AP World History
Ancient to Classical
1200 – 600 BCE Transitions
As the ancient period drew to a close the features that characterized the great river valley
civilizations began to emerge in other environments and the sheer number of states increased as
well. The transition from the ancient period (8000 BCE to 1200 BCE) to the classical period
(600 BCE to 600 CE) that followed was an age of great change. But this change claimed
victims. By about 1000 BCE, war, natural disaster, environmental exploitation, political decay,
had severely weakened most of the civilizations that had emerged with agriculture.
Indo-Europeans
Among the most influential people at the end of the ancient period were those who spoke various
Indo-European languages. Their migrations throughout much of Eurasia profoundly influenced
historical development in both southwest Asia and the larger world.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, linguists noticed that many languages of Europe,
southwest Asia, and India featured remarkable similarities in vocabulary and grammatical
structure. Because of the geographic regions where these tongues are found, scholars refer to
them as Indo-European languages. The only persuasive explanation for the high degree of
similarity was that speakers of Indo-European languages were all descendants of ancestors who
spoke a common tongue and migrated from their original homeland. As migrants established
separate communities and lost touch with one another, their languages evolved along different
lines, adding new words, pronunciations, and spellings but retaining the basic grammatical
structure of their original speech.
The original homeland of Indo-European speakers was probably the steppe region of modern-day
Ukraine and southern Russia. A central feature of Indo-European society was the domestication
of wild horses. The possession of domesticated horses vastly magnified the power of the IndoEuropeans enabling the development of more efficient transportation, such as carts, wagons, and
chariots. Furthermore, because of their strength and speed, horses provided Indo-European
speakers with a tremendous military advantage over peoples they encountered. It is perhaps
significant that many groups of Indo-European speakers considered themselves superior to other
peoples: the terms Aryan, Iran, and Eire (the official name of the modern Republic of Ireland) all
derive from the Indo-European word aryo, meaning “nobleman" or "lord."
As they flourished in southern Russia, Indo-European speakers experienced a population
explosion, which prompted some of them to move into eastern Europe, India, and western China.
The most influential Indo-European migrants in ancient times were the Hittites, who established
a powerful kingdom in modern-day Turkey. The Hittites were responsible for two technological
innovations—the construction of light, horse-drawn war chariots and the refinement of iron
metallurgy—that helped weaken the kingdoms of the Ancient period and ushering in the empires
of the Classical period.
Hebrews, Israelites, and Jews
Perhaps the least influenced by the Indo-Europeans, Hebrews, Israelites, and Jews preserved
memories of their historical experiences in an extensive collection of sacred writings. Hebrews
were speakers of the ancient Hebrew language. Israelites formed a branch of Hebrews who
settled in Palestine (modern-day Israel) after 1300 BCE Jews descended from southern Israelites
who inhabited the kingdom of Judah.
The earliest Hebrews were pastoral nomads who inhabited lands between Mesopotamia and
Egypt during the second millennium BCE. As Mesopotamia prospered, some of the Hebrews
settled in the region's cities. According to the Hebrew scriptures (the Old Testament of the
Christian Bible), the Hebrew patriarch Abraham came from the Sumerian city of Ur, but he
migrated to northern Mesopotamia about 1850 BCE. Abraham's descendants continued to
recognize many of the deities, values, and customs common to Mesopotamian peoples. Hebrew
law, for example, borrowed heavily from Hammurabi's code. The Hebrews also told the story of
a devastating flood that had destroyed all early human society, which was a variation on similar
flood stories related from the earliest days of Sumerian society.
According to their scriptures, around 1300 BCE, a branch of Hebrews fled Egyptian enslavement
under the leadership of Moses. After the time of Moses, however, the religious beliefs of the
Israelites developed along increasingly distinctive lines. Whereas the early Hebrews had
recognized many of the same gods as their Mesopotamian neighbors, Moses embraced
monotheism: he taught that there was only one god, known as Yahweh, who was a supremely
powerful deity, the creator and sustainer of the world. Yahweh expected his followers to worship
him alone, and he demanded that they observe high moral and ethical standards. In the Ten
Commandments, a set of religious and ethical principles that Moses announced, Yahweh warned
his followers against destructive and antisocial behavior such as lying, theft, adultery, and
murder.
After bitter fighting for land, the Hebrews abandoned their inherited tribal structure and united in
favor of a monarch, who residents became known as Israelites. During the reigns of King David
(1000-970 BCE) and King Solomon (970-930 BCE), Israelites dominated the territory between
Syria and Egypt. They built an elaborate and cosmopolitan capital city at Jerusalem. Like other
peoples of southwest Asia, the Israelites made use of iron technology to strengthen their military
forces and produce tough agricultural implements.
Between about 1000 and 400 BCE, the Israelites' religious leaders compiled their teachings in a
set of holy scriptures known as the Torah (Hebrew for "doctrine" or "teaching"), which laid
down Yahweh's laws and outlined his role in creating the world and guiding human affairs. The
Torah taught that Yahweh would reward those who obeyed his will and punish those who did
not. The Israelites placed increasing emphasis on devotion to Yahweh as they experienced a
series of political and military setbacks. Following King Solomon's reign, tribal tensions led to
the division of the community into a large kingdom of Israel in the north and a smaller kingdom
of Judah in the land known as Judea to the south. Under invasion, conquering armies deported
many of the Israelites. Those in the north were gradually assimilated into other religions, but
unlike their cousins to the north, residents of Judea maintained their religious identity and
became known as Jews.
Based on their distinctive monotheism, the Jews established a religious community based on
their conviction that they had a special relationship with Yahweh that remained a scattered
minority group in Southwest Asia and Europe.
