1

TeAna Singletary
Hanft
A.P World History
July 7, 14

Chapter 1

-First civilizations Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Egypt before 3000 B.C.E.
-Indicators of Civilization: Settled Agricultural Life & Political, Traits, Social, Economic, and
Technological Traits
-Last Traits Include:
-Cities as administrative centers
-A political system based on defined territory rather than kinship
-Many people engaged in specialized, non-food-producing activities
-Status distinctions based largely in accumulation of wealth
-Monumental Building
-A system for keeping permanent records
-Long distance trade
-Sophisticated interest in science and art
-Earliest Societies with theses traits appeared in the floodplains of great rivers
-Tigris & Euphrates in Iraq
-Indus in Pakistan
-Yellow in China
-Nile in Egypt

Before Civilization
-Food Gathering & Stone Technology
-(Ancient) Foragers - Hunting and food-gathering peoples
-Most ancient humans from the Stone Age time period had this type of
life style.
-Women were primarily the ones who actually foraged with the addition of
taking care of children while the men would hunt larger animals.
-The groups of ancient foragers would live in groups with a size suited to defend
themselves, split up to collect food and for preparation as well as being small
enough to not strain food within walking distance; these groups would follow
migrating animals and /or collect plants within these different locations.
-In severe climate cases, bands of foragers would build seasonal camps.
-Foragers would learn which plants were edible, substances best for different
tasks (medicines, dying, etc.), animals migration patterns and habits, as well as
uses for different natural recourses (tools, twines, etc.), thus, living of their
environment.
-The foragers would leave visual evidence of their culture in cave walls as
paintings; this would include dancing, singing, and even traces of writing and/or
counting, as well as possible religions.
-These conclusions of the ancient peoples lives were determined thought the
previously mentioned cave paintings, comparison of modern foragers, and
artifacts found by archeologists.
-Agricultural Revolution 10,000 years ago, humans began to domesticate their foods.
-Might have started by forager bands dropping of seed in one locations to later harvest
the crop when they revisited said location.
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-Domestication of plants led to the variations of other food sources becoming
domesticated
-Tools become more specialized.
-Thought to have begun in the Middle East (8000 B.C.E.).
-Wild Grass = Higher-Yielding Grains (Barley & Emmer Wheat)
-Discovered that the alternation of grains helps maintain the land and its fertility.
-Food production was found at its earliest in Northern Africa in the eastern Sahara (8000
B.C.E.).
-Middle East: emmer wheat & barley were principal crops while sheep, goats, and cattle
became the main domesticated livestock.
-Greece: wheat and barley cultivation merged with Middle Eastern borrowings as early as
6000 B.C.E.
-Farming developed in Central Europe & along the Danube River after 4000 B.C.E
-South of the Sahara: (rainfall) sorghums, millets, and teff oppose to wheat and barley.
-West Africa: yams (early domesticated crop) oppose to the wheat and grain (due to their
humidity).
-Domesticated rice originated in southern China, the northern half of Southeast Asia, or
northern India, as early as 10,000 B.C.E., closer to 5000 B.C.E.
-America began to depend and later domesticates wild plants due to a decrease in game
(8000 B.C.E.); maze cultivation started here before spreading (3000 B.C.E.).
-Peru developed food production based around quinoa and potatoes (3000 B.C.E.); in the
tropical of Mesoamerica, tomatoes, peppers, squash, and potatoes were cultivated; in
South Americas tropical rain forests, manioc became a staple, 1500 B.C.E., later
spreading to the Caribbean with maize.
-The first domesticated animal, dogs, possibly helped early humans hunt.
-After 7000 B.C.E., domesticated animals in the Middle East were used as a food source
after the amount of wild meat available was being distinguished.
-Domestication before 3000 B.C.E.: Cattle (N. Africa/ Middle East), Donkeys (N.
Africa), Water Buffalo (China), Humped-Back Zebu Cattle (India), Horses & Two-
Humped Camels (Central Asia), One-Humped Camels (Arabia), Chickens (Southeast
Asia), Pigs
-Cattle & Water Buffalo are later used for plowing, becoming a large part of agriculture.
