User:Atcovi/HIS 111-A26: World Civilization Pre-1500 CE (SP23)/Ch 2

Although the large majority of the world’s population remained concentrated in small communities without access to the resources of big states, along several major rivers in Afro-Eurasia, large cities emerged. Uruk, on the Euphrates River in Mesopotamia, was the first city of this kind to integrate commercial and administrative activity in an urban center, where many inhabitants could focus on specialized-skill work and new social roles.

Similar developments occurred in Egypt, the Indus Valley, and China. Although these urban centers formed a tiny fraction of the world’s population, their emergence posed a threat to neighboring societies, who sought to catch up.

Development of Communities
The development of larger urban centers resulted from communities moving closer to fertile river basins, in drier regions where rivers overflowed to form rich soil on large river beds. Once irrigation techniques were improved, these zones became ideal for developing agricultural surpluses and domesticating plants and animals. Meanwhile, a warming period enabled longer growing seasons, and larger populations could be supported.

Given these new conditions, in the relatively short period between 3500 and 2000 BCE, three major urban developments took place: in the Tigris and Euphrates basin in Southwest Asia; along the northern Nile River, which flows into the Mediterranean Sea; and in northwestern South Asia by the Indus River. A millennium later, another would flourish on the Yellow and Yangzi Rivers in China.

In addition to the new social organization in these expanding settlements, new technologies appeared: the wheel was used for pottery and the movement of vehicles, and metallurgy and stoneworking produced tools and luxury products.

This agricultural surplus and these new technologies facilitated labor specialization, as individuals could devote their time to producing specialized products that they could sell to others.

As urbanization and specialization progressed, so did inequality. The relative egalitarianism that had characterized hunter-gatherer societies gave way to new hierarchies based on status and gender.

Urban and rural communities were interconnected and interdependent. Animal products and crops, as well as other natural resources, came from the countryside into the cities; and manufactured goods were sold or traded to the countryside. In addition to trade and consumption, these two ways of life were linked by family connections, politics, and religion.

Decline of Pastorial Communities
As urbanization expanded, transhumant herder communities remained small and without large public buildings or infrastructure. They moved cyclically from highlands to lowlands, and maintained connections with agrarian communities, with which they could exchange animal products for grains, pottery, and tools.

These communities thrived on the steppe lands of inner and central Eurasia (Mongolia). In this arid northern region stretching across the Eurasian continent, agriculture often proved challenging. Consequently, pastoralist communities focused on animal breeding and herding of horses, sheep, and cattle. Fishing, hunting, and small-scale farming provided a secondary source of food.

These were not passive, nonproductive actors. Rather, their movement over vast territories connected cities and facilitated the spread of ideas in Afro-Eurasia.

Mesopotamia, religion, elitism, cuneiform & the capture of Akkad
The world’s first complex society emerged in Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The region was well suited to support the growth of cities. Though the rivers were unpredictable and difficult to navigate, when controlled with irrigation they could support a rich agricultural system. The region was also well located, providing access to neighboring regions.

The first advances in irrigation occurred in the Zagros mountains, close to smaller rivers that feed the Tigris. The revolutionary irrigation system developed here by an engineer corps used levees to control the rivers and then ditches and canals to divert water, so that vulnerable crops would not be overwhelmed during flood season. Stored and channeled water could then be used to sustain crops during the drier season.

However, this revolutionary transformation of the environment had the unforeseen consequence of damaging the soil over time.

Though it had the resources to manage agriculture, Mesopotamia was deficient in most natural resources. To construct its cities, it depended in large part on trade with neighboring regions. To this end, it imported cedar wood from Lebanon, copper and stones from Oman, copper from Turkey and Iran, and lapis lazuli and tin from Afghanistan. The physical openness of Mesopotamia’s boundaries eased the movement of people and goods into the regions, making it a crossroads. It led, meanwhile, to the growth of its cities. Several important cultures developed in this context: Sumerians in the south, Hurrians in the north, and Akkadians in the west.

As populations grew, many migrated from rural areas to these city centers, where new opportunities were possible. The earliest cities of Sumer, in the south, included Eridu, Nippur, and Uruk. These grew gradually over hundreds of years, often as clusters of mud brick buildings that were built up over time. In Eridu, for instance, its temple was rebuilt twenty times, each more elaborate than the last.

