Part I-From Hunting and Gathering To Civilizations

I
CHAPTER1
From Human Prehistory to the
Early Civilizations
fROM HUNTING
AND GATHERING
TO CIVILIZATIONS,
2.5 MILLION-
1 000 B.C.E.: ORIGINS
The earliest known, fully human species lived in east Africa about 2.5 million
years ago. Gradually humans developed a more erect stance and greater
brain capacity. Early humans lived by hunting and gathering. Because
hunting-and-gathering economies require a great deal of space-on average
about 2.5 square miles per person-populations remained small, and peo-
ple lived in small groups. Even a modest population increase in a hunting-
and-gathering group required part of the group to migrate in search of new
game. Tens of thousands of years ago, the most advanced of the human
species, Homo sapiens sapiens, migrated from Mrica into the Middle East,
then into Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Americas. Early humans devel-
oped tools, first using stones, sticks, and other natural objects. Gradually,
people learned to fashion tools and weapons from stone, bone, and wood.
Agriculture began at different times in different places, from about
10,000 years ago onward. It developed independently in at least three
regions and perhaps more. The map shows the early centers of food pro-
duction and the foods involved. Gradually, agriculture spread widely, though
not universally, from these initial centers.
The development of agriculture was a radical change in humans' way of
life. By providing a dependable source of food, it allowed people to live in
larger groups. Later on, toolmaking technology advanced with the discovery
of metalworking, which in tum further increased agricultural production.
Increased production freed some members of the society to perform other
kinds of work. This in turn encouraged a further series of organizational
changes we call civilization.
Early civilizations arose in five different sites, four of them along the fer-
tile shores of great rivers. At least three and possibly all five of these early civ-
ilizations arose entirely independently of each other. The map of early
civilizations makes another point clear: large parts of the world were not
involved in these developments. Early world history focuses on agricultural
civilizations, but it must also pay attention to regions that developed differ-
ent kinds of economies and different organizational structures.
~
PACIFIC
OCBA'N
~ Centen of ClvUIMtlon
PACIFIC
OCBAN
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
INDIAN
OCBAN
INDIAN
OCBAN
I'ACIFIC
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4 PART I From Hunting and Gathering to Civilizations, 2.5 Million-1000 B.C.E.: Origins
2.5 million Emergence
of Homo sapiens in
eastern Africa
.I Ill :tIll I Ill
-
1 million Emergence of 120,000 Emergence of 30,00D-25,000 Pas- 850D-e500 Domestica-
Homo erectus, an Homo sapiens sapiens, sage of first people to lion of sheep, pigs,
upright, tool-using which displaces other Americas goats, cattle
human human species
15,000..12,000 850D-3500 Neolithic
600,000 Wide spread of Domestication of dogs Age; development of
human species across farming in Middle East
Asia, Europe, Africa;
control of fire
Hunting-and-gathering societies offered an intriguing mixture of features. Not
surprisingly, material life could be meager. The food supply could be precarious,
which was one reason for frequent movement and migration, as when the supply of
game ran low. On the other hand, average workdays were short, leaving a good bit
of time for rest, ritual, and play. Warfare was limited. Hunting bands might con-
front one another, but conflict involved more bluster than bloodshed-more seri-
ous wars developed only when societies become more advanced. Men and women
both had important though separate economic tasks, and overall formal inequality
was usually limited. Here too, more complex societies would bring changes that
were not necessarily improvements.
TRIGGERS FOR CHANGE
The key story in the long early phases of human history focuses on adaptation to
environments, and particularly the search for adequate food supplies. Humans still
react to their environment, but the process was more visible in earlier periods,
when human ability to control aspects of the environment was less well developed.
The early changes in human history-evolutionary development, more advanced
toolmaking, and the extensive migrations-all occurred within the context of a
hunting-and-gathering economy.
About ten thousand years ago, in the Black Sea region, hunting became less
productive. With the end of the ice age, climate changes may have reduced big
game animals in the region. Perhaps a human population increase led to excessive
hunting, depleting the supply of animals. Hunting groups sometimes deliberately
kill off too much game, far more than needed, with the unintended consequence
of producing a food crisis. Whatever the causes of the shortage, people were forced
to look for new sources of food. Women, as gatherers, had undoubtedly become
aware of the possibility of deliberately planting seeds and harvesting grain. Thus the
rise of agriculture was under way.
l
I
PART I From Hunting and Gathering to Civilizations, 2.5 Million-1 000 B.C.E.: Origins 5
= =
.Ill
'''
7000 First town at 5800 Beans domesti- 5000 Domestication of 4000-3000 Develop-
Jericho cated in Western maize (corn) ment of writing, bronze
Hemisphere
500G-2000 Yangshao
metalworking, wheel,
culture in north China
plow in Middle East
350G-1800 Sumerian
civilization
310G-1087 Founding
and flowering of Egypt-
ian civilization
250G-1500 Indus civi-
lization in south Asia
Even the advent of new social organizations associated with civilization involved
efforts at greater environmental control. Early civilizations provided social stnlc-
tures that could coordinate projects like irrigation. The early civilizations also
emerged after the invention of new kinds of tools. The wheel and metal hand tools,
initially of bronze, could increase agricultural production and transport. But they
also depended on some new manufacturing skills. Greater specialization and
greater productivity alike encouraged the kind of organization that early civilization
involved. New technology helped shape another new stage in world history.
THE BIG CHANGES
Agriculture offered a very different set of opportunities and problems than hunting-
and-gathering, and these had far-reaching consequences. Agriculture altered family
forms, for example, by encouraging higher birth rates. It reduced migration, for
in most agricultural regions, permanent settlements arose fairly quickly. By creat-
ing a surplus of food in most years, agriculture permitted a portion of the popula-
tion to engage in occupations other than food production. This led to the
development of unprecedented levels of social inequality, including heightened
inequality between men and women. Agriculture altered the environment, some-
times resulting in overcultivation that depleted the soil. Surplus food allowed
humans to live in larger groups, and by doing so it created new vulnerability to
communicable diseases. While agriculture clearly generated a mixture of advan-
tages and disadvantages, its greater food production helps explain why it tended
to spread and why many people were willing to change basic aspects of their lives
to create this economic shift.
As agriculture produced surplus food, the population grew rapidly. In the most
fertile areas, agricultural centers developed the organizational forms associated with
civilization, most notably formal political stnlctures and cities. Not all did so: state-
less, loosely organized agricultural societies persisted in a few places until relatively
'''
1850 Origins of Shang
kingdom in China
1800 Formation of
Babylonian Empire in
Middle East
170G-1300 Rise of
village culture in
Mesoamerica
1800 Beginning of Indo-
European invasions of
India and parts of the
Mediterranean and Mid-
die East
1800 Spread of civilize-
tion to Crete (Minoan)
1250 Moses and Jewish
exodus from Egypt
(according to Jewish
belief)
l
modern times. But more formal political structures-states-plus larger urban cen-
ters-cities-as places to exchange goods and ideas could further the direction of
agricultural economies. It was no accident that the first four centers of civilization
developed along river valleys, with their opportunities for irrigation: civilization
resulted from the prosperity of this kind of agriculture but also responded to its
organizational needs. Civilizations also helped direct many of the surpluses of agri-
cultural economies to upper-class groups-rulers, landlords, and sometimes priests.
As with agriculture, though to a lesser extent, the arrival of civilizations had wider
consequences. Most early civilizations, for example, developed monumental build-
ings-often associated with religion-and more formal art and culture were stan-
dard features of this final great innovation in early human history.
CONTINUITY
While the development of agriculture brought enormous changes, it is important
to remember that important continuities persisted as well. Changes took place very
slowly. It took thousands of years for humans to develop New Stone Age technolo-
gies such as fashioning tools rather than simply picking up suitably shaped objects.
The slow pace of change had two causes. First, inventing fundamental new
devices took time. In some cases, it never occurred at all: impressive agricultural
societies flourished without ever developing the wheel or metal tools. In addition,
many people remained attached to old ways. Because the food supply was so pre-
carious, taking the risk of innovation probably seemed dangerous. This was one rea-
son that agriculture, though it did fan out from its initial centers, took so long to
spread widely. People cherished the habits long associated with migration. Many
men valued the challenge of hunting. Some groups held out against agriculture,
even when they knew of it.
Change could produce efforts to preserve older values in new ways. In hunting-
and-gathering societies, men and women both had key productive roles; the roles
were very different but they generated some mutual respect. With agriculture, men
took on functions that probably seemed rather feminine, because they were linked to
food gathering. They had far less time to hunt or to enjoy the masculine rituals asso-
ciated with hunting. So men looked for ways within agriculture to emphasize man-
hood. One common response was to claim new levels of superiority over women. This
was a key change in gender relations, but it can also be seen as a kind of compensa-
tion. To this extent, men could feel that not all traditions were being lost.
Once established, agriculture generated its own impulses toward continuity.
Many peasant farmers clung fervently to traditional techniques and village struc-
tures, regarding further change with great suspicion. Thus, a tension between
change and continuity was built into early human experience.
IMPACT ON DAILY LIFE: CHILDREN
Children are an important part of any human society. Some aspects of children's
lives are doubtless natural, part of human experience at any time, in any place. But
the arrival of agriculture had huge implications for children. Hunting-and-gathering
societies depended on a relatively low birth rate, with few children per family. Too
PART I From Hunting and Gathering to Civilizations, 2.5 Million-1 000 B.C.E.: Origins 7
many children would overwhelm resources; and no family could easily transport
more than one young child during migrations. So hunters and gatherers limited
births, mainly by breast feeding each child for up to four or five years, thus reduc-
ing the chances of new conception.
With agriculture, however, more children could be supported, and indeed chil-
dren became a vital part of the family labor force. Infants began to be weaned at
about 18 months on average, a huge change from earlier human patterns. Birth
rates shot up-agricultural families usually averaged five to seven children, though
some would die, as infant mortality rates were high. Childhood began to be defmed
in terms of work. Even young children had obligations. And by the time they were
teenagers, their families depended on their labor. This was a dramatic redefinition
of childhood, even as children became more numerous in the population at large.
Civilization, as an organizational form, had less impact on children, but it
added its own changes. Most civilizations developed written language, though only
a minority could afford the time to learn to write. As a result, the vast majority of
children worked, but an elite minority were sent to school. Also, civilizations used
codes of law and other prescriptions to emphasize the duties of children to their
families. All agricultural civilizations emphasized the authority of parents over chil-
dren and children's obligation to obey their parents. In this way, civilizations tried
to instill in children a willingness to work for the benefit of their families. Some law
codes, as in early Judaism, allowed parents to kill disobedient children. An early
Chinese saying stated simply: "No parent is ever wrong." Children could be loved
and could flourish, but there was a distinctive tone of strict discipline and obedi-
ence in agricultural civilizations that bolstered the necessity of children's labor.
Small wonder that some hunting-and-gathering or herding groups, when they
encountered civilizations, were shocked at how rigorously children were handled.
Many American Indians were appalled by the harsh physical discipline European
immigrants dealt out to their children. Here was an example of agriculture's pro-
found impact on daily life.
Chapter 1 describes the development of agriculture and the ways in which it
changed the lives of early humans. It then describes how farming led, in fertile river
valleys, to the development of civilization. It also notes the limits of these develop-
ments-the many regions that continued living by hunting and gathering as well as
the different trajectory that was followed by societies whose people lived by herding
animals rather than by farming.
CHAPTER
1
Human Life in the Era
of Hunters and Gatherers
Human Life Before
Agriculture
The Neolithic Revolution
Civilization
VISUALIZING THE PAST:
Mesopotamia in Maps
DOCUMENT: Hammurabi's
Law Code
The Heritage of the River
Valley Civilizations
IN DEPTH: The Idea of
Civilization in World Historical
Perspective
The First Civilizations
GLOBAL CONNECTIONS:
The Early Civilizations and
the World
From Human
Prehistory to the
Early Civilizations
0
ne day in 10,000 B.C.E., a solitary figure walked by the edge of the
Pecos River in the American Southwest. He may have been out
hunting or traveling between settlements, but he stopped there to
gather up some dead grass and driftwood into a pile. He used his sharpened
spear to cut a dead twig from an overhanging cottonwood tree and took a
long, dried yucca leaf from his leather belt. He knelt down and held the twig
upright on the centerline of the leaf. Then, as he had done many times
before, he twirled the stick between his hands until the friction between twig
and leaf produced a gleam, or glowing ember, which he quickly transferred to
the grass and wood he had gathered. He tended the flame until it grew into a
fire that provided not only some warmth, but a means of cooking a meal.