-Americas: Lammas (Meat, transport, wool), Guinea Pigs & Turkeys (Meat)
-Excavated bones, tools, & knowledge of the climate in these regions contribute to
evidence of above.
-Pastoralism: a way of life dependent on large herds of grazing animals.
-Farmers were replaced with pastoralists in the Sahara due to dryness, (2500
B.C.E.).
-Herders would continuously move around, watering the various locations,
making them similar to foragers
-Relies on milk more than meat; killing decreased the size of herds.
-In the wet seasons, semi-cultivations may be engaged, as well as trading of their
goods.
-Neolithic Communities
-Farmers worked harder for a longer time, compared to gatherers; harvests for farmers
were meager; diseases were common due to living arrangements; herders had burdens of
defending their crop, guiding them to suitable areas and such.
-Farmers soon began to outnumber those who werent, thus more permeate settlements
were creates and specialized tools and crafts were more common.
-Foragers & farmers may/may not have had tough struggles (example: land could have
been fought over aggressively).
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-Its suggested that over the centuries, farming populations increased due
to dependency on food supply; as pop. densities rose, those with land
farther away created settlements, thus creating a steady, non violent
increase of agriculture
-This would create a non-violent, steady spread of agriculture.
-Kinships & marriages helped to group farming communities together; thus, encouraging
the holding of lad by lineages/ clans (large kinships).
-Religiously, the elderly & those departed where respected highly within kinships;
elaborate burials, worship.
-Foragers Religion: sacred groves, animals, and springs; nature-based.
-Farmers Religion: Earth Mother, Sky God, Divinities for Fire/ Water/ Rain
(polytheism?).
-Megaliths: Big stones relating to religious beliefs: Stonehenge.
-Neolithic villages grew into towns, centers of trading and specialized crafts.
-Jericho (Middle East; Jordan River): Early agricultural settlement (8000 B.C.E.)
-Catal Huyuk (Central Anatolia or Turkey, 7000-5000 B.C.E.)
-Long-distanced trade; Highly dependent on agriculture although
dominantly hunters (Obsidian tools, Pottery, Wove Baskets & Cloth)
-Had religious shrines
-Metalwork was important: Late Neolithic Period

Mesopotamia
-Settled Agriculture in an Unstable Landscape
-Mesopotamia is situated in the plains/mountains around & valley in between the Tigris
& Euphrates River and finishing at the Persian Gulf.
-Today, it is mostly in Iraq.
-Mounatins in N. and E.; Syranian and Arabian Deserts in W. & S.W.; Persian
Gulf to the S.E.
-Floods caused by melting snow in N. mountains, disrupting and destroying crops
growth.
-Dry weather in S. Mesopotamia calls for irrigation; canals were created to water fields
near and far (3000 B.C.E.).
-Farmers favored barley due to its tolerance of hot/dry weather & salt levels in
soil.
-Recourses: Date Palms (Food, Fiber, Wood); Garden Plots (Vegies); Reeds
(Raw Material), Fish (Dietary Staple), Sheep/Goat Herds (Wool, Milk, Meat),
Donkeys, Cattle, Camels, Horses (Beat of Burden).
-Summarions (S. Mesopotamia; 5000 B.C.E.)
-Created the framework of civilization during a long period of dominance in the
3
rd
millennium B.C.E.
-More northerly showed signs of having a non-Sumerian Semitic language.
-Possibly the descendants of nomads from the desert west of Mesopotamia.
-Semites lived in peace with Sumerians; adopted their culture and achieved
positions of wealth/power.
-Semitic peoples become politically dominant (2000 B.C.E.)
-Akkadian (Semitic language) took precedence over Sumerian
-The presence of Semitic gods indicates cultural borrowing
-A merge of cultures also connects to the intermarriages coupling Sumerians and
Semites
-Cities, Kings, & Trade
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-Farmers lived in villages; they would protect one another, work together, and share
tools; provided companionship and marriages for each other.
-When villages grew, smaller ones would branch of from it, and eventually
merge with the main village to form an urban center, or city.
-Cities depended on agriculture, which would include villages.
