdad became the center
of an enormous trade empire that extended into Asia, Africa, and Europe, greatly adding
to the riches of the Islamic world.
Despite its prosperity, all was not well in the empire of the Abbasids. Eventually,
rulers of the provinces of the Abbasid Empire began to break away from the central
authority and establish independent dynasties- Spain in 750 and Egypt in 973.
The Golden Age of Islam
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Before the rise of western European civilization, Islamic civilization was the major
force spreading ideas, ways of life, and knowledge throughout the known world. Just as
importantly, Islam created a cultural umbrella, under which different peoples from lands
stretching from Africa to India could share their ways of life united by a common religion
and common language. The people of the Islamic world grew intensely proud of their
achievements.
Islam was able to combine and spread cultures so remarkably well for two major
reasons. First, its geographic location was ideal. Perhaps more important, however, was
the character of the Islamic religion. Islam led to at least four practices that enhanced
cultural diffusion: Muslims tolerated other religions and cultures; they made pilgrimages
to Mecca; they had to learn Arabic to read the Quran (Koran); and they valued trade as a
livelihood.
Many Muslims were excellent scholars who traded just as expertly in words and
ideas. One of Muhammad's sayings was, "The ink of the scholar is holier than the blood
of the martyr." By recording, preserving, translating, and interpreting ideas from
different cultures, Islamic scholars not only contributed to cultural diffusion, but also
made many impressive intellectual achievements.
"Seek knowledge even as far as China," declared Muhammad. Although he could
not read and write, his respect for learning set the tone for Muslim civilization. The
Prophet's emphasis on study and scholarship led to strong support of places of learning
by Muslim leaders. Both the Umayyads and Abbasids encouraged scholars to collect and
translate scientific and philosophical texts. In the early 800s, Caliph al-Mamun opened in
Baghdad a combination library, academy, and translation center called the House of
Wisdom. Al-Mamun and later caliphs made Baghdad into the greatest Muslim center of
learning. Other cities, like Cairo, Bukhara, Timbuktu, and Cordoba, had their own
centers of learning.
After the fall of Rome in A.D. 476, Europe entered a period of upheaval and chaos,
an era in which scholarship suffered. The scientific knowledge gained up to that time
might have been lost. Thanks to Muslim leaders and scholars, much of that knowledge
was preserved and expanded. Muslims, especially in Cordoba and Baghdad, set the stage
for a later revival of European learning.
Philosophy- One of the important results of Islamic scholarship was the
development of Islamic philosophy. From the ninth century on, Islamic scholars were
busy translating works of philosophy and science from Greek, Persian, and Indian
sources. The translation of Greek philosophy, especially the work of Aristotle, caused a
debate among Islamic scholars about the best path to truth. Islamic tradition held that the
only truth was through faith in the revealed word of Allah. Greek tradition suggested,
however, that human beings could gain truth through reason. Islamic philosophers, like
Ibn Rushd, tried to combine the two approaches long before Christian thinkers in
medieval Europe tried to do the same.
Literature- The Quran (Koran) itself was a major contribution to literature. The
Quran, held sacred by Muslims, is the standard for all Arabic literature and poetry.
Written Arabic poetry began to appear during the Abbasid Dynasty. One of the most
familiar works is the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. In this collection of four-line poems,
he meditates on fate and the fleeting nature of life. Fictional adventure stories also
played an important part in Islamic literature. The most famous of these is entitled The
Thousand and One Nights (also called The Arabian Nights). It's wonderful tales of
Aladdin and his Magic Lamp and Sinbad the Sailor are known all over the world.
Architecture- Islamic art is a blend of Arab, Turkish, and Persian traditions.
Mosques were the most important buildings in the Islamic world. They featured domes,
towers called minarets, clusters of marble columns supporting vaulted ceilings, and
pointed arches. Walls were often gilded or decorated in brilliantly colored mosaics and
tiles. In Jerusalem, they built the Dome of the Rock, a great shrine capped with a
magnificent dome. Domed mosques and high minarets dominated Muslim cities in the
same way that cathedral spires dominated medieval Christian cities.
The finest example of the Islamic palace is the 14th-century Alhambra in Granada,
Spain. Every inch of the castle's surface is decorated in floral and abstract patterns.
Much of the decoration is plasterwork that is so finely carved that it looks like lace.
Muslim artists also perfected skills in calligraphy, or the art of beautiful handwriting. In
other arts, the Muslims were especially noted for their textiles, such as wool carpets.
Math & Science- Islamic scholars also made contributions to mathematics and
the natural sciences that were passed on to the West. The Muslims adopted and passed on
the numerical system of India, including the use of the zero. In Europe, it became known
as the "Arabic" system. The greatest Muslim mathematician was al-Khwarizmi. He
created algebra (from the Arabic word al-jabr), which is still taught in schools today.
The sciences of mathematics and optics, along with scientific observation, led to
major advances in astronomy. They perfected the astrolabe, an instrument used by
sailors to determine their location by observing positions of stars and planets. The
astrolabe made it possible for Europeans to sail to the Americas. The work of Muslim
astronomers and navigators helped pave the way for later explorers like Columbus.
Medicine- While doctors in medieval Europe still drained the blood of their
patients to treat illness, Islamic physicians had developed such advanced techniques as
performing successful surgery with anesthesia. Through their own careful research and
observation, Muslim physicians added greatly to the storehouse of medical knowledge.
The greatest physician of the Muslim world and, more than likely, of world civilization
between A.D. 500 and 1500, al-Razi, studied infectious diseases carefully to find out how
they differed from one another and how best to treat each one.
Many patients from Europe and the Muslim world flocked to Cordoba in Spain,
where the surgeons had a reputation for being the best. Abulcasis wrote the first
illustrated guide to surgery, which doctors used for centuries after. Ibn Sina's gigantic
medical book, the Canon on Medicine, summed up the accomplishments of Muslim
medicine. So valuable was the book that 600 years after Ibn Sina died, students in
European medical schools were still using it as a text.
Medieval Africa
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Africa has a variety of geographical features. The huge continent is made up of
snowy mountains, deserts, tropical rain forests, grasslands, and coastal areas. Deserts
cover almost half of Africa. On the northern coast and the southern tip, a mild climate
zone provides fertile farming land. Ten percent of the continent has rain forests with
heavy rains and hot temperatures. Savannahs, or grasslands that have small trees and
shrubs, cover much of the rest of Africa
The varied regions offer many valuable resources, like salt, gold, iron, copper,
diamonds, and oil. These natural resources made Africa a perfect place for trading
empires to develop. As early civilizations grew, trade became an important part of
Africa's growth.
West Africa
Between about 800 and 1600, several powerful kingdoms won control of the
prosperous Sahara trade. Among the richest West African states were Ghana, Mali, and
Songhai.
Ghana, the first great trading state in West Africa, emerged in about 500 A.D.
Ghana controlled the gold-salt trade routes. So great was the flow of gold that Arab
writers called Ghana "land of gold." Ghana possessed one of the richest gold-producing
areas in all of Africa. Some sources estimate that until about 1350, at least two-thirds of
the world's supply of gold came from West Africa. Ghana's gold made it the center of an
enormous trade empire.
Two products, gold and salt, dominated the Sahara trade. Muslim merchants from
North Africa brought to Ghana metal goods, textiles, horses, and salt. Although rich in
gold, West Africa's savanna and forests lack salt, a material essential to human life. Salt
was used to preserve food, as well as to improve the food's taste. Salt was also important
because people needed extra salt to replace what their bodies lost in the hot tropical
climate. The Sahara had an abundance of salt. Ghanaians traded their abundant gold for
salt and other products brought from North Africa. A block of salt was easily worth its
weight in gold. Other exports from Ghana, including ivory, ostrich feathers, hides, and
slaves, also found their way to the markets of the Mediterranean and beyond.
Much of the trade across the desert was carried by the Berbers, nomadic peoples
whose camel caravans became known as the "fleets of the desert." Camels became a
crucial factor in trade across the Sahara. Camels were useful because they could drink
large amounts of water at one time. They could also travel for many days with little food.
With the camel, nomads blazed new routes across the desert and trade increased.
While Islam spread through North Africa by conquest, south of the Sahara, Islam
spread through trade. Muslim merchants introduced their faith there. Eventually,
Ghana's rulers converted to Islam. Islam's growth encouraged the spread of literacy. To
study the Qur'an, converts to Islam had to learn to read and write Arabic. Muslims also
introduced their coinage, business methods, and styles of architecture.
The state of Ghana collapsed around 1200. In its place rose a number of new
trading societies in West Africa. The greatest of these states was Mali, established in the
mid-13th century. Like Ghana's, Mali's wealth was built on gold.
One of the richest and most powerful kings was Mansa Musa, who ruled from
1307 to 1337. Mansa Musa doubled the size of the kingdom of Mali. During Mansa
Musa's 25-year reign, he worked to ensure peace and order in his empire. He decided- as
devout Muslim- to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. Through his pilgrimage, Mansa Musa
showed his devotion to Islam. At the same time, he forged new trading and diplomatic
ties with Muslim states such as Egypt and Morocco. As a result of Musa's pilgrimage,
word of Mali's enormous wealth spread across the Muslim world and into Europe.
In the 1400s, disputes over succession weakened Mali. By 1450, the wealthy
trading city of Gao had emerged as the capital of a new West African kingdom called
Songhai. It gained control of the trade in salt and gold- the trade that had made Ghana
and Mali so prosperous. The collapse of the Songhai empire in 1591 ended a 1,000-year
period in which powerful empires ruled West Africa.
East Africa
With the growth in trade following the rise of Islam during the 7th & 8th centuries
A.D., the eastern coast of Africa became an important part of the trading network in the
Indian Ocean. Muslims from the Arabian peninsula and the Persian Gulf began to settle
at ports along the coast.
By A.D. 1000, port cities like Mogadishu, Mombasa, Kilwa, and Sofala, and
offshore islands like Zanzibar, were thriving from trade across the Indian Ocean. Riding
the monsoon winds, merchant ships sailed northeast to India between April and August,
and returned to East Africa between December and March. Like the empires of West
Africa, these seaports grew wealthy by controlling all incoming and outgoing trade.
Persian traders brought Asian manufactured goods to Africa and African raw
materials to Asia. In the coastal markets, Arab traders sold porcelain bowls from China
and jewels and cotton cloth from India. They bought African ivory, gold, tortoise shell,
ambergris, leopard skins, and rhinoceros horns to carry to Arabia.
Kilwa was the wealthiest, most powerful coastal city-state. The Arab traveler Ibn
Battuta called Kilwa, which he visited in 1331, "one of the most beautiful towns in the
world." In the marketplace of Kilwa, merchants offered goods from both inland and
coastal regions. A thriving slave trade also developed. Thousands of Africans were
seized as slaves inland and sold.
International trade created a rich and varied mix of cultures in the East African
city-states. Bantu-speaking Africans mingled in the streets with traders from Arabia and
Southeast Asia. As in West Africa, Muslim traders introduced Islam to the East African
coast, and the growth of commerce caused it to spread. Gradually, the Muslim religion
and Arabic architectural styles became part of a society still largely African. As time
passed, a mixed African-Arabian culture, eventually known as Swahili, began to emerge
throughout the coastal area. The term swahili (from sahel, meaning "coast" in Arabic,
and thus "peoples of the coast") was also applied to the major language that developed in
the area.