When he subsequently rejoined others of his kind, he may have talked about
his journey and how he lost his yucca leaf fire-starter at that campsite by the
river. Of course we have no evidence of his conversation, just the yucca leaf he
left behind, found by an archeologist more than 9000 years later.
Our Neolithic (New Stone Age) traveler sends us a number of messages
about early world history. Most obviously, he was a tool user who not only
picked up natural objects but deliberately crafted them to hunt for and pre-
pare his food. As such, he differed from all other animals (a few other kinds
of animals are tool users, but none make their tools). He also knew how to use
fire, a major human discovery that had occurred many thousands of years
before. The use of fire for cooking allowed early humans to eat a wider vari-
ety of foods, particularly animal protein.
This traveler was in what we now call America, far from eastern Mrica,
where human beings first evolved. Just decades ago, it was believed that the
first humans migrated from northeast Asia into what is now Alaska only 12,000
years ago. Vastly improved archeological techniques have recently revealed
that the crossing was made at least as early as 25,000 B.C.E. and that the
migrants spread out quickly, probably traveling both overland and by boat
along the Pacific coast, from Alaska to Chile.
Finally, we know our mend could talk. Human beings had developed what
some call the "speech gene" about 70,000 years earlier, vastly improving the
species' capacity to communicate beyond the sounds and gestures common to
F1GURE 1.1 aeaJI'IIII a Will ltD 8helter !he flnrt wind, a Nealthlc warn&n a dried yucca .talk
-aaJnet a mucfMIIIad tlr!HtarblrtD that will kindle a than the dried plant mld8ltlln hu p**l unlhe

a number of animal groups. Neollihic human& were
what we 110melima call but they had already
experienced a number of fundamental and in
some plac.e$ they were poised to introduce more.
Human Life In the Era of Hunters
and Gatherers
Hunting and gathering economb domi!Wed
human hiltory until 9000 B..C.L These
ecoDomie.l helped propel migration <M:r moet
of the Iandi on earth.
The human species has accomplished a great deal
in a relatively short period of time. There are !ignifi-
cant diaagreement8 over how long an easentially
human species, as distinct from other primates, has
emted. However, a figure of 2 or 2.5 million yean
acceptable. Thia iJ approximately 1/4000 of the
time the earth has existed. That Is, if one t:hln:b of the
whole hilltory of the eanh to date as a !+hour day. the
human species began at about 5 minutes before mid-
night. Human beingl have emted for leu than 5 per-
cent of the time mammal& of any son have lived. Yet In
this brief span of time-by earthhiltory standards-
humankind has spread to every landmaas (with the
exception of the polar regioDJJ) and, for better or
worse, has taken control of the dectinies of countless
other species.
To be sure, human beings have some drawbacb as
a compared to other exiJting models. They are
unurually aggretllive againrt their own kind: While
acme of the great notably chimpanzees, engage
in periodic wan, theae comlict8 can hardly riwl human
9
2.5 million
Emergence of
more humanlike
species, initially
in eastern Africa
25,000
Migration of
people from
Siberia to tip of
South America
1 0,000-8000
Development of
farming in the
Middle East
8000 First
potter's wheel
4000 Yangshao
culture in China
2500
Emergence
of Harappan
(Indus)
civilization
2000 Kotosh
culture in Peru
9000
Domestication
of sheep, pigs,
goats, cattle
5500 Catal
Hiiyiik at its
peak
4000-3000 Age
of innovation in
the Middle East:
introduction of
writing, bronze
metalwork,
wheel, plow
2000 Conver-
sion to agricul-
ture in northern
Europe, south-
ern Africa
750,000
Further develop-
ment of human
species into
Homoerectus
14,000 End
of great ice age
12,000
Fashioning of
stone tools; end
of Paleolithic
(Old Stone) Age
8000 Transition
of agriculture;
introduction of
silk weaving in
China
5000
Domestication
of maize (corn)
in Mesoamerica
1500
Emergence of
Shang kingdom
in China; writing
develops
800,000 Wide
spread of
human species
across Asia,
Europe, Africa;
development of
fire use
240,000-
100,000 Appar-
ent completion
of basic human
evolution; migra-
tions from Africa
begin; Homo
sapiens sapiens
displaces other
human species
violence. Human babies are dependent for a long
period, which requires some special child-care
arrangements and often has limited the activities of
many adult women. Certain ailments, such as back
problems resulting from an upright stature, also bur-
den the species. And, insofar as we know, the human
species is alone in its awareness of the inevitability of
death-a knowledge that imparts some unique fears
and tensions.
Distinctive features of the human species account
for considerable achievement as well. Like other pri-
mates, but unlike most other mammals, people can
manipulate objects fairly readily because of the grip pro-
vided by an opposable thumb on each hand. Compared
to other primates, human beings have a relatively high
and regular sexual drive, which aids reproduction.
Being omnivores, they are not dependent exclusively on
plants or animals for food, which helps explain why they
can live in so many different climates and settings. The
unusual variety of their facial expressions aids commu-
nication and enhances social life. The distinctive human
brain and a facility for elaborate speech are even more
important: much of human history depends on the
knowledge, inventions, and social contracts that result-
ed from these assets. Features of this sort explain why
many human cultures, including the Western culture
that many Americans share, promote a firm separation
3500-1800
Civilization
ofSumer;
cuneiform
alphabet
3100 Rise
of Egyptian
civilization
1500 First
ironworik in the
Middle East
1200 Jews
settle near the
Mediterranean;
first monotheistic
religion
1122 Western
Zhou kings
between human and animal, seeing in our own species
a power and rationality, and possibly a spark of the
divine, that "lower" creatures lack.
Human Life Before Agriculture
Human societies spread widely geographically.
Tool use gradually improved in the hunter-
gatherer economy.
Although the rise of humankind has been impres-
sively rapid, its early stages can also be viewed as
painfully long and slow. Most of the 2 million plus
years during which our species has existed are
described by the term Paleolithic (Old Stone) Age.
Throughout this long time span, which runs until
about 14,000 years ago, human beings learned only
simple tool use, mainly through employing suitably
shaped rocks and sticks for hunting and warfare. Fire
was tamed about 750,000 years ago. The nature of the
species also gradually changed during the Paleolithic,
with emphasis on more erect stature and growing
brain capacity. Archeological evidence also indicates
some increases in average size. A less apelike species,
whose larger brain and erect stance allowed better tool
CHAPTER 1 From Human Pluhllltory to the Civilization& 11
use, emerged between
500,000 and '150,000 yean
ago; it iB called, appropriate-
ly enough, Ht1tM Sev-
eral apecie11 of H- mctw
developed and !pread in
Africa, then to Aeia and
Europe, reaching a popula-
tion size of perhaps l.!S
lion 100,000 yean ago.
Late Paleolithic
Development.
Considerable evidence mg-
gests that mo:re advanced
types of humans kined off or
displaced many competitora
over time, which explaim
why there i8 only one buic
human type throughout the
world today, rather than a
number of rather similar
human apecle&, as among
monkeys and apes. There
waa a1ao a certain amount of
intermarriage. The newest
human breed, R- ,..,_
ROUIE tJI In r.a.c:.ux. F..,_, ln1940. fOur bop flalppened upon Ill led wtth
UIOUIIIICII ol QOmpleX and Slon1 ,..!M11n1111111 like Ullll 0111. Moet of 1tle PQ!ntlnga ... of
ani mala, eome ofWI11Cfl were Ullnc:t 1t1e time they were painted. No - llnOW1I for sure WilY
8'lcne AQe ar!SitS painted INM bUt they Nm8ln a powllftll reminder or ure
IIOPfliltice.tion of IIO-C4lled primitive peopleo&.
MJ/If-. of which aU humans in the 'WOrld today are
de!ICelldanU, originated about 240,000 yean ago, aho
in Africa. The tucceea of thiB subllpecies meiUl.ll that
there have been no n:ugor changes in the basic human
physique or brain size !ince its advent.
Even after the appearance of H1110 S6pilms sapiens,
human life faced important con.etraint&. People who
hunted food and gathered nuu and berries
collld not !upport large numbers or elaborate
soci.e1ies. Most hunting groupe wt:re amall,
and they had to roam widely for food. Two
people required at le:ut one square mile for
surrival. Population growth waa !low, partly
because women brea.rt..f'ed infanlll for several years to
llmit their own fertility. On the other hand, people did
not have to work very hard-hunting took about I!C'Vel1
hours every three days on average. Women, who gath-
ered fruits and vegetables, worked harder, but there
was significant equality between the sexes based on
common economic contribution.s.
Paleolithic people gradually improved their tool
we, beginning with the crude shaping of stone and
wooden implements. Speech developed with HMM-.
tw 100,000 yean ago, allowing more group coopera-
tion and the ttllrUimieaion of technital bowledge. By
the later Paleolithic period, people had developed rit-
uals to lessen the fear of death and creatt:d cave paint-
iDgJ to expre.!oS a sense of nature's beauty and power
(Figure 1.2). often played a prominent role
in the religiow pantheon. Thua, the human species
came to develop Sf'lems ofbeliefthat
helped explain the e:nvirollment and aet up rulet for
various kind& of soda! behavior. The development of
speech provided rich language and symbols for the
tJ:anmlission of culture and ill growing 1ophiatication.
At the same time, different groups of humans, in dif-
ferent locations, developed quile varied belief systems
and COrreiponding languages.
The greatest achievement of Paleolithic people wa5
the sheer spread of the human specie& over much of
the earth's surface. The species in
eaatern A&ica; most of the types of
human remains come from thiB region, in the
pxaent-day countries of 1'an.z:ania, Kenya, and
Uganda. But gradual migration, doubtless
caWJed by the need to find scarce food, lfleadi- Populll:llons
lypuahed the human reach to other areas. Key
dlJlcoverles, notably fire and the uae of animal skins for
clothing-both of which enabled people to live in cold-
er climatea-facilitated the spread of Paleolithic
group3. The first people moved out of Africa about
750,000 years ago. Human remains (Peking man, Java
man) dating from 600,000 and 850,000 years ago have
been found in China and eoutheut Alia, respectively.
, . ..r
PACIFIC OCEAN \ AUSTRALIA

E3 l'ruc,.-<la)' >horehn"' \:)
MAP 1.1 The Spread of Human Populations, c.10,000 B.C.E.
Humans inhabited Britain 250,000 years ago. They first
crossed to Australia 60,000 years ago, followed by
another group 20,000 years later; these combined to
form the continent's aboriginal population. Dates of
the migration from Asia to the Americas are under
debate. Most scholars now believe that humans crossed
what was then a land bridge from Siberia to Alaska
about 30,000 years ago, with several subsequent migra-
tion waves until warmer climates and rising ocean lev-
els eliminated the land bridge by 8000 B.C.E. * Many of
the new arrivals quickly spread out, reaching the tip of
the South American continent possibly within a mere
thousand years. Settlers from China reached Taiwan,
the Philippines, and Indonesia 4500 to 3500 years ago.
In addition, soon after this time-roughly 14,000
years ago-the last great ice age ended, which did won-
ders for living conditions over much of the Northern
Hemisphere. Human development began to acceler-
ate. In the Mesolithic (Middle Stone) Age, a span of
several thousand years, from about 12,000 to 8000
B.C.E., human ability to fashion stone tools and other
*In Christian societies, historical dating divides between years
"before the birth of Christ" (B.C.) and after (A.D., anno Domini, or
"year of our Lord"). This system came into wide acceptance in
Europe in the 18th century, as formal historical consciousness
increased (although ironically, 1 A.D. is a few years late for Jesus'
actual birth). China, Islam, Judaism, and many other societies use
different dating systems, referring to their own history. This text, like
many recent world history materials, uses the Christian chronology
(one has to choose some system) but changes the terms to B.C.E.
("before the common era") and c.E. ("of the common era") as ages-
ture to less Christian-centric labeling.