-Some city dwellers would travel to nearby fields each daily to work; others
depended for food on the surplus food production of the villagers.
-Some specialized in crafts, others served the gods or carried out administrative
duties.
-They controlled the agricultural land and collected crop surpluses from villages
in their vicinity in exchange for rural districts with military protection against
enemies, and a market where villagers could acquire manufactured goods.
-City-state: a self-governing urban center and the agricultural territories it controlled.
-Uncultivated land served as buffers between the many small city-states of early
Mesopotamia.
-Disputes over land, water rights, and movable property sparked hostilities between
neighboring cities and the building of protective walls; however, at times, cities
cooperated, sharing water and allowing traders safe passage through their territories.
-Built and maintained irrigation networks: canals, drainage ditches, weirs (partial dams),
& dikes.
-Operation of water systems (or harvesting, welfare, etc.) depended on leaders
compelling or persuading large numbers of people to work together.
-Two centers of power, the temple and the palace of the king have left written records,
however info. On their government is little.
-Temples housed each city-states deity or deities and their associated cults.
-Owned agricultural lands and stored the gifts that worshipers donated.
-The location of the temple buildings represents its importance.
-Head priests played prominent political and economic roles.
-Sumerian emergence of the lugal, king, appeared in documentation (3
rd
millennium
B.C.E.).
-An increase in warfare as ever-larger communities quarreled over land, water,
and raw materials could have caused the introduction of a king.
-Certain men were chosen by communities to lead their armies in time of war,
and these individuals found ways to prolong their authority when there wasnt
war.
-The position was not hereditary; it was usually passed from father to capable
son.
-The location of the temple in the citys heart and the less prominent siting of the kings
palace symbolize the later emergence of royalty.
-A kings power grew at the expense of the priesthood.
-Priests and temples retained influence because of their wealth and religious
mystique; however they gradually became dependent on the palace.
-Normally the king portrayed himself as the deitys earthly representative, but
some claimed divinity.
-Kings began to assume responsibility for the upkeep and building of temples and the
proper performance of ritual (late 3
rd
millennium B.C.E.).
-This included maintaining city walls and defenses, extending and repairing
irrigation channels, guarding property rights, warding off foreign attacks, and
establishing justice.
-Sargon, the ruler of Akkad, began uniting many cities under one king and capital (2350
B.C.E.).
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-His title symbolized this claim to universal dominion.
-Sargon and his four ruling family members secured their power in several ways:
-They razed the walls of conquered cities and installed governors backed by
garrisons of Akkadian troops.
-They gave soldiers land to ensure their loyalty.
-They adapted cuneiform system of writing used for to express their own
language.
-A uniform system of weights and measures and standardized formats was
administered for official documents; it facilitated assessment and collection of
taxes, recruitment of soldiers, and organization of labor projects.
-The Akkadian state fell roughly at 2230 B.C.E.
-The Sumerian language and culture was revived through campaigns of conquest
and prudent marriage alliances in the cities of the southern plain under the Third
Dynasty of Ur (21122004 B.C.E.).
-Tighter government control based on a rapidly expanding bureaucracy and
obsessive recordkeeping secured Urs dominance.
-They had messengers and well-maintained roads that aided communications;
official calendar, standardized weights and measures, and uniform writing
practices improved central administration.
-The kings erected a wall 125 miles long to defend eh state from outside forces;
however, nomad incursions combined with an Elamite attack from the southeast
toppled the Third Dynasty of Ur.
-Amorites founded a new city at Babylon.
-At the end of a long reign, Hammurabi initiated a series of aggressive military
campaigns, eventually stretched beyond Sumer and Akkad into the north and
northwest (1900-1600 B.C.E.).
-Hammurabis famous Law Code provided judges with a lengthy set of examples
illustrating the principles to be used in deciding cases.
-Amorite notions of justice differed from the monetary penalties prescribed in
earlier codes from Ur.
-Conquest gave some city-states access to vital resources while trade gave an alternative
(this lead to seagoing vessels around the 5
th
millennium B.C.E.).
