Foundations Visuals
South America : tobacco,
groundnut, potato, cotton,
tomato, pine-apple,
pimiento, cassava, rubbertree
Middle East : oat, wheat,
peas, lentil, flax, olivetree, vine, fig-tree, date
palm-tree
Meso-America :
maïze, bean,
squashes, avocado,
tomato, vanilla,
cocoa
Central Africa :
sorghum, yam, coffee,
oil palm-tree
South-East Asia, Southern
Western China : millet, soya,
Pacific : rice, banana, sugar
tea, rice
cane, orange tree, egg plant,
coconut tree, pepper
How Agriculture
changed life
Well how about . . .
• Egalitarian to social stratification and patriarchy
•Communal food sharing to surpluses and taxes
•Semi nomadic to sedentary
•Kinship groups to membership based on territory
•Community pressure to laws and rules and punishments
•Leisure time to less leisure time
. . . Just for starters
Millet
musk duck
It’s a zebu
Alternatives to early agriculture
Slash and Burn: A system of cultivation typical of shifting
cultivators; forest floors cleared by fire are then planted.
pastoral nomads: An intermediate form of ecological
adaptation dependent on domesticated animal herds that feed
on natural environment; typically more populous than shifting
cultivation groups
Çatal
Hüyük
•One of best preserved Neolithic village, in Anatolia (now modern Turkey)
•founded in c.7000 BCE
•inhabitants grew mainly wheat, barley and peas; supplemented their diet by apples,
hackberries, almonds and acorns, which were collected locally.
•The principal meat source was cattle although it seems that wild animals were also
important, judging from the wall paintings
•raw materials had to be imported
•Houses closely packed, without streets (access by wooden laddes fro roofs)
•Center of trading (timber, bsidian, flint, copper, shells)
River Valley Civilizations
Brainstorm: The impact of agriculture . . . What’s the same in
each area? What’s diff? Why? And don’t forget the Olmecs, who
weren’t around a river valley
Indus River
COMPARING
RIVERS
•“gift of the Indus”
•As waters charge down hill from
mountains, they pick of silt and deposit
in in lower lands
•Much less predictable than Nile
Huange He:
•three thousand miles long, it begins high above sea level in the northern mountain
province of Qinghai and ends at the Yellow Sea.
•Westerners call it "China's Sorrow," because over the centuries it has killed more
people than any other river in the world. In 1887 flooding killed nearly two million
people, in 1931 the death toll was almost four million, and in 1938 it was almost one
million
Slide one of two
Tigris and Euphrates:
•TWO rivers
•Flooding more violent, less
predictable than the Nile
•Source of rivers in higher
mountains
•the "Gift of the Nile.“
•Predictable
•Each summer, like clockwork, the river
would take possession of a strip of land on
either side of its banks. When the water
receded, a very thin, evenly spread layer of
black mud was left behind. Farmers would
immediately plant their crops -- never
needing fertilizers because the flood soil
was so rich.
Slide two of two
Indo-European Migrations
Migrations by series of tribes from central Asia; most
significant contribution was the broad distribution of
languages throughout Eurasia
Political Organization of Sumerian city states: Form and
Structure:
can you say decentralized as in city-states? As in “A form of
political organization typical of Mesopotamian civilizations;
consisted of agricultural hinterlands ruled by an urban-based
king”
Slide one of one
Political Characteristics of
Mesopotamian Civilizations
 City states
 Each city had its own king and patron god or goddess
 City states often warred with each other
 Theocracy -- king as god’s representative
Highly legalistic
 Law Codes
Contracts
Judicial proceedings and appeals processes
 Extensive trading networks
Slide two of two
The Cradle of
Civilization
New Iraqi Constitution PREAMBLE
We the sons of Mesopotamia, land of the prophets, resting place of the
holy imams, the leaders of civilization and the creators of the alphabet,
the cradle of arithmetic: on our land, the first law put in place by
mankind was written; in our nation, the most noble era of justice in the
politics of nations was laid down; on our soil, the followers of the
prophet and the saints prayed, the philosophers and the scientists
theorized and the writers and poets created.
Slide one of two
Translated from the Arabic by The Associated Press
Sumerian Inventions: a legacy
 Cuneiform writing
 The wheel
 Potter’s wheel
 Sailing ship
 Pick-axe
 Brick mold
 Glass
 60-based counting system: 60 minutes to
an hour, 360 degrees to a circle
 Beer
 Lyre
 Epic poetry
Slide two of two
A depiction of onager-r-drawn carts on the Sumerian "battle standard of Ur" (circa 2600 BC)
Ziggurat:
Massive towers usually
associated with Mesopotamian temple
complexes.
PERSIA: “Political, Economic, Religious, Social, Intellectual, Artistic”
Cuneiform
[kyU nEE uh fôrm, kyU nEE
uh-] A form of writing
developed by the Sumerians
using a wedge-shaped
stylus and clay tablets
Sumerian Religion
Polytheistic
Each city had its own gods
THEOCRACY: Government of the
gods/priest class. The powerful gods
communicate their desires to humanity
through the medium of a powerful priestly
class or autocratic king who served as the
intermediary.
