Foundations

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Foundations

• Climate, Geography and Empires
• 6000 BCE- 650 CE

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Big Geography the Peopling of the Earth

• Neolithic Overview
• Early migrations (Discover Magazine 5/20/08)
• Agricultural Revolution and the resulting
  communities that develop
• Climate changes
• Tools
• Religion
• Limited Trade

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Neolithic Age?

• The Neolithic or New Stone Age (roughly
  8000-3500BCE) is characterized by the movement
  away from a hunter-gatherer, nomadic lifestyle
  towards an agricultural lifestyle. During this
  time period we see the origins of farming and
  domestication of animals, which is often referred
  to as the Neolithic Revolution (though
  agricultural revolution may be more appropriate).
• These innovations produced the food surpluses and
  rising populations that made possible the
  founding of cities and the increasing
  specialization of occupations within human
  societies.
• Soon after the introduction of agriculture,
  societies in the Middle East began replacing
  stone tools with those made of metalfirst
  copper, then bronze. These new tools improved
  agriculture, aided in warfare, and benefited
  manufacturing artisans.

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Early Migration

1. Who?
2. Why?

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The Fertile Crescent and the Birth of Farming
Dark Green By 8,000 years ago Light Green By
6,000 years ago Red Dots Early agricultural
settlements Orange lined area Distribution of
Wild cereals White diagonal lines Distribution
of Wild sheep and goats
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Civilization

1. Origins of the term
2. Standard Criteria?
3. Problems?

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• Historians and anthropologist have noted several
  problems with the term civilization. First of
  all, it tends to be used in an ethnocentric way
  in other words, it is used to assign to others an
  inferior status. For example, the Chinese of the
  Han dynasty thought all others in the world were
  uncivil barbarians likewise, from the Spartans
  to Nazi Germany, designating others as less than
  civilized was often a pretense for conquering or
  destroying them. Secondly, the term marginalizes
  (excludes) other people who have made important
  contributions to history. For example, nomadic
  people are responsible for the diffusion of some
  of the most important technologies in history,
  but most accepted forms of the term civilization
  exclude them.

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• From ancient times up to today, some peoples
  have seen themselves as civilized and dismissed
  or criticized their neighbors, or any people
  unfamiliar to them, as barbarians. Another
  problem is that modern historians may focus too
  much on societies such as Egypt, that left more
  of an archaeological and written record, giving
  lesser attention to those societies that did not
  the term is too subjective to have much value in
  understanding world history, and many historians
  refuse to use it altogether. It is not used in
  this text.
• Craig A. Lockard, Societies, Networks, and
  Transitions A Global History, pg. 26

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Impact of Agricultural Societies on Environment

1. Irrigation? Salinization of soil
2. Slash and burn ? desertification
3. Population increase
4. Urbanization

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Impact of Agricultural Society on social
interaction and social stratification

1. Increased labor specialization
2. Increased work-load!!! Especially for children!
3. Increased conflict over resources, labor, and
   luxury items with new technologies
4. Social stratification (socio-economic classes
   develop)
5. Civilization with urban areas, specialized
   institutions, military, religious, social and
   political hierarchies, long distance trade,
   economic (as well as ideas, inventions and germs)
   exchanges between local and regional, as well as
   nomadic pastoralists and settled peoples.

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Impact of Agricultural Society on Gender Roles

• How might gender roles change as people stop
  their nomadic lifestyles and become
  horticulturalists?
• Early Neolithic horticulturalists shared
  responsibility? women farmed with the help of her
  children, men hunted, then helped at home.
• With population growth and expansion, military
  became more important and women increasingly were
  viewed by society as inferior.
• goddesses lost out to gods
• Family line through the father (patrilineal)
  instead of through the mother (matrilineal)
• Patriarchy in early societies(Code of Hammurabi)

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Population

• Demography The study of population size, growth
  and age structure, and of the forces (fertility,
  mortality, migration) that lead to population
  change.
• What factors may influence population growth and
  decline?

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Climate and Geography

1. Imagine how early societies may have been
   affected.
2. How do you think early peoples responded?
3. What difference would geography make in the long
   term development of a society?

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Development of States and Empires

1. Competition for resources
2. Expansion
3. State legitimacy including unity building
   measures
4. Military growth

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Emergence of Trans-regional Networks of
Communication and Change

1. Increase of long distance trade amongst large
   scale empires
2. Raw materials and luxury goods
3. Exchanges of technology, religious and cultural
   beliefs, food crops, domesticated animals and
   disease

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Early Societies

1. Mesopotamia
2. Egypt
3. Indus
4. Shang
5. Mesoamerica and Andean South America (Olmec and
   Chavin)

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Civilizations A Comparative Study(Kevin Reilly
Cities and Civilization)

• Mesopotamia
• Irregular flooding

• Egypt
• Predictable flood

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Axial Age Thinkers
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Origins of World Belief Systems

1. Polytheism

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Origins of World Belief Systems

1. Hinduism

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Origins of World Belief Systems

1. Judaism

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Origins of World Belief Systems

1. Confucianism

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Origins of World Belief Systems

1. Daoism

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Origins of World Belief Systems

1. Buddhism

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Origins of World Belief Systems

1. Christianity

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Diffusion of Belief Systems
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Empire Building

1. What does an empire require?
2. What do its subjects expect?
3. Symbols of legitimacy

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Empires A Comparison

1. Rome

1. Han

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Fall of Empires Catastrophe

1. Why?
2. Do we see commonalities? Or do different empires
   fall for different reasons?

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Conrad-Demarest Model

• Empire The term was first used in English in
  1297 to indicate an extensive territory made up
  of formerly independent states. A further
  refinement might be to add that an empire is a
  politically unified state in which one people
  dominates its neighbors.
• The Conrad Demarest Model of Empire Basic
  Principles
• I.  Necessary preconditions for the rise of
  empires
• state-level government
• high agricultural potential in the area
• an environmental mosaic
• several small states with no clearly dominant
  state (power vacuum)
• mutual antagonisms among those states
• adequate military resources
•  
• II.  The primary reason a state succeeded in
  empire building was an ideology supporting
  personal identification with the state, empire,
  conquest, and militarism. III.  The major rewards
  of empire
• economic rewards, reaped especially in the early
  years and redistributed to the elite and often to
  all levels of the citizenry
• population increase, often supported by the
  government and its ideology
• IV.  Empires fall because
• the ideology of expansion and conquest fueled
  attempts at conquest beyond practical limits
• failure to continue conquest indefinitely and to
  continue to bring home its economic fruits eroded
  faith in the ideology that supported the empire
• revolutions toppled the empire
•  
• Homework  Read Chapter 6 in The Earth and Its
  Peoples to find specific examples of each of the
  above indicators for the Roman and Han empires.

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Imperial Achievements
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Alexander the Great
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Interregional Networks of People by 600 C.E.

• Silk Roads
• Mediterranean trade
• Indian Ocean trade

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Silk Routes
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Mediterranean Trade Routes
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Indian Ocean Trade
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Conclusions

1. How do we know what we know?
2. How does change happen?
3. What results stem from interaction through
   migration, trade or pilgrimage?
4. Why do world historians need to pose questions
   differently than regional specialists?