-Wood, metals, and stone came from foreign lands in exchange for wool, cloth,
barley, and vegetable oil.
-Merchants worked for the palace or the temple (3
rd
millennium B.C.E.).
-Institutions commanded the financial resources and organizational skills needed
for acquiring, transporting, and protecting valuable commodities.
-Surpluses from the royal or temple farmlands were exchanged for raw materials
and luxury goods.
-Independent merchants and guilds gained increasing influence (2
nd
millennium
B.C.E.).
-Coined money played no role; it was first seen in the 6
th
century B.C.E. and didnt reach
Mesopotamia until centuries later; items were simply bartered.
-Mesopotamian Society
-Temple leaders and the kings controlled large agricultural estates, and the palace
administration collected taxes from subjects.
- Land was rarely out up for sale; debtors lost their land to creditors, or soldiers and
priests received land in return for their services.
-The Law Code of Hammurabi reflects social divisions that may have been valid for other
places and times despite inevitable fluctuations (18
th
century B.C.E.).
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-The free landowning class; the class of dependent farmers and artisans (primary
rural work force); the class of slaves.
-Penalties in the Law Code depend on the class of the offender; the lower orders
received the most severe punishments.
-Slaves played a lesser economic role and were identified by a specific style of
hair.
-Documents do not distinguish between slaves or dependent workers and free
laborers.
-In the Old Babylonian period, the class of people who were not de-pendent on
the temple or palace grew, the land and other property in private hands increased,
and free laborers became more common.
-There is little known of the daily lives of ordinary Mesopotamians.
-Due to the lack of written evidence on their lives, it is presumed that commoner
were illiterate.
-Scribes were dominantly men, leaving little to know about women; their
writings reflect elite male activities.
-Women lost social standing and freedom with the spread of agriculture.
-Food production depended on the heavy physical labor, jobs usually performed
by men.
-Food surpluses made larger families possible, bearing and raising children
became the primary occupation of many women.
-Women could own property, maintain control of their dowry, and even engage
in trade, but men monopolized political life.
-Some worked outside the household in textile factories and breweries or as
prostitutes, tavern keepers, bakers, or fortune-tellers.
-Tasks for non-elite women included helping with farming, growing vegetables,
cooking, cleaning, fetching water, tending the household fire, and weaving
baskets and textiles.
-The standing of women seems to have declined further due to the rise of an urbanized
middle class and an increase in private wealth (2
nd
millennium B.C.E.).
-Husbands gained authority in the household and benefited from marriage and
divorce laws.
-They could obtain a second if the first gave him no children and kings and rich
men had several wives.
-Marriage alliances arranged between families made women instruments for
preserving and enhancing family wealth.
-A family could decide to avoid a daughters marriage by dedicating her to
temple service as gods bride.
-Constraints on womens lives that eventually became part of Islamic tradition
(possibly 2
nd
millennium B.C.E.)
-Gods, Priests, & Temples
-Sumerian gods embodied the forces of nature: Anu the sky, Enlil the air, Enki the water,
Utu the sun, Nanna the moon.
-Semitic equated their deities with those of the Sumerians when they became dominant.
-Gods had attributed of humans in form and conduct.
-They had senses and bodies, emotions of love, lust, hate, anger, and envy,
gained health from sacrifices, and enjoyed when humanity was obedient and
worshiped them.
-Beliefs taught those to fear the gods and to appease them.
-Cities built temples and showed devotion to the divinity or divinities that protected the
community.
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-Citizens of Sumer saw Nippur as a religious center due to its temple to Enlil, the
air god.
-Temples were considered the gods residence and believed the cult statue in its
interior shrine embodied their life-force.
-Priests at- tended this divine image, pampering it; these rituals reflected the
message of the Babylonian Creation Myth that humankind existed only to serve
the gods.
-Priests passed their office and sacred lore to their sons, and their families lived on rations
of food from the deitys estates.
-The large the amount, the higher the rank.
-The high priest performed the central acts in the great rituals.
- The temple precinct was surrounded by a high wall and housed the shrine of the chief
deity; open plazas; chapels for lesser gods; housing, dining facilities, and offices for
priests and other temple staff; and buildings for crafts, storage, and other services.
