Voyages in World History, Volume 1 To 1600

Voyages in World History

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Voyages in World History V O LU ME 1: To 1600

Valerie Hansen YALE UNIVERSITY

Kenneth R. Curtis CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY LONG BEACH

Australia • Brazil • Japan • Korea • Mexico • Singapore • Spain • United Kingdom • United States

Voyages in World History Valerie Hansen and Kenneth R. Curtis Senior Publisher: Suzanne Jeans Senior Acquisitions Editor: Nancy Blaine Senior Development Editor: Jennifer E. Sutherland Consultant Development Editor: Jean L. Woy Associate Editor: Adrienne Zicht Senior Marketing Manager: Katherine Bates Marketing Coordinator: Loreen Pelletier Marketing Communications Manager: Christine Dobberpuhl Senior Content Project Manager: Christina M. Horn Senior Media Editor: Lisa Ciccolo Art Director: Jill Haber

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BRIEF CONTENTS 1 The Peopling of the World, to 4000 B.C.E.

2 The First Complex Societies in the Eastern Mediterranean, ca. 4000–550 B.C.E.

3 Ancient India and the Rise of Buddhism, 2600 B.C.E.–100 C.E.

4 Blueprint for Empire: China, 1200 B.C.E.–220 C.E.

5 The Americas and the Islands of the Paciﬁc, to 1200 C.E.

114

6 New Empires in Iran and Greece, 2000 B.C.E.–651 C.E.

144

7 The Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity, 509 B.C.E.–476 C.E.

174

8 Hindu and Buddhist States and Societies in Asia, 100–1000

208

9 Islamic Empires of Western Asia and Africa, 600–1258

238

10 The Multiple Centers of Europe, 500–1000

268

11 Expanding Trade Networks in Africa and India, 1000–1500

300

12 China’s Commercial Revolution, ca. 900–1276

328

13 Europe’s Commercial Revolution, 1000–1400

356

14 The Mongols and Their Successors, 1200–1500

386

15 Maritime Expansion in the Atlantic World, 1400–1600

418

16 Maritime Expansion in Afro-Eurasia, 1500–1700

450

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CONTENTS MAPS XVI I VISUAL EVIDENCE XVI I I MOVEMENT OF IDEAS XI X WORLD HISTORY IN TODAY’S WORLD CHAPTER

PREFACE XXI ABOUT THE AUTHORS XXI X NOTE ON SPELLING XXXI XX

The Peopling of the World, to 4000 B.C.E.

TRAVELER: Kennewick Man

The Origins of Humankind 5 The First Hominids: Australopithecines 5 Homo Erectus and the First Migrations Outside of Africa, 2.5–1.8 Million Years Ago 6 The Emergence of Homo Sapiens Sapiens, 2 Million–150,000 Years Ago 7

How Modern Humans Populated Eurasia and Australia 8 The First Anatomically Modern Humans Leave Africa 8 The Settling of Australia, ca. 60,000 B.C.E. 9 The Settling of Eurasia, 50,000–30,000 B.C.E. 9

VISUAL EVIDENCE: The First Art Objects in the World 10

The Settling of the Americas 13

Q MOVEMENT OF IDEAS: The Worship of Goddesses 14 Monte Verde, Chile: How the First Americans Lived, 10,500 B.C.E. 16 The Rise of Clovis and Other Regional Traditions, 11,400–10,900 B.C.E. 18 The Oldest Americans? 19

Q WORLD HISTORY IN TODAY’S WORLD: Kennewick Man in Court 20

The Emergence of Agriculture, 12,500– 3000 B.C.E. 21 The Domestication of Plants and Animals, ca. 12,500–7000 B.C.E. 21 The First Larger Settlements, 7000–3000 B.C.E. 23

Chapter Review 26

Beringia: The Land Bridge from Siberia to the Americas 13

CHAPTER

The First Complex Societies in the Eastern Mediterranean, ca. 4000–550 B.C.E.

TRAVELER: Gilgamesh

The Emergence of Complex Society in Mesopotamia, ca. 3100–1590 B.C.E. 31 City Life in Ancient Mesopotamia 31 The Beginnings of Writing, 3300 B.C.E. 33 Sumerian Religion 34

Q WORLD HISTORY IN TODAY’S WORLD: The World’s First Beer 35

Sumerian Government 36 The Babylonian Empire, 1894–1595 B.C.E. 36

Egypt During the Old and Middle Kingdoms, ca. 3100–1500 B.C.E. 38 The Central Role of the Nile 39 Egyptian Government and Society 39

Note: All images are copyrighted. For full photo credit information, please see each chapter opener page.

vii

viii

Contents

The Old Kingdom and Egyptian Belief in the Afterlife, 2686–2181 B.C.E. 41

VISUAL EVIDENCE: The Narmer Palette 42 Egyptian Expansion During the Middle Kingdom, 2040–1782 B.C.E. 45

The International System, 1500– 1150 B.C.E. 46 New Kingdom Egypt and Nubia, 1570– 1069 B.C.E. 46 The Kingdom of Nubia, 800 B.C.E.–350 C.E. 48 The Hittites, 2000–1200 B.C.E. 50 Wen-Amun’s Voyage to Lebanon and Cyprus, 1130 B.C.E. 51

CHAPTER

Syria-Palestine and New Empires in Western Asia, 1200–500 B.C.E. 51 The History of the Ancient Hebrews According to the Hebrew Bible 51 The History of the Ancient Hebrews According to Archaeological Evidence 53

Q MOVEMENT OF IDEAS: The Flood Narrative in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Hebrew Bible 54 The Assyrian Empire, 911–612 B.C.E. 56 The Babylonian Captivity and the Recording of the Bible, 612–539 B.C.E. 56

Chapter Review 58

Ancient India and the Rise of Buddhism, 2600 B.C.E.–100 C.E.

TRAVELER: Ashoka

The Origins of Complex Society in South Asia, 2600–500 B.C.E. 63 Complex Society in the Indus River Valley, 2600– 1700 B.C.E. 63 The Spread of Indo-European Languages 66 The Indo-European Migrations and Vedic Culture, 1500–1000 B.C.E. 66 Changes after 1000 B.C.E. 68

Q WORLD HISTORY IN TODAY’S WORLD: The Modern Caste System and Its Ancient Antecedents 70

The Rise of Buddhism 71

VISUAL EVIDENCE: The Buddhist Stupa at Sanchi 74

The Mauryan Empire, ca. 320–185 B.C.E.

Life and Society in the Mauryan Dynasty, ca. 300 B.C.E. 76 Mauryan Control Outside the Capital 78 Ruling by Example: The Ceremonial State 79

Q MOVEMENT OF IDEAS: The First Sermon of the Buddha and Ashoka’s Fourth Major Rock Edict 80

South Asia’s External Trade 83 Chapter Review 85

The Life of the Buddha 71 The Teachings of the Buddha 72

CHAPTER

Blueprint for Empire: China, 1200 B.C.E.–220 C.E.

TRAVELER: First Emperor of the Qin Dynasty

The Origins of Chinese Civilization, 1200– 221 B.C.E. 91 The First Agriculture, 7000–1200 B.C.E. 91 Early Chinese Writing in the Shang Dynasty, ca. 1200 B.C.E. 92

Q WORLD HISTORY IN TODAY’S WORLD: The Use of Component Parts in Chinese Food 93 Shang Dynasty Relations with Other Peoples 93

The Zhou Dynasty, 1045–256 B.C.E. Confucianism 96 Daoism 97

Q MOVEMENT OF IDEAS: The Analects and Sima Qian’s Letter to Ren An 98

Qin Rulers Unify China, 359–207 B.C.E. 100 Prime Minister Shang Yang’s Reforms, 359– 221 B.C.E. 100

Contents

The Policies of the First Emperor, 221–210 B.C.E. 101 Legalism and the Laws of the Qin Dynasty

103 VISUAL EVIDENCE: The Terracotta Warriors of the Qin Founder’s Tomb 104

The Han Empire, 206 B.C.E.–220 C.E. 106

Extending Han Rule 109 Han Dynasty Conﬂict with the Xiongnu Nomads, 201–60 B.C.E. 109 Han Expansion to the North, Northwest, and South 110

Chapter Review 112

Han Government and the Imperial Bureaucracy 106 Ban Zhao’s Lessons for Women 108 CHAPTER

The Americas and the Islands of the Paciﬁc, to 1200 C.E.

114

TRAVELER: Yax K’uk Mo’

The First Complex Societies of Mesoamerica, 8000 B.C.E.–500 C.E. 117 The Development of Agriculture, 8000–1500 B.C.E. 117 The Olmecs and Their Successors, 1200– 400 B.C.E. 118 Teotihuacan, ca. 200 B.C.E.–600 C.E. 120

The Classic Age of the Maya, 250– 910 C.E. 120 121 VISUAL EVIDENCE: The Imposing Capital of Teotihuacan 122 Maya Government and Society 124 Q WORLD HISTORY IN TODAY’S WORLD: The World’s First Chocolate 125 The Religious Beliefs of the Maya 126 War, Politics, and the Decline of the Maya 127 The Deciphering of Maya Writing

CHAPTER

Q MOVEMENT OF IDEAS: The Ballgame in Popul Vuh 128

The Northern Peoples, 500 B.C.E.– 1200 C.E. 131 The Peoples of the Andes, 3100 B.C.E.–1000 C.E. 132 The Polynesian Voyages of Exploration, 1000 B.C.E.–1350 C.E. 135 The Settlement of the Polynesian Triangle 135 Polynesian Seafaring Societies 137 The Mystery of Easter Island 139 The Impact of Humans on New Zealand 141

Chapter Review 141

New Empires in Iran and Greece, 2000 B.C.E.–651 C.E.

144

TRAVELER: Herodotus

The Rise of the Achaemenids in Iran, 1000–330 B.C.E. 147 Zoroastrianism 148 The Military Success of the Achaemenid Empire, 550–486 B.C.E. 149

Q MOVEMENT OF IDEAS: Doing What Is Right in The Avesta and the Bible 150

Darius’s Coup, 522 B.C.E. 152 VISUAL EVIDENCE: The Parade of Nations at Darius’s Palace at Persepolis 154 Achaemenid Administration 156

Ancient Greece and the Mediterranean World, 2000–334 B.C.E. 157

Contents

Greek Expansion in the Mediterranean, 2000–1200 B.C.E. 157 The Phoenicians and the World’s First Alphabet 158 The Rise of the Greek City-State, 800–500 B.C.E. 160

Q WORLD HISTORY IN TODAY’S WORLD: The Olympics 161 The Greco-Persian Wars, 490–479 B.C.E. 162 Politics and Culture in Athens, 480–404 B.C.E. 163 Athens as a Center for the Study of Philosophy 165

CHAPTER

Alexander the Great and His Successors, 334 B.C.E.–30 B.C.E. 166 Philip and Alexander: From Macedon to Empire, 359–323 B.C.E. 166 The Legacy of Alexander the Great 167

The Parthians and the Sasanians, Heirs to the Achaemenids, 247 B.C.E.–651 C.E. 169 Chapter Review 172

The Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity, 509 B.C.E.–476 C.E.

174

TRAVELER: Polybius

The Roman Republic, 509–27 B.C.E. 177 Early Rome to 509 B.C.E. 177 The Early Republic and the Conquest of Italy, 509–272 B.C.E. 178 The Conquest of the Mediterranean World, 272–146 B.C.E. 179 Roman Society Under the Republic 182 The Late Republic, 146–27 B.C.E. 183

The Roman Principate, 27 B.C.E.–284 C.E. 185 The Political Structure of the Principate 185 The Social Changes of the Principate 185 Travel and Knowledge of the Outside World 187

VISUAL EVIDENCE: Pompeii 188

The Rise of Christianity, ca. 30–284 C.E. 192 Roman Religion and Judaism

CHAPTER

The Life and Teachings of Jesus, ca. 4 B.C.E.–30 C.E. 193 Paul and the Early Church, 30–284 C.E.

194 Q MOVEMENT OF IDEAS: Early Christianity in the Eastern Provinces 196

The Decline of the Empire and the Loss of the Western Provinces, 284–476 199 Political Changes of the Late Empire 199 Religious Changes of the Late Empire 200

Q WORLD HISTORY IN TODAY’S WORLD: Snapshot of Christianity 202 Christianity in North Africa 203 The Barbarian Invasions: The Fall of Rome 204 Chapter Review 205

192

Hindu and Buddhist States and Societies in Asia, 100–1000

208

TRAVELER: Xuanzang

Religion and the State in India, 100–1000 211 The Rise of Greater Vehicle Teachings in Buddhism 212 The Rise of Hinduism, 300–900 213

Q WORLD HISTORY IN TODAY’S WORLD: Snapshot of Hinduism and Buddhism 214

The Beginnings of the Chola Kingdom, ca. 900 215

State, Society, and Religion in Southeast Asia, 300–1000 216 Buddhist Kingdoms Along the Trade Routes 217 Buddhist and Hindu Kingdoms of Inland Southeast Asia, 300–1000 217

Contents

VISUAL EVIDENCE: Borobudur: A Buddhist Monument in Java, Indonesia 220

Buddhism and the Revival of Empire in China, 100–1000 222 Buddhism in China, 100–589 222 China Reuniﬁed, 589–907 224

State, Society, and Religion in Korea and Japan, to 1000 230 Buddhism and Regional Kingdoms in Korea, to 1000 231 The Emergence of Japan 233

Chapter Review 236

Q MOVEMENT OF IDEAS: Teaching Buddhism in a Confucian Society 226 The Long Decline of the Tang Dynasty, 755–907 228 The Tibetan Empire, ca. 617–ca. 842 230 CHAPTER

Islamic Empires of Western Asia and Africa, 600–1258

238

TRAVELER: Khaizuran

The Origins of Islam and the First Caliphs, 610–750 241 The Life and Teachings of Muhammad, ca. 570–632 241 The First Caliphs and the Sunni-Shi’ite Split, 632–661 244 Early Conquests, 632–661 245

Q MOVEMENT OF IDEAS: The Five Pillars of Islam 246 The Umayyad Caliphate, 661–750 248 The Conquest of North Africa, 661–750

Abbasid Society 253 Slavery 254 Politics of the Harem 256 The Breakup of the Abbasid Empire, 809–936

VISUAL EVIDENCE: Zubaydah’s Road 258

The Rise of Regional Centers After the Abbasids, 945–1258 260 Regional Islamic States, 945–1258 Ibn Jubayr’s Hajj in 1183 262

249

The Abbasid Caliphate United, 750–945 250

257

260

Q WORLD HISTORY IN TODAY’S WORLD: The Hajj Today 263 Chapter Review 266

Baghdad, City of Learning 250 Abbasid Governance 252

CHAPTER

The Multiple Centers of Europe, 500–1000

268

TRAVELERS: Gudrid and Thorﬁnn Karlsefni

Byzantium, the Eastern Roman Empire, 476–1071 271 Justinian and the Legacy of Rome, 476–565 271 The Impact of the Plague and the Arab Conquests, 541–767 273 Religion and State, 767–1071 274

The Germanic Peoples of Western Europe, 481–1000 276

Germanic Society Before 500 276 The Merovingians, 481–751 278 Charlemagne and the Carolingians, 751–ca. 1000 280

The Age of the Vikings, 793–1050 282 284 Q WORLD HISTORY IN TODAY’S WORLD: The Days of the Week 285 Viking Raids on Great Britain, 793–1066

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Contents

Scandinavian Society 285 Scandinavian Religion 286 The Scandinavian Migrations to Iceland and Greenland, 870–980 287 The Scandinavians in Vinland, ca. 1000 287

VISUAL EVIDENCE: The Scandinavian Settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows 288

The Peoples Living in Modern-Day Russia Kievan Rus, 880–1054 293

292

■ MOVEMENT OF IDEAS: Ibn Fadlan’s Description of a Rus Burial 294 The Growing Divide Between the Eastern and Western Churches 296

Chapter Review 297

Russia, Land of the Rus, to 1054 291 CHAPTER

Expanding Trade Networks in Africa and India, 1000–1500

300

TRAVELER: Ibn Battuta

Reconstructing the History of Sub-Saharan Africa Before 1000 C.E. 303 The Geography and Languages of Sub-Saharan Africa 303 The Spread of Bantu Languages 304 Society and Family Life 306

The Kingdom of Mali in Sub-Saharan Africa 307 The Kingdom of Ghana, ca. 700–1000 308 Sundiata and the Founding of the Mali Kingdom, ca. 1230 308

Q WORLD HISTORY IN TODAY’S WORLD: Griottes in Mali 310 Trans-Saharan Trade Networks 311 Q MOVEMENT OF IDEAS: Mali Religion in the Epic of Sundiata 312 Society in Mali 314

Islamic North Africa and the Mamluk Empire 316 The Sultanates of North Africa 316 The Mamluk Empire, 1250–1517 317 Cairo, Baghad’s Successor as the Cultural Capital of the Islamic World 317 Eyewitness to the 1348 Outbreak of Plague in Damascus 318

East Africa, India, and the Trade Networks of the Indian Ocean 319 The East African Coast 319 Great Zimbabwe and Its Satellites, ca. 1275– 1550 321

VISUAL EVIDENCE: The Ruins of Great Zimbabwe 322 The Delhi Sultanate and the Hindu Kingdoms of Southern India 324

Chapter Review 326 CHAPTER

China’s Commercial Revolution, ca. 900–1276 TRAVELER: Li Qingzhao

The Five Dynasties Period and the Song Dynasty, 907–1276 331 The Rise of the Northern Song Dynasty, 960– 1126 331 The Collapse of the Northern Song, 1126– 1127 332 China Divided: The Jin and the Southern Song, 1127–1234 333