Tang & Song China
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The Han dynasty ended in 220, and China fell into chaos. Three hundred years
later a new empire was set up. The Sui dynasty (581-618) did not rule long, but it
managed to unify China. Soon however forced labor, high taxes, and military failures
caused a rebellion. A new dynasty, the Tang emerged. It would last from 618 until 907.
The Tang rulers restored the civil service examination system to recruit officials for the
government bureaucracy. They tried to give land to the peasants and break up the power
of the large landowners. They worked hard to restore the power of China in East Asia.
However, Tang rulers were unable to prevent government corruption. Rebellions led to
the collapse of Tang rule. A new dynasty known as the Song rose to power. The Song
ruled during a period of economic prosperity and cultural achievement, from 960 to 1279.
The era from 581 to 1279 saw the development of a political system based on
practices of the Qin and Han dynasties. China was a monarchy that employed a large
bureaucracy. Confucian ideals were still the cement that held the system together.
During this period, the Chinese economy grew. Agriculture flourished, and
manufacturing and trade increased dramatically. The Silk Road thrived as caravans
carried goods back and forth between China and the rest of Eurasia.
Economic changes had an impact on Chinese society. The vast majority of the
Chinese people still lived off the land in villages, but the period saw the rise of the landed
gentry. This group controlled much of the land and at the same time produced most of
the candidates for the civil service. Called the scholar-gentry, they replaced the old
landed aristocracy as the political and economic elite of China.
During the Sui and Tang dynasties, Buddhism and Daoism rivaled the influence of
Confucianism. Merchants and missionaries brought Buddhism to China from India. The
chaos caused by the fall of the Han dynasty made both Buddhism and Daoism more
attractive. During the Song dynasty, however, Confucian ideas reemerged in a new form
and once again became dominant. Neo-Confucianism served as a Confucian response to
Buddhism and Daoism. Neo-Confucianism teaches that the world is real, not an illusion,
and that fulfillment comes not from withdrawal but from participation in the world.
The period of the Tang and Song dynasties was in many ways the great age of
Chinese literature. The invention of printing helped to make books more available and
more popular. Art, too, flourished during this period. It was in poetry, above all, that the
Chinese of this time best expressed their literary talents. The Tang dynasty is viewed as
the great age of poetry in China. At least 48,000 poems were written by 2,200 authors.
Li Bo and Duo Fu were two of the most popular poets during the Tang era.
During the Song and Mongol dynasties, landscape painting reached its high point.
Influenced by Daoism, Chinese artists went into the mountains to paint and find the Dao,
or Way, in nature. This practice explains in part the emphasis on nature in traditional
Chinese painting. Next to painting in creative accomplishment was the field of ceramics.
In particular, Tang artisans perfected the making of porcelain- a ceramic made of fine
clay baked at very high temperatures.
Feudal Japan
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While the Japanese emperor presided over a splendid court at Heian, rival clans
battled for control of the countryside. Local warlords formed armed bands loyal to them
rather than to the government. As these armies struggled for power, Japan evolved a
feudal system (a decentralized government). As in the feudal world of medieval Europe,
a warrior aristocracy dominated Japanese society.
In theory, the emperor stood at the head of Japanese feudal society. In fact, he was
a powerless, though revered, figurehead. Real power lay in the hands of the shogun, or
supreme military commander. The shogun had the powers of a military dictator.
Officials, judges, taxes, armies, roads- all were under his authority. Minamoto Yoritomo
was appointed shogun in 1192. He set up the Kamakura shogunate, the first of three
military dynasties that would rule Japan for almost 700 years.
Often the shogun controlled only a small part of Japan. He distributed lands to
vassal lords who agreed to support him with their armies in time of need. These great
warrior lords were later called daimyo, or "great names". Since wars between rival lords
were commonplace, each lord surrounded himself with a bodyguard of loyal warriors
called samurai. Samurai means "one who serves." Like medieval Christian knights in
Europe, samurai were heavily armed and trained in the skills of fighting. They wore
armor, fought with swords, and often rode on horseback.
The samurai also developed their own code of values. Known as bushido, or the
"way of the warrior," the code emphasized honor, bravery, unflinching acceptance of
hardship, instant obedience to a superior's orders, and absolute loyalty to one's lord. A
samurai was expected to show reckless courage, reverence for the gods, fairness, and
generosity towards those weaker than himself. The true samurai was supposed to have
no fear of death. Dying an honorable death was judged more important than living a long
life. A samurai who betrayed the code of bushido was expected to commit seppuku, or
ritual suicide, also known in the West as hara-kiri, rather than live without honor.
In exchange for loyalty, the lord had an obligation to provide for the samurai and
reward them appropriately for services rendered. Like European knights, samurai
warriors were expensive to support because they required costly armor, weapons, and
horses. Samurai were financed through system based on the shoen, or "estate." Those
who held a shoen did not live on it; they simply had a right to its harvests, usually in rice.
Far below the samurai in the social hierarchy were the peasants, artisans, and
merchants. Peasants, who made up 75% of the population, formed the backbone of
feudal society in Japan. Peasant families cultivated rice and other crops on the estates of
samurai. Some peasants also served as foot soldiers in feudal wars. On rare occasions,
an able peasant soldier might rise through the ranks to become a samurai himself.
Artisans provided necessary goods for the samurai class. Merchants had the lowest rank
in Japanese feudal society. Unlike the European ideal of chivalry, the samurai code did
not set women on a pedestal. Instead, the wife of a warrior had to accept the same
hardships as her husband and owed the same loyalty to his overlord.
Feudal / Medieval Europe
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As the Western Roman Empire weakened, Germanic tribes moved in, took over
areas, and started new kingdoms. One of these Germanic states, the kingdom of the
Franks, was ruled by Charlemagne from 768 to 814. He built an empire known as the
Carolingian Empire. Covering much of western and central Europe, it was the largest
empire of the time. Charlemagne became emperor of the Romans in 800, crowned by
Pope Leo III. The coronation symbolized the coming together of Roman, Christian, and
German ideas. A new Western civilization had begun. However, the Carolingian Empire
began to fall apart soon after Charlemagne died.
In the 9th and 10th centuries, western Europe was hit by a wave of invasions.
These invasions completely destroyed the Carolingian Empire. The Muslims attacked the
southern coasts of Europe. The Magyars, a people from Asia, moved into central Europe
and terrorized Germany and Italy. And from the north sailed the most dreaded attackers
of all- the Northmen or Norsemen of Scandinavia, also called the Vikings.
The Vikings and other invaders posed a large threat to the safety of people
throughout Europe. Rulers found it more and more difficult to defend their subjects as
centralized governments like the Carolingian Empire fell apart. Kings and emperors
were too weak to maintain law and order. People needed to defend their homes and
lands. Thus, they began to turn to local landed lords, or nobles, to protect them. To
survive, it became important to find a powerful lord who could offer protection in return
for service. This led to a new decentralized political and social system called feudalism.
At the heart of feudalism was the idea of vassalage. A man who served a lord as a
warrior was known as a vassal. It was expensive to have a horse, armor, and weapons.
With the breakdown of central governments, the more powerful nobles took control of
large areas of land. When these lords wanted men to fight for them, they granted each
vassal a piece of land, called a fief, that supported the vassal and his family. In the
society of the early Middle Ages, wealth was based primarily on land, thus land was the
most important gift a lord could give to a vassal.
The highest-ranking lord was a monarch, or king. Below the king were powerful
lords. Each lord had vassals, and each vassal had vassals of his own. The people at the
top of society had the most land, and the vassals below them had less. A man could be a
vassal to a powerful lord and a lord to someone lower at the same time. Everyone had a
place in feudal society.
The lord-vassal relationship was an honorable relationship between free men and
implied no sense of servitude. Feudalism came to be characterized by a set of unwritten
rules- known as the feudal contract- that determined the relationship between a lord and
his vassal. The major obligation of a vassal to his lord was to perform military service,
usually about 40 days a year. To become a vassal, a man performed an act of homage to
his lord. In feudal society, loyalty to one's lord was the chief virtue. Under the feudal
contract, the lord had responsibilities toward his vassals also.
For almost five hundred years, warfare in Europe was dominated by heavily
armored cavalry, or knights, as they came to be called. Like the Japanese daimyo and
samurai, European lords and knights formed an aristocracy, or nobility, which held,
political, economic, and social power.
There gradually developed among this nobility an ideal of civilized behavior,
called chivalry. Chivalry was a code of ethics that knights were supposed to uphold.
Chivalry required knights to be brave, loyal, and true to their word. In warfare, they had
to fight fairly and be generous to their enemies. Chivalry also implied that knights should
fight only for glory and not for material rewards, an ideal that was not always followed.
Chivalry did much to improve the rough and crude manners of early feudal lords.
Chivalry had limits, though. It applied to nobles only, not to commoners. Chivalry
raised women to a new status. A knight was also expected to be courteous to women and
the less powerful. The code of chivalry called for women to be protected and cherished.
Much later, ideas of chivalry would shape our modern ideas of romantic love.
Trained to be warriors from an early age, knights had little else to do but fight. As
the fierce fighting of the early Middle Ages lessened in the 1100s, tournaments, or mock
battles where knights could show their skills, came into fashion. The joust- individual
combat between two knights- became the main part of the tournament.
Feudalism provided the social and political structure of the Middle Ages, while
manorialism shaped the economy of Europe during these years. The landholding nobles
were a military elite who had the leisure time to pursue the arts of war. Landed estates
worked by peasants, provided the economic support that made this way of life possible.
The heart of the medieval economy was the manor, or lord's estate. Manors were
large farming estates that included manor houses, cultivated lands, woodlands, pastures,
fields, and villages. These estates were worked by serfs, or peasants legally bound to the
land. Serfs had to provide labor services, pay rents, and be subject to the lord's control.
By 800, probably 60% of the people of western Europe were serfs.
Peasants and their lords were tied together by mutual rights and responsibilities.
Peasants had to work several days a week farming the lord's lands. The rest of the
estate's land was used by the peasants to grow food for themselves. The serfs paid rent
by giving the lords a share of every product they raised.
Lords had a variety of legal rights over their serfs. Serfs could not leave the manor
without the lord's permission and could not marry without the lord's approval. Lords
often had political authority on their lands, which gave them the right to try peasants in
their own courts. Even with these restrictions, however, serfs were not slaves who could
be bought and sold. The land assigned to serfs to support themselves usually could not
be taken away, and their responsibilities remained fixed. It was also the lord's duty to
protect his serfs from Viking raids or feudal warfare, giving them the safety they needed
to grow crops. In theory, at least, they were guaranteed food, housing, and land.
The medieval manor was a small, self-sufficient world. Peasants produced almost
everything they needed, from food and clothing to simple furniture and tools. Most
peasants never ventured more than a few miles from their village. They had no schooling
and no knowledge of the larger world.
The Medieval Church
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In the centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, the Roman Catholic Church
became more organized and powerful. Throughout the Middle Ages, the Church played
an important role in the new European civilization.
By the fourth century, the Church had developed a system of organization. Local
Christian communities were called parishes and were led by priests. A group of parishes
was headed by a bishop. Gradually, the bishops from five of the most important citiesRome, Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Constantinople- gained power.
The Pope
Over time, the bishop of Rome began to claim that he was the leader of the
Christian Church. According to Catholic beliefs, Jesus had given the keys to the
kingdom of Heaven to Peter, who was considered the chief apostle and the first bishop of
Rome. Later bishops of Rome were viewed as Peter's successors. They came to be
known as popes (from the Latin word papa, "father") of the Catholic Church.