-It is unknown if common people had access to the temples and how dedicated they were
to their religion.
-Individuals placed votive statues in the sanctuaries in the belief that these
miniature replicas of themselves could continually seek the deitiess favor.
-A belief of magic can be seen in the survival of amulets.
-Elite and common folk came together in great festivals.
-Technology & Science
-Writing first appeared in Mesopotamia before 3300 B.C.E.
-The earliest inscribed tablets date from a time when the temple was the
communitys most important economic institution.
-Writing originated from a system of tokens used to keep track of property as
individuals wealth increased and memory dwindled.
-People realized that the incised pictures, the first written symbols, provided an adequate
record of the transaction and stopped using the tokens.
-Each symbol represented a thing or sound of a word of a thing.
-Writing was done in stylized combinations of strokes and wedges, a system
known as cuneiform, which originated from the Sumerian language.
-It was later served to express the Akkadian language of the Mesopotamian
Semites as well as other languages.
-Remains of the ancient city of Ebla in northern Syria shows the Mesopotamian
influence on other parts of western Asia; buildings and artifacts follow
Mesopotamian models, and thousands of tablets inscribed with cuneiform
symbols bear messages in both Sumerian and the local Semitic dialect.
-Cuneiform came to have wide-ranging uses beyond the recordkeeping
that apparently inspired its invention, serving for political, literary,
religious, and scientific purposes.
-Stone tools were later improved as the Mesopotamians imported ores containing copper,
tin, and arsenic.
-Clay, Mesopotamias most abundant resource, went into the making of mud bricks,
constituting the main building material.
-Military technology changed as armies evolved from militias called up for short periods,
to well-trained and well-paid full-time soldiers (late 3
rd
and 2
nd
millennia B.C.E.), to
horses and horse-drawn chariots in western Asia (early 2
nd
millennium B.C.E.).
-Mesopotamians sought to gain control of their physical environment, using a base-60
number system where numbers where shown as fraction and multiples of 60.
-These mathematical advancements along with astronomical knowledge
sophisticated their society.
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Egypt
-The Land of Egypt: Gift of the Nile
-The Nile flows through Egypt, helping to supply the banks of the river with lush
vegetation.
-Egypts population lives on the banks in the Nile Delta.
-Deserts of mountains, rocks, and dunes occupy the 90% left of Egypt.
-Travel and communication centered on the river with important cities located upstream.
-Impassable rocks and rapids in Egypts southern boundary form the First Cataract of the
Nile; however, Egyptian control can extend farther south into Kush (S. Egypt and N.
Sudan).
-Egyptians also settled certain large oases.
-Hot, sunny climate favored agriculture.
-The river provided water to irrigation channels; drainage techniques reduced the
size of Lake Faiyum and allowed land to be reclaimed for agriculture.
-Egyptians needed no dams or weirs to raise the level of the river and divert water into
channels due to seasonally flooding.
-The Nile flooded at the best time for grain agriculture, giving the land a fertile
new layer of mineral-rich silt.
-Egypt was substantially more self-sufficient than Mesopotamia.
-Papyrus was well used in good sails, ropes, and a kind of paper.
-Wild animals, birds, and river fish attracted hunters and fishermen.
-The river served use of transporting goods.
-Clay for mud bricks and pottery could be found almost everywhere.
-Copper, turquoise, and gold were accessible from neighboring regions.
-Farming villages relied on domesticated plant and animal species (5500 B.C.E.).
-Egypts emergence as a focal point stemmed partly from a gradual change in climate
(5
th
-3
rd
millennium).
-The Sahara had a relatively mild and wet climate, accustomed with lakes and
grasslands.
-The climate changed and the Sahara began to dry up, displaced groups mi-
grated into the then marshy Nile Valley, where they developed a sedentary way
of life.
-Divine Kingship
-An increasing population called for greater complexity in political organization,
including a form of local kingship.
-Later generations might have combined smaller units into single states by
southern ruler, Menes (3100 B.C.E.).
-Menes is sometimes equated with Narmer, a historical ruler.