The Commercial Revolution in China, 900–1300 335 Changes in Agriculture and the Rise of the South 335 The Currency of the Song Dynasty 336 Iron and Steel 337 Urban Life 337

328

Contents

VISUAL EVIDENCE: The Commercial Vitality of a Chinese City 338 Footbinding 340

Book Publishing and the Education Boom 341 Woodblock Printing and the Invention of Movable Type 341 The Education of Women 342 The Growth of Civil Service Examinations 343

Q WORLD HISTORY IN TODAY’S WORLD: Exams in Today’s China 344

Religious Life During the Song 345

CHAPTER

xiii

Neo-Confucian Teachings 346 Day-to-Day Religious Life 346

Vietnam, Korea, Japan, and the World Beyond 347 Q MOVEMENT OF IDEAS: The Teachings of Neo-Confucianism 348 Technological Breakthroughs 350 Vietnam 351 Korea 352 Japan 353 The World Beyond East Asia 353 Chapter Review 354

Europe’s Commercial Revolution, 1000–1400

356

TRAVELERS: Peter Abelard and Heloise

The Cerealization and Urbanization of Europe 359 Agricultural Innovation 359 Population Growth and Urbanization 360 Land Use and Social Change, 1000–1350 361

VISUAL EVIDENCE: The Gothic Cathedral at Chartres 362

The Rise of the European Universities, 1100–1400 365 Education in Europe Before the Universities, ca. 1100 365 The Import of Learning and Technology from the Islamic World, 1150–1250 366 The Universities Come of Age, 1150–1250 367

Q MOVEMENT OF IDEAS: Adelard of Bath 368

The Movement for Church Reform, 1000–1300 370 The Structure of the Church Reform from Above 371

371

Reform Within the Established Monastic Orders 372 Reform Outside the Established Orders 373

The Crusades, 1095–1291 374 374 Q WORLD HISTORY IN TODAY’S WORLD: The Memory of the Crusades in Istanbul 377 The Crusades Within Europe 377 The Crusades to the Holy Land

Disaster and Recovery, 1300–1400 378 Continuing Expansion of Trade Outside Europe 378 The Losses from Rural Famines and the Black Death 380 The Hundred Years’ War Between England and France, 1337–1453 381 The Consolidation of Monarchy in France and England 382

Chapter Review 383

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Contents

CHAPTER

The Mongols and Their Successors, 1200–1500

386

TRAVELER: William of Rubruck The Qipchaq Khanate and the Rise of Moscow 403 The Chaghatai Khanate and Timur the Lame

From Nomads to World Conquerors, 1200–1227 389 The Mongols’ Nomadic Way of Life Before 1200 389 Religious Practices of the Mongols 389

The Ottomans, 1300–1500 405 The Rise of the Ottomans, 1300–1400 405 The Ottoman Military 405 The Ottoman Conquest of Constantinople, 1453 406

Q WORLD HISTORY IN TODAY’S WORLD: Modern Nomads 390 Mongol Society 390 The Rise of Chinggis Khan 391 Chinggis’s Army 392 Mongol Governance 394

VISUAL EVIDENCE: The Siege of Constantinople, 1453 408

The United Mongol Empire After Chinggis, 1229–1260 394 The Reign of Ögödei, 1229–1241 The Postal Relay System 396 At Möngke’s Court 397

403

395

Q MOVEMENT OF IDEAS: A Debate Among Christians, Buddhists, and Muslims at the Mongol Court 398 The Empire Comes Apart, 1259–1263 400

East Asia During and After Mongol Rule, 1263–1500 410 The Conquests of Khubilai Khan and Their Limits 410 The Reign of the First Ming Emperor, 1368– 1398 411 The Chinese Voyages to South and Southeast Asia and Africa, 1405–1433 412

Chapter Review 414

Successor States in Western Asia, 1263– 1500 401 The Il-khanate in Iran, 1256–1335

CHAPTER

401

Maritime Expansion in the Atlantic World, 1400–1600

418

TRAVELER: Christopher Columbus

The Aztec Empire of Mexico, 1325–1519 421 The Aztec Settlement of Tenochtitlan 421 Nahua Religion and Writing System 422 Nahua Society 423 The Military and the Conquests of the Aztec

The Inca Empire, 1400–1532 424 Inca Religion and Andean Society

425

424

Q WORLD HISTORY IN TODAY’S WORLD: Miss Bolivia Speaks Out 426 The Inca Expansion 426 Inca Rule of Subject Populations 427 VISUAL EVIDENCE: The Ten Stages of Inca Life According to Guamán Poma 428

Intellectual and Geographic Exploration in Europe, 1300–1500 431 The Rise of Humanism

431

Contents

Europe’s First Books Printed with Movable Type 433 Early European Exploration in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, 1350–1440 433 Portuguese Exploration of Africa and the Slave Trade After 1444 435

The Iberian Conquest of Mexico, Peru, and Brazil, 1492–1580 436 Columbus’s First Voyage to the Americas, 1492 437 A Comparison of Columbus’s and Zheng He’s Voyages 438

CHAPTER

Spanish Exploration After Columbus’s First Voyage, 1493–1517 439 The Conquest of Mexico, 1517–1540 440 The Spanish Conquest of Peru, 1532–1550 442 The Portuguese Settlement of Brazil, 1500– 1580 443

Q MOVEMENT OF IDEAS: The Sacriﬁce of Isaac: A Sixteenth-Century Nahuatl Play 444

The Columbian Exchange 446 Chapter Review 448

Maritime Expansion in Afro-Eurasia, 1500–1700

450

TRAVELER: Matteo Ricci

Maritime Trade Connections: Europe, the Indian Ocean, and Africa, 1500–1660 453 Portugal’s Entry into the Indian Ocean, 1498– 1600 453 The Dutch East India Company, 1600–1660 455 Origins of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1483– 1660 457

VISUAL EVIDENCE: An Ivory Mask from Benin, West Africa 458

The Politics of Empire in Southern and Eastern Asia, 1500–1660 460 461 Q WORLD HISTORY IN TODAY’S WORLD: Conﬂict at Ayodhya 462 The Rise of Mughal India, 1526–1627

Notes C-1 Text Credits

The Apogee and Decline of Ming China, 1500– 1644 463 Tradition and Innovation: Korea, Vietnam, and Japan, 1500–1650 466

Eurasian Intellectual and Religious Encounters, 1500–1620 468 Challenges to Catholicism, 1517–1620 468 Islam, Sikhism, and Akbar’s “Divine Faith,” 1500–1605 471 Ricci in China: Catholicism Meets NeoConfucianism, 1582–1610 472

Q MOVEMENT OF IDEAS: Christianity in China 474 Chapter Review 477

Index C-5

I-1

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MAPS 1.1 1.2 2.1 2.2 2.3 3.1 3.2 4.1 5.1 5.2 6.1 6.2 7.1 7.2 7.3 8.1 8.2 9.1 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 11.1 12.1 13.1 13.2 14.1 15.1 15.2 15.3 16.1 16.2

Ancient Southwestern Asia 22 Early Agriculture 24 Ancient Egypt and Nubia 40 The International System, ca. 1500–1250 B.C.E. 47 The Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empires at Their Greatest Extent 52 Indus River Valley Society 63 Distribution of Languages in Modern South Asia 67 The Han Empire at Its Greatest Extent, ca. 50 B.C.E. 110 Complex Societies in the Americas, ca. 1200 B.C.E. 119 Paciﬁc Migration Routes Before 1500 136 Greek and Phoenician Settlement in the Mediterranean 159 The Empires of Persia and Alexander the Great 168 The Roman Empire at Its Greatest Extent 190 The Spread Christianity 198 The Germanic Migrations 201 The Spread of Buddhism and Hinduism to Southeast Asia 218 Korea and Japan, ca. 550 231 The Abbasid Caliphate 255 The Byzantine Empire 272 The Carolingian Realms 281 The Viking Raids, 793–1066 283 Kievan Rus 291 African Trade Routes, 1200–1500 304 China’s Trade Relations with the External World, 1225 351 The Crusades 375 Movement of the Plague and Trade Routes 379 The Four Quadrants of the Mongol Empire After 1263 402 The Aztec Empire 422 The Inca Empire 427 The Age of Maritime Expansion, 1400–1600 434 Maritime Trade in the Eastern Indian Ocean and East Asia 464 The Protestant Reformation 470

xvii

VISUAL EVIDENCE 1 2 CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 6 CHAPTER 7 CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER 10 CHAPTER 11 CHAPTER 12 CHAPTER 13 CHAPTER 14 CHAPTER 15 CHAPTER 16 CHAPTER CHAPTER

xviii

The First Art Objects in the World 10 The Narmer Palette 42 The Buddhist Stupa at Sanchi 74 The Terracotta Warriors of the Qin Founder’s Tomb 104 The Imposing Capital of Teotihuacan 122 The Parade of Nations at Darius’s Palace at Persepolis 154 Pompeii 188 Borobudur: A Buddhist Monument in Java, Indonesia 220 Zubaydah’s Road 258 The Scandinavian Settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows 288 The Ruins of Great Zimbabwe 322 The Commercial Vitality of a Chinese City 338 The Gothic Cathedral at Chartres 362 The Siege of Constantinople, 1453 406 The Ten Stages of Inca Life According to Guamán Poma 428 An Ivory Mask from Benin, West Africa 458

MOVEMENT

IDEAS

1 The Worship of Goddesses 14 2 The Flood Narrative in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Hebrew Bible 54 CHAPTER 3 The First Sermon of the Buddha and CHAPTER CHAPTER

4 CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 6 CHAPTER 7 CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER 10 CHAPTER 11 CHAPTER 12 CHAPTER 13 CHAPTER 14 CHAPTER 15 CHAPTER 16 CHAPTER

Ashoka’s Fourth Major Rock Edit 80 The Analects and Sima Qian’s Letter to Ren An 98 The Ballgame in Popul Vuh 128 Doing What Is Right in The Avesta and the Bible 150 Early Christianity in the Eastern Provinces 196 Teaching Buddhism in a Confucian Society 226 The Five Pillars of Islam 246 Ibn Fadlan’s Description of a Rus Burial 294 Mali Religion in the Epic of Sundiata 312 The Teachings of Neo-Confucianism 348 Adelard of Bath 368 A Debate Among Christians, Buddhists, and Muslims at the Mongol Court The Sacriﬁce of Isaac: A Sixteenth-Century Nahuatl Play 444 Christianity in China 474

398

xix

WORLD HISTORY 1 2 CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 6 CHAPTER 7 CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER 10 CHAPTER 11 CHAPTER 12 CHAPTER 13 CHAPTER 14 CHAPTER 15 CHAPTER 16 CHAPTER CHAPTER

TODAY’S WORLD

Kennewick Man in Court 20 The World’s First Beer 35 The Modern Caste System and Its Ancient Antecedents 70 The Use of Component Parts in Chinese Food 93 The World’s First Chocolate 125 The Olympics 161 Snapshot of Christianity 202 Snapshot of Hinduism and Buddhism 214 The Hajj Today 263 The Days of the Week 285 Griottes in Mali 310 Examinations in Today’s China 344 The Memory of the Crusades in Istanbul 377 Modern Nomads 390 Miss Bolivia Speaks Out 426 Conﬂict at Ayodhya 462

PREFACE What makes this book different from other world history textbooks? • • • • • • •

Each chapter opens with a narrative about a traveler that grabs the reader’s attention. Shorter than most world history textbooks, this survey still covers all of the major topics required in a world history course. The book’s theme of “movement” highlights cultural contact. A single authorial voice makes many comparisons among different societies, reinforcing what students have learned in previous chapters. Innovative, reader-friendly maps show the travelers’ routes while inviting students to think analytically about geography and its role in world history. A beautiful, open, student-friendly design––with chapter outlines, bold key terms, and an on-page glossary and pronunciation guide––helps students learn better. Chapter-opening focus questions and chapter summaries (which can be downloaded to an MP3) help students grasp the main ideas of the chapters.

This world history textbook will, we hope, be enjoyable for students to read and for instructors to teach. We have focused on thirty-two different people and the journeys they took, starting ten thousand years ago with Kennewick Man (Chapter 1) and concluding in the twenty-ﬁrst century with the ﬁlm director Mira Nair. Each of the thirty-two chapters (one for each week of the school year) introduces multiple themes. First, the travelers’ narratives introduce the home society and the new civilizations they visited. This demonstrates the movement of people, ideas, trade goods, and artistic motifs. We introduce other evidence, often drawn from primary sources, to help students reason like historians. Each chapter also covers the effects of increasing contact and trade among civilizations, changes in political structure, spread of world religions, and ﬁnally, the prevailing social structure and gender. These chapter-opening narratives enhance the scope and depth of the topics covered. The travelers take us to Mesopotamia with Gilgamesh, to Africa with the hajj pilgrim Ibn Battuta, to Peru with the cross-dressing soldier and adventurer Catalina de Erauso, to the Americas with the African Olaudah Equiano, and to Britain during the Industrial Revolution with the Russian socialist Alexander Herzen. They wrote vivid accounts, often important sources about these long ago events that shaped our world. Chapter 12, for example, tells the story of the Chinese poet Li Qingzhao. She lived during the Song dynasty (960–1275) and experienced ﬁrsthand China’s commercial revolution and calamitous warfare. Her eyewitness account of her husband’s death brings this pivotal period in Chinese history to life. Students also learn about the contacts between China and Japan, Korea, and Vietnam during this time of economic growth. In Chapter 24, the focus is on the great Japanese reformer Fukuzawa Yûkichi, an inﬂuential participant in the revolutionary changes that accompanied his country’s Meiji Restoration (1868). Students new to world history, or to history in general, will ﬁnd it easier, we hope, to focus on the experience of thirty-two individuals before focusing on the broader themes of a new society each week. Instead of a canned list of dates, each chapter covers the important topics at a sensible and careful pace, without compromising coverage or historical rigor. Students compare the traveler’s perceptions with alternative sources, and so awaken their interest in the larger developments. Our goal was to select the most compelling topics and engaging illustrations from the entire record of human civilization, presented in a clear spatial and temporal framework, to counter the view of history as an interminable compendium of geographical place names and facts. We have chosen a range of travelers, both male and female, from all over the world. Many travelers were well-born and well-educated, and many were not. The Scandinavian explorers Thorﬁnn and Gudrid

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Karlsefni (Chapter 10) and the blind Chinese sailor Xie Qinggao (Chapter 20) were born into ordinary families. These individuals help cast our world history in a truly global format, avoiding the Eurocentrism that prompted the introduction of world history courses in the ﬁrst place. The book originated at a meeting in 1998 that reviewed twenty or so of the most important world history textbooks on the market. Most of the books seemed similar and all felt encyclopedic. They were crammed with facts, big as phone books, and hard to read. Everything about these books was sacriﬁced for the sake of comprehensiveness. Few of these texts conveyed the excitement––or pleasure––of studying history. When we asked Ken Curtis to join the project, he responded very cautiously to the idea of co-authoring a traditional world history textbook. But eventually the chance to write a different type of book, one focusing on the experience of individual travelers, one that worked toward making students enthusiastic about world history, won him over. Achieving the right balance between the traveler’s experience and the course material has certainly been a challenge. After circulating draft chapters to over 120 instructors of the course, we have found that most agree on the basic topics to be covered. The long process of revision resulted in our giving less space to the traveler and more to the basic themes of the book. We realized that we had achieved the right balance when the reviewers asked for more information about the travelers. In this way, our book is self-contained but open-ended, should instructors or their students wish to do more reading. Some instructors may decide to devote some time in their lectures to the travelers, who are indeed fascinating; students, we hope, will naturally be inclined to write term papers about them. Almost all of these travel accounts are available in English translation, listed in the suggested readings at the end of each chapter. If instructors assign readings in addition to the textbook, they can assign those travel accounts from the world area with which they are most familiar. Where a Europeanist might assign additional readings from Herodotus, for example, an Asianist might prefer to assign the narratives of the Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang. We aspire to answer many of the unmet needs of professors and students in world history. Because our book is not encyclopedic, and because each chapter begins with a narrative of a trip, our book is more readable than its competitors, which strain for all-inclusive coverage. They pack so many names and facts into their text that they leave little time to introduce beginning students to historical method. Because our book gives students a chance to read primary sources in depth, particularly in the Movement of Ideas feature (described below), instructors can spend class time teaching students how to reason historically––not just imparting the details of a given national history. Each chapter includes discussion questions that make it easier for instructors new to world history to facilitate interactive learning. Each chapter closes with answers to those questions: a feature in response to student views as expressed in focus groups. Our approach particularly suits the needs of young professors who have been trained in only one geographic area of history. Our book does not presuppose that instructors already have broad familiarity with the history of each important world civilization. Volume 1, which covers material from the ﬁrst hominids to 1500, introduces students to the important regions and societies of the world: ancient Africa and the Americas (Chapter 1), Mesopotamia and Egypt (Chapter 2), India (Chapter 3), China (Chapter 4), and the Americas again (Chapter 5). The next section of the book emphasizes the rise of world religions: Zoroastrianism in the Persian empire (Chapter 6); Rome’s adoption of Christianity (Chapter 7); the spread of Buddhism and Hinduism in East, South, and Southeast Asia (Chapter 8); and the rise of Islam (Chapter 9). The ﬁnal third of Volume 1 focuses on the parallel commercial revolutions in Europe and China (Chapters 12 and 13) and the gradual increase in knowledge about other societies resulting from the Vikings’ voyages to Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland (Chapter 10); Ibn Battuta’s trips in North, Central, and East Africa (Chapter 11); the Mongol conquest (Chapter 14); and the Spanish and Portuguese voyages to the Americas (Chapter 15). Because many of the people who traveled long distances in the premodern world did so for religious reasons, many of the travelers in Volume 1 were pilgrims. Their experiences help to reinforce student’s understanding of the traditions of different world religions. Volume 2 explores the development of the increasingly interconnected modern world, with the rise and fall of empires a persistent theme. We explore the new maritime trade routes that connected Europe to Asia

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(Chapter 16) and the relationship between religion and politics in both the Christian and Muslim empires of western Eurasia (Chapter 17). The analysis of the colonial Americas (Chapter 18) is expanded by Chapter 19’s discussion of Africa and the Atlantic slave trade. The expansion of Asian empires (Chapter 20) is complemented by an analysis of the relationship between science and empire in the Paciﬁc Ocean and around the world (Chapter 21). The role of revolutions in modern history is addressed in Chapters 22 and 23. Chapters 24 through 26 address the global impact of the Industrial Revolution in Asia, the Americas, Africa, and Southeast Asia. The twentieth century is explored (Chapters 27–31) with an emphasis on the common experiences of globalized humanity through world wars, economic upheavals, and the bitter divisions of the Cold War. Though we cannot properly assess twenty-ﬁrst century conditions using the historian’s tools, Chapter 32 attempts to lay out some of the main challenges and opportunities we face today.