Such temples were at the center of Sumerian cities, and they were points of worship and for the accumulation of wealth, to which inhabitants devoted their attention and resources. The basic urban model that resulted was the city-state. All told, more than thirty-five city-states developed in this period. These were roughly equal in power and each had its major divine sanctuary and guardian deity. In addition to the temple and official buildings located at the edge of cities, the city center was organized around a canal, where different craftspeople worked. In this way, city-states were both commercial and religious centers. This captured the social hierarchy of society in the city.

Religion
Sumerians and later Akkadians believed that their gods had initiated all of this and could control everything around them—for good or ill. The Epic of Gilgamesh, a second millennium BCE composition, captured this worldview. Each city’s god was housed in its major temple, and inhabitants believed that their god determined the city’s character, institutions, relationships with neighbors, and general welfare.

The temple took the form of a large-scale stepped ziggurat by 3000 BCE, flanked by buildings for priests, officials, laborers, and servants. It was thus not a strictly religious site. There, people engaged on the “god’s estate” in productive and commercial activities, which employed a large workforce in agriculture and manufacturing.

Elitism
In addition to the concentration of spiritual and economic power at temples, royal palaces emerged around 2500 BCE on the edge of cities to concentrate royal, secular, and military power. As with the gods, only elites could access these spaces.

The Royal Cemetery in Ur reveals the extraordinary status and power of these individuals. Many sacrificial victims and large quantities of food and manufactured goods buried in these graves demonstrated their elite’s power on earth.

How to maintain this elitism?

To uphold this social system in which the privileged had special access to economic and political power, a complex system of laws and order existed. Bureaucrats and priests supported this system and served the rulers.

Within this system, there was a highly specialized and clearly established set of occupations that determined social status. At the top were the king and priests, underneath them were bureaucrats, then supervisors and the various craft workers, and finally the largest group of workers within households. Though possible to move among classes, it was very uncommon.

First Writing
The world’s first writing system was developed in Mesopotamia and maintained by scribes, who occupied powerful positions in this social hierarchy, just below rulers and priests.

This early record-keeping and reading was in the form of cuneiform, a wedge-shaped writing carved into clay tablets. At some point, these images were linked with sounds, and those sounds with meaning, giving birth to a written and spoken language that could be used to track trade and property. It also allowed for ideas embedded in literature, historical records, and sacred texts to move across distances and be preserved through time. Records from 2400 BCE describe the political structure and economy of Sumer. Cuneiform could also be used by speakers of different languages beyond the region, to the same ends.

These could also capture a community’s identity and beliefs, such as the documentation of the "Great Flood," which described the demise of Uruk as the gods’ will.

Unification
The Sumerian city-states were the most powerful in the third millennium BCE, and their competition for resources and trade drove their growth. However, this constellation of smaller city-states changed under the conquest of King Sargon the Great of Akkad, who unified southern Mesopotamia into the world’s first territorial state—a multiethnic collection of urban centers. Its geographic influence increased under his rule, as did a new period of architecture, art, and literature sponsored by the state.

A century after Sargon's death, in 2190 BCE, Akkad was captured by peoples hailing from the Zagros Mountains and its territorial state fell, revealing the struggle between urban centers and populations on the margins of states.

The Nile River Basin
Ancient Egypt emerged along the Nile in the third millennium as a melting pot, drawing diverse people from the deserts in Sinai and Libya, on the Mediterranean, Nubia, and central Africa to the south. This led to the blending of cultural practices and technologies.

Although Egypt’s development shared much with Mesopotamia, its distinctive geography made it different. As in Mesopotamia, it had dense populations, invested in monumental architecture, granted tremendous power to rulers, and elaborated a complex social order.

However, its desert environment confined it to the limited cultivatable land along the Nile, and especially near the Nile Delta.

The Nile is crucial to understanding Egypt. It is the longest river in the world at more than 4,000 miles; its two branches—Blue and White—meet near Khartoum, from which it flows to the Mediterranean. People lived close to it in order to benefit from its annual flooding and escape the infertile hinterlands of Egypt, making them the most river-reliant of river-based cultures. In contrast to Mesopotamia, the Nile’s flooding was much more predictable, leading to a world view that was more optimistic.

