Transcript WHAP Ch1x

WHAP – CHAPTER 1
Introduction
• Human origins – 2.5 million years ago
• Human beings have existed for less than 5% of the time mammals of
any sort have lived.
• Human negatives and positives
• Aggressiveness, back problems, long baby time, fear of death
• Grip/Opposable thumbs, omnivores – can live in many different
settings, facial expressions and speech
• C. Paleolithic (Old Stone) Age- 2.5 million to 12000 BCE
• Simple tools – increase in size, brain capacity, homo erectus
Late Paleolithic Developments
• Homo Sapiens Sapiens
• 120,000 years ago- we appeared and perhaps killed off homo habilis,
homo erectus, and Cro-Magnon man.
• Population growth required change
• 1 square mile to hunt/gather for 2 people.
• Equality between the genders; women worked harder, but both contributed.
• Religions developed to explain events like death.
• Emergence of culture, system of beliefs, set up social behavior
• Greatest Achievement?
• Spreading over the earth’s surface
• Mesolithic Age – 12000 BCE to 8000 BCE
• Tools – sharpen animal bones, build rafts
• Domesticated animals
• Conflicts with others – skull fractures/bone breaks.
• Knowledge based on cave paintings, tool remains, burial
sites
Neolithic (New Stone) Age Revolution
• Agriculture changed everything – could support more
people
• Settle one spot – focus on economic, political, and religious goals.
• 14000-10000 BCE – Earth’s population increases from 6-8 million
to 100 million
• Causes of Agriculture
• Population increase – better climate (end of ice age)
• Big game animals were decreasing – hunting yield declined
• Gradual change – harvesting wild grains to planting seeds.
• New Animals Domesticated
• Pigs, sheep, goats, cattle
• Meat, skins, dairy
• Why the Middle East?
• Water source, fertile area, not forested, lacked animals – which was a
challenge for hunters.
• “Revolution” was gradual
• Many groups combined this new “trend” of agricultural with hunting
and gathering.
• Took well over 1000 years for this new way of life to be the norm.
• Effects
• Longer work week – agriculture requires more labor than hunting.
• Group work – building houses and villages.
• Varied clothing due to hides, but also wool.
• Resistance – too complicated, boring, and difficult
• Disease – eventually immunity will come, but death did occur.
• Small isolated societies took much longer to come around
• Changes
• Specialization of labor
• Technology
• Metal tools – Bronze Age 3000 – Iron Age 1500 BCE
Civilization
• Benefits of settling
• Houses, wells, justified improvements for future generations,
irrigation devices to channel river water to fields
• Irrigation and defense required people to work together.
• Catal Huyuk – Turkey – 7000 BCE civilization
• Mud-brick houses crowded together
• People spent time on rooftops to experience daylight and make
social contacts.
• Broken bones suggest accidental falls
• Religious images of male hunters and mother goddesses =
agricultural wealth
• Trade occurred with others to keep peace
• Skilled tool-makers and jewelers
Imprint of basket
Fragment of bone
Wall painting of dancing hunter
Statue found in grain bin -- goddess
• Civilization defined?
• Only societies with enough economic surplus can form divisions of
labor and a social hierarchy involving significant inequalities.
• Civilization involves the emergence of formal political organizations,
or states, as opposed to dependence on family or tribal ties.
• The word “civilization” itself is Latin- meaning cities.
• Writing
• 1st – Cuneiform – wedge shaped from Middle East (Mesopotamia)
• Record keeping – tax sufficiently
• Contracts/treaties
• Build on past knowledge
• People look at world as something to be understood rationally
• Not all peoples were literate – in each civilization, only a minority
could read.
Cuneiform alphabet
This is a Cuneiform inscription
from the Gate of all Nations
in Persepolis.
• Negatives of Civilization
• Class/caste distinctions – slavery
• Separation between rulers/ruled
• Warlike
• Gender inequality
• Patriarchal – men get manufacturing, political, religious titles.
• Benefits of Nomadic life
• More regulations
• -- depend of rules transmitted by word of mouth
• Respect of elders/children
• EX: American Indians were shocked at how European settlers spanked
their children
• Impact of Civilization on Environment
• Deforestation
• Erosion, flooding
• EX: Indus River Valley cities.