Western Christians accepted the Pope as head of the Roman Catholic Church. The
Pope started as a religious leader but later gained political power, too. During the papacy
of Pope Innocent III in the 13th century, the Catholic Church reached the height of its
power. At the beginning of his rule in 1198, in a letter to a priest, the pope made a clear
statement of his views on papal supremacy:
God, the creator of the universe, set two great lights in the firmament of heaven,
the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night so He set two great
dignities in the firmament of the universal Church, ... the greater to rule the day, that is,
souls, and the lesser to rule the night, that is, bodies. These dignities are the papal
authority and the royal power. And just as the moon gets her light from the sun, and is
inferior to the sun ... so the royal power gets the splendor of its dignity from the papal
authority.
Innocent III's actions were those of a man who believed that he, the pope, was
supreme, that the pope's authority extended over all the Christian world, Christendom,
including its rulers.
The Roman Catholic Church claimed influence over everything in Europe, from
critical political decisions to the daily lives of peasants. Because churchmen were often
the only educated people, they were given high government positions. Kings started wars
in the name of Christianity. Missionaries spread the faith across Europe. However, as
the Church's power grew, some Church officials became corrupt and worldly.
The Monks
A monk is a man who separates himself from ordinary human society in order to
pursue a life of total dedication to God. The practice of living the life of a monk is
known as monasticism. In the sixth century, Saint Benedict founded a community of
monks for which he wrote a set of rules. This community established the basic form of
monasticism in the Catholic Church.
Benedict's rule divided each day into a series of activities, with primary emphasis
on prayer and manual labor. A Benedictine life was a communal one. Monks ate,
worked, slept, and worshiped together. Each Benedictine monastery was strictly ruled by
an abbot, or "father" of the monastery, who had complete authority over the monks. Each
Benedictine monastery owned lands that enabled it to be a self-sustaining community,
isolated from and independent of the world surrounding it. Within the monastery,
however, monks were to fulfill their vow of poverty.
Monks became the new heroes of Christian civilization and were an important
force in the new European civilization. The monastic community came to be seen as the
ideal Christian society that could provide a moral example to the wider society around it.
The monks' dedication to God became the highest ideal of Christian life. They were the
social workers of their communities, providing schools for the young, hospitality for
travelers, and hospitals for the sick.
Monasteries became centers of learning wherever they were located. The monks
worked to spread Christianity to all of Europe. English and Irish monks were especially
enthusiastic missionaries- people sent out to carry a religious message- who undertook
the conversion of pagan peoples, especially in German lands. By 1050 most western
Europeans had become Catholics.
Although the first monks were men, women, called nuns, also began to withdraw
from the world to dedicate themselves to God. These women played an important role in
the monastic movement. Nuns lived in convents headed by abbesses.
The People
What of ordinary people? What were their religious hopes and fears? What were
their religious beliefs?
The sacraments of the Catholic Church were central in importance to ordinary
people. These rites, such as baptism, marriage, and the Eucharist (Communion), made
the Church a crucial part of people's lives from birth to death. The sacraments were seen
as means for receiving God's grace and were necessary for salvation. Only the clergy
(priests, bishops, & popes) could administer the sacraments, so everyone who hoped to
gain salvation depended on the clergy to help them achieve this goal.
Other church practices were also important to ordinary people. One practice
involved veneration of saints. Of all the saints, the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus, was the
most highly regarded in the High Middle Ages. Mary was seen as the most important
mediator between humans and her son, Jesus Christ, the judge of all sinners. A sign of
Mary's importance is the number of churches all over Europe that were dedicated to her
in the 12th and 13th centuries.
Emphasis on the role of the saints was closely tied to the use of relics. It was
believed that relics could heal people or produce other miracles. Medieval Christians
also believed that a pilgrimage to a holy shrine produced a spiritual benefit. The greatest
shrine, but the most difficult to reach, was the Holy City of Jerusalem. On the continent
two pilgrim centers were especially popular: Rome, which contained the relics of Saints
Peter and Paul, and Santiago de Compostela, the site of the tomb of the Apostle James.
The Changing West
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In the High Middle Ages, the population of Europe grew dramatically- almost
doubling. What caused this huge increase in population? For one thing, conditions in
Europe were more peaceful after the Viking invasions of the early Middle Ages had
stopped. This increased peace and stability led to a dramatic increase in food production
after 1000.
In part, food production increased because a change in climate- it got warmerimproved growing conditions. In addition, more land was cultivated as peasants cut
down trees and drained swamps. Changes in technology also aided the development of
farming. The Middle Ages witnessed an explosion of labor-saving devices. The change
from using oxen to using horses- they were faster- to pull plows and the shift from a twofield to a three-field system of crop rotation also added to the increase in food production.
Medieval Europe was basically an agricultural society in which most people lived
in small villages. In the 11th and 12th centuries, however, population growth led to a
revival of trade and the growth of towns and cities.
The revival of trade in Europe was gradual. Cities in Italy took the lead. Venice,
for example, developed a merchant fleet (a fleet of trading ships) and by the end of the
10th century had become a major trading center. While Venice and other northern Italian
cities were busy trading in the Mediterranean, the towns of Flanders were doing the same
in northern Europe. Flanders (present-day Belgium and northern France) was known for
its much desired, high-quality woolen cloth.
The location of Flanders made it an ideal center for trade. Merchants from
England, Scandinavia, France, and Germany met there to trade their goods for woolen
cloth. By the 12th century, a regular exchange of goods had developed between Flanders
and Italy. To encourage this trade, a series of trade fairs were held. At these fairs,
northern merchants brought the furs, woolen cloth, tin, hemp, and honey of northern
Europe and exchanged them for the cloth and swords of northern Italy and the silks,
sugar, and spices of the East.
As trade increased, demand for gold and silver coins arose at fairs and trading
markets of all kinds. Slowly, a money economy- an economic system based on money,
rather than barter- began to emerge. New trading companies and banking firms were set
up to manage the exchange and sale of goods. All of these new practices were part of the
rise of commercial capitalism, an economic system in which people invested in trade
and goods in order to make profits.
The revival of trade led to a revival of cities. With the revival of trade, merchants
began to settle in the old Roman cities. They were followed by craftspeople or artisanspeople who had developed skills and saw a chance to make goods that could be sold by
the merchants. The old Roman cities came alive with new populations and growth.
Many new cities or towns were also founded, especially in northern Europe. The
merchants and artisans of these cities later came to be called burghers or bourgeoisie.
Medieval cities were small in comparison with either ancient or modern cities. A
large trading city would number about 5,000 inhabitants. By 1200, London was the
largest city in England, with 30,000 people. Italian cities tended to be larger. Venice,
Florence, Genoa, Milan, and Naples each had almost a 100,000 inhabitants. Even the
largest European city, however, seemed small alongside the Byzantine capital of
Constantinople or the Arab cities of Damascus, Baghdad, and Cairo.
The revival of trade enabled cities and towns to become important centers for
manufacturing a wide range of goods, such as cloth, metalwork, shoes, and leather goods.
A host of craft activities were carried on in houses located in the narrow streets of
medieval cities. From the 12th century on, craftspeople began to organize themselves
into guilds, or business associations. Guilds came to play a leading role in the economic
life of the cities. By the 13th century, there were guilds for almost every craft, such as
tanners, carpenters, and bakers. There were also separate guilds for specialized groups of
merchants, such as dealers in silk, spices, wool, or money (banking).
Craft guilds controlled almost every aspect of the production process. They set the
standards for the quality of the articles produced, specified the methods of production to
be used, and even fixed the price at which the finished goods could be sold. Guilds also
determined the number of people who could enter a specific trade and the procedure they
must follow to do so.
A person who wanted to learn a trade first became an apprentice, usually at around
the age of 10, to a master craftsperson. Apprentices were not paid, but they did receive
room and board from their masters. After five to seven years of service during which
they learned their craft, apprentices became journeymen and worked for wages for other
masters. Journeymen aspired to become masters as well. To do so, they were expected
to produce a masterpiece, a finished piece in their craft. This piece allowed the master
craftspeople of the guild to judge whether a journeyman was qualified to become a
master and join the guild.
The university as we know it today was a product of the High Middle Ages.
Medieval universities were educational guilds, or corporations, that produced educated
and trained individuals. The first European university appeared in Bologna, Italy. Kings,
popes, and princes thought it honorable to found new universities. By 1500, there were
80 universities in Europe.
Students began their studies at a medieval university with the traditional liberal arts
curriculum, or course of study. This consisted of grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic,
geometry, music, and astronomy. Teaching at a medieval university was done by a
lecture method, as books were expensive. After completing this curriculum, a student
could go on to study law, medicine, or theology. Universities provided the teachers,
administrators, lawyers, and medical doctors for medieval society.
The 11th thru 13th centuries witnessed an explosion of building in medieval
Europe, especially building of churches. The Gothic cathedral remains one of the
greatest artistic triumphs of the High Middle Ages. The Gothic cathedral, with its
towers soaring toward Heaven, and magnificent stained glass windows bears witness to
an age when most people believed in a spiritual world.
The Byzantine Empire
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After the Roman empire split into two sections, the Eastern Roman Empire came
to be called the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantine Empire reached its largest size under
the emperor Justinian, who ruled from 527 to 565. Justinian dreamed of bringing back
the glory of ancient Rome by reestablishing the Roman empire over the entire
Mediterranean world.
Historians remember Justinian best for his codification of Roman law. He had
officials collect all the laws of ancient Rome. The laws were gathered together, edited,
and organized into a collection called the Code of Justinian. The collection included
laws passed by Roman assemblies and Roman emperors. It also contained the legal
writings of Roman judges. The Code covered subjects like marriage, property,
inheritance, and crimes. This code of Roman laws was the basis of imperial law in the
Eastern Roman Empire until its end in 1453. Furthermore, it was also used in the West
and became the basis for much of the legal system of Europe.
Another of his achievements was the famous Hagia Sophia- the Church of the
Holy Wisdom- completed in 537. The church is crowned by an enormous dome, which
seems to be floating in space.
The Byzantine Empire was both a Greek and a Christian state. Greek replaced
Latin as both the common language and the official language of the empire. At the same
time, the empire was built on a Christian faith that was shared by many subjects. The
Christian church of the Byzantine Empire came to be known as the Eastern Orthodox
Church. The emperor exercised control over the church as well as the state.
After Justinian died, the Byzantine Empire stayed strong for many years. Its
greatest strengths were a strong central government and a wealthy economy. Trade and
industry grew in cities like Constantinople, the capital. The city was the chief center for
the exchange of products between West and East.
By the 1000s, the Byzantine Empire was weakening. Constant warfare and
struggles for the throne hurt the empire. Powerful local lords took control of some areas.
As the empire weakened, its enemies attacked.
In 1071, an invading Turkish army inflicted a crushing defeat on Byzantine forces
at Manzikert. In the 1090s, the Byzantine emperor Alexius I asked western Europe for
help against the Seljuk Turks, who were Muslims. Pope Urban II sent Christian knights
to help fight the Turks in the first of four Crusades. The Crusades were military
expeditions to take back lands that had been conquered by the Muslims. However,
during the Fourth Crusade, Christian knights attacked Constantinople itself. They wanted
its riches, so they burned the city and stole its valuables. A Byzantine emperor took back
the capital in the 1260s, but the Byzantine Empire never recovered.