Egyptians used irrigation basins to trap water; regular flooding created a new and reliable layer of topsoil. Combined with the persistent sun—which the Egyptians worshipped for this reason—abundant harvests were the norm.

Difference to Mesopotamia

Because of its geography, Egypt developed quite differently than Mesopotamia. Its deserts to the east and west, sea to the north, and waterfalls to the south made it much less accessible and open to trade. It developed a more cohesive common culture, organized in part around a dynamic between Lower Egypt, in the north, and Upper Egypt, in the south. The former was the black soil and order of the north, the latter the red sand and disorder of the south. Egyptians thought of this opposition as a challenge that required stability or order—known as ma’at.

Egyptian states & dynasties
Egypt developed quickly, and a semidivine pharaoh was looked to as responsible for protection and prosperity. This king was supposed to control nature, like the flooding of the Nile, as well as protect Egypt from invaders from the desert and the south.

To support the pharaoh’s rule and manage state and economy, a large bureaucracy organized labor and public works.

Thirty-one dynasties carried these original rulers down to the conquest of Egypt in the fourth century BCE. These have been arranged by scholars into an Old, Middle, and New Kingdom, each marked by the breakdown of authority in the First, Second, and Third Intermediate Periods.

Between 2686 and 2613 BCE, the Third Dynasty launched the Old Kingdom, considered the golden age of ancient Egypt. In this period, the ruler was conceived as a god with divine powers. To emphasize his power, rituals were performed on monumental architecture, such as the Sed festival, which served to renew the king’s vitality. King Djoser had this performed at his tomb complex at Saqqara, a step pyramid and precursor to the pyramids. Such rituals emphasized both the divinity of the king and the unity of Egyptians beneath him.

Under the Fourth Dynasty (2613–2494 BCE), the grand pyramids at Giza were built. The Pyramid of Khufu became the largest stone structure in the world, requiring huge amounts of well-organized and coerced labor. At the same time, filling these structures with valuable grave goods required connections to long-distance trade routes. The capacity to build these reflects the power of Egypt’s centralized authority and surplus resources at this time.

There was remarkable prosperity in this period, in which the population grew from 350,000 in 4000 BCE to 5 million in 1500 BCE within a powerful state and well-functioning bureaucracy essential to managing resources.

As Egypt grew, centralization broke down and amid an extended drought, internal weakness led to collapse. Pepy II was the last ruler of the Old Kingdom in 2184 BCE. This led to a First Intermediate Period between 2150 and 2040 BCE, in which local magnates held power and violent regional struggles played out. Nonetheless, the institutions and beliefs of the Old Kingdom persisted and would be revived.

Religion
In the Egyptian worldview, gods, kings, and the rest of humanity inhabited the world. The king’s job was to maintain the order of the cosmos. Destined to be a god after death, he was expected to behave like a god on earth.

Central to the king’s role was the performance of rituals for the gods. Each region had a god, represented by a king during his lifetime. Some had broader appeal across regions, such as the god Amun, associated with Thebes. Over time, these gods evolved and became symbolized by animal and human symbols: Horus, the hawk god; Osiris, god of regeneration and underworld; Isis, ideals of sisterhood and motherhood; Hathor, god of childbirth and love; Ra, the sun god; Amun, creator, the hidden god.

Priests served the crucial role within temples, controlling all communication with the gods in elaborate rituals that required extensive training.

Common people also practiced popular religions, which depended on the use of magic, such as with amulets, omens, and divination, at local shrines.

Magic played an especially important role in Egyptian religion. Magical powers, amulets, omens, and divination offered a way to understand and control events.

Writing & Scribes
As in Mesopotamia, a small portion of society became scribes, mostly those who worked in the court, army, or priesthood—though some kings and royal families also became literate. In addition to its economic function, writing was soon used for making historical records and literature.

Writing took two major forms: hieroglyphs, used in formal, royal, and divine writing; and hieratic writing, a cursive script more common for record keeping, letters, hymns, and poetry. Hieratic writing was crucial for deciphering the Rosetta Stone in the nineteenth century.

Training was intensive and began at a young age with the copying of texts and then literary works. For the upper classes, it was a sign of intellectual achievement—people were even buried with their text books.