Themes Our book has four themes: (1) increasing contact; (2) changing political structures of empire; (3) religion; (4) and social structure. The ﬁrst is linked to our overall theme of movement, but the other three––the changing political structures of empire, religion, and social structure––form the backbone of all world history classes. The book develops these themes in each chapter. Movement is the key theme of world history because world historians focus on connections among the different societies of the past. The movement of people, whether in voluntary migrations or forced slavery, has been of the most fruitful topics for world historians, as are the experience of individual travelers like Ibn Battuta or Simón Bolívar. Their reactions to the people they met on their long journeys reveal much about their home societies as well as about the societies they visited.

Theme 1: The Effects of Increasing Contact Our focus on individual travelers leads naturally to the ﬁrst major theme of the book: the increasing ease of contact among different civilizations with the passage of time. This theme highlights the developments that resulted from improved communications, travel among different places, the movement of trade goods, and the mixing of peoples: the movement of world religions, mass migrations, and the spread of diseases like the plague. The book shows how travel has changed over time––how the distance covered by travelers has increased at the same time that the duration of trips has decreased. As a result, more and more people have been able to go to societies distant from their own. The book examines the different reasons for travel over the centuries. While some people were captured in battle and forced to go to new places, others visited different societies to teach or to learn the beliefs of a new religion like Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. This theme, of necessity, treats questions about the environment: how far and over what terrain did early man travel? How did sailors learn to use monsoon winds to their advantage? What were the effects of technological breakthroughs like steamships, trains, and airplanes––and the use of fossil fuels to power them? Because students can link the experience of individual travelers to this theme, movement provides a memorable organizing principle for the book.

Theme 2: Changing Political Structures of Empire Our second theme, the changing structure of empire, introduces students to political history. This theme permits students to compare the different empires under consideration and to understand that empires became increasingly complex over time, especially as central governments took advantage of new technologies to register and to control their subjects. Students need not commit long lists of rulers’ names to memory: instead they focus on those leaders who created innovative political structures. After an opening chapter on the peopling of the world, the book begins with the very ancient empires (like Mesopotamia and Egypt) that did not control large swathes of territory and progress to those that did––like Qin dynasty China, Achaemenid Persia, and ancient Rome. It examines the political structures of empire: What was the relationship of

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the central government to the provinces? How were taxes collected and spent? How were ofﬁcials recruited? Such questions remained remarkably persistent into the modern period, when societies around the world had to contend with rising Western empires. The focus on the structure of empire helps students to remember the different civilizations they have studied, to explore the borrowing that occurred among various empires, and to understand how the empires were structured differently. This theme ﬁts well with travel because the different travelers were able to make certain journeys because of the political situation at the time. For example, William of Rubruck was able to travel across all of Eurasia because of the uniﬁcation brought by the Mongol empire, while Jean de Chardin’s tavels from France to Iran were facilitated by the size and strength of the Ottoman Empire.

Theme 3: Religion Our third theme, religion, follows naturally from the second because many rulers patronized religions to increase their control over the people they ruled. Students of world history must grasp the teachings of the major world religions, and, more important, they must have some understanding of how originally regional or national religions moved across political borders to become world religions. Volume 1 introduces the religions of Judaism (Chapter 2), Buddhism (Chapters 3 and 9), Confucianism (Chapter 4), Christianity (Chapters 6 and 10), Hinduism (Chapter 8), and Islam (Chapter 9). Volume 2 provides context for today’s complex interplay of religion and politics (Chapter 17) and the complex cultural outcomes that occurred when such religions expanded into new world regions (Chapters 16 and 18). The renewed contemporary focus on religion, as seen in the rise of fundamentalist movements in various parts of the world, is analyzed in the two ﬁnal chapters. The theme of religion ﬁts well with our focus on travelers. Some chapters examine the experience of religious travelers––such as the Chinese monk Xuanzang who journeyed to India and Matteo Ricci who hoped to convert the Chinese emperor to Christianity. Other travelers did not travel for religious reasons, but they had their own religious beliefs, encountered the religious traditions of the peoples they conquered, and sparked religious exchanges. Because the different chapters of the book pay close attention to the religious traditions of diverse societies, students gain a familiarity with the primary religious traditions of the world.

Theme 4: Social Structure Our ﬁnal theme is social structure. Students of world history need to understand how societies have been structured and how these ways of organizing society have changed over the past ﬁve thousand years. Abandoning the egalitarian structures of the distant past, Sumerian and Egyptian civilizations and their successors developed more hierarchical societies. Between 500 and 1500 both Europe and China moved from land-based aristocracies toward bureaucracy, but European and Chinese governments conceived of bureaucracy very differently. Some societies had extensive slavery; others did not. Because the travelers were acutely aware of the differences between their own societies and those they visited, they provide crucial comparisons, although their observations were not always correct. For example, in the early seventh century the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang described the Indian caste system as though it were rigidly structured, but he was not aware of groups who had changed the status of their caste. The topic of gender falls under social structure, and each chapter devotes extensive space to the experience of women. Because in many societies literacy among women was severely limited, especially in the premodern era, we have included as many women travelers as possible: the slave girl and eventual wife of the caliph, Khaizuran (Chapter 9), Leif Eriksson’s sister-in-law Gudrid (Chapter 10), the Chinese poet Li Qingzhao (Chapter 12), Heloise (Chapter 13), Catalina de Erauso (Chapter 18), Pauline Johnson-Tekahionwake (Chapter 25), Louise Bryant (Chapter 27), Halide Edib (Chapter 28), Nancy Wake (Chapter 29), and Mira Nair (Chapter 32). In addition, each chapter provides extensive coverage of gender so that students can grasp the experience of ordinary women.

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Features We see the features of this book as an opportunity to help students to understand the main text better. Each chapter opens with a map feature about the route of the chapter’s traveler and then presents––not always in the same order––World History in Today’s World, Movement of Ideas, and Visual Evidence.

Chapter Opening Map At the beginning of each chapter is a map illustrating the route of the traveler. With their imaginative graphics, these chapter-opening maps look more like the maps in a travel book than the usual textbook maps. This section provides a biographical sketch for each traveler, a portrait, and extended passage from his or her writings (or, if not available, an extended passage about the individual). The goal of this feature is to capture the student’s attention at the outset of each chapter. Although many students do not bother to read the beginning of each chapter, we hope that shifting smoothly from the traveler to the focus questions encourages them to do so.

World History in Today’s World This brief feature (no longer than 400 words, more often around 250) picks one element of modern life that originated in the period under study. We have made every effort to ﬁnd things interesting to students (“The World’s First Beer,” “Japanese Baseball,” and “The Coffeehouse in World History”) and to highlight their relationship to the past. This feature should provide material to trigger discussion and help instructors explain why world history matters since so often students simply have no sense that the past has anything to do with their own lives.

Movement of Ideas This feature offers an introduction, an extensive excerpt from one or more primary sources, and discussion questions. The chosen passages emphasize the movement of ideas, usually by contrasting two different explanations of the same idea. This feature aims to develop the core historical skill of analyzing original sources. Topics include “Doing What Is Right in The Avesta and the Bible” and “Fascism and Youth.”

Visual Evidence The goal of this feature is to train students to examine either an artifact, a work of art, or a photograph and to glean historical information from them. These features are illustrated with pictures or photographs to explain the importance of the ﬁnd or the artwork. A close-up photograph of the Chinese terracotta warriors, for example, shows students how the ﬁgurines were mass-produced yet have individual features. Potraits of George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte lead students to analyze the symbolism they contain to view the portraits as representations of political power. Discussion questions help students analyze the information presented.

Ancillaries A wide array of supplements accompany this text to help students better master the material and to help instructors teach from the book: • • • •

Student Website Instructor Website CL Testing CD-ROM (powered by Diploma) Online Instructor’s Resource Manual

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PowerPoint maps, images, and lecture outlines PowerPoint questions for personal response systems Blackboard™ and WebCT™ course cartridges Interactive ebook HistoryFinder

The Student Website is a companion website for students, which features a wide array of resources to help students master the subject matter. The website, prepared by Mark Seidl, includes material such as learning objectives, chapter outlines, and pre-class quizzes for a student to consult before going to class; review material like interactive ﬂashcards, chronological ordering exercises, primary sources, and interactive map exercises; and our successful ACE brand of practice tests as well as other self-testing materials. Students can also ﬁnd additional text resources such as an online glossary, audio MP3 ﬁles of chapter summaries, and material on how to study more effectively in the “General Resources” section. Throughout the text, icons direct students to relevant exercises and self-testing material located on the Student Website. The Instructor Website is a companion website for instructors. It features all of the material on the Student Website plus additional password-protected resources that help instructors teach the course, such as an electronic version of the Instructor’s Resource Manual and PowerPoint slides. Access both the Student and Instructor Websites for this text by visiting www.cengage.com/history/hansen/voyages1e. The Instructor’s Resource Manual, prepared by Candace Gregory-Abbott of California State University, Sacramento, contains instructional objectives, chapter outlines, lecture topics and suggestions for discussion, classroom activities and writing assignments, analyzing primary sources, activities for the traveler feature, map activities, geography questions, audiovisual bibliographies, suggested readings, and Internet resources. CL Testing (powered by Diploma) offers instructors a ﬂexible and powerful tool for test generation and test management. Now supported by the Brownstone Research Group’s market-leading Diploma software, this new version of CL Testing signiﬁcantly improves on functionality and ease of use by offering all the tools needed to create, author, deliver, and customize multiple types of tests. Diploma is currently in use at thousands of college and university campuses throughout the United States and Canada. The CL Testing content for this text was developed by Dolores Grapsas of New River Community College and offers multiple-choice questions (with page references to the correct response), key term identiﬁcation, geography questions (with blank outline maps provided), and essay questions (with guidelines for how to effectively write the essay). We are pleased to offer a collection of World Civilization PowerPoint lecture outlines, maps, and images for use in classroom presentations. Detailed lecture outlines correspond to the book’s chapters and make it easier for instructors to cover the major topics in class. The art collection includes all of the photos and maps in the text. PowerPoint questions and answers for use with personal response system software are also offered to adopters free of charge. A variety of assignable homework and testing material has been developed to work with the Blackboard™ and WebCT ™ course management systems. Blackboard ™ and WebCT ™ are web-based online learning environments that provide instructors with a gradebook and communication capabilities, such as synchronous and asynchronous chats and announcement postings. They offer access to assignments such as more than 650 gradable homework exercises, writing assignments, interactive maps with questions, primary sources, discussion questions for online discussion boards, and tests, which all come ready-to-use. Instructors can choose to use the content as is, modify it, or even add their own. They even contain an interactive ebook, which contains in-text links to interactive maps, primary sources, and audio pronunciation ﬁles, as well as review and self-testing material for students. HistoryFinder, a new Cengage Learning technology initiative, helps instructors create rich and exciting classroom presentations. This online tool offers thousands of online resources, including art, photographs, maps, primary sources, multimedia content, Associated Press interactive modules, and ready-made PowerPoint slides. HistoryFinder’s assets can easily be searched by keyword or browsed from pull-down menus by topic, media type, or by textbook. Instructors can then browse, preview, and download resources straight from the website.

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Acknowledgments It is a pleasure to thank the many instructors who read and critiqued the manuscript through its development: Wayne Ackerson, Salisbury University; Sanjam Ahluwalia, Northern Arizona University; Mark A. Allee, Loyola University, Chicago; Michael Thad Allen, Georgia Institute of Technology; Patricia Ali, Morris College; Ali Al-Taie, Shaw University; Melanie A. Bailey, South Dakota State University; William P. Bakken, Rochester Community and Technical College; Brett A. Berliner, Morgan State University; Corinne Blake, Rowan University; Stanley E. Blake, Ohio State University; Wayne Bowen, Ouachita Baptist University; Connie Brand, Meridian Community College; Michael Burger, Mississippi University for Women; Suzanne E. Cahill, University of California, San Diego; Michael Cassella-Blackburn, Peninsula College; Leslie G. Cecil, Baylor University; Robert Chisholm, Columbia Basin College; William Clay Poe, Sonoma State University; Paul R. Clementi, Immaculata University; Robert Cliver, Humboldt State University; Christine A. Colin, Mercyhurst College; Theron Corse, Tennessee State University; Scott Cotton, University of Texas, Dallas; Eric Cunningham, Gonzaga University; Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane, University of Minnesota, Morris; Hilde De Weerdt, University of Tennessee, Knoxville; Timothy C. Dowling, Virginia Military Institute; Mark Dupuy, Edith Cowan University; Elizabeth Endicott, Middlebury College; Krista Feinberg, Lakeland College; Kyle Fingerson, UW Rock County; Eve Fisher, South Dakota State University; David Flaten, Tompkins Cortland Community College; Monica Fleming, Edgecombe Community College; Hal Friedman, Henry Ford Community College; Erik Gilbert, Arkansas State University; Dolores Grapsas, New River Community College; Robert Greene, University of Montana; Candace Gregory-Abbott, California State University, Sacramento; Sumit Guha, Brown University; Jim Halverson, Judson University; Jason Hardgrave, University of Southern Indiana; David Head, Jon Tyler Community College; James Heitzman, University of California, Davis; Henry Heller, University of Manitoba; Craig Hendricks, Long Beach City College; Gerald Herman, Northeastern University; Lisa R. Holliday, Appalachian State University; Tamara L. Hunt, University of Southern Indiana; Raymond P. Hylton, Virginia Union University; Matthew Jacobs, University of Florida; Efﬁe Jones, Crichton College; David M. Kalivas, Middlesex Community College; Joy Kammerling, Eastern Illinois University; Frank Karpiel, College of Charleston; Robert L. Kelly, University of Wyoming; Steven King, Valley City State University; Michael Krenn, Appalachian State University; Michael Kulikowski, University of Tennessee; Scott Levi, University of Louisville; Marilyn Levine, Lewis-Clark State College; Michael Lewis, Salisbury University; Ann Livschiz, IPFW; Christine E. Lovasz-Kaiser, University of Southern Indiana; Norman D. Love, El Paso Community College; Lynn MacKay, Brandon University; Moira Maguire, University of Arkansas, Little Rock; Fred McDonald, Cecil College; Patrick F. McDevitt, University at Buffalo SUNY; Mark McLeod, University of Delaware; Brendan McManus, Bemidji State University; John T. McNay, University of Cincinnati, RWC campus; Eben Miller, Southern Maine Community College; Garold Mills; Tim Myers, Butler Community College; Ken Orosz, University of Maine at Farmington; Donald Ostrowski, Harvard University Extension School; John Pinheiro, Aquinas College; Margaret Power, Illinois Institute of Technology; Richard Reiman, South Georgia College; Robert Reinert, Our Lady of the Lake University; Len Rose, Myers University; Ivancica Schrunk, University of St. Thomas; Jane Scimeca, Brookdale Community College; Bruce Scott, Northeastern Junior College; Jonathan Seitz, Drexel University; Courtney Shah, Lower Columbia University; Colonel Rose Mary Sheldon, Virginia Military Institute; David Simonelli, Youngstown State University; Paul D. Steeves, Stetson University; Forrest Studebaker, Clinton Community College; Steve Tamari, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville; Loyd Uglow, Southwestern Assemblies of God University; David J. Ulbrich, Ball State University; Michael G. Vann, California State University, Sacramento; Dr. Maria Vecchio, Felician College; Tommy Walter, Jacksonville University; Charles Wheeler, University of California, Irvine; Gregory R. Witkowski, Ball State University; William Wood, Point Loma Nazarene University; Aharon Zorea, University of Wisconsin; and Alex Zukas, National University, San Diego. Valerie Hansen would also like to thank the following for their guidance on speciﬁc chapters: Benjamin Foster, Yale University; Karen Foster, Yale University; Stephen Colvin, London University; Phyllis Granoff,