[Eis, of.-..d<rohuR>Inb<illj! (lbno.OU0911S)
[!J Sil o( a.rl)' t'A.nn:m
(Homo ha'mhs, llomo ttettus,l lomo Apicn....:...)------'
implements improved greatly. People learned to
sharpen and shape stone, to make better weapons and
cutting edges. Animal bones were used to make nee-
dles and other precise tools. From the Mesolithic also
date the increased numbers of log rafts and dugouts,
which improved fishing, and the manufacture of pots
and baskets for food storage. Mesolithic people domes-
ticated more animals, such as cows, which again
improved food supply. Population growth accelerated,
which also resulted in more conflicts and wars. Skele-
tons from this period show frequent bone breaks and
skull fractures caused by weapons.
In time, better tool use, somewhat more elaborate
social organization, and still more population pressure
led people in many parts of the world to the final Stone
Age-the Neolithic (New Stone) Age (Map 1.1). From
Neolithic people, in turn, came several more dramatic
developments that changed the nature of human exis-
tence-the invention of agriculture, the creation of
cities, and other foreshadowings of civilization, which
ended the Stone Age altogether throughout much of
the world.
The Neolithic Revolution
The Neolithic revolution centered on the
development of agriculture.
Agriculture generated a variety of important
changes in human cultures. Human achievements
CHAPTER 1 From Human Pnlhllltory to the Clvlllzatlona 13
during the variO'WJ ages af stone are both fascinating
and fundamenml, and some points are hotly debated.
Our knowledge af Stone Age IIOcicty is af coune limit
ed, although archeologists have been creative in their
interpretations of tool remain.a and other eridence,
IJUCh as cave paintinp and burial sites, that Stone Age
people produced in various partll of the world. What
people accomplished during thiJ long period of pre-
history remains essential to human life today; our abil-
ity to male and manipulate toola thua depends
directly on what our Stone Age ancestors learned
about physical matter.
However, it waa the invention of agriculture that
moet dearly moved the human apeciea toward more
elaborate aocial and culwral patterns of the aort that
people today would find recognizable. With
ture, human beings were able to settle in one apot and
fucua on particular economic, political, and religious
goals and activities. Agriculture also spawned a great
inc:reaae in the sheer number of people in the world-
from about 6 to 8 million BC1'0ill the earth's surface
during early Neolithic time.&, to about 100 million
some 3000 years later.
The initial development of agriculture-that ia,
the deliberate planting af grain fur later b.am::st--was
probably triggered by two l'e$ults of the ice
age's end. F"ll'St, population increase.&, stem-
ming from improved climate, prompted peo-
ple to search for new and more reliable
aourcea of food. Second, the end of the ice
age .saw the retreat of certain big game ani-
mala, such as ma!todollll. Human hunters had to tum
to pnalier game, auch u deer and wild boar, in many
forested areaa. Hunting's overall yield declined. Here
waa the buill for new interest in other aources of food.
There is evidence that by 9000 B.c.z., in certain parts of
the world, people were becoming inc::rcaaingly depend-
ent on regular harvests of wild grains, berrie.s, and
nuta. Thia undollbtedly set the stage for the deliberate
planting of eeeda (probably accidental to begin with)
and the improvement of key grain& through the selec-
tion of seeds from the beat plan !I.
As fanning evolved, new animals were abo clome5-
ticatecl. Particularly in the Middle East and parts of
Asia, by 9000 B.C.E. pigs. sheep, goau, and cattle were
being raised. Fanners used these animals for meat and
Iikins and soon dilcovered dairying u well. These
reiiUllll not only contributed to the development of
agriculture but al80 seiW:d as the basis for nomadic:
herding soc:ietiea.
Far:mingwasinitiallydeveloped in the Middle Eut,
In an arc of tenitory running from pte$Cnt-day Turkey
to Iraq and Israel This was a very fertile area, more fer-
tile in thoae days than at present. Grains sw:h as barley
and wild wheat were abundant. At the same time, this
area was not heavily forested, and animals were in
short supply, presenting a challenge to hunters. In the
Middle East, the development of agriculture mil)' have
begun as early as 10,000 a.c.:r.., and It gained ground
rapidly after 8000 B.C. E. Gradually during the Neolith-
ic centuries, knowledge af agriculture spread to other
centen, including parts of India, north Africa, and
Europe. Agriculture, including rice culti'v.Uion, soon
developed independently in China.. ThU!I, within a few
thousand 'f'CIID agriculture had aprcad to the parts of
the world that would produce the flnt human dvfll.za
lions (Map 1.2). We will see that agriculture spread. later
to much of Africa aou1h af the Medit:emmean ccut,
reaching wcat Africa by 2000 B.c.E., al1hough here too
there were additional del'elopmenlll with an emphasis on
local grairu and al.so root crops such as yams. Agriculture
had to be invented separately in the .Americu, baaed on
com alltiva!ion, where it waa aleo a lligbtly later
ment (about5000 B.c.E.).
Many scholan have termed the development of
agriculture a Neolithic revollllion. The term is obvi-
ously mialcading in one sense: agriculture wa.s no sud
den tranaformation, even in the Middle East where
the new system had its root!!. Learning the new agri
cultural methods was difJicult, and many peoples long
combined a bit of agriculture with considerable
reliance on the older systems of lnmdDf and gadler--
illa' A "revolution" that took. over a thousand years,
and then eeveral thouaand more to apread to key pop-
ulation centen in Asia, Europe, and Africa, i4 hardly
dramatic by modern standards.
The concept of revolution is, however, appropri
ate in demonatrat.ing the magnitude of change
involved. Early agriculture could l!lpport far more
people per square mile than hunting ever could; it
also allowed people to settle more permanently in one
area. The II}'Btem was nonethelcu not euy. Agriculture
required more regular wort:, at least of men, than
hunting did. Hunting groups today, such as the pyg
mie. of the Xalahari d.eaert in aouthwest Africa, work.
an average o2.5 hours a day, alternating long, intense
hunts with periods of idleness. As much as agriculture
waa demanding, it was also rewarding. Agriculture
supported larger populations, and with better food
supplies and a more settled existence, agricultural
peoples could afford to build houses and villages.
Domesticated animals provided not only hides but
a1Jo wool for more varied clothing.
We know ne:tt to nothing of the debases that must
have raged when people were lint confronted with
agriculture, but it is not hard to imagine that many
would ha-re found the new life too complicated, too dlf
fi.cult, or too unexciting. Most evidence suggeslll that
gathering-a.d-hunting peoples resisted agriculture u
long u they could. Cndually, of coune, agriculture did
14 PART I From Humlng arid Gathering 10 Cllllllz:a!lana, 2.6 a.c.e.: Orlglna
......
....
PACIFIC OCEAN
[Q] Core llteas of agriculture
Bi!l Sprood
gain ground. It& succeu was hard to deny. And as farm
ers cleared new land from fore.sl:!l, they automatically
drove out or convened many hun ten. Disease played a
role: 1ettled agricultural societie! suffered from more
t::ontagious di.&eases be<:au8e of den.eer population t::on
centrations. Hunting-QDl-gathering people.s lacked
remtance and often died when agrit::ulturislll who had
de"Yeloped immunity to thc:ae di.&eaac:.s c::ar:ried them
Into their areas.
Not all the peoplea of the world came to embrace
the slowly spreading wave of agriculture, at lealt not
until very recently. Impo11ant amall societies in south
em Africa., Australia, the islands of southeast Asia, and
even northern Japan were isolated for so long that
news of thi6 economic S)'lltem limply did not reach
them. The hunting tribes of northern
Japan di.aappeared only about a hundred years ago.
Northern Europeans and 110uthem Africana converted
to agriculture earlier, about !000 yean ago, but weD.
after the Neolithic revoludon had tranSformed other
parl:!l of their continents. Agriculture waa initiated in
the Americas u early as 5000 B.C.IL and developed vig
orously in Central America and the northem part of
South America. However, most Indian tribea in North
America continued a hunting-Qnd.gathering existence,
sometimes combined with limited agriculture, until
recent c::enturiea. Finally, the peoplea of the 'nl.!lt plain3
of central Asia long resisted a complete conversion to
agriculture, in part becaUIIe of a hanh climate; herd-
ing, rather than grain-growing, became the bask
socioeconomic system of this part of the world. From
this area would come waves of tough, nomadic
invaders whose role in linking major ci'rilizati.ons wa1 a
vital force in world hiatory until a few centurie-s ago.
Development possibilitie.s among people who
became agriculturislll were more obvious than those
among smaller populatiom who resiated or limply did
not know of the system. Agriculture set the basi& for
more rapid change in human societies.. Greater wealth
and larger populations freed some people for other
specializatiollll, from whic.h new ideal or teclmiquea
might spring. Agriculwre itself depended on control
aver nature that could be facilitated by newly
oped and objecm. For example, during the
Neolithic period, Wmlog people needed storage
ities for grains and seeds, which promoted the dev&
opment of basket-making and pottery. The first
potter"a wheel c::ame into exiatenc::e around 6000 :B.c.E.,
and this, in tum, encouraged faster and hlgheNJ.Uiility
pottery production. Agricultural needs also encour-
aged certain kinds of science, aupporting the human
inclination to learn more about weather or flooding.
Much of what we think of as human history
involves the doing& of agricultural societiet-Societies,
that is, in which most people are farmera and in which
the production offood ia the central economit:: activi-
ty. Nonagricultural group&, like the nonwlic herders
in central Asia, made their own mart. but their great
CHAPTER 1 FromHumanPrehlstorytotheEarlyCivilizations 15
est influence usually occurred in interactions with agri-
cultural peoples. Many societies remain largely agri-
cultural today. The huge time span we have thus far
considered, including the Neolithic revolution itself, is
all technically "prehistorical"-involved with human
patterns before the invention of writing allowed the
kinds of recordkeeping historians prefer. In fact, since
we now know how to use surviving tools and burial sites
as records, the prehistoric-historic distinction means
less than it once did. The preagricultural-agricultural
distinction is more central. Fairly soon after the devel-
opment of agriculture-although not, admittedly,
right away-significant human change began to occur
in decades and centuries, rather than in the sizeable
blocks of time, several thousand years or more, that
describe preagricultural peoples.
Indeed, one basic change took place fairly soon
after the introduction of agriculture, and, again, soci-
eties in the Middle East served as its birthplace. The
discovery of metal tools dates back to about 4000 B.C.E.
Copper was the first metal with which people learned
how to work, although a more resilient metal, bronze,
soon entered the picture. In fact, the next basic age of
human existence was the Bronze Age. By about 3000
B.C.E., metalworking had become so commonplace in
the Middle East that the use of stone tools dissipated,
and the long stone ages were over at last-although,
of course, an essentially Neolithic technology persist-
ed in many parts of the world, even among some agri-
cultural peoples.
Metalworking was extremely useful to agricultural
or herding societies. Metal hoes and other tools
allowed farmers to work the ground more efficiently.
Metal weapons were obviously superior to those made
from stone and wood. Agricultural peoples had the
resources to free up a small number of individuals as
toolmakers, who would specialize in this activity and
exchange their products with farmers for food. Spe-
cialization of this sort did not, however, guarantee
rapid rates of invention; indeed, many specialized arti-
sans seemed very conservative, eager to preserve meth-
ods that had been inherited. But specialization did
improve the conditions or climate for discovery, and
the invention of metalworking was a key result. Like
agriculture, knowledge of metals gradually fanned out
to other parts of Asia and to Mrica and Europe.
Gradually, the knowledge of metal tools created
further change, for not only farmers but also manufac-
turing artisans benefited from better tools. Woodwork-
ing, for example, became steadily more elaborate as
metal replaced stone, bone, and fire in the cutting and
connecting of wood. We are still living in the metal
ages today, although we rely primarily on iron-whose
working was introduced around 1500 B.C.E. by herding
peoples who invaded the Middle East-rather than
copper and bronze.
Civilization
The emergence of civilization occurred in
many though not all agricultural societies.
Early civilizations formed in Mesopotamia,
Egypt, the Indus River basin, and China.
Agriculture encouraged the formation of larger as
well as more stable human communities than had exist-
ed before Neolithic times. A few Mesolithic groups had
formed villages, particularly where opportunities for
fishing were good, as around some of the lakes in
Switzerland. However, most hunting peoples moved in
relatively small groups, or tribes, each containing any-
where from 40 to 60 individuals, and they could not set-
tle in a single spot without the game running out. With
agriculture, these constraints changed. To be sure, some
agricultural peoples did move around. A system called
slash and burn agriculture existed in many parts of the
world, including portions of the American South, until
about 150 years ago. Here, people would burn off trees
in an area, farm intensively for a few years until the soil
was depleted, and then move on-often returning to
earlier sites every 20-30 years. Herding peoples also
moved in tribal bands, with strong kinship ties. The rise
of nomadic herding economies was a vital development
in Central Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere.