Tigris/Euphrates Civilization (Mesopotamia)
• Precedents
• Writing
• Law codes
• City planning/architecture
• Trade institutions and money
• Mesopotamia – land between 2 rivers
• Central America, China, and Meso. were three civs that developed from
scratch.
• Farming required irrigation
• Sumerians 3500 BCE
• Cuneiform – scribes
• Sumerian art – frescoes for temples
• Science – astronomy – calendar/forecasts – aided agriculture.
• Charts of constellations
Sumerian Fresco -- Akkad
Sumerian Star Chart
• Ziggurats
• 1st monumental architecture
• Role of geography
• Swift and unpredictable floods – religious
• Polytheism – punishment of humans through floods – Noah
• Gloomy – punishment in afterlife – hell
• Easy to invade – constantly at war; their geography left them vulnerable.
• City-states
• King has divine authority.
• Regulates religion
• Court system for justice
• Land worked by slaves – warfare created a surplus of labor
• Inventions
• Wheeled carts, fertilizer, silver money
Basic structure of a ziggurat (temple/grainary)
Mesopotamian Silver Coin Money
Sumerian depiction of
wheeled cart
• Babylonians
• Hammurabi – first codified law
• Procedure for courts
• Property rights
• Harsh punishments
• Indo-European invasions from North
• Adopted the culture
Egyptian Civilization
• Benefited from trade/technology of Mesopotamia
• Geographic factors
• Difficult to invade
• Regular flooding cycle
• Economy – government directed (probably to control Nile) vs.
Mesopotamia – independent business class
• Pharoahs – rulers- godlike – theocracy? – tombs – the pyramids
• Interactions (invasions) with Kush to the South
• Egyptian art – lively, cheerful, colorful
• Depicted a positive afterlife surrounded by beauty
• Architecture later influenced Mediterranean
• More advanced math and medical science than Mesopotamia
• Idea of a 24 hour day developed by Egyptians
• Mummification!
• Writing -- hieroglyphics
Egyptian relief: Hippopotamus hunt
Ramses II’s Temple at Luxor; view of pylons
Example of architecture
Ramses II’s courtyard
Wood statuette
Indian and Chinese River Valley Civilizations
• Indus River – Harappa/Mohenjo Daro (cities)
• Houses had running water (technology!)
• Traded with Mesopotamia
• Developed their own alphabet and distinctive art
• Harappan writing has yet to be deciphered.
• Civilization never had to be fully reinvented in India, despite
numerous invasions by Indo-Europeans.
• Indo-Europeans combined their religious and political idea with what
had taken root in early Indian cities.
• Organized their cities on a grid system
• Huange He (Yellow River)
• Isolated, little overland trading with India and Middle East
• Recorded part fact/part fiction of their kings (dodgy history)
• Carefully regulated irrigation in the flood-prone valley as an
ORGANIZED STATE (bureaucracy)
• Skillful horsemen
• Elaborate intellectual life
• Writing – knotted ropes, scratches of lines, ideographic symbols
• Delicate art, musical interest
• Limited materials – basic housing
• Religion
• Ancestor worship
• Oracle bones
Heritage of the River Valley Civilizations
• Accomplishments
• Monuments
• Wheel
• Taming of horse
• Square roots
• Monarchs/bureaucracies
• Calendars/time
• Major alphabets
• How much are these civilizations “origin” of today?
• Except for China, they all have a break from their past.
• Roman empire – god-like king
• Slavery
• Scientific legacy – the Greeks studied the Egyptians
• East vs. West
• Mesopotamians – gap between humankind and nature
• China – basic harmony all live together
• Temple building, art, architecture – Mesopotamia to Middle
East/Greece.
• Mesopotamia – regional cultures that could survive invasion
• Phoenicians – 22 letter alphabet
• Jews – morally/ethically based on monotheistic religion
• Semitic people – small, relatively weak – only autonomous (independent) when
region was in political turmoil.
• Believed in a single god – Jehovah – guided destinies of people
• Orderly, just – not whimsical
• Created moral code
• Religion basis for Christianity/Islam