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The Ancient World Part III:
Asia, Oceania and Europe to 1000 BCE
Time Line of Art History: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
In his famous book, "Organism," Abraham Maslow originated the idea of self-actualization within a hierarchial structure of physilogical and psychological needs. Within this structure are what Maslow calls "esteem needs." From the very beginning of time historians have made manifest evidence of man's expression of "esteem needs." Over 30,000 years ago in Chauvet France the discovery of dynamic, vibrant paintings of animals drawn on limestone cave walls stand as a testament to man's need to express his world through art.
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,
That is all ye know on earth and
All ye need to know.
-------- John Keats (1819) "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
Take the time to see the truth, to see the beauty that man has created across time and space. "Click away!"
South Asia, 1000 B.C.E.–1 C.E.
Southern
Europe, 2000–1000 B.C.E.
The Eastern Mediterranean, 1000 B.C.E..–1 C.E.
Southeast Asia, 1000 B.C.E.–1 C.E.
Mesoamerica and Central America, 1000 B.C.E.–1 C.E.
Using
Artifacts to Analyze Ancient Civilizations
Choose an ancient civilization. Read about the economic, social and political life of that society and complete chart. Look at three artifacts from that civilization and analyze whether the artifacts agree with your previous research. Complete a chart describing and analyzing your artifact. Write a paper describing the economic, social and political life of the civilization and evaluating whether or not the artifact supports the interpretation you have read. Use the graphic organizer to help you write your paper. Your project will be evaluated using a rubric.
Time Line Index:
The Timeline Index : People, Periods, Places and Events in a chronological context.
Ancient Indus Chronology 4000-1000 B.C.E.
Classical Myth : The Ancient Sources 6000-300 B.C.E.
Bridging World History: Annenburg Media
How do diverse political structures and relationships distribute power and material resources? Through the rise of the Chinese empire, Mayan regional kingdoms, and the complex society of Igbo Ukwu, this unit considers the origins of centralized states and alternative political and social orders.
Readings: Washington State University-World Cultures to 1500
Ancient India:
Indian culture is an ancient and dynamic entity, spanning back to the very beginnings of human civilization. Beginning with a mysterious culture along the Indus River and in farming communities in the southern lands of India, the history of the sub-continent is one puncuated by constant integration with migrating peoples and with the diverse cultures that surround India. Placed in the center of Asia, Indian history is a crossroads of cultures from China to Europe, and the most significant Asian connection with the cultures of Africa.
The most striking element of Indian geography is the natural barrier formed by the mountain ranges in the north of India. For India is a continental plate that is crashing into the Asian continental plate. As it does, both continental plates push up the earth where they meet into a forbidding range of mountains. The central mountain range, passing across in the shape of a sword near the northern edge of the Indian subcontinent, is the Great Himalayas. These northern mountains, which are less of a barrier in the west, have naturally isolated India from its neighbors.
Although agriculture seems to have come late to India, arriving sometime around 5000 BCE, India was one of the first regions to give birth to civilization. Only a few centuries after the first Mesopotamian cities sprang up, a people living along the northern reaches of the Indus River discovered urbanization, metalwork, and writing. It is a mysterious civilization and one with no discernible continuity, for it thrived for just several centuries and then disappeared. The Indo-European immigrants who settled the region did not adopt most of the aspects of this civilization, and what precisely they did adopt is difficult to ascertain. So while Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Yellow River civilizations lasted for millenia and left their mark on all subsequent cultures, the Indus River civilization seems to have been a false start.
They called themselves the "noble ones" or the "superior ones." Their names are lost; their tribal names are lost. But when they found themselves conquerors, they gave themselves the name "superior" or "noble." They were a tribal and nomadic peoples living in the far reaches of Euro-Asia in hostile steppe lands barely scratching out a living. They were unquestionably a tough people, and they were fierce and war-like. Their religion reflects it dominated as it is by a storm-god or sky-god that enjoins warfare and conquest. This god was called something like "Dyaus," a word related to "Zeus," "deus" (the Latin word for "god"), "deva" (the Sanskrit word for "god"), and, of course, the English word "divine." Their culture was oriented around warfare, and they were very good at it.
Early Hinduism:
Very little is known about the religion of the Indus civilization because no written records exit. There is, however, an assumption that parts of the Harappan tradition were held in common by ancient religions of the Middle East as well as the later Hinduism. Prominent among the evidence discovered are the many seals discovered at the sites along the Indus River, as well as in Mesopotamia. Some of these seals clearly indicate the sacredness of the bull which later became a common tradition in Hinduism. Other features are the horned god. These seals have two faces in profile, and one facing forward. The figure is surrounded by a tiger, an elephant, a rhinoceros, and a buffalo. His legs are bent with his feet pressed together in a yoga position which has led some to believe that this god is most likely a proto-Shiva. Shiva is the three-faced Hindu god of death, destruction, and fertility.