The maJor agricultural regions, however, involved
more permanent settlements. There were advantages
to staying put: houses could be built to last, wells built
to bring up water, and other "expensive" improve-
ments afforded because they would serve many gener-
ations. In the Middle East, China, and parts of Mrica
and India, a key incentive to stability was the need for
irrigation devices to channel river water to the fields.
This same need helps explain why agriculture generat-
ed communities and not a series of isolated farms.
Small groups simply could not regulate a river's flow or
build and maintain irrigation ditches and sluices. Irri-
gation and defense encouraged villages-groupings of
several hundred people-as the characteristic pattern
of residence in almost all agricultural societies from
Neolithic days until our own century. Neolithic settle-
ments spread widely in agricultural societies. New ones
continued to be founded as agriculture spread to
regions such as northern Europe, as late as 1500 B.C.E.
(Figure 1.3).
One Neolithic village, <;:atal Hiiyiik in southern
Turkey, has been elaborately studied by archeologists.
It was founded about 7000 B.C.E. and was unusually
large, covering about 32 acres. Houses were made of
mud bricks set in timber frameworks, crowded togeth-
er, with few windows. People seem to have spent a good
bit of time on their rooftops in order to experience
daylight and make social contacts-many broken
ROUIE t.:t Skin Bnla.lac:t8d In
ttt omwy "'1/ld' orr 1M c:OMt or
Sc:olllnf, IIIII uc:elllnt111o8J'11)18 or
a late Neolithic Mtllell*lt. It datea
fl!lm 1!100 B.C.E. HCIUSM inCluded
for grain, wdel;,
and MCIIItwaa
c:llyot_,. hMIIIMI
that-'Mitlla.tlld throullft a hoi
In the roo! cw bUilt Into 1M wall. Men
dependable and wried food
and howM gr-.tly enfBiced
the -=urlty Mid camfart ortha
s-1*' WhO I Mid In th-
Mtllna118. Better conditions
apul!'ed h__. blrltl ratea aid
IOW8nld martllllty nltea,mleMt In
tfmae wflan cnlp ylalcH were high.
bone.& attett to frequent m:lh. Some howe.a
were lavishly deoorated, mainly with hunting
scenes. ReligiOU!I images, both of powerful
1111 male hunters and "mother goddeuet" dewt-
VIIIQt ed to agricultural fertility, were common, and
some people in the village aeem to have had special
religioUII responaibiliti.ea. The village produced almost
all the goods it consumed. Some ttade was conducted
with hunting who lived in the hi1h I!Urround
ing the vilLage, but apparently it was initiated more to
keep the peace than to produce economic gain (F'Ig
ure 1.4). By 5500 B.C.E., important p:rod1U:tion activi-
ties developed in the village, including th<* of skllled
toolmakers and jewelers. With time also came linb
with other communities. Large villages like Catal
HUyiilr. ruled cm:r smaller communitiee. 1'hia meant
that some familiee began to specialize in politics, and
military forces were organized. Some villages became
small cities, ruled by kings who were typically given
divine status.
By SOOO B.c.z., (Jatal HUyiik had become part of a
cm!ixation. Although many of the charat:teristia of cN-
ilization had es:isted by 6000 or !5000 B..C.l!. in this Mid-
dle Eastern region, the origins of civilization, strictly
peaking, approximately date to only 5500 a.c.x. The
first civilization aro.se in the Middle Ea&t along the
ba.nb of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.. Another cen-
ter of civilization 1tarted soon thereafter in northeast
Africa (Egypt), and a third by around 2500 s.c.E. along
the banks of the Indus River in northwestern India.
The!e three early centers of civ:iliza!i.on had some
interaction. The fourth and fifth early civilizalion cen-
ters, a bit later and con.slderably more separate, arose
in China and Central America.
Unlike an agriculmraiiOciety, which can be rather
preci.aely defined, c:iYilUr:ldion i3 a more I!Ubjective con-
struct. Some scholars prefer to define civilizations only
:u societie! with enough economic surplUII to form
siom of labor and a .social hierarchy invol'ring signifi-
cant ineq_uallties. This 1.&a very inclusive definition, and
CHAPTER 1 From Human Pluhllltory to the Civilization& 17
under it m0.11t agricultural societies and even some
groups like North .American mdiam who combined
fiuming with hunling would be drawn in. Others, how-
ever, press the concepts of clvillzaUon further, arguing,
for example, that a chief difference between civiliza-
tiollS and other societies (whether huuling or agricul-
tuial) involva the emergence of formal political
organizations, or states, as opposed to dependence on
family or tribal tie11. Most civilizations produce political
unim capable of ruling large n:gi.ons, and some char-
acteristically produce huge 'kingdoms or empire$.
The word itself comes from the Latin
term for cily. and in truth most ci'VilizaUom do depend
on the emtence of tignificant cities. In agricult:ural civ-
ilizationa, most people do not live in cities. But cities
are crucial becawe they ama&S wealth and power, they
allow the rapid exchange of ideas among relatively
large numben of people, thereby encouraging intel-
lecwal thought and artistic expre&Sion, and they pro-
mote specialization in manufacturing and trade.
MO.IIt civilizatiom developed wriling, slm:ting with
the of (writing bued on wedge-
like charactera) in the Middle East around 3500 B.C. E.
Societies that employ writing can organize more elab-
orate political s1Iucturet becaUJe of their ability to
send mesaages and keep records. They can tax more
e:fliciently and make contraclll and treaties. Societies
with writing also generate a mare explicit intellectual
climate becawe of their ability to record data and
bulld on past. written wisdom. (One of the early writ-
ten records from the Middle East is a recipe for mak-
ing beer--a science of a sort.) Some experts argue that
the very fact of becoming literate changes the way peo-
ple thinl:, encour:aging them to consider the 'M>rld as
a place that can be understood by organized human
inquiry, or "rationally: and le.u by a h0.11t of spiritual
belie&. In all agricult:ural civilimtioDJ-that is, in all
human lililtory until le&S than 200 years ago-only a
minority of people were literate, and u.rually that was a
small minority. Nonethele55, the existence of wriling
did make a difference in such societies.
Since c:iv:ilization.a employ writing and are by defini-
tion unusually weD organized. it is not surprl!ing that
almost all recorded hiatory u about what ha.t happened
to civilized societies. We simply lmow the most about
such societies, and we often are particularty impn!&lled
by what they produce in lhe way of great art or powerful
I1llc:rs.. It it also true that civilizationa tend to be mr mare
populous than nomadic or hunting-ud-gadlering aoci-
eties. Therefore, the histnry of civilizaxion generally cov-
ers the hiatnry of most people.
But the history of civilization does not include
everybody. No hunting or nomadic peoples could gen-
erate a civili.r.ation-they lacked the stability and
resources, and. with the exception of a limited number
of signa and symbob, they never developed writing,
unle&S it came from the outside. Funhermore, some
agricultmal peoples did not develop a full ciY:ilization,
if our definition of civilimtion goes beyond the Bimple
acquisition of economic surplus to formal statt$, cities,
and writing. Portion& of west Africa, fully agricultuial
and capable of imprelllli.ve art. have long lacked writing,
major cilic:s, or more than loose regional government..
People in drilizations, particularly during the long
centuries when they were I!UlTOunded by nomadic peo-
characteristically looked down on any society
ladr:ing in civilization. The ancient Greeb coined the
word bal'botri41t to describe such cases-indeed, they
PIGURII1..4 Thll a.n!al'a renCIMPICI
til&--Mtlfem&nt 8l Qll.tlll
HOyOk, In what I now 80ult1.-nl!Jrtu
Movwnent wlttlln UuJ M<!ement-
maNy..-1t1e RlOI'I nd Wr!'lu:lM ot
the 110u-.. a--eaott dwealg hal
a IUbltamfii81Creroom for food, !lie
Mtlfement-often thetatoet ot
-kll by aut81dllns. Aa til a plllntlng
ell owe. )Oinecl
to PfVII!Cie )l!Utee110n from eueh al:tiK:kll;
Whlnth&outaleleenn--
banlcadld, th& complex wu
tl'llnilfalmed into t'lltnA
were prone to regard all non-Greeks 3.!1 barbarians. &
a of labels like this, it ia euy to think of much
human hiltory aa divided between civilizaliom and
primldve nomad&.
Such a di!linction is incorrect. however, and it doe.s
not follow from the real hiltorical meaning of miliza.
tion. In the fint place, like agriculture, civili.zalion
brings lONeS 3.!1 well 3.!1 gains. All <;:atal Hiiyiik moved
toward civi!iz.:uion, distinctions based on IIOcial cl.as and
wealth increaaed. CM!izatiOWI often have firmer claaa or
ca&te divisiom, including alavery, than do simpler" soc::l
eties.. They also oft= promote greater separ:uion
between the rulers and ruled, monarch& and subject!.
Frequently, they are quite warlike, and there ia gn:ater
inequality between men and 'M)men than in huntel'
gadterer societies.. With civilization, more fiilly patriar-
chal !tn.lctunls emerged. In citiCl'.!, male superiority was
even clearer than in agriculture, aa men did m011t of the
manufacturing and assumed political and religious lead.
enhip, thWI relegating women to aubon:linate roles.
"Civilization, then, iJ not a synonym far "good."
By the same token, nomadic qr hunte:r-gatherer
societies may be exception.ally well reguWed and have
important c:ultures.. Many such societies, in
met, have more regulations-in part, because they
depend on rules tranamitted by word of mouth-than
civilized societies. Some of the societies most eager to
repr:as anger and aggrelllion in human dealings, such
aa Zuni lndiam in the .Americm Southweat, are baaed
at least in part on hunting and gathering. Although
some hunting-gathering societies treat old people cru-
elly, othen display more respect and veneration toward
elden than moet civiliza.tiom do. Many nomadic soci
eties may be shocked by the doings of civilized peoples.
For example, American Indians were appalled at the
im:i.rtence of European settlers on spanking their chil-
dren, a behavior they regarded aa vicioWI and unnec
euary. A fa.!lcinating, although probably llll.an!Wel'3ble,
question involve11 determining whether or not the civi-
lization form haa left more or lc:a good in im wake.
It 16 also Important to note that many nomadic
peoples contributed greatly to world history. While
many remaining hunting-and-gathering peoples
became increaaingly iaolated, except in par1ll of the
Americas, nomadic herding economies continued to
flourish in many places.. They depended on the dome
tication of animals and on key technological impi'O'o'e-
menbl, for c:xample in riding equipment and
weaponry. Precisely becawe they traveled widely,
nomadic peoplei could play vital roles in world trade
and in developing conta.ctJ among more 1etded area.!!.
Nomadic groups in central &Ia would play a particu
larly great role in 'M)fld history, but groups in the Mid
die Ea.!!t and Africa were significant 3.!1 well.
Despite the imporllmce of alter:llalivea, i1 remaim
true that the derelopment of cirilization most obvious-
ly continued the procesa of technological change and
political organization. Civ:ilizaUOWI also generated the
lalpt populatiom and the most elaborate artiltic and
intellectual forms.lt is in this context that the term h3.!l
real meaning and in which it legitimately commands
the attention of molt historiam.
Civilization abo increaxd human impact on the
environment. For example, the first center of copper
production in l!.lll'OJie, along the Danube valley, led to
such defareltalion that the fuel supply waa deltroyed,
and the industry collapsed after about 3000 B.c.:&. The
extensive agriculrure needed to support Indus River
cities opened the land to erosion and ftooding because
of overuse af the soil and removal of trees.
