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Chapter 1 The Beginnings of Civilizations, 10,000–2000 B.C.E. |
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Humans possess three crucial adaptive mechanisms: language, the ability to create new technologies, and the ability to form long-lasting social bonds, the foundation of all human communities. In any given human group, these both produce and continue to develop within culture — the knowledge and adaptive behavior used by a particular group of people to mediate between themselves and the natural world in which interconnected meanings facilitate human understanding and communication. Culture, then, is distinct from civilization, which is defined as a city-based society in which there are differing occupations and levels of wealth wherein elites exercise economic, political, and religious power.
By about 45,000 years ago, the first modern humans with their greater mental capacities had successfully adapted to a wide variety of environments, supporting themselves through hunting, fishing, and gathering wild foods.
Beginning around 8000 B.C.E., humans sought to ensure themselves a dependable food supply by planting crops and domesticating animals. As a result, the human population increased, food surpluses allowed for economic specialization and exchange, and the emergence of civilization was made possible.
By 6000 B.C.E., settled, expanding communities that relied on farming and herding were widespread in Southwest Asia. Commerce stimulated interaction between these communities and out of that they developed a more uniform culture that set the stage for the emergence of civilization in Southwest Asia.
Archaeological excavations of Neolithic sites in Southwest Asia give evidence of the agricultural revolution leading to forms of political organization and religious observance, as well as long-distance trade.
About 5300 B.C.E., a dynamic civilization that would last for 3,000 years began to emerge from the villages, and later cities, of Sumer (or southern Mesopotamia).
In learning to control the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in order to irrigate crops, the Sumerians developed the foundation of civilization: the city. By 2500 B.C.E., twelve cities dominated Sumer.
Providing markets and encouraging craft specialists, Sumerian cities were important economic centers, in which centralized authorities directed labor and economic activity. Ultimate power in a Sumerian city lay in the hands of a king, who frequently expended his city's resources in war against other kings. Long-distance trade, however, fostered diplomacy and increased Sumerians' knowledge of foreign peoples.
Sumerians envisioned the natural forces of Mesopotamia's volatile climate as gods who must be appeased, and each city was dominated by temples, especially temples to that city's patron god or goddess.
The Sumerians contributed many cultural innovations but none was as important as their development (around 3200 B.C.E.) of cuneiform, a wedge-shaped system of writing.
With their conquest by the Akkadian king Sargon, the Sumerian cities found themselves part of a new kind of political entity: the multiethnic empire. The difficulties of bringing diverse languages, cultures, and traditions under one rule led to important developments in politics, economics, and law, yet key facets of Sumerian culture endured.
Invading Mesopotamia around 2037 B.C.E., the Amorites absorbed the culture of those they had conquered and there emerged two new kingdoms: Assyria and Babylonia.
The discovery of bronze making helped to expand the power of Assyria beginning around 2000 B.C.E., as Assyria controlled much of the metals trade and political power came to be concentrated in the hands of the leading merchants. But by 1762 B.C.E., Assyria had fallen to Babylonia.
King Hammurabi brought all of Mesopotamia under Babylonia's control and gave his name to the oldest surviving Mesopotamian law code, which introduced such fundamental legal principles as suiting the punishment to the crime.
Along the Nile River, ancient Egyptians created and maintained a remarkably stable civilization throughout millennia.
Having mastered agriculture and herding by 3500 B.C.E., Egyptians in the Predynastic period (3500 - 3000 B.C.E.) saw the development of trade result in wider divisions between rich and poor, a shared common culture along the Nile River, and the foundation of international trade routes.
Egypt was united politically by Narmer, and soon after Egyptian kings established themselves as religious, social, and political focal points. Considered to be human incarnations of divinity, Egyptian kings exercised a highly centralized authority through a complex bureaucracy made possible by the development of a writing system, hieroglyphics.
Egyptians were polytheistic like the Mesopotamians, but placed more emphasis on the idea of life after death, symbolized by the mummification of the dead and the worship of Osiris.
Symbolic entryways to the next life, Egyptian tombs were designed to provide for the deceased materially as well as spiritually, and royal burial customs grew ever more elaborate especially in the Old Kingdom, culminating in the construction of the pyramids.
Following 200 years of anarchy, Egyptian kings restored their authority but were less despotic and directed many of their efforts to improving their subjects' lives, a concern that extended to religious life as well.
Egypt was concerned to protect its international trade and was willing to use force if necessary but preferred diplomacy and friendship when possible. The country also welcomed non-Egyptian immigrants.
A cold climate and heavy forestation made food production more difficult in Europe than in Mesopotamia or Egypt. Farming which did not dominate there until about 2500 B.C.E., spread slowly but steadily by the migration of food-producing peoples into Europe and the adoption of agriculture and herding by European hunter-gatherers. A variety of cultures arose but without cities or systems of writing.
This culture extended from Holland to Russia, developed rudimentary political authority, and built communal stone tombs called megaliths, of which the best known is Stonehenge.
Between 3500 B.C.E. and 2000 B.C.E., these cultures gradually supplanted the Linear Pottery cultures and probably introduced the ancestor of most modern European languages.
Becoming widespread by 2600 B.C.E., the plow caused a dramatic expansion of European agriculture and, as a result, an increase in wealth, trade, and social stratification, laying the foundation of Europe's aristocracy.
By 3000 B.C.E., "civilization" had not yet developed in Europe, but had developed in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Europe — the "West" — would eventually claim these Near Eastern civilizations as remote ancestors, from whom the West inherited such crucial components as systems of writing and the idea of law codes based on abstract principles.
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