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Yale University; Stanley Insler, Yale University; Mridu Rai, Yale University; Thomas R. H. Havens, Northeastern University; Charles Wheeler, University of California, Irvine; Haydon Cherry, Yale University; Marcello A. Canuto, Yale University; William Fash, Harvard University; Stephen Houston, Brown University; Mary Miller, Yale University; Stephen Colvin, University of London; Frank Turner, Yale University; Kevin van Bladel, University of Southern California; Anders Winroth, Yale University; Paul Freedman, Yale University; Frederick S. Paxton, Connecticut College; Francesca Trivellato, Yale University; Stuart Schwartz, Yale University; and Koichi Shinohara, Yale University. The study of world history is indeed a voyage, and Kenneth Curtis would like to thank the following for helping identify guideposts along the way. First, thanks to colleagues in the World History Association and the Advanced Placement World History program, especially Ross Dunn, San Diego State University; Patrick Manning, University of Pittsburgh; Peter Stearns, George Mason University; Jerry Bentley, University of Hawai‘i; Merry Wiesner-Hanks, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee; Alan Karras, University of California, Berkeley; Omar Ali, Vanderbilt University; Heather Streets, Washington State University; Laura Mitchell, University of California, Irvine; Anand Yang, University of Washington; Heidi Roupp, Ane Lintvedt, Sharon Cohen, Jay Harmon, Anton Striegl, Michelle Foreman, Chris Wolf, Saroja Ringo, Esther Adams, Linda Black, and Bill Ziegler. He would also like to acknowledge the support of his colleagues in the history department at California State University Long Beach, especially those who aided with sources, translations, or interpretive guidance: Houri Berberian, Timothy Keirn, Craig Hendricks, Margaret Kuo, Andrew Jenks, Ali Igmen, Sharlene Sayegh, and Donald Schwartz. He also beneﬁted from the feedback of the students who read early drafts of the modern history chapters and gave valuable feedback, with a special nod to those graduate students––Charlie Dodson, Patrick Giloogly, Daniel Lynch––who brought their passion for world history teaching in the public schools to the seminar table, and to Colin Rutherford for his help with the pedagogy. The authors would also like to thank the many publishing professionals at Houghton Mifﬂin and Wadsworth/Cengage Learning who facilitated the publication of this book, in particular: Nancy Blaine, for guiding us through the entire process from proposal to ﬁnished textbook; Jean Woy, for her extraordinary historical judgment; Jennifer Sutherland, for paying attention to everything from the smallest detail to the largest conceptual questions; Jan Fitter, for elegant and perceptive readings of many chapters; Adrienne Zicht, for an excellent ancillary package to accompany the text; Linda Sykes, for her extraordinary photo research that has made this book so beautiful to look at; and Christina Horn, for shepherding the book through the ﬁnal, chaotic pre-publication process. In closing, Valerie would like to thank Brian Vivier for doing so much work on Volume 1; the title of “research assistant” does not convey even a fraction of what he did, always punctually and cheerfully. She dedicates this book to her children, Lydia, Claire, and Bret Hansen Stepanek, and their future educations. Kenneth Curtis would like to thank Francine Curtis for her frontline editing skills and belief in the project, and his mother Elizabeth J. Curtis and siblings Jane, Sara, Margaret, Jim, Steve, and Ron for their love and support. In recognition of his father’s precious gift of curiosity, Ken dedicates this book to the memory of James Gavin Curtis.

ABOUT

THE

AUTHORS

Valerie Hansen Since her graduate work in premodern Chinese history at the University of Pennsylvania, Valerie Hansen has used nontraditional sources to capture the experience of ordinary people. Professor of History at Yale, she teaches the history of premodern China, the Silk Road, and the world. Changing Gods in Medieval China drew on temple inscriptions and ghost stories to shed light on popular religious practice in the Song dynasty (1127–1276), while Negotiating Daily Life in Traditional China used contracts to probe Chinese understandings of the law both in this world and the next. Her textbook The Open Empire: China to 1600 draws on archaeological ﬁnds, literature, and art to explore Chinese interactions with the outside world. With grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Fulbright Association, she has traveled to China to collect materials for her current research project: a new history of the Silk Road.

Kenneth R. Curtis Kenneth R. Curtis received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in African and Comparative World History. His research focuses on colonial to post-colonial transitions in East Africa, with a particular focus on the coffee economy of Tanzania. He is Professor of History and Liberal Studies at California State University Long Beach, where he has taught world history at the introductory level, in special courses designed for future middle and high school teachers, and in graduate seminars. He has worked to advance the teaching of world history at the collegiate and secondary levels in collaboration with the World History Association, the California History/Social Science Project, and the College Board’s Advanced Placement World History course.

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NOTE

SPELLING

Students taking world history will encounter many new names of people, terms, and places. We have retained only the most important of these. The most difﬁcult, of course, are those from languages that use either different alphabets or no alphabet at all (like Chinese) and that have multiple variant spellings in English. As a rule, we have opted to give names in the native language of whom we are writing, not in other languages. In addition, we have kept accents and diacritic marks to a minimum, using them only when absolutely necessary. For example, we give the name of the world’s ﬁrst city (in Turkey) as Catalhoyuk, not Çatalhüyük. In sum, our goal has been to avoid confusing the reader, even if speciﬁc decisions may not make sense to expert readers. To help readers, we provide a pronunciation guide on the ﬁrst appearance of any term or name whose pronunciation is not obvious from the spelling. There is also an audio pronunciation guide on the text’s accompanying website. A few explanations for speciﬁc regions follow.

The Americas The peoples living in the Americas before 1492 had no common language and no shared identity. Only after 1492 with the arrival of Columbus and his men did outsiders label the original residents of the Americas as a single group. For this reason, any word for the inhabitants of North and South America is inaccurate. We try to refer to individual peoples whenever possible. When speaking in general terms, we use the word “Amerindian” because it has no pejorative overtones and is not confusing. Many place names in Spanish-speaking regions have a form in both Spanish and in the language of the indigenous peoples; whenever possible we have opted for the indigenous word. For example, we write about the Tiwanaku culture in the Andes, not Tiahuanaco. In some cases, we choose the more familiar term, such as Inca and Cuzco, rather than the less-familiar spellings Inka and Cusco. We retain the accents for modern place names.

East Asia For Chinese, we have used the pinyin system of Romanization, not the older Wade-Giles version. Students and instructors may wish to consult an online pinyin/Wade-Giles conversion program if they want to check a spelling. We use the pinyin throughout but, on the ﬁrst appearance of a name, alert readers to nonstandard spellings, such as Chiang Kai-shek and Sun Yat-sen, that have already entered English. For other Asian languages, we have used the most common romanization systems (McCune-Reischauer for Korean, Hepburn for Japanese) and have dropped diacritical marks. Because we prefer to use the names that people called themselves, we use Chinggis Khan, for the ruler of the Mongols (not Genghis Khan, which is Persian) and the Turkish Timur the Lame (rather than Tamerlane, his English name).

West Asia and North Africa Many romanization systems for Arabic and related languages like Ottoman Turkish or Persian use an apostrophe to indicate speciﬁc consonants (ain and hamza). Because it is difﬁcult for a native speaker of English to hear these differences, we have omitted these apostrophes. For this reason, we use Quran (not Qur’an).

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Voyages in World History

CHAPTER

The Peopling of the World, to 4000 B.C.E. The Origins of Humankind (p. 5) How Modern Humans Populated Eurasia and Australia (p. 8) The Settling of the Americas (p. 13) The Emergence of Agriculture, 12,500–3000 B.C.E.

(p. 21)

looked down at the ﬁrst piece, the braincase, viewing it from the top. Removing it from the bag, I was immediately struck by its long, narrow shape and the marked constriction of the forehead behind a well-developed brow ridge. The bridge of the nose was very high and prominent. My ﬁrst thought was that this skull belonged to someone of European descent. . . . KENNEWICK MAN I turned the bone to inspect the underside, and what I saw seemed at ﬁrst to be at odds with the rest of the picture. The teeth were worn ﬂat, and worn severely. This is a characteristic of American Indian skeletons, especially in the interior Paciﬁc Northwest, where the people ate stone-ground ﬁsh, roots,

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(Chip Clark, Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution)

rom the earliest moments of human history our ancestors were on the move. Archaeologists continue to debate when and how our earliest forebears moved out of Africa, where humankind originated millions of years ago, and how it populated the rest of the world. One of the last places people reached—probably around 16,000 years ago—was the Americas. For this reason, archaeologists are particularly interested in any human remains that date from this early period. On Saturday, July 28, 1996, two college students found this skull in the riverbed of the Columbia River, near the town of Kennewick in Washington State. The students called the police, who the next day contacted Chatters to determine if the bones were those of a murder victim. At the ﬁnd-spot, Chatters collected an additional 350 bones and determined that the man had lived between 7580 and 7330 b.c.e. (As is common among world historians, this book uses b.c.e. [Before Common Era] and c.e. [Common Era] rather than b.c. [Before Christ] and a.d. [Anno Domini, In the Year of Our Lord].) Here James C. Chatters, a forensic anthropologist, describes what he learned by examining the skull of the skeleton now known as Kennewick Man:

BERINGIA

SI BE RI A Chauvet

NORTH AMERICA

ASIA H

Jericho

Kennewick Man skeleton found in riverbed, 1996; remains dated to 7580–7330 B.C.E.

AL AY AM TS.

GRE A VA T RIFT LLE Y

AFRICA

Olduvai Gorge

ATLANTIC OCEAN

PACIFIC OCEAN

Flores

INDIAN OCEAN

Clovis

SOUTH AMERICA S M TS.

Atapuerca

Monte Verde

Mungo

Blombos Cave

AUSTRALIA

ANTARCTICA

First Travels to the Americas Probable coastal migration route Possible midcontinental migration route Less likely transatlantic migration route Kennewick Man findspot

13,000 B.C.E.

12,000

Ice sheets, 18,000 years ago Ice sheets, 12,000 years ago Probable coastline, 18,000 years ago

11,000

10,000

9000

8000

1500

3000 Km. 1500

3000 Mi.

7000

6000

Lifetime of Kennewick Man

AMERICAS

ca. 7580 7330

Arrival of first Americans 16,000–12,000

Clovis culture 11,400

10,000

Settlement at Monte Verde

Early agriculture in Mesoamerica, Peruvian Andes 8000

12,600

AFRO-EURASIA

Harvesting of wild crops in western Asia

Domestication of dog

12,500

10,000

Natufian settlement at Jericho Town of Ain Ghazal 7500 7250

8300

Domestication of plants and animals in eastern Mediterranean, eastern Sahara 8000 Note: All dates are approximate.

Large settlement at Catalhoyuk 6000

CHAPTER 1

The Peopling of the World, to 4000 B.C.E.

and berries and lived almost constantly with blowing sand. My mind jumped to something I’d seen when I was fourteen years old, working at an ancient site on the Snake River in Washington. . . . “Paleo-Indian?” came the involuntary thought. “Paleo-Indian” is the label given to the very earliest American immigrants, traditionally presumed to be early versions of today’s Native Americans. No, I thought, that can’t be. The inhabitants of the Americas had broad faces, round heads, and presumably brown skin and straight black hair. They had come over from Siberia no more than 13,000 years ago across the Bering Land Bridge and therefore resembled their modern-day Siberian relatives. This was no Paleo-Indian—was it?1

• Kennewick Man Remains of a male found near Kennewick, Washington, dated to between 7580 and 7330 b.c.e.

• hominids Term referring to all humans and their ancestors. • Homo sapiens sapiens Biological term for modern human beings belonging to the genus Homo, species sapiens, and subspecies sapiens.

The day after the discovery, the Umatilla (oo-mah-TILL-uh), the Amerindian people living in the region, argued that Kennewick Man was their ancestor and the remains should be given to them for reburial. A group of scientists countersued, arguing that the remains were so ancient that they could not be linked to the Umatilla. The case dragged on until 2004, when the courts ruled in favor of the scientists, who hope that studying Kennewick Man’s remains can help them determine how and when the Americas were ﬁrst settled. The peopling of the Americas was a late phase in the history of humankind. As early as seven million years ago, the earliest hominids (HAH-moh-nids), a term referring to all humans and their ancestors, branched off from gorillas and chimpanzees. These early hominids had moved out of Africa by 1.8 million years ago. By 150,000 b.c.e., anatomically modern people, the species Homo sapiens sapiens (HO-mo SAY-pee-uhnz SAY-pee-uhnz), had fully developed. By 60,000 b.c.e. people had reached Australia, and by 50,000 b.c.e. they had populated Eurasia. However, the Western Hemisphere was probably not settled before 14,000 b.c.e., and Kennewick Man is one of the earliest and most intact skeletons ever found in the Americas. Since none of these early peoples could read and write, no documents survive. But archaeological evidence, including human remains, cave paintings, and ancient tools, allows us to reconstruct the early history of humanity.

Focus Questions

Who were the ﬁrst hominids? What were the main stages in their development? When and how did hominids leave Africa and settle Eurasia? When did ancient hominids become recognizably human?

The Origins of Humankind

How and when did the ﬁrst people move to the Americas? What was their way of life? How and where did agriculture ﬁrst arise? How did its impact vary around the world?

The Origins of Humankind

aleontologists (pay-lee-on-TAHL-oh-gists), scientists who study ancient life in the distant past, agree that humans and chimpanzees are descended from a species that no longer exists. About seven million years ago in central Africa that lost species gave rise to two separate species. One branch developed into chimpanzees, the other, into hominids. After leaving their homeland in Africa around 1.8 million years ago, hominids continued to develop until anatomically modern people, or Homo sapiens sapiens, appeared 150,000 years ago.

The First Hominids: Australopithecines

Biologists use four different subcategories when classifying animals: family, genus ( JEAN-uhs) (the Latin word for group or class), species, and subspecies. Modern humans are members of the Primate family, the genus Homo (“person” in Latin), the species sapiens (“wise” or “intelligent” in Latin), and the subspecies sapiens, so the correct term for modern people is Homo sapiens sapiens. Members of the same species can reproduce, while members of two different species cannot. The species closest to modern human beings today is the chimpanzee, whose cells contain nuclei with genetic material called deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) that overlaps with that of humans by 98.4 percent. Scientists use the concept of evolution to explain how all life forms, including modern humans, have come into being. In the nineteenth century Charles Darwin proposed that natural selection is the mechanism underlying evolutionary change. He realized that variations exist within a species (we now know that genetic mutations cause them) and that certain variations increase an individual’s chances of survival. All variations, beneﬁcial or not, are passed along to offspring. Because those individuals with beneﬁcial traits—perhaps a bigger brain or more upright posture—are more likely to survive, they will have more offspring. And, because traits are inherited, these offspring will also possess the beneﬁcial traits. Individuals lacking those traits will have few or no offspring. As new mutations occur within a population, its characteristics will change and a new species can develop from an earlier one, typically over many thousands or even millions of years. The process of natural selection caused the early hominids to diverge from other primates, especially in their manner of walking. Our very earliest ancestors did not belong to the genus Homo but to the genus Australopithecus (“southern ape”), whose habitat was also Africa. The deﬁning characteristic of australopithecines (au-stral-oh-PITH-uh-seens) was bipedalism (buy-PEH-dahl-izm), the ability to walk on two feet, whereas chimpanzees and gorillas knuckle-walked on all four limbs.

• evolution

Model proposed by Charles Darwin to explain the development of new species. In each generation, genetic mutations cause variation among members of a species, eventually changing the characteristics of that population into new, distinct species.

• Australopithecus Hominid species, dating to 3.5 million years ago, who walked on two feet (adjectival form: australopithecine).

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CHAPTER 1

The Peopling of the World, to 4000 B.C.E.

Paleontologists have found australopithecine remains in different regions of Africa, including Malawi, Chad, South Africa, and most importantly northern Tanzania in the Olduvai (OHL-doo-vaye) Gorge, which lies in the Great Rift Valley. Located along a crack in the earth’s crust where two giant tectonic plates are slowly moving apart, the Great Rift Valley runs for 2,000 miles (3,600 km) from the Red Sea to Tanzania. Now 25 to 50 miles (40–80 km) wide, it exposes many earlier layers of human occupation. In the 1960s and 1970s, Richard and Mary Leakey found in this valley australopithecine skulls, jawbones, teeth, and even footprints, the ﬁrst tangible evidence of the australopithecine ability to walk. Since early hominids could walk, they were able to leave the cover of forests and hunt in the open grasslands. Scientists believe that millions of years ago grasslands began to replace forests. At that time the African continent, then much wetter than it is today, began to dry up. As grassy savannah replaced rainforest, walking upright conferred an important advantage over those species that walked on four limbs. Upright walking also used fewer calories than knuckle-walking. One of the most complete sets of australopithecine remains comes from a female known as Lucy. She was named for “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” a Beatles song playing on a tape recorder when, in 1974, archaeologists found her remains in Ethiopia. She stood 39 inches (1 m) tall and lived 3.5 million years ago. Her face was shaped like an ape, with a small brain like a chimpanzee, and she made no tools of her own. But the remains of Lucy’s knee showed that she walked upright.

Homo Erectus and the First Migrations Outside of Africa, 2.5–1.8 Million Years Ago

• Paleolithic The “Old Stone Age” period, from 2.5 million years ago to 8000 b.c.e.

• Homo erectus Hominid species, appearing 1.9 million years ago, who left Africa and populated Eurasia.