In 1453, the Ottomans, another Turkish people, conquered the city of
Constantinople. They renamed it Istanbul, and it became the capital of the Ottoman
Empire. The fall of Constantinople was the end of the Byzantine Empire. However,
Byzantine culture continued to influence Europe, particularly Russia, much longer.
The Crusades
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In the 1060s, the Seljuk Turks, who were Muslims, invaded the Byzantine Empire.
The Byzantine army needed help defending their empire, so the emperor asked for help
from Pope Urban II. Although Byzantine emperors and Roman Popes were rivals, the
Pope said he would send help. He agreed to this because the Seljuk Turks had also taken
over the Holy Land. The Holy Land included Jerusalem and other places in Palestine
where Jesus had lived and taught.
Pope Urban II met with a group of bishops and noblemen in 1095. The Pope
called for a Crusade, a military expedition, to free the Holy Land from the invading
Muslims. He challenged Christians to take up their weapons and join in this holy war.
Urban II promised: "All who die ... whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the
pagans, shall have immediate remission [forgiveness] of sins." The enthusiastic crowd
cried out: "It is the will of God, it is the will of God."
By 1096, thousands of European knights were on their way to the Holy Land.
Some knights joined the Crusades because they believed strongly in their religion. Many
went because they hoped to win wealth and land. Others traveled to the Middle East
because they wanted adventure.
Christian knights captured Jerusalem in 1099 amid a horrible massacre of the city's
Muslim and Jewish inhabitants. The Muslim leader Saladin took Jerusalem back in 1187.
The Third Crusade tried and failed to take the city back. During the Fourth Crusade, the
crusaders fought against fellow Christians instead of Muslims! The crusaders captured
and looted Constantinople, the Byzantine capital.
None of the next four Crusades, which took place between 1212 and 1270,
succeeded as the First Crusade had and were for the most part utter failures. The most
tragic crusade was probably the "Children's Crusade" of 1212. Only 201 of the 50,000
children who went to the Holy Land survived to return home.
The Crusades continued off and on for 200 years. Each time the crusaders won,
they turned the captured lands into Christian kingdoms. The Muslims took back the
lands, which resulted in more knights being sent from Europe. Christians and Muslims
committed terrible acts against each other in the Middle East in the name of religion. The
Crusades left behind a bitter legacy of religious hatred that continues to the present.
In Europe, the Crusades had a major political effect. During the Crusades,
European noblemen sold their lands to join the fight. This caused them to lose power.
As the nobles lost power, kings created stronger central governments. By the mid-1400s,
there were four strong nation-states in Europe: Portugal, Spain, England, and France.
The Crusades played a part in stimulating trade between Europe and Asia by
heightening demand Eastern luxury goods: spices, sugar, tapestries, and silk. Contact
with the more advanced Byzantine and Muslim civilizations broadened European views
of the world, expanding their horizons. Many believe that the Crusades played an
important role in bringing about the Renaissance in the 1300s and an Age of Exploration
in the 1400s.
The Mongols
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A belt of dry grassland called the steppe stretches 5,000 miles across Europe and
Asia. The Mongols were nomadic people who lived on this steppe. They lived in small
groups called clans. They prided themselves on their skill on horseback, their discipline,
their ruthlessness, and their courage in battle.
Around 1200 A.D., one of the Mongol khans, or clan leaders, united all of the
Mongols under his leadership. This man became known as Genghis Khan, or "universal
ruler" of all the Mongol clans. Once leader of the Mongols, Genghis Khan wanted more.
He wanted the wealth and glory that would come with conquering mighty empires.
Over the next 21 years, Genghis led the Mongols in conquering much of Asia.
Under Genghis Khan, the Mongols were forged into the mightiest war machine the world
had seen up to that time. The results of these campaigns were horrifying. Millions died
in what was probably the worst bloodshed of pre-modern times. Their invasions ended
many of the great empires of the postclassical period and also extended the world
network that had increasingly defined the period. The Mongol conquests would forever
transform Asia and Europe.
Under Genghis Khan, the Mongols were extremely organized. An effective
military planner, he grouped troops in armies of 10,000. Each army was like a moving
city. Soldiers brought family members, horses, and livestock with them. Mongol women
were responsible for the needs of the camp. They also took care of the wounded.
Mongol soldiers were excellent horsemen. When traveling, each soldier had three
extra horses. By changing horses, they could keep riding for many days and nights at a
time. Sometimes, Mongol messengers traveled as far as 120 miles in a day. Each
cavalry warrior had leather armor, a lance, and a dagger, as well as a bow and arrows.
The Mongols used tricks to confuse their enemies. The soldiers made their foes
believe they had more men than they actually had. The Mongols did this by dressing
prisoners or lifelike dummies as Mongol warriors. They also used spies. Sometimes a
small Mongol unit would attack and then pretend to run away. The small unit led enemy
soldiers to the rest of the Mongol army. Then, the larger Mongol army surprised and
slaughtered the enemy forces.
Genghis Khan used fear as a tool to conquer Asia. The Mongols destroyed one
city after another, killing many of the people who lived in them. The populations of
some cities were wiped out completely. Sometimes, conquered peoples were forced to
serve as troops for the Mongols against their own allies. People heard about the terrible
things the Mongols did to those who stood up to them. The rumors about the Mongols'
cruelty frightened people. After hearing such terrible stories, many towns surrendered to
the Mongols without a fight.
The Mongols conquered much of Asia. By 1221, Central Asia was under Mongol
control. Genghis Khan died from an accident in 1227. Those who ruled after him kept
expanding the Mongol Empire, conquering territory from China to Poland.
Genghis Khan died in 1227. His successors, however, continued to expand his
empire. In less than 50 years, the Mongols conquered territory from China to Poland. At
its fullest extent, the Mongol Empire stretched from the Yellow Sea to the Baltic Sea and
from the Himalayas to northern Russia. In so doing, they created the largest unified land
empire in history.
The vastness of the Mongol Empire allowed, for the first time, an inter-continental
traffic in goods, knowledge, and ideas. From the mid-1200s to the mid-1300s, the
Mongols imposed stability and law and order across much of Eurasia. This period is
sometimes called the Pax Mongolica (or Mongol Peace). The Mongols guaranteed safe
passage of trade caravans, travelers, and missionaries from one end of the empire to
another. The caravans and embassies that crossed the Mongol lands spread new foods,
inventions, and ideas from one civilization to others and from civilized peoples to
nomadic peoples. Like the Islamic expansion that came before it, the Mongol explosion
laid the foundations for more human interaction on a global scale, extending and
intensifying the world network that had been building since the classical age.
China was thrown open to the world by both land and sea. Over the Silk Roads,
traders transported Chinese silk and porcelain, which continued to be desired in Europe
and western Asia. Each year, so Marco Polo recorded, 20,000 cargo ships sailed up the
Yangtze River, bringing diamonds and pearls from India; ginger, cotton, and muslin from
Ceylon; black pepper and cloves from Java.
More significant, ideas and inventions traveled along with the trade goods. The
gradual westward flow of eastern artifacts, knowledge, and expertise worked in favor of a
Europe that was far behind China in the arts and sciences. Many Chinese innovations,
such as gunpowder, printing, the compass, and paper currency reached Europe during this
period.
Other things spread along with the goods and the ideas. Perhaps the greatest longterm impact of the Mongol drive to the west was indirect and unintended. In recent
years, a growing number of historians have become convinced that the Mongol conquests
played a key role in spreading the fleas that carried bubonic plague from south China and
central Asia to Europe and the Middle East. The Mongol armies unknowingly paved the
way for the spread of the dreaded Black Death across the steppes to much of China, to the
Islamic heartlands, and from there to most of Europe in the mid-14th century.
Ultimately, in 1259, a dispute arose concerning succession to the Grand Khanate
and the empire broke into four independent states which began feuding among
themselves. These four were the Khanate of the Great Khan (Mongolia and China), the
Khanate of Chagatai (Central Asia), the Ilkhanate (Persia), and the Khanate of the Golden
Horde (Russia). The warrior Mongols, however, knew little about administering their
territory. As a result, their vast empire crumbled in just a few generations- the entire
Mongol period lasted only a century and a half.
Interestingly, both Beijing (or Peking) in China and Moscow in Russia owe their
status as capitals to the Mongols. Both cities became important military, economic, and
administrative centers under the Mongols and have remained so to the present day.
The Black Death
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In the fall of 1347, Italian trading ships left the Black Sea port of Caffa. They
headed for the island of Sicily. During the trip, sailors started getting sick and dying.
Soon after the ships arrived in Messina, Sicily, townspeople became sick and died. The
Black Death, another name for the bubonic plague, had arrived in Italy. The disease
had already killed millions in Asia and the Middle East.
The bubonic plague is a disease that is spread by fleas on rats. It had broken out
before in Europe, Asia, and North Africa. A new epidemic, or outbreak, of the disease
started in China in the 1200s.
It was normal for rats to be on ships and city streets during the Middle Ages. Fleacovered rats were common in crowded cities. Most people did not bathe, and almost all
people had fleas and lice. Fleas carrying the disease jumped from rats onto people.
Then, fleas jumped from person to person, spreading the disease quickly. The path of the
Black Death followed trade routes. Infected fleas from rats in Chinese cities leaped onto
the clothes and packs of traders who were traveling west. In this way, the disease spread
from Asia to the Middle East.
From Sicily, the plague spread to southern Italy, southern France and Spain by the
end of 1347. In 1348, the plague spread through France, the Low Countries, and
Germany. It ravaged England in 1349 and expanded to northern Europe and
Scandinavia. Eastern Europe and Russia were affected by 1351.
Unaware of what a flea bite might mean, people paid little attention until they
noticed the swellings and black bruises on their skin that promised death. Victims
suffered heavy sweats and convulsive coughing. They spat blood, stank terribly, and died
in agony. The disease struck with stunning speed, killing within one to five days.
Out of a total European population of 75 million, possibly as many as 38 million
people died between 1347 and 1351. Especially hard hit were Italy's crowded cities,
where 50 to 60% of the people died. In England and Germany, entire villages
disappeared. No one knows the exact number of plague deaths in Europe. They
happened so rapidly and in such great numbers that often the survivors could not keep up
with burying the dead.
The death of so many people had severe economic consequences. Town
populations fell. Production declined, trade declined, and a shortage of workers caused a
dramatic rise in the price of labor. Workers, now in short supply, demanded higher
wages. At the same time, the decline in the number of people lowered the demand for
food, resulting in falling prices.
Fewer people meant that workers were scarce everywhere. Landlords were now
paying more for labor while their incomes from rents were declining. Farmland was
abandoned or used to pasture sheep, which required less labor. Serfs had often been
unpaid or poorly paid for their labor. They left the manor in search of better wages.
Some peasants bargained with their lords to pay rent instead of owing services. In
essence, this change freed them from serfdom.
People at the time did not know what caused the plague. Many believed that it
either had been sent by God as a punishment for their sins or had been caused by the
devil.
Frightened people looked around for a scapegoat. They found one in the Jews,
who were blamed for causing the plague by poisoning the town wells. In the resulting
hysteria, thousands of Jews were slaughtered. All over Europe, Jews were driven from
their homes or, worse, massacred. The worst attacks occurred in Germany. Many Jews
fled eastward, especially to Poland, where the king provided protection.
