The Birth of Civilization Essay

Words: 18945
Pages: 76

1
The Birth of Civilization
Mohenjo-Daro Figure. Scholars believe this limestone statue from about 2500 B.C.E. depicts a king or a priest from Mohenjo-Daro in the
Indus valley in present-day Pakistan.
Does this figure seem to emphasize the features of a particular person or the attributes of a particular role?
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CRAIMC01_xxxii-031hr2.qxp 2/17/11 3:22 PM Page xxxii
EARLY HUMANS AND THEIR CULTURE page 1
WHY IS “culture” considered a defining trait of human beings?
EARLY CIVILIZATIONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST TO ABOUT 1000 B.C.E. page 5
HOW DID control over water resources influence early Middle Eastern civilizations?
ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN EMPIRES page 14
HOW DID conquest and trade
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Societies divided into classes or castes:
Most members engaged in farming, a few traded, and others assumed military, priestly, or governmental roles. As these civilizations expanded, they became richer, more populous, and more powerful. The last millennium B.C.E. witnessed two major developments.
One was the emergence, during 600–300 B.C.E., of the religious and philosophical revolutions that would indelibly mark their respective civilizations: monotheistic Judaism from which would later develop the world religions of Christianity and Islam; Hinduism and Buddhism in southern Asia; the philosophies of Greece and China. The second development was the rise of the Iron Age empires—the Roman, the Mauryan along the Ganges, the Han in China—during the centuries straddling the end of the millennium.
After the fall of these early empires, swift changes occurred.
For a millennium, Europe and Byzantium fell behind, while China and the Middle East led in technology and the arts of government.
But by 1500 Europe had caught up, and after 1700, it led.
India had invented Arabic numerals, and Arab thinkers inspired
GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
Paleolithic Age
The earliest period when stone tools were used, from about 1,000,000 to
10,000 B.C.E. From the Greek meaning
“old stone.”
From Hunter-gatherers to Food-producers-
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The Toolmaker (3300 B.C.E.) at myhistorylab.com
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