One can easily get the impression that our ancestors evolved in a logical progression, with ancient tiny hominids growing taller and more human-like, but the reality was more complex. Fossil evidence suggests that a number of species came into existence, ﬂourished for a time, and then died out. Some of these had more human characteristics, while others had more in common with chimpanzees and gorillas. Recent ﬁnds suggest that four different groups of human ancestors coexisted 2.5 million years ago, or one million years after Lucy was alive. These different human ancestors all shared two important characteristics that set them apart from the australopithecines: they had bigger brains and made tools of their own by chipping off stone ﬂakes from cores. This innovation marked the beginning of the Paleolithic (pay-lee-oh-LITH-uhk) period, or Old Stone Age (2.5 million years ago–8000 b.c.e.). The earliest tools were sharp enough to cut through animal hides and to scrape meat off bones. Over the long course of the Paleolithic period, protohumans made tools of increasing complexity. These early hominids belonged to the same genus, but not the same species, as modern people: they are called Homo habilis (HO-mo hah-BEEL-uhs) (“handy human”). Standing erect, Homo habilis weighed less than 100 pounds and measured under 5 feet tall. They ate whatever fruits and vegetables grew wild and competed with other scavengers, such as hyenas, to get scraps of meat left behind by lions and tigers. The species that evolved into modern humans—Homo erectus (HO-mo-eeRECT-oos) (“upright human”)—appeared about 1.9 million years ago. Homo erectus

The Origins of Humankind

had a brain double the size of earlier hominid brains, about the same size as that of modern humans, as well as far greater mobility than any earlier human ancestor. Armed with hand axes, and perhaps even simple boats (evidence of which does not survive), Homo erectus left Africa and migrated to Asia. Two main routes connect Africa with Eurasia: one leads across the Strait of Gibraltar into Spain, and the other crosses the Sinai Peninsula into western Asia. The earliest hominid remains found outside of Africa date to 1.8 million years ago in Dmanisi, Georgia (in the Caucasus Mountains) and in Ubeidiya, Israel, from 1.4 million years ago. The distribution of the few Homo erectus ﬁnds in Eurasia shows that the route into western Asia was more heavily traveled than the route across the Mediterranean at the Strait of Gibraltar. These early species did not move quickly from western Asia to Europe, perhaps because the cold climate there was not inviting. They entered Europe by crossing the Bosporus strait in modern Turkey and then walking along the northern shore of the Mediterranean. The earliest evidence that our ancestors lived in Europe, from Atapuerca (ah-TAH-poo-air-kah), Spain, dates to 1.1 million years ago. It seems likely that Homo erectus learned how to control ﬁre at this time. One early ﬁnd, dating to 1.4 million years ago, at the site of Chesowanja (chuh-SOHwahn-juh), Kenya, included lumps of burnt clay alongside animal bones and stone tools, but many think a natural ﬁre might have occurred. A more convincing ﬁnd, from northern Israel, dates to 790,000 years ago. There archaeologists found fragments of ﬂint next to charred remains of wood in different layers of earth, an indication that the site’s occupants passed the knowledge of ﬁre making to their descendants. To keep a ﬁre going requires planning far ahead, an ability that earlier hominids lacked. Following the discovery of ﬁre, our ancestors began to eat more meat, which resulted in a larger brain size. By 500,000 years ago, they had settled many sites throughout Europe and Asia. At this time, Homo erectus began to evolve into archaic Homo sapiens.

The Emergence of Homo Sapiens Sapiens, 2 Million–150,000 Years Ago

One of the ﬁercest debates currently raging among paleontologists concerns the development of humankind between about 1.9 million years ago, when Homo erectus was alive, and the appearance of Homo sapiens sapiens, or anatomically modern people, about 150,000 years ago. The “regional continuity” school holds that, after Homo erectus settled the Eastern Hemisphere about two million years ago, different hominids from different regions gradually merged to form modern people. The “single origin” school posits a very different history for humankind. It agrees with the regional continuity school that Homo erectus settled the Eastern Hemisphere starting 1.9 million years ago, but it suggests that a second wave of migration out of Africa—of Homo sapiens sapiens between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago—supplanted all pre-existing human species. The “single origin” school cites DNA evidence in support of its position. The DNA in the nucleus of every cell in our bodies contains about 100,000 genes, an inherited mix of one’s father’s and mother’s DNA. In addition, all of our cells contain structures outside the nucleus called mitochondria (my-toe-CON-dree-uh). Each of these mitochondria contains a single DNA strand that is inherited only

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CHAPTER 1

The Peopling of the World, to 4000 B.C.E.

from the egg cell of the mother. If one examines mitochondrial DNA from different populations around the world, statistical analysis of minute differences points toward an ancestral female population that lived somewhere in Africa about 100,000 years ago, an indication that the descendants of an “African Eve” replaced all other human populations after a second migration out of Africa. The “regional continuity” scholars argue that different regional populations could have mixed with the second wave of migrants from Africa and that they did not necessarily die out. Everyone agrees, though, that the earliest hominids originated in Africa and that Homo erectus left Africa about 1.9 million years ago.

How Modern Humans Populated Eurasia and Australia

hen anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) ﬁrst appeared in central and southern Africa some 150,000 years ago, their bodies and braincases were about the same size as ours. They lived side by side with other animals and other hominid species. But in important respects they were totally different from their neighbors, for they had learned to change their environment with radically new tools and skills. Carrying their supplies themselves since they had no domesticated animals, they moved out of Africa into Eurasia after 150,000 b.c.e. By 60,000 b.c.e. they were using simple rafts or boats to travel over water to Australia.

The First Anatomically Modern Humans Leave Africa

• Neanderthals Group of pre-modern humans who lived between 100,000 and 25,000 b.c.e. in western Asia and Europe, eventually replaced by Homo sapiens sapiens.

Paleontologists have found very few human remains dating to the time when Homo sapiens sapiens ﬁrst arose in Africa, but in 2003 they were extremely pleased to ﬁnd three skulls (from two adults and one child) dating to 160,000 b.c.e. in Ethiopia. Of the same shape and dimensions as modern human skulls, these skulls show that the Homo sapiens sapiens species arose ﬁrst in Africa. Concluding that all modern people are descended from this group, one of the excavating archaeologists commented: “In this sense, we are all African.”2 Starting in 150,000 b.c.e., Homo sapiens sapiens began to migrate out of Africa to populate Eurasia. By 100,000 b.c.e. they had reached North Africa and crossed the Sinai Peninsula into modern-day Israel in western Asia. As they migrated, they encountered groups of pre-modern humans called Neanderthals (knee-AHN-dehrthalls) in Israel and then western Europe. Named for the site in West Germany where their remains were ﬁrst found, Neanderthals were shaped differently from modern humans: their skulls were longer and lower, their faces protruded, and their bones were bigger and heavier. Neanderthal tools included longer stone ﬂakes, which they chipped off larger stone cores. They painted themselves, their dwellings, and their graves with clumps of pigment such as ocher (OH-kerh), a naturally occurring mineral that can be mixed with water to make a red paint. The Neanderthals used ﬁre to cook large animals that they had caught. To be able to migrate out of Africa and displace existing populations in Asia and Europe, modern humans had to behave differently from their forebears. They showed a capacity for symbolic thinking, evident in the creation of the world’s

How Modern Humans Populated Eurasia and Australia

ﬁrst art, as well as an ability to plan far ahead. (See the feature “Visual Evidence: The First Art Objects in the World.”) Archaeologists believe that these characteristics indicate a new stage in human development, when humans became recognizably human. The earliest evidence of religion comes from sites dating to 100,000 b.c.e. The deﬁning characteristic of religion is the belief in a divine power or powers that control or inﬂuence the environment and people’s lives. The most reliable evidence is a written text demonstrating religious beliefs, but early humans did not write. They did, however, bury their dead. In 100,000 b.c.e., anatomically modern humans who had migrated to western Asia interred three people in the Qafseh (KAHF-seh) cave near Nazareth, Israel, most likely because they believed in an afterlife, a major component of many religious belief systems. Modern humans had larynxes starting around 150,000 b.c.e., but many suspect that they did not begin to speak until sometime between 100,000 and 50,000 b.c.e. We cannot know exactly because the act of speaking produces no lasting evidence in the archaeological record.

• religion

Belief system that holds that divine powers control the environment and people’s futures.

The Settling of Australia, ca. 60,000 B.C.E.

Homo sapiens sapiens of the Upper Paleolithic Era were sufﬁciently versatile that they could adjust to new, even cold, habitats far removed from their original home in central Africa, and their improved hunting skills allowed them to move to new places. The farthest they traveled was to Australia. One of the most isolated places on earth, this continent provides a rich environment for animals, such as kangaroos, that are found nowhere else in the world. No animals from Eurasia, except for rodents and modern humans, managed to reach Australia. How Homo sapiens sapiens traveled to Australia is still a mystery. Oceans then lay about 250 feet (76 m) below modern levels, and the body of water dividing Australia from the Asian landmass was at least 40 miles (65 km) across, suggesting that this species knew how to cover short distances by raft. Yet no watercraft from this time have been found, possibly because any remains would have disintegrated. Once they reached Australia, the early settlers did not stay on the coast but moved inland rapidly, reaching the site of Mungo (muhn-GO), in southeast Australia, by 60,000 years ago. There archaeologists found a burial in which a male skeleton (known as Mungo Man) was placed in the ground and sprinkled with red ocher powder. Nearby was a woman (Mungo Woman), whose burnt remains constitute the earliest known example of human cremation. Since many later peoples cremated the dead in the hope that their souls could proceed safely to the next world, the human settlers of Australia may have had similar beliefs.

The Settling of Eurasia, 50,000–30,000 B.C.E.

The settlers of Europe continued to reﬁne the advanced hunting technologies of their African forbears, who had formed large, organized hunting parties that killed big game with sharp-pointed spears. In addition to hunting, the migrants also gathered wild plants. Starting around 50,000 b.c.e. the humans living in Europe began to organize hunts of migrating animals in the fall to provide meat during the winter. The Paleolithic period entered its ﬁnal phase, the Upper Paleolithic, or the late Stone Age, around 38,000 b.c.e. The rise of agriculture around 10,000 b.c.e. (see page 21) marks the end of this period.

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THE FIRST ART OBJECTS IN THE WORLD

ne site in Africa—Blombos Cave in South Africa—has produced some of the earliest art objects in the world. The Blombos Cave site, near Stilbai about 186 miles (300 km) from Cape Town, dates to 75,000 B.C.E. The surface of this chunk of ocher (opposite) bears a geometric design of triangles between three parallel lines. This pure design, with no functional purpose, points to the capacity for abstract thinking. The occupants of Blombos Cave ﬁshed and hunted and made sets of ﬁne bone tools, all of the same size. First they cut bone with stone tools and then polished it with leather and abrasive powder. The excavating archaeologist explains the signiﬁcance of these tools: “Why so ﬁnely polished? It’s actually unnecessary for projectile points to be so carefully made. It suggests to us that this is an expression of symbolic thinking. The people said ‘Let’s make a really beautiful object.’”* At Blombos archaeologists found nineteen snail shells, about the size of a kernel of corn, each with a hole through it (see opposite, bottom). Traces of wear at the ends of the shell indicate that they were originally strung together to make a strand of beads, worn perhaps on the wrist or at the neck. The beads also show traces of ocher. The beads, archaeologists speculate, may have functioned at Blombos as they

*Interview with Christopher Henshilwood in “When Humans Became Human,” New York Times, February 26, 2002, p. F5.

do among the Ju/’hoansi people who live in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana and who are sometimes called Bushmen. Speakers of a language with many click sounds, the Ju/’hoansi present ostrich shell beads to other groups with whom they hope to form alliances. The scientist who discovered these shells argued convincingly that these are very early signs of human creativity. A recent discovery suggests that they may be more. In 2007, archaeologists excavating the Pigeon Cave site in Morocco have found similar shells dated between 91,000 and 74,000 years ago. These beads also have holes, abrasion marks at the ends where they were strung together, and traces of ocher. They are not from exactly the same species of snail as those from Blombos Cave, but the two species of snail look identical to the naked eye (one can see the differences between them only with a microscope). Other undated ﬁnds of similar shells in Israel and Algeria suggest that a trading network that spanned Africa and Israel may have existed as early as 82,000 years ago. The chunk of ocher, the bone tools, and the beads from Blombos reveal that their makers were able to produce beautiful objects because they had the time and energy left over after meeting basic subsistence needs. These early objects clearly display the artistic impulses of their makers and suggest that Homo sapiens sapiens engaged in the recognizably human activity of making art objects as early as 75,000 B.C.E. and possibly even before.

QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS Which evidence from the archaeological record (including, but not limited to, the objects discussed above) do you ﬁnd most convincing as the earliest indication of people becoming recognizably human? Why?

This is a block of red ocher, a pigment made from iron oxide. Now the color of rust, the surface would have originally been a vivid blood red. This block, 2.5 inches (6 cm) long, formed a small crayon that was used, perhaps, to decorate the body.

These abstract triangle markings may be purely decorative or may represent a way to count something, perhaps the passage of days.

This object was found in Blombos Cave, some 186 miles (300 km) from Cape Town, where the cave’s occupants hunted and ﬁshed around 75,000 B.C.E.

(top photo: Anna Zieminski/AFP/Getty Images; bottom photo: © Centre for Development Studies, University of Bergen, Norway)

CHAPTER 1

The Peopling of the World, to 4000 B.C.E.

The humans living in Europe during the Upper Paleolithic period are called Cro Magnon (CROW MAG-nahn), after the site where their remains were ﬁrst found. Their methods of food acquisition show that they were better able to think about the future, not just the present. Cro Magnon bands traveled to rivers and coasts to catch ﬁsh. As they moved in search of more game and ﬁsh, they built new types of houses and developed better clothes. These humans also produced the extraordinary cave paintings of Chauvet (SHOW-vay) in southern France (dated to 30,000 b.c.e.), which show the different animals hunted by the local peoples: mammoths (various types of extinct elephants), lions, and rhinoceroses. Some are decorated with patterns of dots or human handprints. Other cave sites, such as the well-known Lascaux (las-KOH) (15,000 b.c.e.) site in southwestern France, show horses, bison, and ibex, suggesting that ancient hunters targeted different animals during different seasons. (See the feature “Movement of Ideas: The Worship of Goddesses?”) Most experts thought that by 25,000 b.c.e. Homo sapiens sapiens was the only human species on earth, since all other species, including the Neanderthals, had died out. But a discovery announced in October 2004 has forced everyone to reconsider this view. Archaeologists working on the island of Flores in western Indonesia announced that they had discovered bones from a previously unknown

An Ancient Artist at the Chauvet Caves of France Traces of charcoal from the battling woolly rhinoceros (lower right) have been dated to about 30,000 B.C.E., making this one of the earliest cave paintings found anywhere in the world. The panel also portrays the same horse in four different poses, rare sketches done by an individual artist. Many of the paintings in the Chauvet caves display this artist’s distinctive style. (AP/Wide World Photos)

The Settling of the Americas

human species they called Homo ﬂoresiensis (HO-mo ﬂor-ehs-ee-EHN-suhs) (“Human from Flores”). The remains date from 95,000 to 13,000 b.c.e. The most complete skeleton, intact except for missing arms, came from a female who stood only 3 feet (.9 m) tall and whose brain was as small as the australopithecine Lucy’s. The excavating archaeologists propose that the new species was a descendant of either the australopithecines or Homo erectus. Because other pygmy animals, such as pygmy elephants, developed on the island, these scientists suggest that the process of island-dwarﬁng could also have produced smaller-than-usual Homo erectus. The island is currently home to a group of human pygmies, who could be the descendants of the earlier population.3 Yet some scientists have loudly voiced their skepticism, largely because the stone tools found at the site are much more sophisticated than any associated with australopithecines or Homo erectus. They suggest, instead, that the skeleton may be that of a small Homo sapiens sapiens afﬂicted with a disorder called microcephaly (my-cro-SEPH-uh-lee) that results in a shrunken brain and other deformities. This controversial ﬁnd shows how a single discovery can prompt radical revision of the scientiﬁc consensus on human evolution.

The Settling of the Americas

omo sapiens sapiens reached the Americas much later than they did any other landmass. The earliest conﬁrmed human occupation in the Western Hemisphere dates to about 10,500 b.c.e., some forty thousand years after the settling of the Eurasian landmass and Australia. Accordingly, all human remains found so far in the Americas belong to the Homo sapiens species. We know, however, much less about the settlement of the Americas than we do about the other continents. Scholars are not certain which routes the early settlers took, when they came, or if they traveled over land or by water. Far fewer human burials have been found in the Americas, and the few that have been found were excavated with much less scientiﬁc care than in Eurasia and Africa. Many sites had been disturbed so that the original layers of earth, so valuable to archaeologists, are no longer intact. Many early sites contain no human remains at all. For this reason, even skeletons like Kennewick Man are of great interest to those studying early migration to the Americas.

Beringia: The Land Bridge from Siberia to the Americas

One theory is that humans reached America on a land bridge from Siberia. Beringia (bear-in-JEE-uh) is the landmass, now below water, that connected the tip of Siberia in Russia with the northeastern corner of Alaska. Today Beringia is covered by a 50-mile-wide (80-km-wide) stretch of the Bering Sea. The water in this part of the Bering Sea is shallow, consistently less than 600 feet deep (182 m). As the earth experienced different periods of extended coldness, called Ice Ages, ocean water froze and covered such northern landmasses with ice. During these periods the ocean level declined and the ancient Beringia landmass emerged to form a land bridge between Russia and America. It was a large land bridge, measuring over 600 miles (1000 km) from north to south.

• Beringia

Landmass now submerged below water that connected the tip of Siberia with the northeastern corner of Alaska.