Having started in 3500 B.C.E., civiliz:a.tion
oped in its four initial centen-the Middle l!.alt, Egypt,
northwettem India, and northeru China-over the
lowing 2500 years. These area.!! covered only a tiny por
tion of the inhabited parts of the 'M)rld, although they
were the moet densely populated. Such early ciriliza.
tiOWI, all clustered in key river valleys, were in a way
pilot tests of the new form of social organization. Only
after about 1000 B.c.:r.. did a more consistent proc:eu of
development and spread af c:ivilization begin-and
with it came the main threadl afworld hilto:ry. Howev-
er, the great civilizations unquestionably built on the
achievements of the river valley pioneers, and so some
understiiD.ding af this contribution to the list of early
human accompliahmen1ll ia
Tlgrl..euphrate Civilization
The moet noteworthy achievements of the
lizations were early versions of organizational and
tural forms that moet of WI now take for granted:
writing, formal codes of law, city planning and archi-
tecture, md inltillltiOWI for trade, including the use of
money. Once developed, most of theie building blocks
of human organization did not have to be reinvented,
although in some ca.'lel they aprnd only slowly to other
paJU of the 'M)rld.
It is not SUJFriling then, given its lead in
ture, memlworking, and village 111rUctUre, that the Mid-
dle Eut generated the fint eJWDple of human
dvillzation. Indeed, the fint dvill.z:ation, founded In
the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in a part of
the Middle E:ailt long called Ma.opotaaia. forms one
of only a few caaes of a civilization developed absolute-
ly from scratch-and with no examples from anyplace
else to imitate. (Chinese civilization and civilization in
Central America also developed independently.) By
4000 B.C.E., the farmers of Mesopotamia were familiar
with bronze and copper and had already invented the
wheel for tramportation. They had a well-eitabliJhed
pottery indwtl}' and interesting anillic forms. Fanning
in this area, of the need for irrigation,
CHAPTER 1 From Human Prehistory to the Early Civilizations 19
VISUALIZING THE PAST
Mesopotamia in Maps
Throughout their centuries of existence, the Mesopotamian
civilizations steadily expanded from their roots in the fertile val-
ley between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers . Reading the maps
can help explain the nature of the civilizations in the region.
Questions What do these maps suggest about the rela-
tionship between Mesopotamian civilizations and the topog-
SAHARA
Thebes
l
Mesopotamia and the Middle East
SY RIA. N
OI. SERT
Allid(?)
Babylon ~ i p p u r
CagMh
Ur ""'S
ARABIA.
required considerable coordination among communi-
ties, and this in tum served as the basis for complex
political structures.
By about 3500 B.C.E., a people who had recently
invaded this region, the Sumerians, developed a
cuneiform alphabet, the first known case of human
writing. Their alphabet at first used different pictures
to represent various objects but soon shifted to the use
of geometric shapes to symbolize spoken sounds. The
early Sumerian alphabet may have had as many as 2000
such symbols, but this number was later reduced to
raphy of the Middle East? Does geography suggest reasons
for invasion and political instability in this civilization center?
Did later empires in the region have the same relationship to
river valleys as did the earlier states? What might have caused
the change? Why did even the larger empires not spread
through the Arabian peninsula? What were the potential
contacts between Mesopotamia and other river valley civi-
lization centers? Why has the Middle East been so significant
in European, Mrican, and Asian history?
PARTHIA
IRANIAN
PLATEAU
PERSIA
ARACHOSIA
Arabian Sea
INDIAN OCEAN
about 300. Even so, wnt.mg and reading remained
complex skills, which only a few had time to master.
Scribes wrote on clay tablets, using styluses shaped
quite like the modern ballpoint pen.
Sumerian art developed steadily, as statues and
painted frescoes were used to adorn the temples of the
gods. Statues of the gods also decorated individual
homes. Sumerian science aided a complex agricultural
society, as people sought to learn more about the
movement of the sun and stars-thus founding the sci-
ence of astronomy-and improved their mathematical
20 PART I From Humlng arid Gathering 10 Cllllllz:a!lona, 2.6 a.c.e.: Orlglna
knawiedge. (Astronomy defined the calendar and pro-
vided the astrological foreca.rts widely wed in politia
and reJi8ion.) The Sumeria.na employed a ')'litem of
numbers based on units oflO, 60, and 360 that we stlD
use in calculating circlei and hours. In other words,
Sumer:ia:aJ and their Jucceuors in Me1opota:mia creat-
ed pattern.8 of o and ab.stract thought about
nat:ure that a number of cimizationa, including our
own, atill rely on, and they abo introduced specific q&-
temJ, IJUCb. aa charlll of xwgor con&tdlation&, that have
been c:urren.t at leaat among educated people for 5000
years, not only in the Middle Eaat, but by later imita
lion in India and Europe aa well.
Sumc:rian, developed romplc:x. reJ4Poua r:Uualt. Each
city had a patron god and ereded impressive shrines to
and honor this and other deities. Ma.!lliYe towers,
called ligundl. formed the first monumental m:hi.tec-
ture in this milizalion. Profe111ional. prieltl operated
these temples and conducted the rituals within.. Sumeri-
an& belil:\'ed in many powerful gocb, for the nature on
which their agriculture depended often seemed rwift and
unpredictable. Prayera and oft'c:rinp to floodl aa
'Wcll as to protect good health 'M!re a vital pan of Sumel'-
ian life. Sumerian ideaa about the divine foroe in natural
objectl--in ri:vers, trees, and mountain.t-were common
among early agricultural peoples. A religion of this son.
which aee.& god& in many aapedll of nat:ure, is known aa
polytheism. More specifically, Sumerian religiow
notiom, notably their idc:aa about the god&' creation of
the earth from water and about the divine punishment of
hum.ana through fl.oodl, lau!r influenced the writers of
the Old 'Ialam.ent and thll! continue to play a role in
Jewillh, OuiJtian, and Mwlim cullun:'& Sumerian reli
gioll.!l ideas, which had a decidedly gloomy cast, also
included a belief in an afterlife of puni!hment-QD origi
n.aJ. wn:ion the concqn of hell.
Sumerian political atructureJ tightly
organized ruled by a king who claimed
divine authority. The Sumerian state had carefully
defined boundaries, unlike the leaa formal te:rritoria
of preclvllized villages in the region. Here 1.& a key early
example of how civilization and a more formal politi-
cal at:ructw:e came together. The government helped
regulate religion and enfun:e its duties; it aho provid-
ed a court S)'lltem in the interests of jll.!ldce. Kings were
originally military leaden during times of war, and the
function of defense and war, including leadership of a
trained army, remained 'rita! in Sumerian politica.
Kings and the noble class, along with the priesthood,
controlled conaiderable land, which was worked by
lllavet. Thw began a tradition of slavery that would
long mark Middle Easrem socletie&. Warfare remained
vital to enaure supplies of slaYeS taken aa prisoners dur-
ing combat. At the same time, slavery Wll! a variable
ttate af c::xiJtence, and many slave were able to eam
money and even buy their freedom.
The Sumerians added to their region's agricultur
al pro!lperity not only by wing wheeled cart11 but alr.o
by lc11111ing about fertilizen and by adopting
silver as a means of exchange for buying and I -. _j.
early form of money. However, the
region wu abo hard to defend and proved a
con!Jtant temptation to outside invaden from
Sumerian times to the present. The Sumeri-
ana feU to a people called the Aklwlians,
who continued much of Sumerian culture. Another
period of decline was followed by conqut by the
au.,toa:lall.l. who c:x.tended their own empire and thw
helped bring civilization to other pam of the Middle
Eaat. It was under Babylonian rule that the :king
Bammurabi introduced the most famous early code of
law, bo:uting of his purpose: "to promote the welfare of
the people, I, Hammurabi, the devout. god-fearing
prince, juatice to prevail in the land by destroy-
ing the wicked and the evil, that the strong might not
oppreas the -weak. Hammurabi'a code euabli.shed
ru!H of procedure for coUJ:U of law and regulated
property rights and the dutiH of &.mily members, set
ting harsh punishm.enta for crimea.
For many centuriei during and after the heyday af
Babylon, peace and civilization in the Middle Eut were
troubled by the Invasion& of hunting and herding
groups. Indo-European peoples pressed in from the
north, starting about 2100 l!.c.E. In the Middle Ea.'lt
it5elf, invasion& by Semitic peoples from the JOuth were
more important, and Semitic peoples and languag
incre.uingly dominated the region. The new arrivals
adopted the culture of the conquered peoples aa their
own, 10 the key features of the clrilization peniated.
But large political units declined in favor of smaller
city11tates or regional kingdoms, particularly during
the centuries af greaten tu:rmoil, between 1200 and
900 B.C.ll. Thereafter, new invaders, fint the AMyriana
and then the Penians, created large new empires in
the Middle Eut.
SDPtlan Civilization
A 1econd. center of civilization sprang up in northem
Africa. along the Nile River. Egyptian civilization,
formed by 3000 B.C.E., benefited from the
trade and technological influence of
Melopotamia, but it produced a quite differ.
ent eociety and culture. Le88 open to in'm.llion,
Egypt retained a unified state throughout
mon ofilll hiatory. The king, or pharaoh. poe-
se!ISed immense power. The Eg)'ptian economy waa
more fully government-<lirected than ita
an counterpart, which had a more independent
neaa clau. Covemment control may have been
neceiiJIII}' beawae of the complexity of coordinating
irrigation along the Nile. It nonethele&!l resulted in
DOCUMENT
Hammurabi's Law Code
Hammurabi, as king of Babylon, united Mesopotamia under
his rule from about 1800 to 1750 B.C.E. His law code, the ear-
liest such compilation still in existence, was discovered on a
stone slab in Iran in 1901 c . E. Not a systematic presentation,
it was a collection of exemplary cases designed to set general
standards of justice. The code provides vital insights into the
nature of social relations and family structure in this ancient
civilization. Examples of the Hammurabic code follow:
When Marduk commanded me to give justice to the peo-
ple of the land and to let [them] have [good] governance, 1
set forth truth and justice throughout the land [and] pros-
pered the people.
At that time:
If a man has accused a man and has charged him
with manslaughter and then has not proved [rt against]
him, his accuser shall be put to death.
If a man has charged a man wtth sorcery and then has
not proved J)t agamtj him, he who Is charged wtth the sor-
cery shal go to the holy river; he shall leap into the holy river
and, if the holy river overwhelms him, his accuser shal take
and keep his house; if the holy river proves that man clear [of
the offense] and he comes beck safe, he who has chaged
him wtth sorcery shall be put to dleath; he who leapt into the
holy river shall take 111d keep the house of his accuser.
If a man has come forward In a case to bear witness
to a felony and then has not proved the statement that he
has made, if that case [IS] a capital one, that man shall be
put to death.
If he has come forward to bear witness to [a claim
for] com or money, he shall remain liable tor the penalty
for that suit
If a judge has tried a suit, given a decision, caused a
sealed tablet to be executed, [and] th8f88fter varies his
judgment, they shall convict that judge of vatytng [his]
judgment and he shall pay twelvefold the claim in that suit
then they shall remove him from his place on the bench of
judges in the assembly, and he shall not [again] sH In judg-
ment wtth the judges.
If a free person helps a slave to escape, the free per-
son will be put to death.
If a man has committed robbery and Is caught, that
man shall be put to death.
If the robber is not caught, the man who has been
robbed shall formally declare whatever he has lost before
a god, and the city and the mayor In whose territory or dis-
trict the robbery has been committed shall replace what-
ever he has lost for him.
If [rt is] the life [of the owner that is lost], the city or the
mayor shall pay one maneh of silver to his kinsfolk.
If a person owes money and Adad [the river god] has
flooded the person's field, the person will not give any
grain [tax] or pay any interest in that year.
If a person Is too lazy to make the dike of his field
strong and there is a break in the dike and water destroys
his own farmland, that person will make good the grain
[tax] that Is destroyed.
If a merchant increases interest beyond that set by
the king and collects it, that merchant will lose what was
lent.
If a trader borrows money from a merchant and then
denies the fact, that merchant in the presence of god and
witnesses will prove the trader borrowed the money and
the trader will pay the merchant three times the amount
borrowed.
If the husband of a married lady has accused her but
she is not caught lying with another man, she shall take an
oeth by the life of a god and return to her house.
If a man takes himself off and there is not the [neces-
sary] maintenance In his house, his wife [so long as] her
[husband is delayed], shall keep [herself chaste; she shall
not] enter [another man's house].
If that woman has not kept herself chaste but enters
another man's house, they shall convict that woman and
cast her Into the water.
If a son strikes his father, they shall cut off his tore-
hand.
If a man has put out the eye of a free man, they shell
put out his eye.
If he breaks the bone of a [free] man, they shall break
his bona.