Indus River Valley
Also in the third millennium, cities developed in the Indus River valley. Their culture is called Harappan, after the city of Harappa on the Ravi River. Villages had first appeared around 5000 BCE on the Baluchistan Mountain foothills. By two millennia later, these had spread eastward to the Indus River, where the fertile soil supported an increase in wealth, trade, and the construction of public works and fortified cities.

The region benefited from predictable flooding coming from Himalaya Mountain snow runoff. ''Monsoons also temporarily filled dried-up riverbeds, providing seasonal sources of water. Farmers could plant wheat and barley after the  floodwaters receded, and tools such as furrows were used for cultivation.'' As in Egypt and Mesopotamia, these food surpluses allowed other inhabitants to focus on different pursuits. Populations expanded as did cities, such as Harappa and Mohenjo Daro, which each had 35,000 inhabitants.

The layout of Harappan cities and towns was similar, with a fortified citadel and residential area at the center, and a main street with covered drainage—much of this constructed with durable bricks. Citadels probably served as hubs for political and ritual activity, but could also contain great baths, as in Mohenjo Daro. Good houses, meanwhile, could have private bathrooms, showers, and toilets, which drained to municipal sewers. Basic structures remain intact today.

However, much less is known about Indus peoples’ language, including records that might tell its political history. There is a 400-symbol script, but there are limited resources to study the language. Unlike Mesopotamia and Egypt, Harappans produced no King Lists that would allow us to reconstruct their political history.

We know that they did, however, engage in extensive long-distance trade, both along the Indus River and into the Iranian plateau and Persian Gulf. They traded products such as copper, ivory, and pottery in exchange for gold, silver, gemstones, and textiles. To facilitate this trade, they had towns at strategic sites such as Lothal, on the Gulf of Khambat. There, they could access the sea and certain raw materials. Because their trade depended on stones, they built fortified settlements near resources, such as the red gemstone carnelian and copper mines.

With their written script, they also used a system of weights and measures to manage this complex trade system. This pattern of settlement and trade suggests a centralized and structured Harappan state. At the same time, the apparent lack of spectacular displays of elite wealth through monumental structures contrasts significantly with the sharp hierarchies of Egypt and Mesopotamia.

The Yellow and Yangzi River Basins: East Asia
In China, settlement was concentrated along the Yellow River in the north and the Yangzi River to the south. In contrast to the other major river-basin cultures, China was slower to develop a system of hydraulic works, big cities, and the priestly and bureaucratic classes that managed them with the help of writing. Some reasons for this include the lack of domesticated plants and animals, and geographic barriers that impeded migration and the spread of ideas.

Distinct regional cultures emerged in this area between 4000 and 2000 BCE, contrary to traditional histories. Geographical barriers made connections between these societies and the rest of Afro-Eurasia difficult. However, openings in the Gansu Corridor and on the Inner Asian Steppe allowed nomadic cultures, new technologies, and goods to filter in.

A major cultural divide in China existed between the Yellow and Yangzi River basins, whose inhabitants practiced very different material and ritual cultures.

Yangshao
Yangshao was one of the first of these cultures to develop. The Yangshao peoples practiced slash and burn agriculture, which required them to move their village sites once the soil was exhausted. Yangshao archaeological remains suggest that these peoples experimented with written symbols, though a full-fledged writing system did not emerge until much later.

Yangshao was succeeded by the Longshan culture around 3000 BCE. For the next millennium, Longshan showed the beginnings of urban life on the Central Plains, where it had a broad cultural influence, as well as migration to the eastern coast.

Longshan
Among the remains of the Longshan culture, we can detect defensive walls, wells, and cemeteries outside of villages with tombs housing objects such as pottery, wooden instruments, and painted murals. Jade axes were used by shamans in rituals, reflecting the advanced technology required to make them. They suggest, along with mass graves and defensive walls, the threat of organized violence in this period.

There is further evidence of short-lived political organizations, referred to as the era of Ten Thousand States.

One of these cultures, called Liangzhu, had sophisticated agriculturalists who grew rice and fruits along the Qiantang River and used tools and domesticated animals. Wooden tools suggest skill with watercraft and fishing, and black pottery suggests the production of artistic and religious objects. Animal motifs on these objects imply a shared cosmology and rituals among the elite.

Extended droughts in the third millennium limited development. In the early second millennium, Chinese cultures recovered and developed elaborate agrarian systems along the Yellow and Yangzi Rivers resembling those of the other major river-basin cultures.