The most ancient sacred literature of Hinduism is called the Vedas. This collection of hymns, poems, and ceremonial formulas represent the beliefs of several Aryan tribes. Initially the Vedas were considered so sacred that they were only transmitted orally from one generation of brâhmans to the next. The passages of the Vedas were eventually written in Sanskrit, we believe, near the end of the third century BC, and primarily consist of four collections called the Rig-Veda, the Sama-Veda, the Yajur-Veda, and the Atharva-Veda. Collectively, these are referred to as the Samhitas.
What little we know of the Vedic Age comes from the Rig-Veda. By the time the oral tradition of the Aryan religion was comitted to Sanskrit, however, some of the gods mentioned had already begun to lose their importance. Nevertheless, The Rig-Veda represented a blend of beliefs held by several Aryan tribes.
Between 800 and 400 BC, significant changes began to occur in the lives of religious peoples in all of the civilized parts of the world. Independent thinkers, discontented with the traditional explanations of the cosmic order, and specifically man's place within that cosmos, began to develop new, more simple and rational, doctrines. Scholars frequently refer to this period as the Axial Age. There is, however, no solid explanation why such dramatic religious changes would occur throughout the world during the same period
The British Museum: Ancient India
Geography - Early Hinduism - Indus Valley - Time - Writing
Video Presentations and Links
Ancient India:
Hindusim Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3- Part 4 - Part 5
Five Part Production of the elements of Hinuism. Do not take all facts/opinions mentioned in the documentary at absolute truth value since the presentation is from a Western perspective
Origins of civilization-INDIA-The Empire of Spirit Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6
India, the origin of civilization and empire of spirit & religion. it also describes the affect of western and arabic invaders and conquerer.
The Ancient Indus Civilization
1,144 illustrated pages by leading scholars of ancient India and Pakistan and the ancient Indus Valley Civilization - including the very latest discoveries
Readings: Washington State University-World Cultures to 1500
Ancient China:
As in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and along the Indus River, Chinese civilization began within a major river valley. Modern China itself is a huge geographical expanse. Around 4000 BC, this huge area contained an almost infinite number of ethnic groups and languages. The course of Chinese history, however, is in part dominated by a single ethnic group and language. This history, in which a vast area populated by diverse ethnic groups became, over time, a more or less single culture, began in the Yellow River Valley.
In history according to the Chinese, the Shang dynasty began when T'ang, a man of great virtue and wisdom, overthrew the decadent emperor Chieh, the last of the Hsia dynasty. Like the previous dynasty, the Shang eventually declined and ended with the ignominious rule of the last Shang king, Chou; he was overthrown by King Wen and his son Wu who began the third dynasty of China, the Chou.
When the Chou usurped the throne from the Shang dynasty, China itself was split into several states. The Shang, in fact, only had power over a relatively small region in the Yellow River area. The Chou occupied an area to the west of the Shang kingdom, but when the Chou kings overthrew the Shang, the Chou kingdom became incredibly large.
The British Museum: Ancient China
Crafts and Artisan - Geography - Time - Tombs and Ancestors - Writing
Video Presentations
Ancient China:
Engineering an Empire Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5
Discovery Channel: Lost Treasure of the Ancient World
Readings: Washington State University-World Cultures to 1500
The Minoans and Myceneans
The story of European civilization really begins on the island of Crete with a civilization that probably thought of itself as Asian (in fact, Crete is closer to Asia than it is to Europe). Around 1700 BC, a highly sophisticated culture grew up around palace centers on Crete: the Minoans. What they thought, what stories they told, how they narrated their history, are all lost to us. All we have left are their palaces, their incredibly developed visual culture, and their records. Mountains of records. For the Minoans produced a singular civilization in antiquity: one oriented around trade and bureaucracy with little or no evidence of a military state. They built perhaps the single most efficient bureaucracy in antiquity.
The Minoan civilization began on the island of Crete, a large island located midway between Asia Minor and Greece. On the island, the climate is comfortable and the soil fertile; as an island, it was isolated from the mainland of Asia Minor, the Middle East, and Egypt (which isn't far away to the south). None of the earliest great cultures of the ancient world were seafaring cultures, so Crete was spared the great power struggles that shook small states like Judah and Israel.
We know of the Minoans only through their ruins. Splendid as they are, with their remarkable architectural logic, their hypnotic art, and the richness of cultural artifacts, they spoke a language we don't understand and they wrote in a script which we can't read. So the voices of the Minoans, their stories, their history as they understood it, is lost to us. Even if we do by some miracle decipher their writing and penetrate the mists of their language, we may not end up with much of anything. For all of their writing seems to be one thing: accounts and records. The Minoans were, after all, a great mercantile people and they kept profoundly accurate records of their transactions.
