WHAP 200809

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WHAP 2008-09
Foundations Visuals
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South America tobacco, groundnut, potato,
cotton, tomato, pine-apple, pimiento, cassava,
rubber-tree
Central Africa sorghum, yam, coffee, oil
palm-tree
Middle East oat, wheat, peas, lentil, flax,
olive-tree, vine, fig-tree, date palm-tree
South-East Asia, Southern Pacific rice, banana,
sugar cane, orange tree, egg plant, coconut tree,
pepper
Western China millet, soya, tea, rice
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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
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(No Transcript)
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Its a zebu
musk duck
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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
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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)

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River Valley Civilizations
Brainstorm The impact of agriculture . . .
Whats the same in each area? Whats diff? Why?
And dont forget the Olmecs, who werent around a
river valley
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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
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• 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.

• Tigris and Euphrates
• TWO rivers
• Flooding more violent, less predictable than the
  Nile
• Source of rivers in higher mountains

Slide two of two
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Indo-European Migrations
Migrations by series of tribes from central
Asia most significant contribution was the broad
distribution of languages throughout Eurasia
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• 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
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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 gods representative
• Highly legalistic
• Law Codes
• Contracts
• Judicial proceedings and appeals processes
• Extensive trading networks

Slide two of two
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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. Translated from the Arabic by The
Associated Press
Slide one of two
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Sumerian Inventions a legacy

• Cuneiform writing
• The wheel
• Potters 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)
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Ziggurat Massive towers usually associated with
Mesopotamian temple complexes.
PERSIA Political, Economic, Religious, Social,
Intellectual, Artistic
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Cuneiform kyU nEE uh fôrm, kyU nEE uh- A form
of writing developed by the Sumerians using a
wedge-shaped stylus and clay tablets
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Sumerian Religion
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
Polytheistic Each city had its own gods
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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
Peninsulathe lands of present-day Spain and
Portugal.
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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)
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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
egalitarianjust 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/wom
neg.htm
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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. New York Times August,
2007
Nefertiti (the name is an Egyptian phrase meaning
"the beautiful one who has come") was the Great
Wife of Akhenaten
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Egyptian Writing
Hieroglyphics
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BANTU MIGRATIONS
Originated in eastern Nigeria in West Africa
migrated into central and southern Africa using
riversparticularly the Congo Basin spread
language, iron technology and agriculture
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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.

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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

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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.

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Form and Structure of Political Organization for
Indus Civilization
Mohenjo daro priest king
                                    Granary/Pal
ace? at Harappa
Not a lot of info--- large granaries near the
cities indicate govt control Sewers, planned
streets indicated coordinated govt Appears
decentralizeda series of cities Fall to Aryans
(nomadic tribes from Caucuses Mtns area) with
horses and advanced weapons
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• 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 SEALS
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Indus Valley Writing
Not deciphered
Harappan pictograph writing
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Indus Valley Trade
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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 squashno
large domesticated animal
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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.
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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.