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12.1
Chapter 12
An Explosion of Complexity:
The Flowering of Civilization in the Old World
Chapter Synthesis:
The Neolithic set the stage for the development of sedentary farming villages in
various places in the Old World. In a select few such regions an acceleration of cultural
complexity led to the development of a stratified social system that controlled the excess
wealth possible through the ability to produce an agricultural food surplus. Social elites
developed as part of a reorganization of society that allowed for orderly and systematic
trade, the construction of irrigation canals to increase the food base, and the construction
of monumental defensive fortifications. In these same regions, the new way of organizing
and controlling human labor was utilized by the developing elite to construct less
practically oriented monumental works: temples, palaces, or mortuary features like
pyramids. This kind of monumental construction, today diagnostic of ancient
civilizations, was both a cause and effect of the new social dynamic of the world's first
civilizations. Large, impressive monuments served as dramatic evidence of the power of
the elite. Such monuments served to symbolize and to reify this power at the same time
that it magnified this power.
In the Old World the processes that led to the kinds of societies we are calling
“civilization,” occurred in Mesopotamia in the Middle East, in the Nile Valley of Egypt,
in the Indus Valley of Pakistan, in eastern China in southeastern Europe on the Island of
Crete, and later, in southeast Asia. These cultures are the focus of this chapter.
Key Terms
barrays
Bayon
central place
city-state
cuneiform
cylinder seal
deffufa
Funan
hang-t'u
Khmer
Knossos
Kush
Lung shan
mastaba
Minoan
monumental works
Mycenaeans
New Temple Period
Nubia
scapulimancy
seal
social stratification
specialization of labor
state
system of record
keeping
tokens
Ubaid
envelope
tumuli
hieroglyphic
12.2
Additional Sources: Videos, CD-Roms, and Websites
The Royal Geographic Society's CD-ROM, The Egytpian Pyramids, is a useful
tool providing a virtual visit to ancient Egypt. An absolutely stunning CD-ROM is
Scala/Emme’s Voyage in Egypt. There is plenty of useful information and the
background music alone is worth the price of the disk.
The video Pyramid in the Secrets of Lost Empires series is another terrific
teaching tool from Nova. Also produced by Nova, This Old Pyramid chronicles a
replicative experiment designed by Egyptologist Mark Lehner. Students get a kick out of
the obviously unscripted give-and-take between Lehner and those who feel they have a
better way to build a pyramid.
There is an enormous number of sites on the Internet devoted to early
civilizations, including scholarly, university and museum web sites, sties put up by travel
agencies hoping to book you on a tour to an archaeological destination, personal web
pages with tourist visit photographs of pyramids and temples, and the ever present New
Age web sites purporting to expose the mystical secrets of ancient societies. I am
providing here a very small sample of some of the most informative and accurate sites I
have found—one for each of the ancient Old World civilizations discussed in this
chapter. Any Internet search engine can help you find lots more for help with a term
paper or simply to satisfy your intellectual curiosity about the world’s oldest civilizations:
Mesopotamia: http://www.mesopotamia.co.uk/menu.html
Egypt: http://guardians.net/egypt
Nubia: http://www.byu.edu/ipt/projects/egypt/Nubia.html
Indus Valley: http://www.harappa.com/har/har0.html
Shang: http://www.chinaknowledge.de/History/Myth/shang.htm
Minoan Crete: http://www.uk.digiserve.com/mentor/minoan/knossos.htm
Khmer: http://www.cambodia-travel.com/khmer-civilization.htm