If he puts out the eye of a villain or breaks the bone of
a villain, he shall pay one maneh of silver.
If he puts out the eye of a [free] man's slave or breaks
the bona of a [free] man's slave, he shall pay half his price.
If a man knocks out the tooth of a flree] man equal [In
rank] to hlm[self], they shall knock out his tooth.
If he knocks out the tooth of a villain, he shall pay
one-third maneh of silver.
If a man strikes the cheek of a [free] man who is supe-
rior Pn rank] to hlm[self], he shall be beaten wtth 60 stripes
wtth a whip of ox-hide in the assembly.
If the man strikes the cheek of a free man equal to
him[self in rank], he shall pay one maneh of silver.
If a villain strikes the cheek of a villain, he shall pay ten
shekels of silver.
If the slave of a [free] man strikes the cheek of a free
man, they shall cut off his ear.
Questions What can you tell from the Hammureblc code
about the social and family structure of Mesopotamia? What
is the relationship between law and trade? Why did agricultur-
al civilizations such as Babylon insist on harsh punishments
for crimes? What religious and magical beliefs does the doc-
ument suggest? Using specific examples, show how inter-
preting this document for significant historical meaning differs
from simply reading it.
22 PART I From Humlng arid Gathering 10 Cllllllz:a!lona, 2.6 a.c.e.: Orlglna
godlike swus for the pharaoh!, who built splendid
tombs for themaelve=.-the pyrliiiiWII-from 2'100 B.C.E.
onward. During periods of weak rule and
Invasions, Egyptian society suffered a dedlne, but
revivals kept the framework of Egyptian ciY:ilization
inmct until after 1000 B.c.!.. (.Map 1.5). At key points,
Egyptian influence spread up the Nile to the now
known as the Sudan, with an impact on the later derel
opment of African culture. The kingdom of KD.Ih
inte:racted with Egypt and invaded it at some point.
Neither Egyptian sclence nor the Egyptian alpha
bet was as elaborate as its Mesopotamian equal,
although mathema!ia was more advanced in
thi, civilization. Egyptian art was exceptional-
ly 1ively; cheerful and colorful pictures deco-
rated not only the tombs-where the belief in
an afterlife made people want to be aur-
Atudft rounded by objecta of beauty-but also
palace.& and furnishings. Egyptian an:hitecmral forms
were also quite inlluential, not only in Egypt but in
other parts of the Mediternmean as weD. Egyptian
mathematia produced the idea of a day divided into
24 hours, and here too Egypt influenced the derelop-
mentoflater Mediterranean (Figure 1.5).
Indian and Chin ... Rhfar YallaJ'
Chflllzallons
Ri'l'el' valley civilizations developed in 11No other center!!.
A proaperous w:ban civili2alion emerged along the
llldu Rm::r by 2500 B.C.E., rupporling sc:vera1
large citiea, including Harappe. and Mohmjo
Daro, whose holl.!let even had running water.
Indus River peoples had trading contacb with
Mesopotamia, but they dc:veloped their own
_, 1111111 dislinctire alphabet and artistic forms. Inliltra
lions by Indo-Europeans, however, plua n.atw:lll
calamilial, raulted in ruch daitruclion that it ma:i.a it
hard to speak with confidence about either the nawre
of this culllll.'e or il:!l subsequent influence on India.
Harappan writing, for example, hu yet to be deci-
phered. It remains txue that civilization never had to be
fully reinvented in India. The Indo-European mlgranta
combined their n!ligioWI and political ideas with those
that had tii.bln root in the early ciliea.. In recent timet,
Indian&' pride: in their early cMiized hlatory has become
an important pan of their national identity.
CM!ization along the (Ydlow Bhv) in
China deldoped in collliderable i5olalion, although
some overland trading contact with India and
the Middle Ea.u did develop. Huanghe civiliza..
lion 'Wa! the subject. of much later Chinese leg
end, which p:raiJed the godlike 'kin8s of early
AllelentOI_, dvlllza&lon, &tarting with the mythic anCCI!tor of
the Chinese, P'an K:u.. The Chinese had an unu.rually
1./ITt.N
DIISIII't
"'"""
...... ..
!!,I
l
..... r ...
BTBIOI'lltll
IIIDIIAIIDI
IMP 1.1 Emit. Kllltl, aid Alwm, s-1'18
klnctdCftll fartller up the aid deepw Inti)
Africa roae in il'l'll)ortane&.
elaboJate concept of their remote: origin&, and they
began early to ft':Ulrd a part.fact, part-fiction history of
their early kings. What is clear is the following: First. an
organized state e:xisted !hat carefully regulated irrigation
In the fertile but flood-prone river 'r.lllc:y. Second, by
about !000 B.C.L the Chinese had produced an
FIGURE 1.8 This elaborately decorated vessel from the Shang
era, with its whimsical elephant figure, shows the sophisticated
artistic expression achieved very early In Chinese history. It also
demonstrates a high level of metalworking ability, which carried
over Into Shang weapons and tools. Although the design of
these ritual vessels often was abstract, mythical creatures such
as dragons and sacred birds were deftly cast in bronzes thet
remain some of the great treasures of Chinese art.
FIGURE 1.& This detail from Egyptian
tomb art shows a husband and wife
harvesting grain. As dictated by
patriarchal values, the husband takes the
lead in the work and the wife follows, but
in Egypt, unlike Mesopotamia, men and
women were depicted working together.
advanced technology and developed an elaborate intel-
lectual life. They had learned how to ride horses and
were skilled in pottery; they used bronze well and by
1000 B.C.E. had introduced iron, which they soon
learned to work with coal. Their writing progressed from
scratches of lines on bone to the invention of
ideographic symbols. Science, particularly astronomy,
arose early. Chinese art emphasized delicate designs, and
the Chinese claim an early interest in music (Figure 1.6).
Because of limits on building materials in the
region, the Chinese did not construct many massive
monuments, choosing to live in simple hous-
es built of mud. By about 1500 B.C.E., a line of
kings called the Shang ruled over the
Huanghe valley, and these rulers did con-
struct some impressive tombs and palaces.
Invasions disrupted the Shang dynasty and
The Shang
Kingdom
caused a temporary decline in civilization. However,
there was less of a break between the river valley socie-
ty and the later, fuller development of civilization in
China than occurred in other centers.
The Heritage of the River Valley
Civilizations
Most river valley civilizations declined after
about 1200 B.C.E.
A number of small centers emerged in the
Middle East that introduced further innova-
tions, including the religion ofjudaism.
Many accomplishments of the river valley civiliza-
tions had a lasting impact. Monuments such as the
24 PART I From Hunting and Gathering to Civilizations, 2.5 Milllon-1000 a.c.E.: Origins
IN DEPTH
The Idea of Civilization in
World Historical Perspective
The belief that there are fundamental differences between
civilized and "barbaric" or "savage" peoples is very ancient
and widespread. For thousands of yean the Chinese set
themselves off from cattle- and sheep-herding peoples of the
vast plains to the north and west of China proper, whom they
saw as barbarians. To the Chinese, being civilized was cultur-
al, not biological or racial. If barbarians learned the Chinese
language and adopted Chinese ways-from the clothes they
wore to the food they ate-they were regarded as civilized.
The word civilization
is derived from the
Latin word civilis,
meaning "of the
A similar pattern of
demarcation and cultural
absorption was found
among the American Indi-
an peoples of present-day
Mexico. Those who settled
citizens." in the valleys of the moun-
tainous interior, where they
built great civilizations, lived in fear of invasions by peoples
they regarded as barbarous and called Cbicbimec:s, meaning
"sons of the dog." The latter were nomadic hunters and gath-
erers who periodically moved down from the desert regions
of north Mexico into the fertile central valleys in search of
game and settlements to pillage. The Aztecs were simply the
last, and perhaps the most fierce, of a long line of Chichimec
peoples who entered the valleys and conquered the urban-
based empires that had developed there. But after the con-
querors settled down, they adopted many of the religious
beliefs and institutional patterns and much of the material
culture of defeated peoples.
The word civilization is derived from the Latin word
civilis, meaning "of the citizens." The term was coined by the
Romans. They used it to distinguish between themselves as
citizens of a cosmopolitan, urban-based civilization and the
Egyptian pyramids have long been regarded as one of
the wonders of the world. Other achievements,
although more prosaic, are fundamental to world his-
tory even today: the invention of the wheel, the taming
of the horse, the creation of usable alphabets and writ-
ing implements, the production of key mathematical
concepts such as square roots, the development of
well-organized monarchies and bureaucracies, and the
invention of functional calendars and other divisions
of time. These basic achievements, along with the awe
that the early civilizations continue to inspire, are vital
legacies to the whole of human history. Almost all the
major alphabets in the world today are derived from
the writing forms pioneered in the river valleys, apart
"inferior" peoples who lived in the forests and deserts on the
fringes of their Mediterranean empire. Centuries earlier, the
Greeks, who had contributed much to the rise of Roman civ-
ilization, made a similar distinction between themselves and
outsiders. Because the languages of the non-Greek peoples
to the north of the Greek heartlands sounded like senseless
babble to the Greeks, they lumped all the outsiders together
as barlJarians, which meant "those who cannot speak Greek."
As in the case of the Chinese and Aztecs, the boundaries
between civilized and barbarian for the Greeks and Romans
were cultural, not biological.
Until the 17th and 18th centuries C.E., the priority given
to cultural attributes (e.g., language, dress, manners) as the
means by which civilized peoples set themselves off from bar-
baric ones was rarely challenged. But in those centuries, a
major change occurred among thinkers in western Europe.
Efforts were made not only to define the differences between
civilized and barbarian but to identify a series of stages in
human development that ranged from the lowest savagery to
the highest civilization. Depending on the writer in question,
candidates for civilization ranged from Greece and Rome to
(not surprisingly) Europe of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Most of the other peoples of the globe, whose "discovery"
since the 15th century had prompted the elfurts to classify
them in the first place, were ranked in increasingly complex
hierarchies. Nomadic cattle- and sheep-herding peoples,
such as the Mongols of central Asia, usually were classified as
barbarians. In the 19th century, racial differences were
added to the hierarchy, with white people seen as having
evolved the most advanced civilizations.
The second major shift in Western ideas about civiliza-
tion began at the end of the 18th century but did not really
take hold until a century later. In keeping with a growing
emphasis in European thinking and social interaction on
racial or biological differences, modes of human social
organization and cultural expression were increasingly
linked to what were alleged to be the innate capacities of
from the even more durable concept of writing itself.
Almost all later civilizations, then, built on the massive
foundations first constructed in the river valleys.
Despite these accomplishments, most of the river
valley civilizations were in decline by 1000 B.C.E. The
civilizations had flourished for as many as 2500 years,
although of course with periodic disruptions and
revivals. But, particularly in India, the new waves of
invasion did produce something of a break in the his-
tory of civilization, a dividing line between the river val-
ley pioneers and later cultures.
This break raises one final question: besides the
vital achievements--the fascinating monuments and the
indispensable advances in technology, science, and
each human race. Although no one could agree on what a
race was or how many races there were, most European writ-
ers argued that some races were more inventive, moral,
courageous, and artistic-thus more capable of building civ-
ilizations-than others. Of course, white (or Caucasian)
Europeans were considered by white European authors to be
the most capable of all. The hierarchy from savage to civi-
lized took on a color dimension, with white at the top, where
the civilized peoples clustered, to yellow, red, brown, and
black in descending order.
Some authors sought to reserve all the attainments of
civilization for whites, or peoples of European stock. As the
evolutionary theories of thinkers such as Charles Darwin
came into vogue in the late 1800s, race and level of cultural
development were seen in the perspective of thousands of
years of human change and adaptation rather than as being
fixed in time. Nevertheless, this new perspective had little
effect on the rankings of different human groups. Civilized
whites were simply seen as having evolved much further than
backward and barbaric peoples.
