Chapter 3 Summary

1.  What changed about new civilizations from the earlier farming villages, pastoral societies, and chiefdoms?

New civilizations encompassed far bigger populations.  In these cities, people were organized and controlled by states whose leaders could use force to compel obedience.  Profound differences in economic function, skill, status, and wealth divided the people of civilizations, making them less equal, and valuable to greater oppression than had been the case in earlier societies.

2.  Where and when did the first civilizations emerge?

• Sumer in Mesopotamia, 3000 BCE
• Egypt in Nile River Valley, 3000 BCE
• Norte Chico, along the coast of central Peru, 3000 BCE
• Indus Valley civilization, present day Pakistan, 2000 BCE
• China in the Yellow River Valley
• Olmecs, southern Mexico near present day Venezuela, 1200 BCE

3.  What was special about each of the first six civilizations?

• Sumer- had world's earliest written language; city-states; temples
• Egypt- pharaohs and pyramids; had a unified territorial state(unlike Sumer)
• Norte Chico- cities were smaller than those of Mesopotamia; had monumental architecture in the form of earthen platform mounds; had quipu for record keeping purposes; had self contained civilization
• Indus Valley- elaborately planned cities; had standardized weights and measures; architectural styles, even brick sizes; irrigated agriculture provided economic foundation for the civilization; written language; there was little indication of centralized state
• China- Shang and Zhou dynasties; luxury tombs for readers; their ruler was known as son of Heaven; early writing on bones; stayed the same for the longest of all the ancient civilizations
• Olmecs- their cities rose from a series of competing chiefdoms and became ceremonial centers filled with many elaborately decorated alters, pyramids, temples, and tombs of past rulers; they had colossal basalt heads that weighed more than 20 tons; a game with a rubber ball that was a cross between soccer and basketball

4.  What answers are given for the rise of civilizations?

All of the civilizations had roots in agriculture, some of these civilizations emerged from earlier and competing chiefdoms, in which some social ranking and economic specialization developed, some scholars have emphasized the need to organize large-scale irrigation projects as a stimulus for the earliest civilizations, but others found that the more complex water control systems appeared after states and civilizations were meant to protect favored groups.

5.  How does Robert Carneiro approach the question of the creation of civilizations?

• Carneiro argued that a growing population density produced a crowded and competitive society that motivated change
• Such settings provided incentives for innovations because opportunities for territorial expansion were not readily available
• Environments with dense populations led to massive, repeated warfare
• The losers of these wars were absorbed into the winners low class
• The leader of the winning side emerged as elite with an enlarged base of land, a class of subordinated workers, and a powerful state of their disposal

6.  What was the role of cities in the the first civilizations?

• political and administrative centers
• centers of culture
• marketplaces for local and long-distance exchange
• centers of manufacturing activity

7.  In what ways was social discrimination expressed in early civilizations?

• wealth
• avoidance of physical labor
• clothing
• manner of burial
• housing
• class-specific treatment in legal codes

8.  In the rival Mesopotamian cities, what were the usual occupations of male and female slaves?

Female slaves were put to work in large-scale semi-industrial weaving enterprises, while males helped to maintain irrigation canals and construct ziggurats.  Other male and female slaves worked in their owners' houses.

9.  Describe the enslavement of people in all of the First Civilisations.

Slaves-derived from prisoners of war, criminals, and debtors-were available for sale; for work in the fields, mines, homes, and shops of their owner; or for sacrifice.  From the days of the earliest civilizations until the 19th century, slavery has been an enduring feature of state-based societies everywhere.

10.  What was unique about slavery in each region?

• Egypt and the Indus Valley civilizations had fewer slaves than Mesopotamia
• Greece and Rome had much more slaves than the Chinese or Indus Valley (Indians)
• Most ancient slavery differed from the more recent American slavery(children of slaves could often go free, and they weren't primarily African)

11.  In what ways have historians tried to explain the beginnings of patriarchy?

• Women were more often pregnant and more involved with child care than before
• Men were able to perform heavy work better
• The declining position of women could have been connected to the growth of social complexity in civilization as economic, religious, and political "specialists" became prominent
• Since men were less important in the household, they could have become leaders
• Women had long been identified with nature
• Large-scale wars left women as the first slaves, and men as the warriors
• Commerce was soon applied to male rights over women

12.  How did Mesopotamia and Egyptian male dominance differ from each other?

Mesopotamia:  By 2000 BCE, various written laws codified and sought to enforce a patriarchal family life that offered women a measure of paternalistic protection while insisting on their submission to the unquestioned authority of men.  Central to these laws was the regulation of female sexuality.  Women in Mesopotamia were sometimes divided into two sharply distinguished categories.  Respectable women, those under the protection and sexual control of a man, were required to be veiled when outside the home, whereas non-respectable women were forbidden to cover their heads.  The powerful goddesses of early times were gradually relegated to the home and hearth and were replaced by dominant male deities.

Egypt:  Egypt, while clearly patriarchal, afforded its women greater opportunities than did most other first civilizations.  Women were recognized as legal equals to men, able to own property and slaves, administer and sell land, sign their own marriage contracts, and to initiate divorce.  Royal women occasionally exercised significant political power.  Married women were not veiled.  Statues often showed men and women as equals.