Like them, it also had an extensive trade network with other regions and a highly stratified social hierarchy within. This centralized polity was eventually run by a powerful monarch. However, in contrast to other regions, this leadership depended on the idealization of the past and a tradition of sage-kings who were meant to be emulated.

Life Outside the Basins
Developments in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley, and China were just part of human social organization in this period, as the vast majority of people in 3500 BCE did not live in complex cities. Instead, they were hunter-gatherers, nomads, or residents of small agricultural villages. In regions like the Aegean, Anatolia, Europe, and parts of China, others lived in small towns without considerable growth. In Europe and Anatolia in particular, these communities were run by military men engaging in conquest, rather than rulers backed by priests and scribes.

Aegean Worlds
In these regions of Europe and Anatolia, scattered settlements remained small, separated by natural obstacles. In the Aegean islands, it took 2,000 years after the initial sixth millennium population developed more complex societies. On Crete and the Cycladic islands, we see some formal administration and trade with the eastern Mediterranean and Egypt emerging by 2500 BCE. Luxury goods at Knossos on Crete suggest that the elite depended both on control of local resources and trade with others.

Anatolia
To the east in Anatolia, regional cultures emerged that were more dependent on the control of trade routes and mining outposts. There, small cities with fortified citadels emerged in the third millennium BCE, much smaller than those to the southeast on the Mesopotamian plain. These include Horoz Tepe and Alaça Hüyük. Also, Troy was an important city, which had monumental stone gateways and stone-paved streets as well as graves for the elite filled with luxury items. There is much evidence of an extensive trading system with the Aegean and Southwest Asia, but Troy was also subject to predatory neighbors by land and sea.

Europe
Early European communities, organized in chieftain societies, engaged in much more violent conflict over access to resources. There, hierarchies replaced more egalitarian social organization, and warfare was the major force in social development. Agriculture was expanded by clearing woodlands and plowing, and households and small communities organized irrigation and settlements. Expansion led to conflicts over resources, including flint mining, which allowed for cheaper tools crucial to clearing and cultivating more land.

By 3500, Europe began to see the development of large communities. By the end of the third millennium, some of these groups succeeded in assembling megalithic stone constructions, such as Avebury and Stonehenge on the British Isles.

By the second millennium, a shared material culture connected northern Europe. It was based on agriculture, herding cattle for meat and milk, the use of the plow, wheeled vehicles, and metal tools and weapons. The growth of populations, agricultural surpluses, and increased interaction of these communities led to both more wealth and more warfare, which we can see in the burial sites that have manufactured products in them. The aggravated conflict led to a particular boon of manufactured and traded weapons throughout the region.

America
In the Americas, the means to grow, store, and transport agricultural surpluses was much more limited. Communities remained small, often near the seaside, and didn’t become larger and more complex during this period. Some villages in Chicama Valley of Peru, for instance, did make advances in pottery manufacture, irrigation, trading, and religious organization. Meanwhile, to the north in Tehuacán, the largest population center developed based on the cultivation of corn. But these did not amount to cities.

Africa
Similarly in sub-Saharan Africa, there was population growth but not urbanization. Instead, communities concentrated near bodies of water and migrated as the climate became drier or resources were scarce. Across this area, people cultivated a variety of crops, built stone structures, and often lived at great distances from other population centers. Nonetheless, a shared pottery style suggests interconnections among them.

Conclusion
In the fourth and third millennia BCE, some human communities witnessed profound changes in social organizations. Larger agricultural surpluses made it possible to increase the size and complexity of settlements. Social hierarchies sharpened, standards of living rose, intellectual life flourished, and forms of centralized political administration took shape.

These developments occurred in communities clustered around river basins. Areas with only one river tended to be smaller and more politically stable. On floodplains like that of the Tigris and Euphrates, urbanized communities needed larger surpluses to sustain their growing populations. In these areas, more competitive societies emerged.

Despite these momentous changes, most people still lived in small, simple, and relatively egalitarian societies like those of the Americas and Sub-Saharan Africa. Anatolia, Europe, and parts of China saw the development of regional cultures, while distinctive warrior societies took shape in the Aegean and in northern Europe.

Climate was key to all of these changes, as environmental conditions could slow or reverse the development of human societies.