This system centralizes power in the hands of
a small group of people and gives political
decisions to a religious authority
Phoenician
Traders
This map shows the Phoenicians’ sea routes and the
principal cities where they traded. Many of these cities,
like Carthage, were Phoenician colonies. The
Phoenicians were the masters of trade in the
Mediterranean, exporting jewelry, furniture, textiles,
cedar wood, and purple dye. They also dealt in slaves
and in precious metals, which came from the mines of
the Iberian Peninsula—the lands of present-day Spain
and Portugal.
Form and Structure of
Political Organization in
Ancient Egypt
The pharaoh - man, ruler and god
The Egyptians themselves perceived clearly that their
overlord fulfilled a number of essentially different roles.
Sennefer, an 18th dynasty mayor of Thebes wrote of
himself in his tomb:
He who filled both ears of the Horus in his palace,
The great confidant in the house of the king,who has
access to his lord in single audience
NOTE ALSO: theirs was a CENTRALIZED form of political
organization (empires are you know)
STATUS OF WOMEN
Women in Egypt seem to have had more freedoms than in other ancient societies. In addition,
they had equal legal and economic status as Egyptian men - at least in theory (note that this does
not mean that Egyptian law was egalitarian—just that distinctions seemed to be based on class
and not gender) . . . “Women could manage, own, and sell private property, which included
slaves, land, portable goods, servants, livestock, and money. Women could resolve legal
settlements. Women could conclude any kind of legal settlement. Women could appear as a
contracting partner in a marriage contract or a divorce contract; they could execute testaments;
they could free slaves; women could make adoptions. Women were entitled to sue at law. This
amount of freedom was at variance with that of the Greek women who required a designated
male, called a kourios, to represent or stand for her in all legal contracts and proceedings. This
male was her husband, father or brother.”
http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/mideast/womneg.htm
A few Women gain status as Queens
Tooth May Have Solved Mummy Mystery
Some archaeologists say they have evidence that this mummy, found in an
obscure and unadorned tomb in the Valley of the Kings, is Hatshepsut, one of
the great queens of ancient Egypt, who died at about age 50.
Times August, 2007
Nefertiti (the name is an Egyptian
phrase meaning "the beautiful one who
has come") was the Great Wife of
Akhenaten
New York
Egyptian
Writing
Hieroglyphics
BANTU
MIGRATIONS
Originated in eastern Nigeria in
West Africa; migrated into
central and southern Africa
using rivers–particularly the
Congo Basin; spread language,
iron technology and agriculture
Form and Structure of Political
Organization for the Shang Dynasty
• Centralized organized state,
regulated irrigation
• Kept histories
• Philosopher kings
• “Mandate of Heaven” (Zhou)
• Need to defend from nomads
so developed military tech.
Bronze in the
Shang
Dynasty
Brilliant
bronze culture

casting of intricate ritual vessels

tools
Shang
bronze types were copied and reused later in
Chinese history, even into the nineteenth century
Oracle Bones
 Oracle bones used for divination.
 A question was written on the bone, which was
then fired and a T shaped crack was produced to
be interpreted; the interpretation was then
written on the bone.
 After the predicted event occurred, the date of
the occurrence was also written on the bone.
Form and Structure of
Political Organization
for Indus Civilization
Mohenjo daro
“priest king”
Not a lot of info--- large granaries near the
cities indicate gov’t control—
Sewers, planned streets indicated coordinated
govt
Appears decentralized—a series of cities
Fall to Aryans (nomadic tribes from Caucuses
Mtns area) with horses and advanced
Granary/Palace? at Harappa
weapons
INDUS
SEALS
Soapstone seals
•purpose of a seal is to prove
authenticity
•indicate trade with both
Mesopotamians and China
across ocean (mountain
passes isolate from other
trade)
• Provide Evidence of writing
Indus Valley Writing
Not deciphered
Harappan pictograph writing
Indus Valley Trade
OLMEC CIVILAZATION
Olmecs in Mesoamerica: apparently not united politically; unusual for ancient
civilizations, highly developed astronomy; used to predict agricultural cycles and
please the gods; Polytheism; religious rituals important, shamans as healers, writing,
calendars; Ritual ballgames; Irrigation and drainage canals, Well-developed
agriculture based on maize, beans and squash—no large domesticated animal
OLMEC HEADS
Perhaps the best-recognized Olmec art are the enormous helmeted heads. There
have been 17 colossal heads unearthed to date.
No known pre-Columbian text explains these impressive monuments that have been
the subject of much speculation. Given the individuality of each, these heads seem
to be portraits of famous ball players or perhaps kings rigged out in the
accoutrements of the game. The unique elements in the headgear can also be
recognized in headdresses of human figures on other Gulf Coast monuments,
suggesting that these are personal or group symbols.
The heads range in size from the Rancho La Corbata head, at 3.4 m high, to the pair
at Tres Zapotes, at 1.47 m. Some sources estimate that the largest weighs as much as
40 tons, although most reports place the larger heads at 20 tons.
Olmec Writing
Olmec is a syllabic writing system
used in the Olmec heartland from
900 BC- AD 450. This is the
earliest text written in America,
helps us to understand the culture
religion and politics of the Olmec.