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Chapter 1
For hundreds of thousands of years before
written history, humans made advances in
the use of tools, created art, and
developed agriculture, which led to a shift
from nomadic hunting and gathering
patterns of living to more sedentary ways
of life.
Before Western Civilization
• Out of Africa: The Paleolithic Period, 600,000-10,000
B.C.
• Human beings first evolved in sub-Saharan Africa
– Trade Networks
• Goods and Stories
• Stone Tools
– Cave Art
• Bison (over 10,000 years repeated)
• Ritual Purpose
• Gathering Place of Clans for Trade and Other Interactions
– Stone Monuments
• Called Megaliths (Stonehenge) – Western England
50 Tons, Concentric Circles & Semicircles, Show Movements of Sun
and Moon
Before Western Civilization
• The Neolithic Period: The First Stirrings of
Agriculture, 10,000-3000 B.C.
• People learned how to plant and cultivate grains
– Domestic Animals
• Dogs, Goats, Cows, Pigs, Sheep (food), and Horses
– Middle East Plants and Animals
• Highest amount or number of the worlds prized grains wheat
& barley (protein)
– Population Growth
• More clans selling settling same area
Before Western Civilization
– Slavery
• Sell children – or themselves into slavery
• Born into slavery
• Not racial issue
– New Warfare
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More people to engage
More rewards for the winners and enslave the losers
Excavations have shown walls
Greatly feared their neighbors
Settlement throughout Europe and Asia Minor
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• In the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, people
developed a complex society that made
advances in religious ideas, political
organization, and the use of writing.
– Bronze Age
• Sometime after 3000 B.C. learned how
to smelt metals tools and weapons
• Copper + Tin = Bronze
Struggling with the Forces of
Nature: Mesopotamia
• The Development of Writing
• The Mesopotamian cities needed a system of keeping records
• The Sumerians developed a system of writing
– Cuneiform
• Scribes imprinted wedge-shaped characters into wet clay tablets
– Written Records
• Inventories, wills, contracts, payrolls, property transfers, and
correspondence between monarchs
• The Epic of Gilgamesh and other myths
• Laws and Justice
– Code of Hammurabi (Laws)
• It regulated everything from family life to
physicians’ fees to building requirements
Struggling with the Forces of
Nature: Mesopotamia
– Women and Children
• Many laws tried to protect women and children from unfair
treatment and limited the authority of husbands over their
housholds.
• Indo-Europeans: New Contributions in the Story
of the West
– Indo-European Languages
• Linguists – analyze similarities in languages
• Fertile Crescent spoke “Semitic”
– Mounted Warriors
• They rode horses, which they first domesticated for riding in
about 2000B.C.
• It gave Indo-European warriors the deadly advantages of
speed, mobility, and reach
Struggling with the Forces of
Nature: Mesopotamia
– Contributions
• Heavy carts outfitted with four solid wheels, and
their own written languages
– Hittites (kingdom in Asia Minor – Turkey)
• Indo-European group established a kingdom in
Asia Minor (modern Turkey)
Struggling with the Forces of
Nature: Mesopotamia
• The Origins of Western Civilization
– Administration
• Priests and Priestesses Provided the Needed Organization
• These Leaders Claimed a Percentage of the Land
– Economic Functions (Center of City Life)
• Ziggurats – Served as Administrative and Economic Centers, Storehouses,
Administrative Rooms, People Came to Bring Goods and Socialize
• Temple Administrators Organized Irrigation Projects & Tax Collection
• Life in a Sumerian City
– Trade
• Area Lacked Metal & Stone – Traded Textiles (wool)
– Families
Struggling with the Forces of
Nature: Mesopotamia
– Woman’s Work
• Work in Shops, Wine Sellers, Tavern Keepers, Prostitutes
• Gods and Goddesses of the River Valley
– Sumerian Pessimism
• Sumerians Only Hope for Happiness Hinged on Fickle Dieties Who
Cared Little for Humans
– Sargon (King)
• Akkadian Ruler – Invaded Sumer in about 2350 B.C.