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MOVEMENT OF IDEAS

The Worship of Goddesses?

hat were the religious beliefs of the residents of Europe between 26,000 and 23,000 B.C.E.? Over twenty female ﬁgurines have been found at sites in Austria, Italy, Ukraine, Malta, the Czech Republic, and most often France. Made from mammoth ivory tusk, soapstone, and clay, the ﬁgurines range in size from 2 inches (5 cm) to a foot (30 cm) tall. The wide distribution of the ﬁgurines poses an interesting problem: Did different groups learn independently to make similar objects, or did one group ﬁrst craft a model, which was then diffused to other places? Modern archaeologists require striking similarities before they can be persuaded of diffusion. It seems likely in this case that people in different places crafted women according to their own conceptions and that diffusion did not necessarily take place. Some of the women are shown with extremely wide hips and pendulous breasts. Almost none have feet. They may have been placed upright in dirt or on a post. Their facial features remain vague, a suggestion that they are not portraits of particular individuals. Some appear to be pregnant, others not. Some have pubic hair, and one, from Monpazier, France, has an explicitly rendered vulva. Some have suggested that the ﬁgurines are fertility icons made by men or women who hoped to have children. Others propose that the images are selfportraits because no mirrors existed at this early time. If women portrayed their own bodies as they looked to themselves, they would have shown themselves with

pendulous breasts and wide hips. Still other archaeologists take these ﬁgurines as a sign of a matriarchal society, in which women served as leaders, or a matrilineal society, in which people traced descent through their mother (as opposed to a patriarchal society, in which descent is traced through the father). Since most of these ﬁgurines were found in the nineteenth century and were taken to museums or private collections, we do not know their original context and cannot conclude more about their function. The one exception is a cave site at Laussel in the Dordogne region of France, where ﬁve different twodimensional pictures were carved onto the cave walls and could not be easily removed. One picture, Woman with a Horn, was carved into the face of a block of stone. This two-dimensional rendering has the large breasts and wide hips of the smaller freestanding ﬁgurines, but her right hand is unusual in that it holds a horn, perhaps from a bison. The Laussel cave had other pictures of a similar woman, a younger man in proﬁle, a deer, and a horse. One design showing a woman on top and another ﬁgure below has been interpreted alternatively as two people copulating or a woman giving birth to a child. Several vulvas and phalluses were shown in the same cave. The conjunction of these different images strongly suggests that the Woman with a Horn was worshiped, along with the other images and sexual body parts, probably to facilitate conception or easy childbirth.

QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS 쑺 How do archaeologists determine if an idea or motif diffused from one place to another or developed independently? 쑺 What constitutes evidence of religious belief among preliterate peoples? 쑺 How have scholars interpreted female ﬁgurines found across Europe between 26,000 and 23,000 B.C.E.?

Woman with a Horn, Laussel Cave, Dordogne River Valley, France. An Ancient Pregnancy? Standing 17.5 inches (44 cm) high, this block of stone, along with ﬁve others, came from a rock shelter occupied by people between 25,000 and 21,000 B.C.E. Similar carvings of women with wide hips and pendulous breasts have been found throughout the Dordogne River Valley region in France, but only this woman holds a bison horn. Interpreting the markings on the horn as calendrical records (perhaps of moon sightings), some analysts propose that her hand on her stomach indicates that she may be pregnant. (Musée d’Aquitaine, Bordeaux, France/Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY)

CHAPTER 1

The Peopling of the World, to 4000 B.C.E.

Being covered with ice, sometimes very deep, Beringia would not have been an easy route for humans to cross. Yet we know that people had already migrated as far south as the site of Monte Verde (MAHN-tay VEHR-day), Chile, in South America at a time when Beringia was covered with ice. So how did humans get there? Core samples of the ocean ﬂoor, drilled into what used to be Beringia, have yielded the remains of animal, insect, and plant life that reveal the extent of glaciation. The most intense phase of the late Wisconsin Ice Age was in 16,000 b.c.e., a time when the sea level fell 650 feet, exposing Beringia to its largest extent. The islands of the Bering Sea then stood as giant peaks on the Beringia landmass. Less ice formed on the Alaskan and Canadian side of Beringia. In fact, cores reveal that small, low shrubs, many of them dwarf birches, shaped a tundra environment. The ﬁrst migrations to the New World may have occurred in 14,000 b.c.e. or even earlier, and certainly took place by about 10,500 b.c.e., when ice still covered much of Beringia. Much of North America was covered by sheets of ice over 10,000 feet (3,000 m) thick. Some scientists believe that an ice-free corridor between ice masses allowed movement through today’s Canada. Others hypothesize that the ancient settlers hugged the coast, traveling in boats covered by animal skins stretched tight over a wooden pole frame. Boats would have allowed the settlers to proceed down the coast from Beringia to modern Chile, going from ice patch to ice patch. Where no ice had formed, the early settlers could have disembarked to pitch temporary camp.

• Monte Verde, Chile Earliest site in the Americas, dating to 12,500 b.c.e., where evidence of human occupation has been found.

• stratigraphy Archaeological principle that, at an undisturbed site, material from upper layers must be more recent than that from lower layers.

• carbon-14 Isotope of carbon whose presence in organic material can be used to determine the approximate age of archaeological samples.

Monte Verde, Chile: How the First Americans Lived, 10,500 B.C.E.

The best evidence for this ﬁrst wave of migration comes from far down the west coast of the Americas, from a settlement called Monte Verde, Chile, which lies only 9 miles (14 km) away from the Paciﬁc coast, south of the 40th parallel. Monte Verde is the most important ancient site in the Americas for several reasons. First, without a doubt it contains very early remains. Lying under a layer of peat, it also preserves organic materials like wood, skin, and plants that almost never survive. Finally, and most important, professional archaeologists have scrupulously recorded which items were found at each level following the key principle of stratigraphy. This is the idea that, at an undisturbed site, materials from lower levels predate those found above them. Using this principle, we can conclude that, at an undisturbed site, any remains found under one layer are earlier than anything from above that layer. Monte Verde’s undisturbed state made it an excellent place from which to collect samples for carbon-14 testing. Carbon-14 is an isotope of carbon with a known half-life of 5,700 years. A ﬁxed percentage of the carbon atoms in a living organism consists of this isotope, but this percentage declines after death because new carbon no longer enters the organism. Accordingly, one can determine the approximate age of an archaeological sample by analyzing the percentage of carbon-14 in it. Carbon-14 dates always include a plus/minus range because they are not completely accurate: the farther back in time one goes, the less accurate the dating is. (This book gives only one date for ease of presentation.) Carbon-14

The Settling of the Americas

analysis of evidence from Monte Verde gave an approximate date of 10,500 b.c.e. for the lowest level deﬁnitely occupied by humans. Forming a bony spine running along the western edge of the Americas, the Rocky Mountains and the Andes Mountains formed a barrier that kept the ﬁrst settlers in the coastal zones west of the mountain chain. Latin America’s climate in this early period, like Africa’s, is still the subject of intense study. Climatologists concur that the climate was extremely variable: periods of heavy glaciation were much cooler than those when glaciers retreated. In comparison to North America, there was much less ice, except in the southernmost reaches of the continent. Major rivers and lakes had not yet formed. Although no human remains have been found at Monte Verde so far, the footprints of a child or a young teenager were preserved on the top of a level dated to 10,500 b.c.e. This ﬁnding provides indisputable evidence of human occupation. The twenty to thirty residents of Monte Verde lived in a structure about 20 yards (18 m) long that was covered with animal skins; the ﬂoor was also covered with skins. The residents used poles to divide the structure into smaller sections, probably for family groups, and heated these sections with ﬁres in clay hearths. There they prepared food that they had gathered: wild berries, fruits, and wild potato tubers. An even lower layer with stone tools has been dated to approximately 31,000 b.c.e., but the evidence for human occupation is less convincing than the human footprints from the higher level.4 If people lived at the site at this time, then the Americas may have been settled much earlier than the 14,000 b.c.e. date that is widely accepted today. A separate building, shaped like a wishbone, stood about 100 feet away from the large structure. The residents hardened the ﬂoor of this building by mixing sand, gravel, and animal fat to make a place where they could clean bones, produce tools, and ﬁnish animal hides. Healers may have treated the ill in this building, too, since the ﬂoor contained traces of eighteen different plants, some chewed and then spit out, as though they had been used as medicine. The unusual preservation of wood at Monte Verde means that we know exactly which tools the ﬁrst Americans used. The site’s residents mounted stone ﬂakes onto wooden sticks, called hafts. They also had a small number of more ﬁnely worked spear points. Interestingly, Monte Verde’s residents used many round stones, which they could have easily gathered on the beach, for slings or bolos. A bolo consists of a long string made of hide with stones or round beach pebbles tied at both ends. Holding one end, early humans swung the other end around their heads at high speed and then released the string. If on target, the spinning bolo wrapped itself around the neck of a bird or other animal and killed it. The residents of Monte Verde hunted mastodon, a relative of the modern elephant that became extinct about 9000 b.c.e. They also foraged along the coast for shellﬁsh, which could be eaten raw. In the initial stages of migration, the settlers found a coastal environment much more hospitable than an inland one because they could forage for many different types of food at the beach. Hunting parties could leave for long periods to pursue mastodon and other large game, conﬁdent that those left behind had ample food supplies. The main weapon used to kill large game at Monte Verde and other early sites was the atlatl (AHT-latt-uhl) a word from the Nahuatl (NAH-waht) language spoken in central Mexico. The atlatl was a powerful weapon, capable of piercing thick animal hide, and was used for thousands of years (see the illustration on the next page).

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CHAPTER 1

The Peopling of the World, to 4000 B.C.E.

A Powerful Ancient Weapon: The Atlatl The residents of the Monte Verde site used the atlatl spear-thrower to kill game. The atlatl had two parts, a long handle with a cup or hook at the end, and a spear tipped with a sharp stone point. The handle served as an extension of the human arm, so that the spear could be thrown farther with much greater force. (Illustration by Eric Parrish from James E. Dixon, Bones, Boats and Bisons: Archaeology and the First Colonization of Western North America [Albuquerque, N.M.: University of New Mexico Press, 1999], p. 153, Figure 6-1.)

The Rise of Clovis and Other Regional Traditions, 11,400– 10,900 B.C.E.

• Clovis technological complex The characteristic stone spear points that were in use ca. 11,000 b.c.e. across much of modernday America.

By 11,000 b.c.e., small bands of people had settled all of the Americas. They used a new weapon in addition to the atlatl: wooden sticks with sharp slivers of rock, called microblades, attached to the shaft. Studies of different sites have determined that while the people in these regions shared many traits in common, different technological traditions also existed in different North American regions. Each left behind distinct artifacts (usually a spear point of a certain type). In contrast, South American sites do not show the same clear signs of regional difference because the residents of different sites mixed and matched different types of tools and spear points. Like the residents of Monte Verde, these later peoples combined hunting with the gathering of wild fruits and seeds. They lived in an area stretching from Oregon to Texas, with heavy concentration in the Great Plains, and hunted a wide variety of game using atlatl tipped with stone spear points. Archaeologists call these characteristic spear points the Clovis technological complex. It takes its name from Clovis, New Mexico, where the ﬁrst such spear points were found. It is difﬁcult to estimate the number of residents at a given location, but some of the Clovis sites are larger than earlier sites, suggesting that as many as sixty people may have lived together in a single band. The Clovis people ate small animals such as rabbit, ground sloth, and turtle as well as larger animals like deer and bison. They also used tools to grind vegetables, but the types of vegetables have left few traces in the archaeological record. The Clovis spear points impress all viewers with their beauty: their makers chose glassy rocks of striking colors to craft ﬁnely worked stone points. Foraging bands covered large stretches of territory, collecting different types of stone and carrying them far from their areas of origin. The Clovis peoples buried some of these collections in earth colored by ocher, the same mineral element used by the

The Settling of the Americas

ancient peoples of South Africa and Australia. Archaeologists working at later Clovis sites throughout the Great Plains have also found a different type of stone blade lodged in bison bones. It seems that, as mammoth and mastodon became extinct, the residents shifted to hunting bison.

The Oldest Americans?

Who lived at sites like Monte Verde in the Americas in 10,500 b.c.e. or at the different Clovis sites in 9000 b.c.e.? This question would be much easier to answer if archaeologists had found multiple human remains at Monte Verde or at the Clovis sites in the Western Hemisphere. In both North and South America, thirty-six sites predate 9500 b.c.e., but only thirty-eight skeletons older than 9000 b.c.e. have been found.5 Unfortunately, almost all of these early skeletons were removed from their original location. As a result, archaeologists must study bones divorced from their original context as they reconstruct the patterns of ancient migration to the Americas. Some scholars of early migration to the Americas have conducted statistical analysis of these early remains in the hope of identifying the ancestors of today’s Amerindians. Although we use the concept of race in casual conversation every time that we say someone is white or black, it is impossible to classify people by race scientiﬁcally. Many of the world’s peoples do not fall into the widely used categories of black, white, or yellow; Australian aborigines have dark skin but light hair color, and Polynesians do not ﬁt any of these categories. Rather than use the problematic category of race, scientists today focus on determining the geographic origin of a given population. Physical anthropologists use one basic technique for identifying the characteristics of a given population in modern times. They collect measurements of the skull and other body parts for many different people from one place and input all the values into a computer database. Because skulls give the most information, anthropologists measure their shape, eye sockets, and teeth carefully. All provide clues about a given skeleton’s background. Skulls and bones from a single place, however, tend to vary widely. A bone or skull may look like those normally associated with one place but may actually belong to an atypical individual from another place. Once they have ﬁnished measuring a skeleton, physical anthropologists use databases containing thousands of data points to assign, however tentatively, a certain skeleton to a given population. The thirty-eight skeletons found in the Americas divide into two groups: individuals with longer heads and those with rounder heads. Those with rounder heads have wider, ﬂatter faces. Their teeth share certain characteristics with modern-day Chinese, Japanese, Siberians, Russians, and Amerindians. They could well be the ancestors of today’s Amerindians, who also have rounder, ﬂatter faces and teeth like those of people living in Asia. Those with the longer heads have small faces that tend to be narrow and noses that jut out. Their teeth have the characteristics of one group whose modern members live in Indonesia and Southeast Asia. Kennewick Man belongs to the group with the longer heads. Examination of his remains showed that he had sustained several injuries, the most obvious being a projectile point lodged in his pelvis. The growth of bone around the wound showed that the injury had occurred long before his death in his 40s. He had broken ribs, a dent on his forehead (perhaps from a wound), and arthritis in his elbows and knees, and he probably did not have full use of his left arm, which was fully grown but less developed than his right arm.

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WORLD HISTORY in TODAY’S WORLD

Kennewick Man in Court

or over a century Amerindian skeletons, unlike European skeletons, were kept in storage bins and displayed in museums. In 1990 the U.S. Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, which required that all Amerindian skeletal remains that demonstrated cultural afﬁliation to an existing, federally recognized Amerindian people be offered for repatriation. The case of Kennewick Man is different from most because of the skeleton’s great age. Kennewick Man lived nearly ten thousand years ago, and his bone structure does not resemble that of the Umatilla people living near the Columbia River. One Umatilla leader insisted that they had lived in the region for ten thousand years: “Our oral history goes back 10,000 years. We know how time began and how Indian people were created.”* Bruce Babbitt, Secretary of the Interior at the time of the discovery, agreed and ordered the remains of Kennewick Man repatriated to a consortium of ﬁve tribes living in the Northwest, including the Umatilla. A group of scientists led by Robson Bonnichsen, a professor of anthropology at Texas A & M University, sued the government for return of the remains.

The scientists focused on the language of NAGPRA: “Native American means of, or relating to, a tribe, people, or culture that is indigenous to the United States.” The act, they contended, required a relationship ﬁrst to be established between the Umatilla and Kennewick Man before the Umatilla could claim him. If Kennewick Man belonged to a group that had died out, they argued, then the Umatilla did not have the right to claim his remains. The scientists and their legal team hoped to show that Congress had not considered an exceptional example like Kennewick Man when drafting NAGPRA. In 2002 a federal magistrate decided that Kennewick Man could not be “related to any identiﬁable group or culture, and the culture to which he belonged may have died out thousands of years ago.’’† In 2004 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld his ruling, and scientists examined the remains in the summer of 2005. *New York Times, September 30, 1996, Section A, p. 12. †New York Times, July 19, 2005, Section F; Column 2; Science Desk; p. 4.

Like the other members of the longer-head group, Kennewick Man’s head and body measurements did not seem to correspond to those of any Amerindians living in the region today. In fact, those in the long-headed group do not closely resemble any modern population. This lack of correspondence suggests that the long-headed group may have become extinct in the past, leaving no descendants today. Scientists are still grappling with the implications of these ﬁnds, and many refuse to speculate further, since the data are so sparse and inconclusive. However, a small number of scientists have proposed a provocative, but tentative, model for the peopling of the Americas: they suggest that, as early as 14,000 b.c.e. and certainly by 10,500 b.c.e., the long-headed peoples came ﬁrst, perhaps from northeast Asia, and lived along the west coast of the Americas. These settlers may have lived in Monte Verde and other early sites. Several thousand years later, these scientists suggest, a second wave of round-headed settlers came to the Americas, replaced the original settlers, and moved inland. Others dispute this hypothesis vigorously. (See the feature “World History in Today’s World: Kennewick Man in Court.”) In sum, many scholars agree that people migrated to the Americas but not on when or in how many waves. Everyone concurs that the age of migrations ended when the world’s climate warmed quickly at the end of the Wisconsin Ice Age. Between 8300 and 7000 b.c.e., the sea level (as measured near British Columbia, Canada) rose 400 feet (122 m), from 350 feet (107 m) below today’s level to 50 feet (15 m) above it.6 By 7000 b.c.e., the Bering Strait had ﬁlled with water and most

The Emergence of Agriculture, 12,500–3000 B.C.E.

of Beringia lay under water once again. The only regions of the world that had not yet been settled were the islands of the Paciﬁc (see Chapter 5). After 7000 b.c.e., the ancestors of modern Amerindians dispersed over North and South America, where they lived in almost total isolation from the rest of the world until 1492.