The perceived correspondence between race and level
of development and the hardening of the boundaries
between civilized and "inferior" peoples affected much more
than intellectual discourse about the nature and history of
human society. These beliefs were used to justify European
imperialist expansion, which was seen as a "civilizing mis-
sion" aimed at uplifting barbaric and savage peoples across
the globe. In the last half of the 19th century, virtually all
non-Western peoples came to be dominated by the Euro-
peans, who were confident that they, as representatives of the
highest civilization ever created, were best equipped to gov-
ern lesser breeds of humans.
ln the 20th century, much of the intellectual baggage
that once gave credibility to the racially embedded hierar-
chies of civilized and savage peoples was discarded. Racist
thinking was discredited by 20th-eentury developments,
including the revolt of the colonized peoples and the crimes
art-what legacies did the river valley civilizations
impart for later ages? The question is particularly impor-
tant for the Middle East and Egypt. In India, we must
frankly admit much ignorance about possible links
between Indus River accomplishments and what came
later. In China, there is a definite connection between
the first civilization and subsequent forms. Indeed, the
new dynasty in China, the Zhou, took over from the
Shang about 1000 B.C.E., ruling a loose coalition of
regional lords; recorded Chinese history flowed smooth-
ly at this point. But what was the legacy of Mesopotamia
and Egypt for later civilizations in or near their centers?
Europeans, even North Americans, are some-
times prone to claim these cultures as the "origins" of
committed by the Nazis before and during World War II in
the name of racial purification. In addition, these ideas have
failed because racial supremacists cannot provide convincing
proof of innate differences in mental and physical aptitude
between various human groups. These trends, as well as
research that has resulted in a much more sophisticated
understanding of evolution, have led to the abandonment of
rigid and self .. erving 19th-eentury ideas about civilization.
Yet even though non-European peoples such as the Indians
and Chinese are increasingly given credit for their civilized
attainments, much ethnocentrism remains in the ways social
theorists determine who is civilized and who is not
Perhaps the best way to avoid the tendency to define
the term with reference to one's own society is to view civi-
lization as one of several human approaches to social organ-
ization rather than attempting to identify specific kinds of
cultural achievement (e.g., writing, cities, monumental
architecture). All peoples, from small bands of hunters and
gatherers to farmers and factory workers, live in societies.
All societies produce cultures: combinations of the ideas,
objects, and patterns of behavior that result from human
social interaction. But not all societies and cultures gener-
ate the surplus production that permits the levels of spe-
cialization, scale, and complexity that distinguish
civilizations from other modes of social organization. All
peoples are intrinsically capable of building civilizations,
but many have lacked the resource base, historical circum-
stances, or desire to do so.
Questions Identify a society you consider civilized. What
criteria did you use to determine that it was civilized? Can
you apply those criteria to other societies? Can you think of
societies that might not fit your criteria and yet be civiliza-
tions? Do the standards that you and others use reflect your
own society's norms and achievements rather than neutral,
more universal criteria?
the Western civilization in which we live. These claims
should not be taken too literally. It is not altogether
clear that either Egypt or Mesopotamia contributed
much to later political traditions, although the
Roman Empire emulated the concept of a godlike
king, as evidenced in the trappings of the office, and
the existence of strong city-state governments in the
Middle East itself continued to be significant. Ideas
about slavery may also have been passed on from
these early civilizations. Specific scientific achieve-
ments are vital, as the Greeks, for example, carefully
studied Egyptian mathematics. Scholars argue, how-
ever, over how much of a connection exists between
Mesopotamian and Egyptian science and later Greek
thinking, aside from certain techniques of measuring
time or charting the stars.
Some historians of philosophy have asserted a
basic division between a Mesopotamian and Chinese
understanding of nature, which they claim affected
later civilizations around the Mediterranean in con-
trast to China. Mesopotamians were prone to stress a
gap between humankind and nature, whereas Chinese
thinking developed along ideas of basic harmony. It is
possible, then, that some fundamental thinking helped
shape later outlooks, but the continuities here are not
easy to assess. Mesopotamian art and Egyptian archi-
tecture had a more measurable influence on Greek
styles, and through these, in tum, later European and
Muslim cultures. The Greeks thus learned much about
temple building from the Egyptians, whose culture had
influenced island civilizations, such as Crete, which
then affected later Greek styles.
There was a final connection between early and
later civilizations in the form of regional cultures that
sprang up under the influence of Mesopotamia and
Egypt, along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean
mainly after 1200 B.C.E. Although the great empires
from Sumer through Babylon were disrupted and the
Egyptian state fmally declined, civilization in the Mid-
dle East had spread widely enough to encourage a set
of smaller cultures capable of surviving and even flour-
ishing after the great empires became weak. These cul-
tures produced important innovations that would
affect later civilizations in the Middle East and
throughout the Mediterranean. They also created a
diverse array of regional identities that would continue
to mark the Middle East even as other forces, like the
Roman Empire or the later religion of Islam, took cen-
ter stage. Several of these small cultures proved
immensely durable, and in their complexity and capac-
ity to survive, they would influence other parts of the
world as well.
A people called the Phoenicians, for example,
devised a greatly simplified alphabet with 22 letters
around 1300 B.C.E.; this alphabet, in tum, became the
predecessor of Greek and Latin alphabets. The Phoeni-
cians also improved the Egyptian numbering system
and, as great traders, set up colony cities in north Africa
and on the coasts of Europe. Another regional group,
the Lydians, first introduced coined money.
The most influential of the smaller Middle Eastern
groups, however, were the Jews, who gave the world the
first clearly developed monotheistic religion. We have
seen that early religions, both before and after the
beginnings of civilization, were polytheistic, claiming
that many gods and goddesses worked to control
nature and human destiny. The Jews, a Semitic people
influenced by Babylonian civilization, settled near the
Mediterranean around 1200 B.C.E. The Jewish state was
small and relatively weak, retaining independence only
when other parts of the Middle East were in political
turmoil. What was distinctive about this culture was its
firm belief that a single God, Jehovah, guided the des-
tinies of the Jewish people. Priests and prophets
defined and emphasized this belief, and their history
of God's guidance of the Jews formed the basis for the
Hebrew Bible. The Jewish religion and moral code per-
sisted even as the Jewish state suffered domination by a
series of foreign rulers, from 772 B.C.E. until the
Romans seized the state outright in 63 B.C.E. Jewish
monotheism has sustained a distinctive Jewish culture
to our own day; it would also serve as a key basis for the
development of both Christianity and Islam as major
world religions.
Because Judaism stressed God's special compact
with the chosen Jewish people, there was no premium
placed on converting non:Jews. This belief helps
explain the durability of the Jewish faith itself; it also
kept the Jewish people in a minority position in the
Middle East as a whole. However, the elaboration of
monotheism had a wide, if not immediate, signifi-
cance. In Jewish hands, the concept of God became
less humanlike, more abstract. This represented a
basic change in not only religion but also humankind's
overall outlook. Jehovah had not only a power but also
a rationality far different from what the traditional
gods of the Middle East or Egypt possessed. These gods
were whimsical and capricious; Jehovah was orderly
and just, and individuals would know what to expect if
they obeyed God's rules. God was also linked to ethical
conduct, to proper moral behavior. Religion for the
Jews was a way oflife, not merely a set of rituals and cer-
emonies. The full impact of this religious transforma-
tion on Middle Eastern civilization would be realized
only later, when Jewish beliefs were embraced by other,
proselytizing faiths. However, the basic concept of
monotheistic religion was one of the legacies of the
end of the first great civilization period to the new cul-
tures that would soon arise.
The First Civilizations
Early civilizations both separated and integrat-
ed key groups of people.
Overall, the river valley civilizations, flourishing for
many centuries, created a basic set of tools, intellectu-
al concepts such as writing and mathematics, and polit-
ical forms that would persist and spread to other parts
of Europe, Asia, and Mrica. Invasion and natural
calamities in India, and invasion and political decline
in Egypt, marked a fairly firm break between the insti-
tutions of these river valley civilizations and those that
would later develop. Huanghe civilization, in contrast,
flowed more fully into the more extensive Chinese civ-
ilization that would follow. The Middle East, where civ-
ilization had first been born, provided the most
complex heritage of all. Here too there was a break
between the initial series of riverine empires and the
civilizations of Greece and Persia that would later dom-
inate the region. However, the development of smaller
cultures, such as that of the Jews, provided a bridge
between the river valley period and later Middle East-
ern society, producing vital new inventions and ideas.
The smaller cultures also generated a deeply
entrenched network of regional or minority values and
institutions that would continue to make the Middle
East a complex, vibrant, and sometimes troubled part
of the world.
One final result of the first, long period of human
civilization is certainly clear: a pattern of division
among the world's peoples. The diffusion of Homo
sapiens sapiens set the initial stage. Small groups of peo-
ple spread to almost every corner of the world but
maintained little contact with each other thereafter.
Separate languages and cultures developed widely.
The rise of agriculture stimulated new links, and the
spread of farming and new technologies began to cut
into local isolation. Trade soon entered the picture.
Although most commerce centered within a region,
linking a city to its hinterland, a few routes traveled
greater distances. By 1000 B.C.E., Phoenicians traded
with Britain for metals (they bought lead to make
bronze), while Chinese silk was reaching Egypt. Here
we have one of the basic themes of world history:
steadily proliferating contacts against a background of
often fierce local identity.
The rise of civilization further reduced local
autonomy, as kings and priests tried to spread trade
contacts and cultural forms and warred to gain new
territory. Civilization itself was an integrating force at a
larger regional level, although, as we have seen in the
Middle East, smaller identities persisted. However,
individual civilizations had only sporadic contacts with
each other. They, and their leading institutions and
cultural forms, developed separately. Thus, four di!;-
tinct centers of civilization developed (five, if the
emerging Olmec culture in Mexico is included), each
with widely varied patterns, from style of writing to
beliefs about nature.
The early civilizations shared important features,
including cities, trade, and writing, that helped them
meet the common basic definition of civilization in the
first place. They also frequently developed some mutu-
al relationships, although the Huanghe culture in
China is one example of a civilization that flourished
in relative isolation. Egypt and Mesopotamia, in partie-
ular, had recurrent contacts through trade and war.
But the values or belief systems of each civilization, and
their manifestation in political and business styles,
were not so easily disseminated. Even relatively close
neighbors, such as Egypt and Mesopotamia, developed
radically different political attitudes, beliefs about
death, and artistic styles. Civilization and considerable
diversity thus coexisted hand in hand.
GLOBAL CONNECTIONS
The Early Civilizations and the
World
Mesopotamia and Egypt presented two different
approaches to relationships outside the home region.
Mesopotamia was flat, with few natural barriers to
recurrent invasion from the north. Perhaps for this
reason, Mesopotamian leaders thought in terms of
expansion. Many conquering emperors expanded
their territory, though within the Middle East. Many
traders pushed outward, dealing either with merchants
to the east or sending expeditions into the Mediter-
ranean and beyond, and also to India. The Middle
East's role as active agent in wider contact was clearly
being established.
Egypt, though not isolated, was more self-con-
tained. There was important trade and interaction
along the Nile to the south, which brought mutual
influences with the peoples of Kush and Ethiopia.
Trade and influence also linked Egypt to Mediter-
ranean islands like Crete, south of Greece. A few inter-
actions, finally, occurred with Mesopotamia. But most
Egyptians, including the leaders, thought of Egypt as
its own world. There was less need or desire to learn of
wider horizons. Correspondingly, ancient Egypt played
less of a role as intermediary among regions than did
Mesopotamia.
River valley civilization in China had less far-
reaching contacts than its counterpart in Mesopotamia.
Ultimately, however, contacts with China would shape
developments in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Already in
the river valley period, the Chinese were advancing new
technologies, for example in the manufacture of silk,
that would have wide influence on later interregional
trade. Chinese irrigation systems became increasingly
sophisticated, involving engineering principles that
would gain wider scope later on.
Harappan society traded widely with Mesopotamia,
but there is little evidence of significant influence. The
decline of Harappan civilization also limited the civi-
lization's impact on later developments in world histo-
ry. Harappan civilization proved much more vulnerable
28 PART I From Hunting and Gathering to Civilizations, 2.5 Milllon-1000 a.c.E.: Origins
to natural disasters and climate change, particularly in
contrast to China. Comparison of the early civilizations
thus emphasizes quite different patterns of scope and
legacy.