• Daughter Enheduanna as High Priestess Worked so Well That
Successor Continued the Practice
• As King Started to Handle Matters – Sky Gods Became More
Important
– Individual Longings
• Story of Gilgamesh and Dealing With Life
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• In the Nile Valley, a less unpredictable
environment than that of the TigrisEuphrates Valley led to the establishment
of a more stable and optimistic culture
than in Mesopotamia.
– Nile Valley
• Mesopotamia Spread Crops
to Egypt
• River Reliably
Rule of the God-King: Ancient
Egypt, ca. 3100-1000 B.C.
• Prosperity and Order: The Old Kingdom, ca 2700-2181
B.C.
– Preserving Order
• At the center was the king
• Unlike Mesopotamias which their kings served as priests to their
gods, Egyptians believed their rulers were gods
– Trade
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Mineral Resources
Copper Ore
Abundance of Crops
Trade with Nubia – Access to Sub-Saharan Africa
Gold, Ivory, Ebony, Aromatics, & Gems
– Family Life
• Prosperity
Rule of the God-King: Ancient
Egypt, ca. 3100-1000 B.C.
• Hieroglyphs: Sacred Writing
More than a series of pictures each symbol could express one of three
things
Object it portrayed, abstract idea associated with object, one or more
sounds
• Pyramids and the Afterlife
– Scribes
• Carefully tracked the rulers finances
– Afterlife
• A Heavenly Nile
– Burial Rituals
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Embalmed
Mummy Wrapped Linen & Resin
Stocked Tombs with Items
Images on Walls
Rule of the God-King: Ancient
Egypt, ca. 3100-1000 B.C.
• Changing Political Fortunes, ca. 2200-1570 B.C.
– Famine
• As drought in southern Nubia led to a series of low floods in
Egypt, crops failed, and people pillaged the countryside in a
desperate search for food.
– Middle Kingdom
• Egypt prospered, the kings conquered Nubia and grew rich
on the gold of that kingdom.
– Egypt Conquered
• The Nubians in the south revolted and broke away from
Egyptian control.
• In 1650 B.C. the Hyksos rose to power
Rule of the God-King: Ancient
Egypt, ca. 3100-1000 B.C.
• Political Expansion: The New Kingdom, 15701085 B.C.
– Egyptian Empire
• Temple priests began rivaling the pharaohs in power, slaves
brought to Egypt, introduced new languages, views and
religions, lives of Egyptian soldiers changed for the worse
– Hatshepsut
• Tried to revive Egypt’s isolationist ways
– Empire Building
• Amenhotep III built huge statues of himself and a spacious
new temple
Rule of the God-King: Ancient
Egypt, ca. 3100-1000 B.C.
• Religious Experiment of Akhenaten, ca.
1377-1360
– Akhenaten’s Religion
• Amenhotep IV tried to institute worship of a single
god whom he called Aten, the sun-disk
• Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten
• The Twilight of the Egyptian Empire, 1360ca. 1000 B.C.
• Akhenaten was succeeded by Tutankhaton, who
died at the age of 18.
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• The other peoples made significant
contributions to Western civilization: the
Phoenicians developed an alphabet; the
Hebrews turned away from the polytheism
of other ancient cultures to embrace
monotheism.
Merchants and Monotheists
• The Phoenicians: Traders on the Sea
– Trading Colonies
• Phoenician traveled widely throughout the Mediterranean,
traded as far west as Spain, and into the Atlantic down the
west coast of Africa
• They established merchant colonies all along the north coast
of Africa; the most important was Carthage
– Phoenician Alphabet
• The Phoenicians’ most important
Contribution to Western culture was their
Alphabet
• A phonetic alphabet of only twenty-two letters
Merchants and Monotheists
• The People of the One God: Early Hebrew
History, 1500-900 B.C.