The plague brought terror and bewilderment, since people had no way to stop the
disease. Some people turned to magic and witchcraft for cures. Still others saw the
plague as God's punishment. They beat themselves with whips to show they repented
their sins.
Many people who saw how abruptly life could end became pessimistic about life
itself, fearing the future. The art and literature of the time reflect an unusual awareness of
death. On the other hand, many people displayed the attitude of "Eat, drink, and be
merry, for tomorrow you may die."
Normal life broke down. Unlike catastrophes that pull communities together, this
epidemic was so terrifying that it ripped apart the very fabric of society. "This scourge
had implanted so great a terror in the hearts of men and women that brothers abandoned
brothers, uncles their nephews, sisters their brothers, and in many cases wives deserted
their husbands. But even worse, fathers and mothers refused to nurse and assist their own
children."
The Church suffered a loss of prestige when its prayers and penances failed to stop
the onslaught of the bubonic plague. In addition, many clergy deserted their flocks or
charged high fees to perform services for the dying. The Church lost some of its power
and importance.
One person out of every three was killed by the epidemic in Europe. The bubonic
plague spread death and caused many economic and social problems. Western Europe
was left in a decline from which it did not fully recover for over 100 years.
The Maya
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In the early centuries A.D., the peoples of Mexico and Central America were
entering into the full flower of civilization. An example of this cultural flowering was the
Maya, who built an extraordinary civilization in the heart of Mesoamerica. The
civilization of the Maya flourished between A.D. 300 and 900. It was one of the most
sophisticated civilizations in the Americas.
The homeland of the Maya stretched from southern Mexico into northern Central
America. This area includes a highland region and a lowland region. The lowlands lie to
the north. They include the dry scrub forest of the Yucatan Peninsula and the dense,
steamy jungles of southeastern Mexico and northern Guatemala. The highlands are
further south- a range of cool, cloud-wreathed mountains that stretch from southern
Mexico to El Salvador.
The period from A.D. 250 to 900 is known as the Classic Period of Mayan
civilization. During this time, the Maya built spectacular cities such as Tikal, a major
center in northern Guatemala. Other important sites included Copan, Palenque, Uxmal,
and Chichen Itza. Mayan cities were built around a central pyramid topped by a shrine to
the gods. Nearby were other temples, palaces, and a sacred ball court. Tens of thousands
of people lived in residential areas surrounding the city center, which bustled with
activity. Archaeologists have identified at least 50 major Mayan sites, all with
monumental architecture.
Political: Mayan civilization was composed of city-states, each governed by a
hereditary ruling class. Each city was an independent city-state, ruled by a god-king and
serving as a center for religious ceremonies and trade. Rulers of the Mayan city-states
claimed to be descended from the gods. His position was hereditary. When he died, he
passed the throne on to his eldest son.
Economic: Most of the Mayan people were peasant farmers. They lived on tiny
plots or on terraced hills in the highlands. They grew corn, beans, and squash- the basic
food crops of Middle America- as well as fruit trees, cotton, and brilliant tropical flowers.
There was a fairly clear-cut division of labor. Men did the fighting and hunting, women
the homemaking and raising of children. Women also made cornmeal, the basic food of
many Mayans. To support the cities, farmers paid taxes in food and helped build the
temples.
For years, experts assumed that the Maya practiced slash-and-burn agriculture.
This method involves farmers clearing the land by burning existing vegetation and
planting crops in the ashes. Evidence now shows, however, that the Maya also developed
more sophisticated methods which allowed them to thrive in the tropical environment.
Mayan farmers cleared the dense rain forests and then built raised fields that caught and
held rainwater. They also built channels that could be opened to drain off excess water.
This complex system produced enough maize and other crops to support rapidly growing
cities.
Much of the wealth of Tikal and the other Mayan cities came from trade. Along
roads made of packed earth, traders carried valuable cargoes of honey, cocoa, and
feathers across most of Middle America. Cities exchanged the products of their local
environment such as salt, flint, feathers, shells, and honey. Also traded were craft goods
like cotton textiles and jade ornaments. While the Maya did not have a uniform currency,
cacao (chocolate) beans sometimes served as one.
Religion: Religion influenced most aspects of Mayan life. Crucial to Mayan
civilization was its belief that all of life was in the hands of divine powers. The Maya
believed in many gods. There were gods of corn, of death, of rain, and of war. Gods
could be good or evil, and sometimes both.
Mayan religious beliefs also led to the development of the calendar, mathematics,
and astronomy. Mayans believed that time was a burden carried on the back of a god. At
the end of a day, month, or year, one god would lay the burden down and another would
pick it up. A day would be lucky or unlucky, depending on the nature of the god. Thus it
was important to have an accurate calendar to know which god was in charge of the day.
The Maya practiced human sacrifice as a way to appease the gods. Human
sacrifices were usually of captured enemies. At Chichen Itza, in the Yucatan, they threw
captives into a deep sinkhole lake, called a cenote, along with gold, jade, and other
offerings. The Maya believed that human sacrifice pleased the gods and kept the world
in balance. Nevertheless, the Maya's use of sacrifice never reached the extremes of some
other Mesoamerican peoples, like the Aztecs.
Cultural: The Maya also developed the most advanced writing system in the
ancient Americas. They created a sophisticated writing system based on hieroglyphs, or
pictures. Mayan writing consisted of about 800 hieroglyphic symbols, or glyphs. The
Maya used their writing system to record important historical events. Mayan hieroglyphs
remained a mystery to scholars for centuries.
The Maya used two different systems for measuring time. One was based on a
solar calendar of 365 days. The other system was based on a sacred calendar of 260
days. The two calendars were linked together like meshed gears so that any given day
could be identified in both cycles. The calendar helped identify the best time to plant
crops, attack enemies, or crown new rulers.
Mayan astronomers used a math system that included the concept of zero. The
Mayan number system was a base 20 system. They used the numerical system primarily
for calendar and astronomical work, not to count people or objects.
The remarkable history of the Maya ended in mystery. About A.D. 900, the Mayas
abandoned their cities, leaving their great stone palaces and temples to be swallowed up
by the jungle. Not until modern times were these "lost cities" rediscovered. No one
knows for sure why Mayan civilization declined. Increased warfare may have disrupted
trade and produced economic hardship. In addition, population growth and over-farming
may have caused ecological damage, causing food shortages, famine, and disease. All
these circumstances probably contributed to the fall of Mayan civilization.
The Aztecs
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According to their legends, their god of war and of the sun, Huitzilopochtli, had
told the Aztecs that when they saw an eagle perched on a cactus growing out of a rock,
their nomadic wanderings would end. In 1325, on one of the islands in Lake Texcoco,
they saw an eagle standing on a prickly pear cactus on a rock. There they built
Tenochtitlan (or "place of the prickly pear cactus"), now the location of Mexico City.
Political: The Aztecs, who were then called the Mexica, were fierce and
ambitious. Over the years, the Aztecs gradually increased in strength and number. The
Aztecs were outstanding warriors. Through a combination of fierce conquests and
shrewd alliances, they spread their rule over most of Mexico, from the Gulf of Mexico to
the Pacific Ocean. By the early 1500s, they controlled a vast Mesoamerican empire.
Unlike the Mayan city-states, each of which had its own king, the Aztecs had a
single ruler. Power in the Aztec state was in the hands of the monarch, who claimed that
he was descended from the gods.
The Aztec kingdom was not a centralized state. The Aztecs exercised loose
control over much of their empire. They often let local rulers govern their own regions.
The Aztec ruler supported these rulers in their authority in return for tribute, goods in the
form of gold, maize, cacao beans, cotton, jade, and other products, paid by conquered
peoples to their conquerors. If local rulers failed to pay tribute, or otherwise defied the
Aztecs, the Aztec warriors would respond brutally. They would destroy villages and
capture or slaughter the inhabitants. War brought immense wealth as well as power.
Social: At the height of the Aztec empire, military leaders held great power in
Aztec society. Along with government officials and priests, these military leaders made
up the noble class. Many nobles owned vast estates, which they ruled over, like lords,
living a life of great wealth and luxury. Next came the warriors, who could rise to noble
status by killing or capturing enemy soldiers.
The other two broad classes in Aztec society were the commoners and the slaves.
Commoners included merchants, artisans, soldiers, and farmers who owned their own
land. Most people were commoners, and many commoners were farmers. At the bottom
of society were the slaves, mostly criminals or prisoners of war. Slaves did many
different jobs.
From the beginnings of their lives, boys and girls in Aztec society were given very
different roles. As soon as a male baby was born, the midwife who attended the birth
said, "You must understand that your home is not here where you have been born, for
you are a warrior." To a female infant, the midwife said, "As the heart stays in the body,
so you must stay in the house."
Economic: The Aztecs controlled an extensive trade network, which brought
many products from faraway regions to the capital at Tenochtitlan. The economic heart
of the city was the huge market of Tlatelolco.
When the Spanish reached Tenochtitlan in 1519, they were awestruck. "The city has
many squares where markets are held and trading is carried on. There is one square
where there are daily more than 60,000 souls, buying and selling, and where are found all
the kinds of merchandise produced in these countries, including food products, jewels of
gold and silver, lead, brass, copper, zinc, bones, shells, and feathers."
Much of the agricultural produce sold at the market was grown on chinampas,
artificial islands made of earth piled on reed mats that were anchored to the shallow lake
bed. On these "floating gardens," they raised corn, squash, and beans. These farm plots,
which spread out from Tenochtitlan in all directions, were extremely productive. They
provided the food needed for a huge urban population.
Religion: Religion played a major role in Aztec society. In Tenochtitlan, there
were hundreds of temples and religious structures dedicated to the gods. Aztec religious
practice centered on elaborate public ceremonies designed to communicate with the gods
and win their favor. The priests performed the rituals needed to please the many Aztec
gods and prevent droughts, floods, or other disasters.
Aztec religion was based on a belief in an unending struggle between the forces of
good and evil throughout the universe. The Aztecs believed that Huitzilopochtli, the
chief Aztec god / the sun god, battled the forces of darkness each night and was reborn
each morning. As the Legend of the Five Suns shows, there was no guarantee that the
sun would always win. To give the sun strength to rise each day, the Aztecs offered
human sacrifices. Without regular offerings of blood, the sun would fall from the sky
and all life would perish. For that reason, priests offered the hearts of tens of thousands
of victims to Huitzilopochtli and other Aztec gods.
At the center of the capital city of Tenochtitlan was a massive pyramid dedicated
to Huitzilopochtli. A platform at the top held shrines to the gods and an altar for
performing human sacrifices. Thousands of victims, usually prisoners of war, were led to
the altar atop the Great Temple, where priests carved out their hearts using obsidian
knives. Other cultures such as the Olmecs and the Mayas had practiced human sacrifice,
but not on the massive scale of the Aztecs. To fulfill this sacred duty, the priests required
a steady supply of war captives. The Aztecs carried on almost continuous warfare, using
the captured enemy soldiers for a regular source of sacrificial victims. The battle tactics
of Aztec warriors were designed to provide live prisoners of war for the sacrifices.
Cultural: By the early 1500s, Tenochtitlan had become an extraordinary urban
center. With an estimated population of 200,000 people, it was larger than London or
any other European capital of the time. In Tenochtitlan, palaces, temples, markets, and
residential districts were connected by streets and avenues. Canals divided the city,
allowing canoes to bring people and cargo directly into the city center. Aqueducts
funneled fresh water in from the mainland.