The Emergence of Agriculture, 12,500–3000 B.C.E.

he development of agriculture, when people planted the ﬁrst seeds and harvested the resulting crops using domesticated animals, marked a crucial breakthrough in the history of humankind. Before it, all ancient peoples were hunters and gatherers and never established permanent settlements. They were constantly in motion, whether following herds of wild animals or gathering wild berries and plants. Over thousands of years, early peoples in different parts of the globe experimented ﬁrst by gathering certain plants and hunting selected animals. Eventually they began to plant seeds in speciﬁc locations and to raise tame animals that could help them harvest their crops. The cultivation of crops facilitated settled life ﬁrst in small farming villages and then in towns.

• agriculture

The planting of seeds and harvesting of crops using domesticated animals.

The Domestication of Plants and Animals, ca. 12,500–7000 B.C.E.

The ﬁrst people in western Asia, and possibly the world, who learned how to plant seeds, domesticate animals, and cultivate crops were the Natuﬁans (NAH-too-feeuhnz), who lived in Palestine and southern Syria in 12,500 b.c.e. (see Map 1.1). Hunters and gatherers, they harvested ﬁelds of grain, particularly wild barley and emmer wheat, which ﬂourished because the region’s climate was warmer and wetter than today. They also picked fruits and nuts and hunted wild cattle, goats, pigs, and deer. The Natuﬁans used small ﬂint blades mounted on wooden handles to cut down the stands of wild barley and emmer wheat, and they ground the harvested grain in stone mortars with pestles. Because they knew how to make advanced stone tools, archaeologists class them as Neolithic, literally “New Stone Age.” Unlike Paleolithic peoples, the Natuﬁans and other Neolithic peoples practiced agriculture. Gradually the Natuﬁans began to modify their way of life, possibly to support a growing population. The Natuﬁans at ﬁrst gathered wild grain where it grew naturally. But wild grains had two ﬂaws: their stems were so weak that their seeds easily fell to the ground, and their thick husks made it difﬁcult to remove the kernels of grain from inside the seeds. The Natuﬁans gradually started to weed these naturally occurring stands of grain and to plant extra seeds in them. The Natuﬁans picked seeds from tall plants, a practice that eventually fostered the growth of wheat with stronger stems. Similarly, as they favored plants whose kernels had thinner husks, the wheat and barley they planted began to diverge from their wild prototypes. People took thousands of years to master the two major components of farming: taming animals and planting crops. The ﬁrst step to domesticating wild animals was simply to stop killing young female animals. Then people began to watch over wild herds and kill only those animals that could no longer breed. Eventually,

• Neolithic

“New Stone Age,” the archaeological term for societies that used stone tools and practiced agriculture.

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MAP 1.1 Ancient Southwestern Asia The Natuﬁans, who lived in Palestine and southern Syria, began to practice agriculture around 12,500 B.C.E. and gradually learned how to raise animals and plant crops over the next several thousand years. Agriculture eventually spread beyond the Levant and Mesopotamia to southern Anatolia, where agriculturalists built the world’s earliest city at Catalhoyuk. the Natuﬁans began to feed the herds in their care. The dog was the ﬁrst animal to be tamed, around 10,000 b.c.e., and its function was to help hunters locate their prey. After several thousand years, villagers had domesticated goats, sheep, and cattle. All these animals produced meat, and sheep produced wool that was woven into cloth. The size of excavated Natuﬁan sites suggests that groups as large as 150 or 250 people—far larger than the typical hunting and gathering band of 30 or 40—lived together in settlements as large as 10,800 square feet (1000 sq m). Although some analysts have idealized life in ancient society and imagined early peoples sharing their food and clothing with each other, archaeological evidence shows just the opposite: some people, presumably the higher-ranking members of the group, gained control of more resources than others. Burials reveal the greatest differences: some Natuﬁan tombs contain the unadorned corpses of the lower ranked, while corpses decorated with shell, bone, or stone ornaments are clearly those of the more powerful members of the society. After 8300 b.c.e., possibly because of a sustained period of dryer weather, it became increasingly difﬁcult for the Natuﬁans to continue gathering wild grain as before. Some Natuﬁans returned to a life of hunting undomesticated crops and gathering wild plants, a possible indication that they found the cultivation of crops too difﬁcult. Still others intensiﬁed their planting and gathering of wheat and barley.

The Emergence of Agriculture, 12,500–3000 B.C.E.

By 8000 b.c.e. many peoples throughout the eastern Mediterranean, particularly near the Zagros Mountains in modern Turkey, had begun to cultivate wheat and barley (see Map 1.2). Unlike the Natuﬁans, these peoples did not live near preexisting stands of wild wheat and barley but rather in more difﬁcult living conditions that forced them to experiment with planting seeds and raising crops. Archaeologists have noticed that peoples living in marginal areas, not the most fertile areas with the heaviest rainfall, tended to plant crops because they had to innovate. Once they had begun to cultivate crops, the larger size of their villages forced them to continue farming because agriculture could support a larger population than hunting and gathering.

The First Larger Settlements, 7000–3000 B.C.E.

Between 8300 and 7500 b.c.e., the largest Natuﬁan settlement was Jericho ( JEHR-ih-koh), near the Jordan River in the present-day occupied West Bank, where as many as one thousand people may have lived in an area of 8 to 10 acres (.03–.04 sq km).7 Residing in mud-brick dwellings with stone foundation bases, the residents of Jericho planted barley and wheat, possibly along with ﬁgs and lentils, at the same time they continued to hunt wild animals. The more grains they ate, the more their bodies needed salt, which they collected by evaporating water from the Dead Sea. The residents of Jericho dug a wide ditch and built a wall at least 8 feet (2.5 m) high around their settlement to protect their accumulated resources from wild animals, human enemies, or possibly both. They also built a 28-foot (8.5-m) tower inside the wall that may have served as a lookout post. The ditches, the wall, and the tower all show the ruler’s ability to mobilize laborers and supplies for largescale construction. Around 7250 b.c.e., more than one thousand people lived at the site of Ain Ghazal (AYN GUH-zahl) near Amman, Jordan, which also covered 10 acres (.04 sq km).

The Earliest Depictions of People? The Plaster Statues of Ain Ghazal, Jordan Dating to 6500 B.C.E., these ﬁgures were probably used in rituals and commemorated the dead. Their makers fashioned a core of reeds and grass, covered it with plaster, and then painted clothes and facial features on it. The eyes, made from inlaid shells with painted dots, are particularly haunting. (Photo by John Tsantesi, courtesy Dr. Gary O. Rollefson, Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington)

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MAP 1.2 Early Agriculture Agriculture developed independently at different times in the different regions of the world. In some places, like western Asia, residents gradually shifted to full-time cultivation of crops and raising domesticated animals, while in others, like New Guinea, they continued to hunt and gather. Interactive Map

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3,000 Mi.

The Emergence of Agriculture, 12,500–3000 B.C.E.

In 6500 b.c.e., the site had become twice as large, and by 6000 b.c.e. it was three times as large. Like the residents of Jericho, the people of Ain Ghazal planted wheat, barley, and lentils, even as they continued to hunt for wild animals and gather wild plants. They also raised their own domesticated goats. The site is most famous for producing quantities of unusual human ﬁgurines, some as tall as 3 feet (.9 m), with distinctive shell eyes. By 7000 b.c.e. early farmers were living in villages in western Turkey and the region of the Levant (the eastern shore of the Mediterranean in today’s Lebanon and Israel). Their residents could depend on rainfall to support their crops, and they continued to hunt and gather as they raised their own herds. By far the largest settlement in the region was at Catalhoyuk (CHAH-tal Her-yerk) in south central Anatolia, where some ﬁve thousand people were living in 6000 b.c.e. Catalhoyuk did not resemble earlier settlements. Unlike Jericho, it had no external wall or surrounding moats. The residents lived in mud-brick dwellings touching each other, and the exteriors of the houses on the perimeter of the village formed a continuous protective wall. Frequently white-washed, the walls of the Catalhoyuk dwellings depicted animals, hunters, gods, and even the earliest known landscape painting of a volcano exploding. Of the more than one hundred rooms that have been excavated, forty had plaster models of bull or ram heads mounted on the walls or paintings showing women giving birth to rams or bulls. Some archaeologists believe that these rooms served as shrines where residents worshiped bulls and rams; others see them simply as the homes of the wealthy, who worshiped ram and bull deities. The different types of houses at Catalhoyuk indicate that some residents had more wealth than others. The wealthy buried their dead with jewelry and tools, while the poor interred only their dead bodies. At the same time that they worked in the ﬁelds, some families worked bone tools, wove cloth, or made clay pots, which they could trade for other goods, especially obsidian, a naturally occurring volcanic glass. Ancient peoples treasured obsidian because they could use it to make sharp knives and beautiful jewelry. Archaeologists have found evidence of the independent development of agriculture in a number of regions around the world: in western Asia around 12,500 b.c.e., as we have seen in this chapter (see Map 1.2); in Mesoamerica around 8000 b.c.e.; in the Yangzi Valley of China around 7000 b.c.e.; in the Indus River Valley in today’s Pakistan between 6500 and 5000 b.c.e.; in the Peruvian Andes around 8000 b.c.e.; in New Guinea around 5000 b.c.e.; in eastern Sahara around 8000 b.c.e.; and in sub-Saharan Africa around 2000 b.c.e. Many peoples of the world continued to hunt and gather as the major source of their food supply. In the spring hunter-gatherers in New Guinea planted the seeds of a particularly desirable crop, such as bananas, and then returned in the fall to harvest the ripened fruit. Only in a few places in the world did the development of agriculture lead to the rise of a complex society, as we will see in Chapters 2 through 5.

The World’s Earliest City: Catalhoyuk, Turkey This artist’s reconstruction shows what Catalhoyuk looked like in 6000 B.C.E., when it had a population of around ﬁve thousand people. The settlement had no streets, and the houses had no doors at ground level. Instead, residents walked on top of the roofs to get from one place to another. Entering houses through a hole in the roof, they climbed down a ladder to get inside. (From Vanished Civilization: The Hidden Secrets of Lost Cities and Forgotten People. Reader’s Digest Association, Ltd., London, 2002.)

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Chapter Review

KEY TERMS Kennewick Man (2) hominids (4) Homo sapiens sapiens (4) evolution (5) Australopithecus (5) Paleolithic (6) Homo erectus (6) Neanderthal (8) religion (9) Beringia (13) Monte Verde, Chile (16) stratigraphy (16) carbon-14 (16) Clovis technological complex (18) agriculture (21) Neolithic (21)

Download the MP3 audio ﬁle of the Chapter Review and listen to it on the go.

he remains of Kennewick Man shed light on the settlement of the Americas, one of the last phases in the peopling of the world. The movement of peoples from Africa to almost every corner of the globe was a long one, requiring six or seven million years. This complex migration involved many different human ancestors, some closely related to modern people, some less so. One theme is constant: from the very beginning ancient hominids were constantly moving. They followed herds, crossed rivers, traveled by boat, and ultimately covered enormous distances at a time when their most powerful weapon was a stone hand ax and the fastest means of locomotion was running. From their beginnings, early humans were voyagers who traveled the world.

Who were the ﬁrst hominids? What were the main stages in their development? The history of humankind began some seven million years ago in Africa, when the ﬁrst hominids probably broke off from chimpanzees and other primates. By 3.5 million years ago, australopithecines like Lucy stood upright. Around 2.5 million years ago, Homo habilis made the ﬁrst tools by breaking ﬂakes off stone cores.

When and how did hominids leave Africa and settle Eurasia? The ﬁrst human ancestor to move outside of Africa, Homo erectus, crossed the Sinai Peninsula and reached modern-day Georgia in the Caucasus Mountains by 1.8 million years ago and Ubeidiya, Israel, 1.4 million years ago. Homo erectus could probably control ﬁre but did not settle in northern Eurasia because it was too cold.

When did ancient hominids become recognizably human? Homo sapiens sapiens, or anatomically modern humans, ﬁrst arose in central Africa around 150,000 b.c.e. In 100,000 b.c.e. they buried their dead in Israel, a sign that they believed in the afterlife, a major element of most religious systems. In 75,000 b.c.e. they created the world’s ﬁrst art objects, such as the chunk of ocher from Blombos Cave. By 50,000 b.c.e. these humans were planning hunting expeditions in the fall so that they had meat over the winter, and they probably used speech to do so. Their ability to hunt, to build boats and rafts, and to adjust to new environments allowed them to settle Australia by 60,000 b.c.e. and Europe by 50,000 b.c.e.

26 26

Chapter Review

How and when did the ﬁrst people move to the Americas? What was their way of life? The ﬁnal phase of the expansion occurred when Homo sapiens sapiens moved from Siberia across the Beringian land bridge to the Western Hemisphere about 14,000 b.c.e. The earliest conﬁrmed site with human habitation in the Americas is Monte Verde, Chile, where humans lived in 10,500 b.c.e. Almost all of the residents of the Americas were hunter-gatherers who lived in small bands of about forty members.

WEB RESOURCES Pronunciation Guide Interactive Maps MAP 1.1 Ancient Southwestern Asia MAP 1.2 Early Agriculture

Chapter Objectives ACE Multiple-Choice Quiz Flashcards

How and where did agriculture ﬁrst arise? How did its impact vary around the world? Agriculture arose ﬁrst in western Asia around 12,500 b.c.e. There, the Natuﬁans and other Neolithic peoples used stone tools to gather wild barley and emmer wheat. By 8,000 b.c.e. different peoples in western Asia had domesticated dogs, goats, sheep, and cattle, and they were planting and harvesting strains of barley and wheat. In some parts people continued to hunt wild animals and gather plants at the same time they cultivated certain crops, while in other parts of the world, including western Asia, agriculture resulted in the rise of complex societies, as we will learn in the next chapter.

For Further Reference Benedict, Jeff. No Bone Unturned: The Adventures of a Top Smithsonian Forensic Scientist and the Legal Battle for America’s Oldest Skeletons. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.

White, Randall. Dark Caves, Bright Visions: Life in Ice Age Europe. New York: American Museum of Natural History in association with W. W. Norton, 1986.

Chatters, James. Ancient Encounters: Kennewick Man and the First Americans. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001.

Websites

Dillehay, Thomas D. The Settlement of the Americas: A New Prehistory. New York: Basic Books, 2000. Dixon, E. James. Bones, Boats, and Bison. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999. Fagan, Brian M. The Great Journey: The Peopling of Ancient America. London: Thames and Hudson, 1987.

American Museum of Natural History, History of Human Evolution (http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/ humanorigins/history/humans5.php). Virtual, interactive tour of the Museum’s Hall of Human Origins. Northern Clans, Northern Traces (http://www.mnh.si.edu/arctic/html/kennewick_man .html). James Chatters provides his explanation of the Kennewick man discovery.

Fagan, Brian M., ed., The Oxford Companion to Archaeology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Klein, Richard, with Blake Edgar. The Dawn of Human Culture. New York: John Wiley, 2002.

Scientiﬁc American (http://www.sciam.com). Excellent source for latest discoveries in human history and archaeology.

Koppel, Tom. Lost World: Rewriting Prehistory—How New Science Is Tracing America’s Ice Age Mariners. New York: Atria Books, 2003. Stiebing, William H. Ancient Near Eastern History and Culture. New York: Longman, 2003.

The Smithsonian Institution: Human Origins Program (http://anthropology.si.edu/humanorigins/). Comprehensive introduction to the history of all human species.

Stringer, Chris, and Peter Andrews. The Complete World of Human Evolution. London: Thames & Hudson, 2006.

Films

Wells, Spencer. The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.

“Nova: Mystery of the First Americans.”

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CHAPTER

The First Complex Societies in the Eastern Mediterranean, ca. 4000–550 B.C.E. The Emergence of Complex Society in Mesopotamia, ca. 3100–1590 B.C.E. (p. 31) Egypt During the Old and Middle Kingdoms, ca. 3100–1500 B.C.E. (p. 38) The International System, 1500–1150 B.C.E.

(p. 46)

Syria-Palestine and New Empires in Western Asia, 1200–500 B.C.E. (p. 51)

nkidu, born in the uplands, Who feeds on grass with gazelles, Who drinks at the water hole with beasts, . . . Shamhat looked upon him, a human-man, A barbarous fellow from the midst of the steppe: Shamhat loosened her garments,

GILGAMESH KILLING A BULL

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Courtesy Schoyen Collection

he epic Gilgamesh (GIL-ga-mesh), one of the earliest recorded works of literature, captures the experience of the people of Mesopotamia (mess-ohpoh-TAME-ee-ah), who established one of the ﬁrst complex societies in the world. Mesopotamia (Greek for “between the rivers”) is the region between the Tigris (TIE-gris) and Euphrates (you-FRAY-teez) Rivers in today’s Iraq and eastern Syria. The epic Gilgamesh indicates that the people in this region remembered what life was like before the rise of cities. It describes the unlikely friendship between two men: Enkidu (EN-kee-doo), who lives in the wild like an animal, and Gilgamesh, the king of the ancient city Uruk (OO-rook), located in modernday Warka in southern Iraq. Ruler of the walled city between 2700 and 2500 b.c.e., Gilgamesh enjoys the beneﬁts of a complex society: wearing clothing, drinking beer, and eating bread. Early in the epic, when a hunter complains to Gilgamesh that Enkidu is freeing the animals caught in his traps, Gilgamesh sends the woman Shamhat, a priestess at the main temple of Uruk, to introduce Enkidu to the pleasures of complex societies:

Black Sea

The Travels of Gilgamesh Gilgamesh’s legendary journeys Sumer, 2900–2334 B.C.E. Old Kingdom Egypt, 2686–2181 B.C.E.

Possible place where Gilgamesh might have killed Humbaba.