– Patriarchs
• The patriarchs - early leaders of the Hebrews
• Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob led seminomadic tribes that
roamed the eastern Mediterranean
– Hebrew Scriptures
• The history of the Israelites are found in the Hebrew
Scriptures
• Record laws, wisdom, legends, and literature
• The first five books constitute the Torah
Merchants and Monotheists
– Establishing a Kingdom
• Instead of relying solely on tribal leaders, people
turned to “judges”
• In time, the elders of the tribes felt they needed a
king, and the people insisted that Samuel anoint
their first king Saul
– Dividing a Kingdom
• After Solomon’s death tribes form the separate
kingdom of Isreal
• The southern state was called Judah
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• With the spread of iron-forging technology
also came changes in warfare and the
successive emergence of three great
empires, the Assyrians, the Babylonians,
and the Persians.
Merchants and Monotheists
• A Jealous God, 1300-587 B.C.
– The Covenant
• During 40 years in the wilderness, Moses bound his people
in a special covenant though which the Jews would be God’s
“chosen people” in return for their undivided worship.
– Hebrew Laws
• The core of the Hebrew legal tradition lay in the Ten
Commandments, and adhering to these laws defined on as a
Jew.
– Prophets
• Amos, Micah, Hosea, Jeremiah, and Isaiah
• They became the conscience of Israel
– “God’s Punishments”
Merchants and Monotheists
• Judaism in Exile
• Hebrew priests had the scriptures preserved so that their
people would not forget the purity laws.
– “Second Temple” Period
• In 538 B.C. the Persian king, Cyrus, let the Jewish exiles
return to Jerusalem.
• The Jews built a new temple in 515 B.C. the “Second
Temple” period
– Hebrew Contributions
• Believed that God created the world at a specific point in time
• Monotheism
Terror and Benevolence: The
Growth of Empires, 1200-500 B.C.
• The Age of Iron
– Iron Age
• In about 1200 B.C. tin was scarce.
• To overcome the tin shortage, Hittite metalworkers
in Asia Minor first began to employ iron.
• Rule by Terror: The Assyrians, 911-612 B.C.
– Governing an Empire
• Assyrians built roads to unify their holdings, kings appointed
governors and tax collectors, and facilitated trade by the use
of Aramaic as a common language
Terror and Benevolence: The
Growth of Empires, 1200-500 B.C.
– Preserving Learning
• The Assyrian king Ashurbanipal collected a huge library, and
he preserved the best of Mesopotamian literature, including
The Epic of Gilgamesh.
– Fall of Assyrians
• The Assyrians used terror to control their far-flung territories.
• Because the empire was so large it overextended the
Assyrians’ resources, and the provinces gave way quickly.
• Nineveh finally collapsed in 612 B.C. after a brutal two-year
siege.
Terror and Benevolence: The
Growth of Empires, 1200-500 B.C.
• Babylonian Rule, 612-539 B.C.
– Culture and Commerce
• Under Nebuchadrezzar, Babylon blossomed into an impressive city
graced by gardens, palaces, and temples.
• Babylonian kings obtained funds through fostering the commerce
that often guided their military policies.
– Astronomy and Mathematics
• Babylonian priests excelled in astronomy and mathematics.
• Rule by Tolerance: The Persian Empire, ca. 550-330
B.C.
• Under the king Cyrus the Great the Persians expanded westward to
establish a larger empire.
– Persians Administration
• Persians required subject peoples to pay reasonable taxes and
serve in their armies.
Terror and Benevolence: The
Growth of Empires, 1200-500 B.C.
– Persians Administration (cont.)
• They retained Aramaic as the common language of
commerce.
– Coins
• Lydians seem to have invented the use of coins in
the seventh century B.C.
– Zoroastrianism
• Zoroaster founded a new religion that contained
seeds of many modern belief systems.
• Zoroaster was called to reform Persian religion by
eliminating polytheism and animal sacrifice.