Further Readings
World historians have been drawn to Ronald Wright's A
Shurt History of Progress (2004), which attempts to show how
even the most recent of humanity's struggles can be better
understood by examining its origins and early history. Per-
haps the fullest account of human prehistory available is
Brian Fagan's People of the Earth (1998), which includes an
extensive bibliography on prehistoric developments in vir-
tually all regions of the world. A considerable literature has
developed in recent years on early humans and the critical
Neolithic transformations. John Mears's pamphlet on
Agricultural Origins in Global Perspective (American Histori-
cal Association, 2000) provides a concise and authoritative
survey of this process in key regions over much of the
globe. For other broad overviews that trace the archeolog-
ical and historical discoveries that made it possible for us
to understand these critical processes in the shaping of
human history, see Robert J. Wenke's Patterns in fuhistory
(1984) and C. Wesley Cowan and Patty Jo Watson, eds., The
Origins of Agrirultun: An International Perspective (1992) .
For a clear discussion of debates on the Neolithic rev-
olution and references to major authors and works, see
Stephen K. Sanderson, Social Transformations (1995) . Sev-
eral of these works are of special relevance, despite their
sometimes technical language and details, especially Don-
ald 0 . Henry's From Foraging to Agricultun (1989), Douglas
Price and James A. Brown, eds., fuhistoric Hunter-Gatherers:
The Emergence of Cultural Complexity (1986), and Allen W.
Johnson and Timothy Earle, The Evolution of Human Soci-
eties: From Foraging to Agriculture (1987) . For the origins of
agriculture in the often neglected Americas, see Stuart J.
Ficdcl, fuhistory of the Americas (1992). M. C. and H. B.
Quennell's Everyday Life in the New Stone, Bronu, and Early
Iron Ages (1955) is difficult to top for an imaginative
reconstruction of life in the Neolithic Age, although
some of it is now dated. The most reliable treatment of
technology in this era can be found in volume 1 of C.
Singer et al., A History of Technology ( 1954). The most
readable introduction to the earliest towns is in James
Mellaart's Earliest Civilizations of the Near East (1965) and
The Neolithic of the Near East (1975).
Two excellent studies can guide additional work on
early civilization in Mesopotamia: C. L. Redman's The Rise of
Civilization: From Early Farmers to Uroan Society in the Ancient
Near East (1988) and N.J. Nissen's The Early History of the
Ancient Near East, 9000-2000 B.C. (1988) . Sec also S. N.
Kramer, History Begins at Sumer ( 1981) ; C. B. F. Walker,
Cuneifurm (1987) ; and H. W. F. Saggs, Babylonians (1995) .
Important studies of Egypt include T. G. H. James, Ancient
Egypt The Land and Its Legacy (1988) ; N.C. Grima!, A Histo-
ry of Ancient Egypt ( 1992) ; and Gay Robins, Women in Ancient
Egypt (1993) . See also Donald Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and
Israel in Ancient Times (1995); and David O'Connor, Ancient
Nubia: Egypt's Rival in Africa (1993).
For an excellent study of non-Western science begin-
ning with the Egyptians and Mesopotamians, see Dick
Teresi, Lost Discoveries: The Ancient Roots of Modern Science-
From the Babylonian.! to the Maya (2002). See also Brian
Fagan's lavishly illustrated The Seventy Gnat Inventions of the
Ancient World (2004). Two books deal with important spe-
cial topics: M. Silver' s &anomie Structures of the Ancient Near
East (1987) and T. Jacobsen's The 11liasuns of Darlcness: A
History of Mesopotamian &ligion (1976) . Two studies of
Israel are J. Bright, A History of Israel (1981) , and the first
two volumes of W. D. Davies and L. Finkelstein, eds., The
Cambridg. History of Judaism (1984, 1987) . For studies of
Phoenicia and its role in world history, see N. K Sanders,
The Sea Peoples (1985) ; and M. E. Auher, The Phoenicians and
the West (1996).
On disruptions in the late Bronze Age, see Trude
Dothan and Moshe Dothan, People of the Sea: The Searr;h fur
the Philistines (1992) . Martin Bernal's controversial Black
Athena (1992) seeks to trace ancient Mrican influences on
the classical Western world but also can be employed as a
window into the use and misuse of history by both Mrocen-
tric and Eurocentric scholars. Travel and travel literature
has become a major issue in world history. Lionel Casson's
Travel in the Ancient Wurld (1994) is a well-researched and
popular study (principally of the Middle East and Mediter-
ranean) that ranges from accounts of tourism (including
inns and restaurants) to early postal services.
On the Web
A virtual tour of the social life of early humans in the
Americas, including weaving and toolmaking can be taken
at http://pecosrio.com/. The dramatic findings at Olduvai
Gorge made by the Leakey family that revolutionized
knowledge about human prehistory and the continuing
debate over human origins can be viewed at
http://www.talkorigins.org/. An assessment of the
relationship between the DNA of modern humans and
Neanderthals is offered at http://www.psu.edu/ur/NEWS/
news/Neandertal.html. Views of Chauvet, rich in cave
paintings, can be found at http://www.culture.gouv.fr/
culture/arcnat/chauvet/en/. The diaries ofarcheologists
working at Qltal Huyiik and recent photographs of the site
are among the many features of the official Qltal Huyiik
Web page at http://catal.arch.cam.ac.uk/catal/catal.httnl.
Daily life at the Neolithic site at Skara Brae in the Orkney
Islands in Scotland is explored at http://
www.orknexjar.com/history/skarabrae/skarab2.httn. A
virtual walk through an exhibit on human prehistory at
http://users.hol.gr/-dilos/prehis/prerm5.httn also includes
a discussion of the views of Darwin and others on human
evolution, a gallery of art and artifacts, and an artist's
reconstruction of Qltal Huyiik. A debate over the origins of
human beings can be followed at http://www.bbc.eo.uk/
education/darwin/dehate/index.httn. The Smithsonian
Institution has developed a human phylogenetic tree, an
eye-opening graphic that depicts the evolutionary
relationships, that is set against a timescale of human
CHAPTER 1 From Human Pnlhi&tory to the Early CiviliZII!iona 28
de9elopmenL II: hup:/ /www.mnh.si.edlla:od!ro/
humanorigiru/ha/a...cn:e.html.
It iJ pot.l!b'le to make a Wtual mit 10 1he Mesopotamian
city of Ur at http:/ I oluclrleago.edu/01/
UB/Ur_home.html azul http:/ /'WWW.mnru.edu/emuaeum/
an:hacologr/sita/middle_eul/ur.htmL A amail but
euellent artiat's ofUr can be '9iewed by
acrolling down at hup:/ jwww.taisei.cojp/ english/
pmfile/oo!p_ci.tizen.hlml. Even more
reoollltrUCt!ODs and toun of the city ofNippur are o1fered
at http:/ /oi.uchl.c:ago.edu/OI!PROJ/NIP/
PUI!9S/NSC/NSC.html and htlp:/ I oi.uchicago.edu/01/
PROJ/NIP /PUB9S/NSC/NSCFIG:thtmL It i.t aJao poillible
10 take vin:ual toun of kq lite a of Egyptian
{hup:/ and Xruhite
civiliza.tiona (hup:/ /www.nubianet.org/about/
about.hiltor,G.h.tml mil hUpc/
c:gyptian/bmsacs/is!luel/wehby.html). A head-mming
virtual three-dimeruional walk through an Egyptian pyramid
it offered at hup:/ ,lwww.pbLorglwgbh/now./
PJ1211lidfexpleft/khufu.html. The ant:imt civilimliona of
Pmiacan
PA,IlRAN/PAAI/PAALhtml, hup:/ /w.emben amn;n1 aD.au/
.-ancientpenia/indcz.html, and hup:/ /www. aywm!inb.oom/
iran.html. The Penian capilal ofPenepolia receiw:s cloee
tmUmmtat lmp:/ /WWW'<liuchiCllg"O.trlu/01/MUS/PA/
IRAN/PAAl/PAAI.html and http:/ /www.upllWnb.com/
inm.html.
Ancient mathematical system are examined at http:/ I

Babylauimt.hlml and hup:/
-his10ry/Indcxea/l!gyptian.s.htmL The Web offcn an
oppor1llnity to "write like a Babylonian" (http:/ I
and a tutorial in
biemglnlhicwriling (hup:/ /WWW.qelid.oo.uk[hiromenu.htm
and http:/ /emUJewll.lllllsu.edu/prehlltoty/egypt/
bieroglyphialhierogiJPhica.html}. For a cloter look into
one ofhUUWiity"s 6nt reconied literary productiom, the
Epi&ofGV(ptrwll, aee http:/ /www.WJU.edu/ooodee/MESO/
Gll.G.HTM, http:/ /www.ancicnttem..org/library/
meeopommian/gilgamelh/, http:/ /gilgamelh.pmc.pV, and
hup:/
The Web aJao ofli:n inlight iDto the life mil royal art w the
mort lignifil:ant n.dc:n of the anc:ient world, Nlllllle!"
(h.l!p:/ /www.C%)'\IIalinb.rom/narmer.h!ml),Akhemlml (h!lp:/ I
man.amet.wncc.cdu/ ...gn:mpeV coll!1!ft/wcl/leccure./
O!al:.henaron.hlml and hup:/ /tangha.net/meuengen/
alMntm btm},Ndertlll. (hup:/
http:/ /toUl'Clmlt.uet/featurertoriea/
oetmili.htm, and hup:/
and Cyrua the Great (http:/ /ozneLnet/qnut/ and http:/ I
www.ir.anclwnber.rom/hilrrory/cyna/qnut.php).
Part I Global Retrospective
fROM HUNTING AND GATHERING
TO CIVILIZATIONS, 2. 5 MILLION-
1000 B.C.E.: ORIGINS
30
CONTACTS AND THEIR LIMITS
No regular pattern of contacts among the major population centers developed dur-
ing the long early phases of human history. Even at the end of the period of the
river valley civilizations, no such pattern existed. To be sure, separate developments
did not prevent many similar features. In broad outline, early civilizations devel-
oped many of the same functions, as they introduced formal governments, writing
systems, and significant cities. Agriculture generated similar tendencies to establish
patriarchal family structures, but these similarities occurred spontaneously, the
result of similar needs, not because they learned extensively from one another. And
of course the specifics varied considerably-the system of government and the gen-
der relations in Egypt, for example, differed from those in Mesopotamia.
Three kinds of contacts did exist during the early phases of human history.
Their results were significant, though they were somewhat sporadic. First, local or
long-distance trade could bring knowledge of new developments or products. Peo-
ple in one region could learn about innovations in the region next door. Local
exchanges of products or symbolic gifts-the latter designed to help keep the
peace-served as conduits. Through this kind of interaction, diffusion occurred.
This was the mechanism through which knowledge of agriculture gradually spread
from the areas where it was first developed to neighboring regions, and ultimately
over whole subcontinents. Knowledge of new technologies, like metalwork, spread
the same way. So did knowledge of new foodstuffs: some crops original to southeast
Asia, for example, reached Africa by 1000 c.E. and became staples.
This kind of diffusion was the most important contact in early human history.
We do not always know the precise processes involved. For example, an Indian
Ocean trade system existed by 1000 C.E., involving timber and perfumes; this led to
a southeast Asian migration to the island of Madagascar. But we know almost noth-
ing about the specifics of the system. It is also true that some trade contacts, like the
Phoenician voyages to southern England to get tin, did not seem to produce wider
diffusion of products or technologies.
A second kind of contact resulted from migration and invasion. We have seen
that this combination occurred frequently in the Middle East, leading to changes
in language but also the spread of new technologies. The wheel was almost cer-
tainly invented in central Asia, then brought by a migrant group to the Middle
East. Migrations and invasions could be extremely disruptive, as when the Indo-
Europeans moved into India, doing great violence to local populations. But they
could also bring new knowledge to immigrants and local populations alike.
A third kind of contact involved direct trade, diplomatic relations, and military
activity between two major early civilization centers. While Mesopotamia and Egypt
developed separately for the most part, there were periods of invasion from one
direction or another, some trade, and some cultural exchange. Tablets have been
found, for example, whose text was written in both cuneiform and hieroglyphics,
showing a need for direct translations. Egyptians and Mesopotamians both inter-
acted with parts of Greece, including the island of Crete, which was therefore able
to borrow from both societies. Some trade (though no military contact) probably
occurred between Mesopotamia and the Indus valley. Early civilizations in China
and the Americas were more fully isolated.
Contacts brought fundamental changes to the people involved, even in these
early periods. Diffusion, particularly, was responsible for basic shifts in economic
and therefore social systems. Most contact was sporadic, however, and did not lead
to elaborate exchanges of religious or scientific ideas or political institutions. Here,
the emphasis on separate patterns of development remains valid.
31

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