Phoenicians
North of the Israelites' kingdom in Palestine, the Phoenicians occupied a narrow coastal plain in
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modern day Lebanon. Though not a numerous or militarily powerful people, the Phoenicians
influenced societies throughout the Mediterranean basin because of their trade and
communication networks. Between 1200 and 800 BCE, they dominated trade on the
Mediterranean Sea. They sailed far and wide in search of raw materials, which established
commercial colonies in Rhodes, Cyprus, Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, and north Africa.
The Phoenicians largely adapted Mesopotamian cultural traditions to their own needs, most
notably written language. By creatively experimenting with simpler alternatives to cuneiform,
Phoenician scribes devised an early alphabetic script consisting of twenty-two symbols
representing consonants (the Phoenician alphabet had no symbols for vowels). Learning twentytwo letters and building words with them was much easier than memorizing the hundreds of
symbols employed in cuneiform. Because alphabetic writing required much less investment in
education than did cuneiform writing, more people were able to become literate than ever before.
Alphabetic writing spread widely as the Phoenicians traveled and traded throughout the
Mediterranean basin, becoming the basis of Greek language. These proto-Greeks, along with
others, were eventually devastated by nomadic invaders, likely Indo-Europeans.
India: Aryans
Drawn by the wealth of the Indus River Valley, Indo-European invaders, known as Aryans, used
the Khyber Pass to cross the rugged mountains that ring the northern border of India. Using
horses and iron weaponry, the Aryans easily defeated the populations in the Indus Valley. Over
time the Aryans began to create permanent settlements – first in northern India and gradually
moving south. Once settled, cultural exchange between the Aryans and Indians resulted in the
establishment of religious traditions (particularly reincarnation) that continue to define India to
this day. Recording their beliefs in epics called the Vedas and Upanisads, a belief system that
stressed reincarnation and was superficially polytheistic evolved into what we now call,
Hinduism. The Aryan social structure combined with Hinduism also had a major impact on later
developments in India. The new social structure, the caste system, established rigid class ranks
based on birth. The caste system divided people into groups, from top to bottom: priests (called
Brahmins), warriors, merchants/landowners, and finally peasants. Social mobility among the
classes was prohibited. Because members of different castes could not marry, children were
born into the same castes as their parents – and stayed there.
China: Zhou
Around 1100 BCE, the Shang kingdom in China was overthrown by rivals who established the
Zhou dynasty, which continued much of the previously established Chinese culture. The Zhou
officially ruled China for nearly 900 years (although their power was in serious decline by 600
BCE). The durability of the Zhou dynasty was in part due to a political innovation known as the
Mandate of Heaven. The Zhou believed that heaven would grant the Zhou power only as long as
its rulers governed justly and wisely. Put another way, the Zhou dynasty would remain in power
only as long as it had the blessing of heaven. Additionally, the Zhou developed a feudal system
of government, whose flexibility and trust in nobles, aided in its longevity. Similar to medieval
Europe, the Zhou kings ruled the entirety of the kingdom, but through the loyalty of nobles who
governed regions within the kingdom in his name. The king gave each noble protection as long
as the noble remained loyal to him. Around 600 BCE, nomadic invaders (either Indo-Europeans
or other nomadic groups displaced by Indo-European migrations) began to weaken the Zhou
kings’ grasp on China. As these invasions strained commerce as well as the financial and
military resources of the king’s central government, the Chinese citizens began questioning the
wisdom of the dynasty. How could the Zhou dynasty still possess the blessing of heaven, if the
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standard of living was in such decline? The nobility entrusted with the essential task of passing
along tax revenue (and its intrinsic loyalty) gradually each began building their own armies –
first for protection and later to add territory – while disregarding the Zhou kings. As a result, this
time period in Chinese history of Zhou decline and tensions among rival regional nobles earned
the name, the Warring States. The warring states remained a fact of life until the Zhou dynasty
was officially overthrown in 256 BCE.
Bantu of Sub-Saharan Africa
Just as the Indo-European migrations had important effects on the history of Europe and Asia, so
too did the migrations of the Bantu people of Sub-Saharan Africa. Around the world, the
conclusion of the Ancient period witnessed the spread of agriculture, iron, and complex states.
The most prominent driver of this process in Africa was the migrations of Bantu-speaking
peoples from modern-day Nigeria to the rest Sub-Saharan Africa.
The earliest Bantu speakers inhabited a region embracing the eastern part of modern Nigeria and
the southern part of modern Cameroon. Members of this community referred to themselves as
bantu. The earliest Bantu speakers settled mostly along the banks of rivers, which they navigated
in canoes, and in open areas of the region's forests. They cultivated yams and oil palms, and in
later centuries they added millet and sorghum. They also kept goats and raised guinea fowl. They
lived in clan-based villages headed by chiefs who conducted religious rituals and represented
their communities in dealings with neighboring villages. They traded regularly with hunting and
gathering peoples who inhabited the tropical forests. Bantu cultivators provided these forest
peoples with pottery and stone axes in exchange for meat, honey, and other forest products.
Unlike most of their neighbors, the Bantu displayed an early readiness to migrate between 2000
BCE and 1000 CE. The precise motives of the early Bantu migrants are unknown, but it seems
likely that population pressures drove the migrations. After about 1000 BCE, the pace of Bantu
migrations quickened, as Bantu peoples began to produce iron tools and weapons. Iron tools
enabled Bantu cultivators to clear land and expand the zone of agriculture more effectively than
before, while iron weapons strengthened the hand of Bantu groups against adversaries and
competitors for land or other resources. By 1000 CE Bantu-speaking peoples occupied most of
Africa south of the equator.
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