13.  What were the sources of state authority in the Early Civilisations?

• Citizens recognized that the complexity of life in cities or densely populated territories required some authority to coordinate and regulate the community enterprises, such as irrigation and defense.
• State authorities frequently used force to compel obedience
• Authority was often associated with divine sanction
• Perception of state authority and power was seen through its grand architecture, impressive rituals, and lavish lifestyles
• writing helped state authority by defining the elite status, conveying prestige on the literate, providing a means to disseminate propaganda, strengthening the state by making accurate record keeping possible, and giving added weight to laws

14.  Compare and Contrast Mesopotamian and Egyptian cultures and political systems.

Mesopotamia:

Political:  Sumer was organized in a dozen or more separate and independent city-states.  Each city was ruled by a king, who claimed to represent the city's patron deity and who controlled the affairs of the walled city and surrounding rural area.  Nevertheless, frequent warfare among these Sumerian city-states caused people living in rural areas to flee to the walled cities for protection.

Environment:  An open environment without serious obstacles to travel made Mesopotamia more vulnerable to invasion.  The Tigris and Euphrates rivers provided fertile soil.  Although, flooding of the rivers was unpredictable.  Their irrigation involved a complex work of canals and dikes.

Culture:  Mesopotamians viewed humankind as caught in an inherently disorderly world, subject to the whims of capricious gods, and facing death without an afterlife.  Their environment probably had something to do with their bleak outlook on life, as portrayed in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Egypt:

Political:  Egyptian civilization, by contrast, began with the merger of several earlier states or chiefdoms into a unified territory that stretched 1000 miles along the Nile River.  Egypt maintained that unity and independence, though with occasional interruptions, cities in Egypt were far less important than in Mesopotamia, although political capitals, market centers, and major burial grounds gave them an urban presence.  The focus of the Egyptian states resided in the pharaoh, who ensured the daily rising of the sun and the annual flooding of the Nile, alone.  All of the country's many officials served at his pleasure.

Environment:  Egypt was surrounded by deserts, mountains, seas, and cataracts which made it less vulnerable to invasions.  The Nile flooded every year predictably, which created alluvial soil for productive agriculture.  Egyptian irrigation just regulated the natural flow of the Nile.  Egypt's ability to work with its more favorable environment enabled a degree of stability and continually that was impossible for Sumer.

Culture:  Elite literate culture in Egypt produced a cheerful outlook on the world.  The rebirth of the Sun every day and of the river every year seemed to assure Egyptians that there is an afterlife.

15.  In what ways were Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations shaped by their interactions with near and distant neighbors?

• Egyptian agriculture drew upon wheat and barley, which reached Egypt from Mesopotamia, as well as watermelons, domesticated donkeys, and cattle
• Some say that the pyramids and Egypt's writing system were stimulated by Mesopotamian models
• The practice of divine kingship seems to have derived from Mesopotamia
• Hitties and Hyksos influenced both Egypt and Mesopotamia by bringing domesticated horses, wheeled carts, and chariot technology
• The Egyptians took in foreign innovations from the Hyksos, and expelled the Hyksos to create their own empire
• The Babylonian and Egyptian Empires were also bound together by marriage alliances as part of an international political system.

16.  What are the reservations some scholars have with the term "civilization?"

The first is its implication of superiority.  In popular usage, "civilization" suggests refined behavior, a "higher" form of society, something positive.  The opposite of "civilized"-barbarian, savage, or "uncivilized"- is normally understood as an insult implying inferiority, and that, of course, is precisely how the inhabitants of many civilizations have viewed those outside their own societies.  A second reservation about using the term derives from its implication of solidity-the idea that civilizations represent distinct and widely shared identities with clear boundaries that mark them off from such other units.

Explain the significance of each of the following:

*Quipu- A series of knotted cords used for accounting in the Norte Chico civilization

Oracle Bones-  In Chinese civilization, animal bones were heated and the cracks then interpreted prophecies.  The prophecies were written on the bone.  These provide the earliest form of written language

Mandate of Heaven-  The ideological foundation of Chinese emperors, this was a belief that a ruler held authority by command of divine force as long as he ruled morally and benevolently

Harappa/Mohenjo Daro-  Both were major cities of the Indus River Valley civilization that flourished around 2000 BCE

Code of Hammurabi- A series of laws publicized, at the order of king Hammurabi of Babylonia, that proclaim the king's commitment to social order

Cuneiform-  wedged-shape writing in the form of symbols incised into clay tablets; used in Mesopotamia from around 3100 BCE to 0 AD

Hieroglyphs-  Ancient Egyptian writing system

Epic of Gilgamesh-  The most famous existing literary work from ancient Mesopotamia, it tells the story of a man's quest for immortality

Osiris-  Egyptian god of the dead

Hebrews-  A smaller early civilization whose development of a monotheistic faith provided the foundation of modern Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Phoenicians-  A civilization in the area of present-day Lebanon, creators of the first alphabetic writing system

Nubia-  A civilization to the south of Egypt in the Nile River Valley, noted for the development of an alphabetic writing system and a major iron-working industry by 500 BCE

Hitties- An Indo-European civilization established in Anatolia in the 18th century BCE

Hyksos-  A pastoral group of under own ethnicity that invaded Egypt and ruled in the north from 1650-1535 BCE.  Their dominance was based on their use of horses, chariots, and bronze technology

*You will have to know what Quipu is throughout the entire class, so you'd best learn it now