At the center of the city was a huge, walled complex, filled with palaces, temples,
and government buildings. The main structure in this complex was the Great Temple. It
was a giant pyramid with twin temples at the top, the Aztec religious center.
The Inca
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Pachacuti, a skilled warrior and leader, was the founder of the Incan empire. In
1438, he proclaimed himself Sapa Inca, or emperor. He and his son rapidly conquered an
empire that stretched 2,500 miles down the Andes and along the Pacific coast, extending
Incan rule from Ecuador in the north to Chile in the south. The Inca called this empire
Tihuantinsuya, or "Land of the Four Quarters," it was the largest empire ever seen in the
Americas.
Political: The Sapa Inca exercised absolute power over the empire. Claiming he
was divine, the son of the sun itself, he was also the chief religious leader. The Incan
god-king owned all the land, herds, mines, and people.
To create a well-organized empire, Pachacuti divided it into four quarters, with
each ruled by a governor. In turn, the quarters were divided into provinces, each also
ruled by a governor. From their capital at Cuzco, the Inca ran an efficient government
with a chain of command reaching into every village. Nobles ruled the provinces. In
general, local administration was left in the hands of local rulers, and villages were
allowed to continue their traditional ways.
The Incan state was built on war, so all young men were required to serve in the
Incan army. They created an efficient economic system to support the empire and an
extensive road system to tie it together. They also imposed a single official language,
Quechua, and founded schools to teach Incan ways. All of these actions were to unify the
variety of people controlled by the Inca.
There was almost no crime in the Incan empire. Inca laws were very harsh.
Punishment was swift. If you insulted the Inca, cursed the gods, or committed a murder,
you were thrown off a cliff. If you were caught stealing or cheating, you either had your
hands and feet cut off. There were lesser punishments- you could be stoned or you could
be tied to a wall and left to freeze.
If you lived through your punishment, you were classified as a criminal, and you
became a ward of the state. The state took care of you. They clothed and fed you. Your
job as a criminal was to tell others about your crime. Every day, criminals were taken to
the city gates and given a begging bowl. As people passed by, criminals had to announce
their crimes. If their stories were interesting, people would toss food or small trinkets
into the bowls. That way, each criminal could prove how many had stopped to listen as
they confessed their crimes. And the people had daily reminders of what would happen
to them if they broke the law.
Economic: The Incan state controlled most economic activity, regulating the
production and distribution of goods. Unlike the Maya and the Aztec, the Inca allowed
little private commerce or trade. Land ownership was divided in three ways: state lands,
religious lands, and community lands. Farmers worked on all three types of land.
On steep hillsides, farmers carved out strips of land to be held in place by stone
walls. These terraces kept rains from washing away the soil and made farming possible
in places where flat land was scarce. The Inca also created a massive water management
system that stored water for the dry season.
The main demand the Incan state placed on its subjects was for tribute, mainly in
the form of labor. The labor tribute was known as mita. It required all to work for the
state a certain number of days every year, usually for several weeks. Mita workers might
labor on state farmlands, produce craft goods for state warehouses, or help build public
works, such as roads, palaces, or irrigation canals. Farmers had to spend part of each
year working land for the emperor and the temples as well as for their own communities.
The government took possession of each harvest, dividing it among the people and
storing part in case of famine.
Historians have compared the Incan system to a type of socialism or a modern
welfare state. Citizens were expected to work for state and were cared for in return. For
example, the aged and disabled were often supported by the state.
Religion. The Inca were polytheistic. The Inca focused on key nature spirits such
as the moon, the stars, and thunder. Chief of the Incan gods was a creator god called
Viracocha. Next in importance was the sun god, Inti. Because the Incan ruler was
considered a descendant of Inti, sun worship amounted to worship of the king.
The Temple of the Sun in Cuzco was the most sacred of all Incan shrines. It was
heavily decorated in gold, a metal the Inca referred to as "sweat of the sun."
Cultural: The heart of the Incan empire, Cuzco, the capital, was a splendid city of
temples, plazas, and palaces. Like the Romans, the Inca were master engineers and
stonemasons. Incan builders carved and transported huge blocks of stone, fitting them
together perfectly without mortar. Nothing shows the architectural genius of the Inca
more than the ruins of the abandoned city of Machu Picchu.
The Incan road system was one of the great road systems in history. A marvel of
engineering, this road system symbolized the power of the Incan state. The 24,800-milelong network of roads and bridges spanned the empire, traversing rugged mountains and
harsh deserts. The roads ranged from paved stone to simple paths. Hundreds of bridges
spanned rivers and deep gorges. Steps were cut into steep slopes and tunnels dug through
hillsides. As in Rome, all roads led to the capital, Cuzco.
Along the roads, the Inca built rest houses, located a day's walk apart, to provide
shelter for weary travelers. The roads allowed armies and news to move rapidly
throughout the empire. A system of runners traveled these roads as a kind of postal
service, carrying messages from one end of the empire to the other. Ordinary people,
though, were restricted from using the roads at all.
Despite the sophistication of many aspects of Incan life, the Inca never developed a
writing system. For numerical information, the Inca created an accounting device known
as the quipu, a set of knotted strings that could be used to record data. The lack of a fully
developed writing system did not prevent the Inca from attaining a high level of cultural
achievement.
The Age of Exploration
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For almost a thousand years (500-1500), Europeans had mostly remained in one
part of the world. Then at the end of the 15th century, they set out on a remarkable series
of overseas journeys. First Portugal and Spain, then later the Dutch Republic, England,
and France. What caused them to take such dangerous voyages to the ends of the earth?
The desire to grow rich and to spread Christianity, coupled with advances in
sailing technology, spurred an age of European exploration.
The desire for new sources of wealth was the main reason for European
exploration. By the late 1400s, the desire to share in the rich trade in spices and other
luxury goods from Asia spurred Europeans to explore the oceans.
Europeans had long traded with Asia. The people of Europe had been introduced
to Asian goods during the Crusades, the wars fought between Christians and Muslims
from 1096 to 1270. After the Crusades ended, Europeans continued to demand spices
which added flavor to the bland foods of Europe. Later, when the Mongol empire united
much of Asia in the 1200s and 1300s, Asian goods flowed to Europe along the Silk Road
(an overland trade route). The Black Death and the breakup of the Mongol empire
disrupted these routes.
By the 1400s, though, Europe was recovering from the plague. As its population
increased, so too, did the demand for Asian goods. The most valued trade items were
spices, such as cloves, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg- and, especially, pepper. In the days
before refrigeration, meat spoiled quickly. People used spices to preserve food and to
add flavor to dried and salted meat. Spices were also used to make medicines and
perfumes.
The major source of spices was the Moluccas, an island chain in present-day
Indonesia, which Europeans called the Spice Islands. Because demand for these goods
was greater than the supply, merchants could charge high prices and thus make great
profits. In the 1400s, Muslim and Italian merchants controlled most of the trade between
Asia and Europe. Muslim traders brought spices and other prized goods to eastern
Mediterranean ports in Egypt, Syria, and Turkey. From there, traders from Venice and
other Italian cities carried the precious cargoes to European markets. Each time goods
passed from one trader to another, the prices increased.
Europeans wanted to cut out the Muslim and Italian middlemen and gain direct
access to the riches of Asia. This meant finding a sea route directly to Asia. In the hope
of enormous reward, sailors risked death on long sea voyages in tiny wooden ships.
Europeans also had hopes of finding precious metals (gold and silver and precious
jewels). A few even went in search of fabulous cities with enormous riches, such as the
legendary El Dorado.
The desire for wealth was not the only motive that lured men to sea. The desire to
spread Christianity also fueled European exploration. Some voyagers were still fired by
the centuries-old desire to crusade against the Muslims. Others believed that they had a
sacred duty to convert non-Christians throughout the world.
Bartolomeu Dias, an early Portuguese explorer, explained his motives: "to serve
God and His Majesty, to give light to those who were in darkness and to grow rich as all
men desire to do." Many people shared the belief of Hernan Cortes, the Spanish
conqueror of Mexico, that they must ensure that the natives "are introduced into the holy
Catholic faith."
Finally, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation had led to religious and
political persecution. Many people, like the Pilgrims and Puritans, went overseas to seek
religious freedom for themselves and to escape persecution at home.
Grandeur, glory, and a spirit of adventure also played a major role in European
expansion. By the early 1400s, Europeans were ready to venture beyond their borders.
For one thing, the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution had created a desire to learn
more about the world. Thus simple curiosity and a spirit of discovery moved many
people to explore the world outside Europe.
In many cases, there was no single reason that motivated a person or group of
people to explore or colonize. Rather, a combination of these hopes and aims led
Europeans to leave their old lives for new and, to them, unknown lands.
"God, glory, and gold," then, were the chief motives for European expansion, but
what made the voyages possible? Europeans had reached a level of technology that
enabled them to make a regular series of voyages beyond Europe.
Several improvements in technology helped Europeans conquer the vast oceans of
the world. In the 1400s, the Portuguese developed a new vessel- the caravel, which
combined the square sails of European ships with Arab lateen, or triangular, sails. The
new rigging made it easier to sail across or even into the wind. Caravels also adopted the
sternpost rudder and numerous masts of Chinese ships. Ships traveled more quickly and
could be steered more easily.
Along with larger and better ships, Europeans had more reliable navigational tools.
New technology enabled ships to sail beyond sight of land without getting lost. European
sailors also learned to use the astrolabe, an instrument developed by the ancient Greeks
and perfected by the Arabs, to determine their latitude at sea. One of the most important
instruments to be developed during this time was the compass. Explorers were able to
more accurately track their direction by using a magnetic compass invented by the
Chinese. Cartographers, or mapmakers, created more accurate maps and sea charts.
Improved ways of doing business also played a part. Banks could store large sums
of money that they could lend governments or businesses wanting to explore overseas.
Individual merchants joined together into a new kind of organization called a joint-stock
company. Owners raised money by selling shares, or stock, in the company. Investors
who bought the stock became co-owners and shared in the profits. The more shares they
owned, the more of the profits they would receive. Joint-stock companies raised large
sums of money from investors to finance exploration.
In other cases, Europeans changed basic economic practices. The changes were so
great that many historians refer to the period between the late 1400s and the 1700s as the
Commercial Revolution.
The Explorers
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The Age of Discovery, also known as the Age of Exploration, was a period in
history starting in the 15th century, in which Europeans explored the world by sea
searching for particular trade goods- the most desired being gold, silk and spices.
Leading up to the Age of Exploration was a series of European travelers crossing
Eurasia by land during the Pax Mongolica. The most famous of whom was Marco Polo,
an Italian merchant, who wrote of his journeys throughout Asia from 1271 to 1295 in a
book called Travels. The Mongol empire collapsed almost as quickly as it formed and
soon the route to the east became difficult and dangerous. The rise of the hostile and
expansionist Ottoman Empire, a Muslim empire, further limited the possibilities of
European overland trade. Thus Western Europeans sought a sea trade route to Asia.
Portugal led the way in European exploration. Beginning in 1420, under the
sponsorship of Prince Henry "the Navigator", Portuguese fleets began probing southward
along the western coast of Africa. In 1488, Bartholomeu Dias rounded the tip of Africa,
called the Cape of Good Hope, and proved that one could sail around Africa and enter the
Indian Ocean. In 1498 Vasco da Gama made good on this promise by reaching India
itself. He returned to Portugal with a fabulous cargo of spices and jewels.