Since we have only ruins and remains from Minoan culture, we can only guess at their religious practices. We have no scriptures, no prayers, no books of ritual; all we have are objects and fragments all of which only hint at a rich and complex religious life and symbolic system behind their broken exteriors. The most apparent characteristic of Minoan religion was that it was polytheistic and matriarchal, that is, a goddess religion; the gods were all female, not a single male god has been identified until later periods. Many religious and cultural scholars now believe that almost all religions began as matriarchal religions, even the Hebrew religion (where Yahweh is frequently referred to as physically female), but adopted patriarchal models in later incarnations.
Urbanization dramatically changes social relations. In place of real, biological relationships based on kinship, urbanized cultures organize themselves around more abstract, less stable, and inherently unequal lines. In particular, urbanized society is organized around "class," that is, economic function, rather than kinship. Economic function produces a kind of social inequality, as administrators, kings, and priests, come to occupy economically more important roles (distribution and regulation) than others. While there is really no such thing as social mobility in the ancient world, class is inherently unstable as a way of organizing society.
While very little Minoan culture remains for us—no writings, music, or religious texts—we do have Minoan art. For the Minoans literally surrounded themselves with art, and that fact more than any has mesmerized all the scholars and students of the culture. It's hard, in fact, to distance yourself from the visual culture and view it dispassionately, for seeing Minoan art for the first time produces the illusion that you are staring at kindred souls. They are, of course, not kindred souls and the artwork had far different meaning for the Minoans than it does for us.
The Minoans were a sport-centered society; while all sports ultimately derive from religious rituals, by the time the Cretans were enjoying their palace civilization, sport seemed to have passed over into a recreational activity. This is a new pheneomenon in the ancient world: sport for sport's sake, and parallels a number of other aspects of Minoan culture. We know a great deal about Cretan sports because they are a common subject of wall paintings and vase sculptures. The most popular sport subjects in Minoan painting and sculpture are two sports in particular: boxing and bull-jumping.
Video Presentations
Ancient Europe:
Ancient Apocalypse - Mystery of the Minoans:
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5
The Military States In Greece: Mycenae and the Dark Ages
Somewhere between 3000 BC and 2000 BC, the lands of Greece were settled by a metal-using agricultural people who spoke a language other than Indo-European. Some of the names they gave their villages were preserved by the Greeks, names, for instance, ending in "-ssos." We know next to nothing of these people, their religion, their cultural memory, their language, or their everyday experience. The period when they dominated Greece, called the "Early Helladic" period, seemed to be one of comparative quiet and peace. All that ended around 2000 BC; the early Helladic sites and villages were destroyed in fire or abandoned outright. An invader had entered the stage, one that quickly dominated the landscape: the Greek.
In many ways we know Mycenean religion for much of it survives into classical Greece in the pantheon of Greek gods. But we really don't know how much of Greek religious belief is Mycenean, and how much is a product of the Greek Dark Ages or later. Like everything else about ancient cultures, it is hard to reconstruct a religious system from only ruins and a few fragments of writing.
The Greek Dark Ages (1200-700 BCE)
For some reason the Myceneans abandoned their civilization between 1200 and 1100 BC. The populations of their once-mighty cities dwindled rapidly until there was no urbanized culture left on the Greek mainland. Most of the cities were eventually destroyed, and all the great craftsmen of the Mycenean cities faded away when society could no longer support them. How much of their culture they abandoned, we don't know. For the one key element of their culture that they did abandon was writing , and we don't know why. Without writing, they left us no history following the collapse of Mycenean civilization; we have, instead, only five centuries of mystery: the Greek Dark Ages.
Readings: Washington State University-World Cultures to 1500
Civilizations in America:
The culture of the Native Americans was complex, rich, and diverse, displaying unique and profound patterns of thought and life. Urbanization, however, came rather late in the Americas and, like so much else of Native American culture, took on forms never seen elsewhere. Many of the aspects of urban culture were established in the Americas: living in cities, the use of writing, complex social structures, and so on. But there are also some intriguingly unique aspects: several American civilizations did not develop writing systems; all urban American cultures, while adopting an abstract class system, never abandoned kinship as the primary way of organizing society; the growth of urban centers never shifted the economy away from agriculture. In the bustling city of Tenochtitlan, the largest and most complex city of the Native Americans, the bulk of the population left the city in the morning to go farm and returned at night.
The earliest civilization in Central America—and possibly the earliest civilization in the Americas—was the Olmec civilization which arose sometime between 1200 and 1000 BC. They originally lived in the Gulf Coast region of southern Mexico, but soon expanded into Guatemala
Explore the MesoAmerican World
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