-Later kings of Egypt bore the title Ruler of the Two Lands, Upper and Lower
Egypt, and wore two crowns symbolizing the unification of the country.
-Egypt discovered unity early in its history.
-Mantheo historians divide Egyptian history into thirty dynasties.
-The rise and fall of dynasties often reflects the dominance of one or another part
of the country.
-Egyptian history is divided into Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms, each a
period of centralized political power and brilliant cultural achievement.
-The Egyptian state centered on the king, or pharaoh.
-Egyptians considered the king a god on earth, the incarnation of Horus and the
son of the sun god Re.
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-The king maintained maat, the divinely authorized order of the universe.
-His rule ensured the welfare and prosperity of the country.
-The Egyptians conception of a divine king may explain the apparent absence in
Egypt of an impersonal code of law comparable to Hammurabis Code in
Mesopotamia.
-Much depended on the kings; their deaths evoked elaborate efforts to ensure the
wellbeing of their spirits on their journey to rejoin the gods.
-Organized were funerary rites, constructing royal tombs, and sustaining the
kings spirits in the afterlife by perpetual offerings in adjoining funerary chapels
demanded massive resources.
-Rectangular tombs made of mud brick sufficed for the earliest rulers; a stepped
pyramid was constructed in order of Djoser near Memphis (2630 B.C.E.).
-Pharaohs Khufu and Khefren ordered the construction of the pyramids of Giza.
-Egyptians accomplished construction with stone tools and no machinery other than
simple levers, pulleys, and rollers.
-Large quantities of people would have been needed to build a pyramid.
- The age of the great pyramids lasted about a century, though 37 constructions
of pyramids on a smaller scale continued for 2 millennia.
-Administration & Communication
-Ruling dynasties placed capitals in the area of their original power base.
-Memphis held its central position during the Old Kingdom.
-Thebes replaced it during the Middle and New Kingdom periods.
-A bureaucracy kept detailed records of the countrys resources.
-Bureaucrats kept track of land, labor, products, and people, extracting as taxes a
substantial portion of the annual revenues of the country.
-The income supported the palace, bureaucracy, and army; paid for building and
maintaining temples; and made possible great monuments.
-The government maintained a monopoly over key sectors of the economy and
controlled long-distance trade.
-Literacy according to a writing system developed before the Early Dynastic period
marked the administrative class.
-Hieroglyphics were the first of this system, using picture symbols standing for
words, syllables, or individual sounds.
-The discovery of the 2
nd
century B.C.E. Rosetta Stone helped paleontologists to
read the writing (19
th
century C.E.).
-Administrators and copyists developed a cursive script (2500 B.C.E.).
-The script was written with ink on papyrus.
-Egyptian literary compositions included tales of adventure and magic, love poetry,
religious hymns, and instruction manuals on technical subjects.
-Strong monarchs appointed and promoted officials on the basis of merit and
accomplishment; grants of cultivated land were given.
-Low-level officials worked in villages and district capitals; high-ranking
officials served in the royal capital.
-Egyptian history exhibits a recurring tension between the centralizing power of the
monarchy and the decentralizing tendencies of the bureaucracy
-A shift of officials tombs from the vicinity of the royal tomb to home districts
signaled the breakdown of centralized power in the late Old Kingdom and First
Intermediate Period.
-Inheritance of administrative posts similarly indicated a decline in centralized
power.
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-Middle Kingdom monarchs restored centralized power by reducing the power
and prerogatives of the old elite and creating a new middle class of
administrators.
-Egypt was a land of villages without real cities stems from its capitals being primarily
extensions of the palace and central administration.
-A larger percentage of the Egyptian population lived in farming villages.
-Egypts wealth derived to a higher degree from cultivating the land.
-Egypt stuck to itself during the Old and Middle Kingdoms.
-Foreigners were regarded as enemies.
-Limited contact was maintained with other advanced civilizations in the region.
-Maintaining access to resources rather than on acquiring territory was Egypts
interest.
-Egypts interests involved goods from the south.
-Egyptian forces invaded Nubia, a country with prized gold mines, and extended
the Egyptian border towards the Third Cataract of the Nile, taking possession of
the gold fields.