Portugal's rival Spain had been somewhat slower than its neighbor to begin
exploring the Atlantic. It was not until the late 15th century following the completion of
the reconquista that Spain began looking for new trade routes and colonies overseas. In
1492, the rulers of Spain- Ferdinand and Isabella- funded Christopher Columbus'
expedition. Columbus, like most educated people, knew the Earth was round, and thus he
believed that he could reach Asia by sailing west across the Atlantic instead of east.
In August, Columbus set sail with three ships- the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa
Maria. After a voyage of six weeks, Columbus reached the Americas on October 12,
where he explored the coastline of Cuba and the island of Hispaniola. Claiming the
islands for Spain, Columbus believed he had reached Asia. Through three more voyages,
he sought in vain to find a route through the Caribbean islands- which he called the
Indies- to the Asian mainland.
Columbus did not reach Asia, but rather found what was to the Europeans a New
World. For Portugal and Spain a division of influence became now necessary to avoid
conflict. The Treaty of Tordesillas, signed in 1494, split the world between the two
powers. Territories east of the line would be controlled by Portugal, and those west of
the line by Spain. The Portuguese "received" Africa, Asia and eastern South America
(Brazil), while the Spanish "received" everything to the west- almost all the Americas.
Upon da Gama's return to Portugal in 1499, the jubilant King Manuel styled
himself "Lord of the Conquest, Navigation, and Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia,
and India," setting forth the ambitious scope of his plans. Previously the Indian Ocean
had been an open sea, used by merchants of all the surrounding lands. Now the
Portuguese intended to make it Portugal's sea, the private property of the Portuguese
alone, which others might use only on Portuguese terms.
The Portuguese began seizing key points that would allow them to control all the
major trade routes of the east. Thus forts and trading posts were established in West and
East Africa, at Hormuz/Ormuz in the Persian Gulf, at Goa & Diu in India, at Malacca in
Southeast Asia, and Macao in China. The ability of little Portugal to assert control over
the Indian Ocean stemmed from the superiority of its ships and cannons.
The Portuguese never gained complete control of the Indian Ocean trade, but their
domination of key ports and the main trade routes during the 16th century brought them
great wealth. It was the Northern Europeans who became the great rivals to the
Portuguese in the Indian Ocean. The Dutch, French and English ignored the division of
the world. During the 17th century, they established trading posts and colonies of their
own in the east, at the expense of Portugal. The Portuguese state proved to be simply too
small to provide the money and manpower needed to control and defend its empire.
Initially, Columbus and other Spanish explorers were disappointed with their
discoveries- unlike Africa or Asia, the Caribbean islanders had little to trade with the
Spanish ships. The islands thus became the focus of colonization efforts. It was not until
the continent itself was explored that Spain found the wealth it had wanted in the form of
abundant gold and silver. In the Americas, the Spanish found a number of rich empiresthe Aztecs and the Inca- to conquer.
In 1519 the Spanish crown funded the expedition of Portuguese navigator
Ferdinand Magellan. The goal of his mission was to find the Spice Islands by travelling
west, which would place the islands in Spain's sphere. The fleet managed to cross the
Pacific Ocean and reach the islands, and was the first to circumnavigate (sail around) the
world upon its return three years later. The expedition was a failure though in the sense
that its route was impractical. It was not a realistic alternative to the route around Africa.
European voyages of discovery were undertaken to search for sea routes to Asia.
The Portuguese found a route east around Africa, the Spanish a route west around South
America. The English, Dutch, and French began looking for a route west around North
America. The first mission in 1497 was an English expedition led by the Italian, John
Cabot. In 1534, the French explorer, Jacques Cartier discovered the St Lawrence River
which carried him deep into the continent. Martin Frobisher set out in 1576. Henry
Hudson, an Englishman, sailed for the English in 1607, the Dutch in 1609, and the
English again in 1610. The Northwest Passage to Asia was never discovered, but in their
travels other possibilities were uncovered and in the early 17th century colonists began to
settle on the east coast of North America.
During the early period of the Ming dynasty- the late 1300s and early 1400s- the
Chinese were probably the most skilled sailors in the world. The Chinese admiral Zheng
He led seven expeditions between 1405 and 1433 exploring the coasts of Southeast Asia,
India, Arabia, and East Africa. Everything about them was large- distances traveled, size
of the fleet, and the size of the ships themselves. The Chinese clearly had the ability to
become a great seafaring power. After the seventh voyage ended in 1433, there were no
more. China withdrew into isolation. Given the impact of Europe's voyages of
discovery, we can only wonder how history might have changed if the Chinese had
continued their explorations.
The Conquerors
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Spanish colonization of the New World began in the West Indies. From there,
Spanish explorers, known as conquistadors, after the Spanish word for conquerors, went
to Central and South America. There they found new and thriving civilizations- the
Aztecs and the Inca. Rich in treasure, their wealth proved to be their ruin. The two
Spaniards leading the conquests of the Aztec and Incan empires were Hernan Cortes and
Francisco Pizarro respectively.
Cortés landed his expedition on the coast of modern-day Mexico in 1519 and
established a settlement called Vera Cruz, which was the starting point for his attempt to
conquer the Aztec empire. After destroying his ships, effectively stranding his men,
Cortés led his band of some 600 soldiers inland towards the fabled Tenochtitlan.
After a journey of nearly three months, Cortés arrived at the outskirts of
Tenochtitlan, the island capital of the Aztecs. It is believed that the city was one of the
largest in the world at that time. The Aztec ruler Moctezuma II welcomed him with great
pomp and they exchanged gifts. Cortés then seized Moctezuma, made him his prisoner
as insurance against an Aztec revolt, and demanded an enormous ransom of gold.
At this point, Cortés received news from the coast that a much larger force of
Spaniards had arrived with orders to arrest him and bring him back to Cuba for trial for
mutiny. Cortés returned to Veracruz and convinced the soldiers to join him instead.
When Cortés returned to Tenochtitlan, he found that the men he had left behind had
attacked and killed many of the Aztec nobility during a festival. The population of the
city risen in mass after the Spanish attack.
The Aztecs besieged the palace housing the Spaniards. Cortés ordered Moctezuma
to speak to his people and persuade them to let the Spanish leave in peace. Moctezuma
was jeered and stones were thrown at him, injuring him badly. He died a few days later.
Now the Spaniards and their allies had to flee the city. On a rainy night, the
Spaniards and their allies set out for the mainland via a causeway, taking all the gold they
could carry. Their movement was detected and Aztec forces attacked, both along the
causeway and by means of canoes on the lake. The Spanish were thus caught on a
narrow road with water on two sides. The retreat quickly turned into chaos. The bulk of
the Spanish infantry had to cut their way through masses of Aztec warriors. Many of the
Spaniards, weighed down by gold, drowned or were killed by the Aztecs. In this retreat
the Spaniards suffered heavy casualties. It is said that Cortés, upon reaching the
mainland, wept over his losses. This episode is called "La Noche Triste" (the sad night).
The Aztecs pursued and harassed the Spanish, but the Spanish were able to escape
to Tlaxcala. There Cortés made an alliance with Tlaxcalteca, who hated the Aztecs, and
began to fight back. Cortés returned to Tenochtitlan and mounted a siege of the city.
The Spaniards cut off the supply of food and water to the city. Even worse, many of the
Aztecs were afflicted with smallpox and died. Despite heroic resistance, the city fell on
August 13, 1521 when the last Aztec emperor, Cuauhtemoc, surrendered to Cortés.
Tenochtitlan was dismantled and the Spanish began to build Mexico City.
At the time that the Spanish arrived in 1528, the Incan Empire extend from
southern Colombia to Chile, and from the Pacific Ocean to the edge of the Amazonian
jungles (about 380,000 square miles). Scholars estimate that the population of the empire
probably numbered over 16,000,000.
Francisco Pizarro was attracted by the news of this rich kingdom. In 1529, he
obtained permission from the Spanish king to conquer the land. Pizarro returned to Peru
in 1532 and learned of the civil war and of the smallpox epidemic that was weakening the
Incan Empire.
At this point, Pizarro had 168 men under his command: 106 on foot and 62 on
horses. Most accounts agree that Atahualpa, the Sapa Inca or Incan emperor, met with
Pizarro voluntarily. It seems Atahualpa did not consider the small Spanish force a threat.
Atahualpa met with the Spaniards at Cajamarca. He came with 7,000 unarmed soldiers
and attendants. But Pizarro had prepared an ambush to trap the Inca.
At the signal to attack, the Spaniards unleashed volleys of gunfire at the vulnerable
mass of Incas and surged forward. The effect was devastating, the shocked Incas offered
such feeble resistance that the battle has often been labeled a massacre with the Inca
losing 2,000 dead compared to five of Pizarro's men. Accounts by members of Pizarro's
force explain how the Spanish used a cavalry charge against the Incan forces, who had
never seen horses, in combination with gunfire (the Inca had never seen guns either).
Other factors in the Spaniard's favor were their steel swords, helmets and armor, against
the Incan forces which only had leather armor and were unarmed. The Spanish also had
a three small cannon which were used to great effect in the crowded town square.
Pizarro took Atahualpa captive. The Incan Empire had a highly centralized chain
of command which meant that once the greatly outnumbered Spaniards held the emperor
hostage, they effectively paralyzed the empires' military forces.
Noticing the Spanish lust for precious metals, Atahualpa offered to fill a large
room with gold and promised twice that amount in silver in exchange for his freedom.
While Pizarro accepted this offer and allowed the gold to pile up, he had no intention of
releasing the emperor. He needed Atahualpa's influence over his generals and the people
in order to maintain the peace.
By May 1533, Pizarro received all the treasure he had requested. The question
now was what to do with Atahualpa. A mock trial was held. He was charged with
revolting against the Spanish and practicing idolatry. Atahualpa was sentenced to
execution by burning. Upon converting and being baptized, he was strangled to death
instead.
Having deprived the Incan empire of its leader, Pizarro moved south to Cuzco, the
capital and heart of the empire, which he captured in November 1533. He then led his
men in an orgy of looting, pillaging, and torture in search of more precious metals. The
Spaniards destroyed almost every Incan building in Cuzco, built a Spanish city on top of
the old foundations, and proceeded to colonize and exploit the former empire.
Riding horses, carrying firearms, and spreading disease, a small number of
conquistadors had conquered two empires and put the New World's vast wealth at Spain's
disposal, making Spain the most powerful nation on Earth for the next 100 years.
The Atlantic Slave Trade
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During the Age of Exploration, the Portuguese first explored the coast of Africa.
As they advanced down the coast in search of gold and a route to Asia, they exchanged
goods with African traders. In return for European goods, local traders offered gold,
ivory, and slaves. At first the Portuguese were less interested in slaves than in gold and
ivory. The demand for slaves changed dramatically, however, with the discovery of the
Americas and the planting of sugarcane there.
Cane sugar was introduced to Europe from the Middle East during the Crusades.
During the 16th century, plantations, large agricultural estates, were set up along the
coast of Brazil and on islands in the Caribbean to grow sugarcane. Sugar plantations and
tobacco farms required a large supply of workers to make them profitable for their
owners.
European owners had planned to use Native Americans as a source of cheap labor.