-The People of Egypt
-There was an estimated million to a million and half inhabitants in Egypt.
-Egypt experienced no migrations or invasions; settlers periodically trickled into
the Nile Valley.
-Egypt had less pronounced social divisions.
-The king and high-ranking officials enjoyed status, wealth, and power.
-Below them were low-level officials, local leaders, priests and other
professionals, artisans, and well-to-do farmers; below them were
peasants
-Peasants lived in rural villages and devoted themselves to the seasonally
changing tasks of agriculture.
-Implements were more than likely shared as well as villagers helping
one another.
-Tomb paintings of the elite sometimes depict the lives of common folk.
-Artists employed conventions to indicate status
-Slavery existed on a limited scale.
-Prisoners of war, condemned criminals, and debtors could be found on country
estates or in the households of the king and wealthy families.
-However, slaves were given humane treatment as well as the possibility of being
freed.
-From what can be interpreted, women of the royal family and elite classes accompanied
their husbands and engaging in domestic activities.
-Subordination to men was evident.
-Egyptian women could own property, inherit from their parents, and will their
property to whomever they wished.
-Marriage was monogamous, arising from a mutual decision between a man and
woman to join a household together.
-Either party could dissolve the relationship, and the woman retained rights over
her dowry in case of divorce.
-Queens and queen mothers played significant behind-the-scenes roles in the
politics of the royal court, and priestesses sometimes supervised the cults of
female deities.
-Women in ancient Egypt enjoyed greater respect and more legal rights and
social freedom.
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-Belief & Knowledge
-Religion evoked the landscape of the Nile Valley and the vision of cosmic order that this
environment fostered.
-The king fit into the pattern of the dead returning to life and the sun-god
renewing life.
-He intervened with the gods on behalf of his land and people.
-Egyptian rulers zealously built new temples, refurbished old ones, and made lavish gifts
to the gods.
-Much of the countrys wealth went for religious purposes of gaining their gods
approval.
-Egyptians had a rich oral tradition.
-Towns had temples in which deities were thought to reside.
-Priests served the daily needs of the deity by attending to his or her statue
-During great festivals, the priests paraded a boat-shaped litter carrying the shrouded
statue and cult items of the deity around the town.
-This was said to bring people in contact with the deity.
-At home, family members revered and made small offerings.
-Egyptians believed in the afterlife.
-A safe passage and a comfortable existence once they arrived were prepared for.
-The Egyptian Book of the Dead, present in many excavated tombs, contained
rituals and spells to protect the journeying spirit.
-The Egyptian obsession with the afterlife produced concerns about the physical
condition of the dead body and a perfection of mummification techniques for preserving
it.
-Elite classes spent the most on mummification.
-Specialists removed vital organs, preserved it and dehydrated it, and then
wrapped it in linen.
-They then placed the mummy in one or more decorated wooden caskets with a
tomb.
-Pictures and samples of food and objects from everyday life accompanied the mummy to
provide whatever he or she might need in the next life.
-Knowledge of Egyptian life comes from examining utilitarian and luxury
household objects found in tombs.
-The form of the tomb also reflected wealth and status.
-Common people used pit graves or small mud-brick chambers.
-Privileged classes built larger tombs and covered the walls with pictures and
inscriptions.
-Kings erected pyramids and other grand edifices.
-The ancient Egyptians explored many areas of knowledge and developed advantageous
technologies.
-Chemistry was learned through developing the mummification process,
providing access to the human anatomy.
-Mathematics was develops for determining the dimensions of fields and
calculating the quantity of agricultural produce owed to the state.
-Calendars were constructed through the observation of the stars.
-Nile carried lightweight ships equipped with sails and oars.
-Canals and flooded basins limited the use of carts and sledges, thus the
construction of sandstone slabs for roads.
-The oldest known paved road in the world dates to the second half of the 3
rd

millennium B.C.E.
12

The Indus Valley Civilization
-The civilization in the Indian subcontinent originated on a fertile floodplain.
-Settled farming created the agricultural surplus essential to urbanized society.
-Natural Environment
-More than 1 million acres stretched between mountains of western Pakistan and the Thar
Desert to the east.
-Silt was deposited, building up the riverbank of the Indus River above the plain.
-The river would overflow twice a year and floods he surrounding area.
-Snowmelt fed the flood in March and April.
-Monsoons fed the second flood.
-The floods made two crops a year possible
-Material Culture
-Several hundred communities flourished, but Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro best typify the
Indus Valley civilization (2600-1900 B.C.E.).
-High water table at the sites makes excavation of the earliest levels of settlement nearly
impossible.
-This civilization spoke Dravidian languages related to those spoken now in India.
-Invaders from the northwest speaking Indo-European languages conquered these
people, causing them to migrate to the southeast (1500 B.C.E.).
-The population remained stable from ancient times to the present.
-Settled agriculture date back to at least 5000 B.C.E.
-Relations have not yet been revealed between the Indus Valley civilization and
earlier cultural complexes in the Indus Valley and the hilly lands to the west or
the forces that gave rise to the urbanization, population increase, and
technological advances that occurred in the mid-third millennium B.C.E.
-The case for continuity with earlier cultures seems stronger than the case for a
sudden transformation due to the arrival of new peoples.
-The writing system of the Indus Valley people contained more than four hundred signs
to represent syllables and words.
-Thousands of inscribed seal stones and copper tablets were recovered.
-Inscriptions are brief and none has translated them yet.
-Harappa, 3 in circumference, may have housed a population of 35,000; Mohenjo-Daro
several times that.
-Show marked similarities in planning and construction: high, thick, encircling
walls of brick; streets lay out in a rectangular grid; and covered drainpipes to
carry away waste.
-There is evidence of a strong central authority due to an elevated, enclosed
compound containing large buildings.
-Mohenjo-Daro seems to dominate the great floodplain of the Indus.
-Harappa sits in the zone where farmlands give way to pasturelands, with no
settlements found west beyond it.
-Most people surely lived in smaller settlements, which exhibit the same artifacts and the
same cause of styles and shapes as the large cities.
-It is believed that the settlements were made small due to the extensive
exchange of goods within the zone of Indus Valley civilization,
-Metal appears more frequently in Indus Valley sites.
-Tools and other useful objects were of high importance.
-Metal goods belonged to a broad cross- section of the population in the Indus
Valley.
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-Technologically, skill was showed in irrigation, use of the potters wheel, and the firing
of bricks to rocky hardness in kilns for use in the foundations of large public buildings.
-Smiths worked with gold, silver, copper, and tin; the use of copper and tin
implying an awareness of the hardness of different mixtures.
-Archaeological finds point to widespread trading contacts.
-Mountain passes through the northwest granted access to the valuable
resources: metals, precious stone, building stone, and timber.
-Rivers provided transportation within the zone of Indus Valley culture
-Inhabitants of the Indus Valley and of Mesopotamia obtained raw materials from similar
sources.
-The finding of Indus Valley seal stones indicates that merchants from the former region
may have acted as middlemen in long- distance trade, obtaining raw materials from the
north- west and shipping them to the Persian Gulf.
-There are efforts to connect artifacts and images to cultural characteristics of Indian
history, but they remain speculative.
-Sociopolitical Institutions
-Architectural Forms
-Religious Beliefs /Practices
-Transformation of the Indus Valley Civilization
-Indus Valley cities were abandoned after 1900 B.C.E.
-The civilization suffered from systems failure.
-Causes may have been one or more natural disasters, such as an earthquake or
massive flooding.
-Gradual ecological changes may also have played a role as the Hakra river
system dried up and salinization and erosion increased.
-Towns left dry by a change of riverbed, seaports re- moved from the coast by silt
deposited in deltas, and regions suffering loss of fertile soil would have necessitated the
relocation of populations and a change in the livelihood of those who remained.
-The causes varied with urbanization persisting longer in some regions than in
others.
-Urban centers eventually succumbed and village-based farming and herding
took their place.
-Interaction between regions lessened, regional variation replaced the
standardization of technology and style of the previous era.