European colonists in the Americas had forced Native Americans to work in their mines
and plantations. But millions of Native Americans had died from disease and warfare.
The small native population could not provide the cheap labor needed. Therefore, the
Europeans in Brazil, the Caribbean, and the southern colonies of North America soon
turned to Africa for workers.
The Spanish took an early lead in importing Africans to the Americas. By 1650,
nearly 300,000 Africans labored throughout Spanish America on plantations and in gold
and silver mines. However, the Portuguese soon surpassed the Spanish. During the
1600s, Brazil dominated the European sugar market. As the colony's sugar industry
grew, so too did European colonists' demand for slaves. During the 17th century, more
than 40% of all Africans brought to the Americas went to Brazil. By the time the slave
trade ended, Brazil had received more than 3.6 million Africans. That was nearly 10
times the number of Africans who would arrive in North America.
As the other European nations established colonies in the Americas, their demand
for cheap labor grew too. Thus, they also began to import and enslave large numbers of
Africans. A majority of these slaves labored on sugar, tobacco, and coffee plantations in
the Dutch, French, and English colonies in the Caribbean.
In time, the buying and selling of Africans for work in the Americas- known as the
Atlantic slave trade- became a massive enterprise. This Atlantic slave trade soon
dominated all relations between Europe and western Africa. It had begun in the 1500s, to
fill the need for labor in Spain's American empire. In the next 300 years, it grew into a
huge and profitable business. Each year, traders shipped tens of thousands of enslaved
Africans across the Atlantic to work on tobacco and sugar plantations in the Americas.
In 1518, a Spanish ship carried the first boatload of African slaves directly from
Africa to the Americas. During the next two centuries, the trade in slaves grew
dramatically and became part of the triangular trade that marked the emergence of a new
world economy. The pattern of triangular trade connected Europe, Africa and Asia, and
the American continents.
Over one trade route, European merchant ships carried European manufactured
goods, such as guns and cloth, to Africa, where they were traded for a cargo of slaves.
Europeans seldom went into the interior to take part in slave raids. Instead, they relied on
African rulers and traders to seize captives in the interior and bring them to coastal
trading posts and forts. There, the captives were exchanged for textiles, metalwork, rum,
tobacco, weapons, and gunpowder.
The slaves were then transported across the Atlantic Ocean and sold in the
Americas. This second leg was known as the Middle Passage.
European merchants then bought tobacco, molasses, sugar, and raw cotton and
shipped them back to Europe to be sold in European markets. The prosperity of port
cities such as Nantes in France, Bristol in England, and Salem in Massachusetts depended
in large part on the slave trade.
On another triangular route, merchants carried rum and other goods from the New
England colonies to Africa. There they exchanged their merchandise for Africans. The
traders then transported the Africans to the West Indies and sold them for sugar and
molasses. They then sold these goods to rum producers in New England. Various other
transatlantic routes existed. In fact, the triangular trade encompassed a network of
trade routes crisscrossing the Northern and Southern colonies, the West Indies, England,
Europe, and Africa. The network carried a variety of traded goods. These included furs,
fruit, tar, and tobacco, as well as millions of African people.
For enslaved Africans, the Middle Passage was a horror. Sickening cruelty
characterized this journey. Once purchased, Africans were packed below the decks of
slave ships. Hundreds of men, women, and children were crammed into a single vessel.
Slave ships became "floating coffins" on which up to half the Africans on board died
from disease or brutal mistreatment. The smell of blood, sweat, and excrement filled the
hold. African captives often lived in their own vomit and waste. Some enslaved
Africans resisted. A few tried to seize control of the ship and return to Africa. Others
committed suicide by leaping overboard. Scholars estimate that roughly 20% of the
Africans aboard each slave ship perished during the brutal trip to the Americas.
Between 1500 and 1600, nearly 300,000 Africans were transported to the
Americas. In the 17th century, the total climbed to over a million and jumped to six
million in the 18th century. By then the trade had spread from West Africa and central
Africa to East Africa. As England's presence in the Americas grew, it came to dominate
the Atlantic slave trade. From 1690 until the nation abolished the slave trade in 1807,
England was the leading carrier of enslaved Africans.
Historians are still debating the number of Africans who were affected by the
Atlantic slave trade. By the 1800s, when the overseas slave trade was finally stopped, an
estimated 11 million enslaved Africans had reached the Americas.
One reason for these astonishing numbers, of course, was the high death rate. The
journey of slaves from Africa to the Americas became known as the Middle Passage, the
middle portion of the triangular trade route. Another 2 million probably died under the
brutal conditions of the voyage between Africa and the Americas. Those who arrived
often died from diseases to which they had little or no immunity.
The Columbian Exchange
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Though his landing was not at the spot that he had proposed to the Spanish rulers,
Columbus's arrival at Guanahani was to have consequences far more significant and farreaching than the discovery of a western trade route to India. Perhaps the most important
consequence of Columbus's voyage was the unleashing of a set of extraordinary forces of
change. As Columbus strode ashore to meet the friendly, generous natives, he began a
series of exchanges between the two worlds. From that moment on, neither world was
ever the same.
Historian Alfred W. Crosby Jr. calls this transfer of peoples, animals, plants, and
diseases between the New and Old Worlds- the Columbian Exchange. Crosby notes
that some catalysts, like the potato, were humble, while others, like religion, were more
profound. The Smithsonian Institution selected five catalysts, which it called "seeds," for
its 1992 exhibit, Seeds of Change: disease, the horse, corn, the potato, and sugar. As the
exhibit pointed out, the exchange was not one-way. While sugar and the horse were
brought to the Americas, corn and the potato were taken to Europe and Africa. Diseases
sought out victims in both hemispheres. Each of these seeds, once transplanted, had farreaching, often contradictory, consequences.
At first an agent of Spanish conquest, horses became a catalyst for change in
Indian culture. By giving the Plains Indians increased mobility, the horse brought tribes
into increased contact- both peaceful and warlike- with each other and with encroaching
whites. Moreover, it influenced virtually every aspect of Plains culture, from hunting and
transportation to concepts of wealth and courage, to marriage customs and funeral
traditions.
Disease, too, brought major changes in both hemispheres after Columbus's
voyages. Smallpox, especially, among the diseases common in Europe but unknown in
the Americas, ravaged the native American population, producing as much as a 90%
population loss in the first century after contact. Though the disease was not introduced
intentionally, it became an unexpected ally of the conquest. Cortes' victory at
Tenochtitlan can be credited largely to the effects of smallpox.
Food seems a more benevolent seed of change. For Europe and Africa, the
Americans provided a cornucopia of new foods. Among the over three hundred food
crops cultivated by the American Indians were peanuts, beans, squash, sweet potatoes,
pumpkins, papayas, manioc (cassava or tapioca), guavas, avocados, pineapples, tomatoes,
chili peppers, cocoa, sunflowers, and the two "miracle crops" corn and potatoes. The
major New World crops, especially corn and the potato, provided a greater number of
calories per acre than did the Old World wheat, barley, rice, or rye. Other foods, like
many varieties of beans, became known as the "poor man's meat," providing a source of
protein for those who could not afford to own livestock.
In contrast to most of these crops, sugar brought controversial change. Growing
and processing sugar is labor-intensive, and, when the native labor pool declined from
disease and harsh treatment, an alternative source was needed: slaves from Africa.
By the eighteenth century, sugar cane was the most important cash crop in tropical
America. The Americas became an integral part of the world economy, largely because
of the sugar trade. The sugar colonies bought slaves from Africa, manufactured goods
and luxuries for Europe, and harvested basic foods and lumber from North America. In
return, they exported sugar, rum, and molasses. The sugar industry of the Americas
began a global economy in which decisions made on one continent had consequences for
several others.
It is this interconnectedness that the Smithsonian claimed was Columbus's greatest
legacy. In 1492 the world was round. After 1492 the world was one. Today, the world
is even more closely linked than it became in October 1492. This, then, may be the most
significant result of Columbus's voyages- not that he discovered a "a new world" but
rather that, from his time on, two "old worlds" merged into one.
Columbus: Hero or Villain?
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No, Columbus didn't discover America. It's pretty clear by now that Columbus
was not the first outsider to set foot in the Western Hemisphere. That distinction belongs
to the original human settlers, who probably crossed from Asia tens of thousands of years
ago. Or, most likely, Leif Eriksson and the Vikings who landed in "Vinland" in about
A.D. 1000.
But even if they did reach the American continent, none of them made a big deal
about it- which Christopher Columbus, in 1492, emphatically did. He left European
settlers and animals behind, he brought native people and vegetables back. He told tales
of rich lands and potential treasure. He inspired a wave of explorers and adventurers to
head west. In short, he had consequences.
That is why, 500 years later, the world still takes notice. It was as if scattered
pieces of the human puzzle were fitted together at last. Parts became a whole, and life
was transformed in a hundred ways. New foods reshaped the diet of both hemispheres;
sugar, cattle and pigs moved west, the tomato and the potato, cocoa and corn moved east.
The horse, unknown in the New World, changed daily existence for the Indians of the
North American plains and made possible the world of the gauchos and cowboys. The
wheel, which the pre-Columbian civilizations of the West used only in children's toys,
revolutionized work and travel. Written language spread through the continent, replacing
either a ponderous system of hieroglyphics or nothing at all.
Inevitably, there was havoc. Diseases against which they had no natural immunity
took a terrible toll among the people of the New World; smallpox alone wiped out many
millions. Germs were the conquistadors' most devastating weapon; local populations
were so racked by illness that they could offer little resistance to the European conquest.
Syphilis may have spread in the opposite direction; it first appeared in Europe after the
conquistadors began returning from the Americas. Tobacco, its delights masking its
dangers, was another gift from the New World to the Old.
Not only Europeans came over; soon Africans began arriving in great numbers, as
slaves. They were brought in, at first, to work the sugar plantations springing up on the
islands of the Caribbean; the local population was found to be unsuitable for the work- or,
in many instances, had been decimated by disease. Agriculture based on slavery spread
both north and south. The Western Hemisphere's natives were thus not the only ones to
suffer from the European advance. Columbus and his followers sowed seeds of racial
antagonism that tangle life in many parts of the American continent to this day.
Slavery, conquest, disease and humiliation- these are the legacy of Columbus, in
the eyes of some people today. They see nothing to celebrate in the 500th anniversary of
his crossing; instead, they think it should be an occasion for protest- or at best a vast, sad
silence. Fair enough- up to a point. Much of the old "Columbus sailed the ocean blue"
lore does need refinement. For one thing, some of it is wrong. Past ages, too, have told
the story mostly through European eyes.
The problem is that those who denounce Columbus today, like those who used to
glorify him, are looking at history through contemporary glasses. It's fairly easy to paint
Columbus and the early explorers as people who oppressed the local residents, smashed
alien civilizations and chopped down a lot of trees. It's a damning portrait. But it also
leaves a lot out.
Above all, it leaves out the fact that this encounter was inevitable. This is not
simply to state the obvious: that if Columbus hadn't set sail in 1492, some other European
voyager would have made the trip soon afterward. The key point is that whoever made
the first crossing and whenever it occurred, the consequences for the people of the
Western Hemisphere would not have been much different.
Therefore, don't look for heroes and villains, look at the vast changes that were
wrought. Because of what happened in 1492, life in much of the world has never been
quite the same. Not everyone will find this an occasion to celebrate. But it was
indisputably one of the great divides in human history, an event to marvel at and to learn
from.