A N AT O L I A

ate hr sR

SY R IA

Byblos

s R. g ri Ti

Eu p

CYPRUS

Mediterranean Sea

BABYLON IA Babylon

Nippur

Ain Ghazal

LOWER EGYPT

ELAM

Susa

SUMER

Jericho

Probable ancient coastline

Uruk

Memphis

Gilgamesh departs Uruk with Enkidu.

EGYPT (OLD KINGDOM) UPPER EGYPT

IA B U A S R A IN N PE

le Ni

Thebes

H A R A

DILMUN

Gilgamesh enters what the ancient Sumerians believed to be the land of the dead.

a N N U B IA 0

300 Km.

150

3500 B.C.E.

3000

2500

2000

150

300 Mi.

1500

1000

500 B.C.E.

Lifetime of Gilgamesh

WESTERN ASIA

(between 2700 and 2500) Early Dynastic period

Uruk period 3400

3000 2900

Hittite Empire

1792 1750

1322 1220

2334

3300

Assyrian Empire 911

960 920

ca. 2000

Unification of Egypt 3100 3050

Old Kingdom 2686

Middle Kingdom 2181 2040

1782

Earliest writing

Kingdom of Kush

3100

2000

Reign of Hatshepsut 1473–1458

Hebrew Bible recorded ca. 500 Egypt under Persian rule

New Kingdom 1570

Persians conquer Mesopotamia 612 539

Reign of Solomon in Israel

Hittites make iron tools

First writing

EGYPT AND NUBIA

Reign of Hammurabi

1069 Reign of Akhenaten 1352–1336

525 404 Kingdom of Nubia 800

(to 350 C.E.)

CHAPTER 2

The First Complex Societies in the Eastern Mediterranean, ca. 4000–550 B.C.E.

She exposed her loins, he took her charms, . . . After he had his ﬁll of her delights, He set off towards his beasts. When they saw him, Enkidu, the gazelles shied off, The wild beasts of the steppe shunned his person. . . . Enkidu was too slow, he could not run as before, But he had gained reason and expanded his understanding.1

Primary Source: The Epic of Gilgamesh Find out how Gilgamesh’s friend Enkidu propels him on a quest for immortality, and whether that quest is successful.

After his encounter with Shamhat, Enkidu immediately adopts the ways of those living in complex societies and becomes Gilgamesh’s close friend. First written around 2100 b.c.e., Gilgamesh is not a strict chronicle of the historic king’s life but the romanticized version of a legendary king’s life, complete with appearances by different gods who controlled human fate. The hero of the epic is constantly in motion. Gilgamesh makes two long journeys, traveling overland by foot and across water on a small boat he guides with a pole. First, he travels with Enkidu to kill the ferocious monster Humbaba, who guards a cedar forest somewhere to the west. Then, after Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh voyages to the land of the dead, where he learns about a ﬂood surprisingly like that described in the Hebrew Bible. The story of Gilgamesh was written by people living in one of the world’s ﬁrst complex societies. This chapter traces the rise of the ﬁrst cities, then city-states, then kingdoms, and ﬁnally regional powers that interacted in an international system spanning Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, including Anatolia (the western section of present-day Turkey), Crete, and Greece in the Aegean Sea. These societies were signiﬁcantly more complex than those that preceded them. As the centuries passed, an international system developed in which envoys traveled from one ruler to another and merchants transported goods throughout the region.

Focus Questions

What were the similarities in political structures, religion, and social structure in Mesopotamia and Egypt? What were the main differences? When did the international system of the eastern Mediterranean take shape, and how did it function? How did monotheism arise among the ancient Hebrews, and under what circumstances did they record their beliefs?

The Emergence of Complex Society in Mesopotamia, ca. 3100–1590 B.C.E.

s we have seen in the previous chapter, the settlements of the eastern Mediterranean increased in size gradually, reaching some ﬁve thousand people living in Catalhoyuk by 6000 b.c.e. Eventually some villages became larger than the surrounding villages and thus became centers. In time these centers grew to become cities of twenty thousand inhabitants or more. By 3100 b.c.e. even larger urban centers had formed in southern Mesopotamia, where the ﬁrst city of forty or ﬁfty thousand people was located at Uruk. Here complex society took shape for the ﬁrst time. Scholars deﬁne a complex society as a large urban center with a population in the tens of thousands whose residents pursue different occupations, the mark of specialized labor. Some have higher social positions than others, an indication of social stratiﬁcation. Some earlier deﬁnitions of complex society required the presence of a writing system, but today the term also covers urban societies without writing systems. In recent years, analysts have stressed that, unlike Neolithic societies, early complex societies had much larger surpluses—of both material goods and labor—and believed that their rulers, their gods, and their human representatives, the priests, were entitled to a large share of these surpluses. The shift from a simpler society to a complex one took thousands of years. Complex societies interest historians because they had larger populations than simple societies and their residents often left behind written records that allow historians to study how they changed over time, the major topic of historical writing. The world’s ﬁrst complex societies appeared in Mesopotamia and Egypt at about the same time, before 3000 b.c.e.; this chapter ﬁrst considers Mesopotamia.

• Mesopotamia Greek “between the rivers”: the region between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in today’s Iraq and eastern Syria.

• Gilgamesh

Name of a historic king of Uruk (modern-day Warka, Iraq) who ruled between 2700 and 2500 b.c.e. Also, the name of an epic about him.

• complex society Societies characterized by large urban centers with specialized labor and social stratiﬁcation, as well as the belief that rulers and deities were entitled to the surpluses these societies produced.

City Life in Ancient Mesopotamia

The ﬁrst settlers came to southern Mesopotamia from the eastern Mediterranean and western Turkey. They found the environment harsh. Each year not enough rain fell to support farming, and no wild grain grew naturally in the marshlands. In addition, the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers tended to ﬂood in the late summer, when crops were ripening, and the ﬂoodwaters often washed away the settlers’ homes. The settlers responded by developing techniques for draining the water. They settled along the shore of the Euphrates, which ﬂowed less rapidly than the Tigris, and dug channels for the ﬂoodwater from the Euphrates. They discovered that they could use these channels to move the water to ﬁelds far from the river. Using irrigation, these early farmers permanently settled the lower Mesopotamian plain between 6000 and 5000 b.c.e. Their ﬁrst villages were small, but by 4000 b.c.e. some villages had grown into walled urban centers of over ten thousand people. The farmland within the walls could not produce enough food for the growing population, so the urban centers came to depend on surplus food grown by the residents of the surrounding villages. The food was stored in temples. Excavations reveal that temples had a main chamber surrounded by multiple rooms for the storage of grain. In turn, the cities provided the villages with military protection from raids by neighboring cities.

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CHAPTER 2

• city-state

A city whose ruler governs both the city center and the surrounding countryside.

The First Complex Societies in the Eastern Mediterranean, ca. 4000–550 B.C.E.

Historians use the term city-state for a city whose ruler governs both the city center and the surrounding countryside. Kings descended from prominent families, like Gilgamesh, ruled these city-states, often with the support of temple priests and in consultation with other prominent families (see page 36). The ﬁrst kings were probably successful military leaders who continued to rule in peacetime. The epic describes Gilgamesh’s city of Uruk as the leading city of its time, and ancient texts simply call Uruk “the city,” because no other city rivaled Uruk in size or importance between 3400 and 3000 b.c.e., the dates of the Uruk period. One of the most ancient cities to be excavated by archaeologists, Uruk meets the deﬁnition of a complex society: its population numbered between forty and ﬁfty thousand, and its inhabitants had specialized occupations and were divided by social level. The surrounding countryside provided a large surplus of grain that the ruler and temple leadership distributed to the residents of the city. The opening section of Gilgamesh provides a vivid description of the region’s greatest city: Go up, pace out the walls of Uruk, Study the foundation terrace and examine the brickwork. Is not its masonry of kiln-ﬁred brick? And did not seven masters lay its foundations? One square mile of city, one square mile of gardens, One square mile of clay pits, a half square mile of Ishtar’s dwelling, Three and a half square miles is the measure of Uruk!

• bronze

An alloy of copper and tin used to make the earliest metal tools.

Uruk, then, contained one square mile each of land occupied by residences, farmland, and clay pits, with the remaining half square mile taken by the temple of Ishtar, the city’s guardian deity. (The Sumerian mile does not correspond exactly to the modern English mile.) Dating to 700 b.c.e., the most complete version of the Gilgamesh epic is a retelling of the original story, and historians must use archaeological data to supplement the information it provides about early Uruk. Although the epic claims that the walls were made from ﬁred bricks, the actual walls were made from sundried mud brick. In roughly 3000 b.c.e., the city had a wall 5 miles (9.5 km) long. Enclosing approximately 1,000 acres (400 hectares), it was by far the largest city in the world at the time. Much of it consisted of open farmland. Farming required year-round labor and constant vigilance. Unlike Neolithic farmers, whose tools were made from bone, wood, or stone, Mesopotamian farmers had much more durable tools made of bronze, an alloy of copper and tin. In addition to axes used to cut down trees and clear ﬁelds, they used bronze plow blades to dig the furrows and bronze sickles to harvest the grain. Other workers also had bronze tools. Those who smelted metal used hammers and tongs, while carpenters had saws and drills. Archaeologists are not certain where the wheel was ﬁrst invented. One of the most important tools used by the Mesopotamians, it ﬁrst appeared sometime around 3500 b.c.e. in a wide area extending from Mesopotamia to the modern European countries of Switzerland, Slovenia, Poland, and Russia. The earliest wheeled vehicles were ﬂat wooden platforms that moved on two logs pulled by laborers. By 3000 b.c.e. the Mesopotamians were using narrow carts, usually with four solid wooden wheels, to move loads, both within city-states and over greater distances. By 2500 b.c.e., they had begun to add spokes to wheels, which moved much faster.

The Emergence of Complex Society in Mesopotamia, ca. 3100–1590 B.C.E.

Built in the ﬂood plain of the Euphrates, Uruk had no tall trees suitable for lumber, little stone, and almost no mineral deposits. The epic tells of Gilgamesh and Enkidu’s overland journey to the wooded home of the monster Humbaba to obtain lumber, and the real-life inhabitants of Uruk shipped wood in carts or by boat ﬁrst from the highlands of northern Mesopotamia, near the Zagros (ZAHgroes) Mountains, and later from the forests of Lebanon. At Uruk, archaeologists have found extensive evidence of occupational diversity and social stratiﬁcation, both important markers of a complex society. Large quantities of broken pottery found in the same area suggest that potters lived and worked together, as did other craftworkers like weavers and metalsmiths. Because people received more or less compensation for different tasks, some became rich while others stayed poor. Poorer people lived in small houses made of unﬁred mud bricks and mud plaster, while richer people lived in ﬁred-brick houses of many rooms with kitchens. They hosted guests in large reception rooms in which they served lavish meals washed down with generous quantities of beer. (See the feature “World History in Today’s World: The World’s First Beer.”)

The Beginnings of Writing, 3300 B.C.E.

People living in southern Mesopotamia developed their writing system sometime around 3300 b.c.e., making it the earliest in the world. Scholars call the language of the ﬁrst documents Sumerian, after Sumer, a geographical term referring broadly to the ancient region of southern Mesopotamia. It is not always easy to determine whether a given sign constitutes writing in ancient script. Markings on pottery, for example, look like writing but may be only the sign of the person who made the pot. A sign becomes writing only when someone other than the writer associates a speciﬁc word or sound with it. We can track the invention of writing in Mesopotamia because the residents used clay, a material that once baked was virtually indestructible. At ﬁrst, sometime between 4000 and 3000 b.c.e., the ancient Sumerians used small clay objects of different shapes to keep track of merchandise, probably animals being traded or donated to a temple. Eventually they began to incise lines in these objects to stand for a certain number of items. Later, they placed these small objects in a bag made from a clay sheet and incised these bags, while still soft, on the outside to indicate their contents. These markings did not yet constitute written language because they could be understood in different ways; one had to cut open the clay bag, after it had hardened, to ﬁnd out what was inside. The transition to written language came when people drew a picture on a ﬂat writing tablet that represented a speciﬁc animal and could not be mistaken for anything else. The ﬁrst documents in human history, from a level dating to 3300 b.c.e., depict the item being counted with a tally next to it to showing the number of items. Temple accountants needed writing to record increasingly sophisticated transactions, like the number and type of animal or the amount of grain donated on successive days. By 3300 b.c.e., a full-blown writing system of more than seven hundred different signs had emerged. Some symbols, like an ox-head representing an ox, are clearly pictorial, but many others are not. The word sheep, for example, was a circle with an X inside it (see Figure 2.1). Over time, the marks lost their original shapes, and by 700 b.c.e. each symbol represented a certain sound; that is, it had become phonetic. We call this later

• Sumer

A geographical term from Akkadian meaning the ancient region of southern Mesopotamia.

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CHAPTER 2

The First Complex Societies in the Eastern Mediterranean, ca. 4000–550 B.C.E.

SAG head NINDA bread GU7 eat AB2 cow APIN plow SUHUR carp ca. 3100 B.C.E. ca. 3000 B.C.E. (Uruk III) (Uruk IV)

ca. 2500 B.C.E. ca. 2100 B.C.E. (Fara) (Ur III)

ca. 700 B.C.E. (NeoAssyrian)

Sumerian reading and meaning

FIGURE 2.1

Cuneiform The Mesopotamians ﬁrst made small pictures, or pictographs, to write, but these symbols gradually evolved into combinations of lines that scribes made by pressing a wedge-shaped implement into wet clay. The cuneiform forms from 700 B.C.E. hardly resemble their original pictographic shapes from 3100 B.C.E. (From J. N. Postgate, Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the Dawn of History [New York: Routledge, 1992], p. 63. Reprinted with permission of Taylor and Francis Books Ltd.)

• cuneiform The term, meaning “wedge-shaped,” for the writing system of Sumer in its late stages, when the script became completely phonetic.

writing cuneiform (cue-NAY-i-form), meaning “wedge-shaped,” because it was made by a writing implement pressed into clay. These early records, most of them temple accounts, allow us to understand early Sumerian religion and how the ancient Sumerians distributed their surplus wealth.

Sumerian Religion

The people of ancient Sumer believed that various gods managed different aspects of their hostile environment. The most powerful god, the storm-god, could control storms and ﬂooding. Like human beings, the Sumerian gods had families who sometimes lived together in harmony and sometimes did not. The largest building in Uruk was the temple to Ishtar, the protective deity of Uruk and the storm-god’s daughter. Sumerian temple complexes sometimes housed a thousand priests, priestesses, and supporting laborers. The largest structure inside each temple was a ziggurat, a stepped platform made from bricks. Throughout the year both rich and poor participated in different festivals and ceremonies presided over by priests and priestesses. The Warka Vase from Uruk (Warka is the modern name for Uruk) shows the residents of the city-state bringing different offerings to Ishtar (see the illustration on page 36). The human king played an important role in Sumerian religion because he was believed to be the intermediary between the gods and human beings. The epic describes Gilgamesh as two-thirds divine, one-third human. He was sufﬁciently attractive that Ishtar proposed marriage to him. He brusquely turned her down, pointing out that each of her previous lovers had come to a bad end.

WORLD HISTORY in TODAY’S WORLD

The World’s First Beer

“E

nkidu did not know how to eat bread, / Nor had he ever learned to drink beer!”* the author of Gilgamesh exclaims. Having grown up in the wild, Enkidu had never tasted the two basic foodstuffs of the Sumerians—bread and beer—both made from barley and wheat. The usual way to make malt is to add water, allow barley or wheat to germinate partially in a sealed container, and then remove the water before the grain sprouts. Partial germination creates enzymes that produce the malty ﬂavor. The Sumerians used large clay jars with lids for this process. We do not know exactly how they learned to make malt, but perhaps someone tasted a piece of discarded bread that had become wet and then fermented. The Sumerians were the ﬁrst people in the world to make beer. Gilgamesh vividly describes Enkidu’s ﬁrst taste: Enkidu drank seven juglets of the beer. His mood became relaxed, he was singing joyously, He felt light-hearted and his features glowed.

The Sumerians drank beer constantly. The rations provided by the king to royal messengers included beer, bread, and onions. Temple-goers offered clay jars full of beer to their gods, and Sumerians regularly gave wedding presents ranging from 5 to 10 gallons (20–40 liters), or one-third or two-thirds of a modern keg of beer. By the year 2000 B.C.E., the Babylonians had learned to make at least twenty types of beer, some from emmer wheat, some from barley, and some from a mixture of the two. The art of brewing spread throughout the region, and people throughout Egypt and Mesopotamia learned how to make beer. The main ingredient in beer, even today, is malt extract, which is made from grain that has been allowed to ferment. Home brewers make beer by boiling water mixed with malt extract, adding sugar, combining it with still water, and adding yeast. After one to two weeks, the mixture is drinkable but tastes quite different from commercial beers. *Quotes from Benjamin R. Foster, The Epic of Gilgamesh: A Norton Critical Edition (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), p. 14.

Ishtar persuaded her father to retaliate by sending the Bull of Heaven to punish Gilgamesh and destroy Uruk. Gilgamesh’s friend Enkidu killed the bull, to the delight of Uruk’s residents but to the dismay of the gods, who then convened in council. The storm-god decided that Enkidu must die. Before he died, Enkidu dreamed of the world of the dead: To the house whence none who enters comes forth, On the road from which there is no way back, To the house whose dwellers are deprived of light, Where dust is their fare and their food is clay. They are dressed like birds in feather garments, Yea, they shall see no daylight for they abide in darkness.

This description provides certain evidence—not available for earlier, preliterate societies—that the Sumerians believed in an afterworld. After Enkidu dies, the heartbroken Gilgamesh resolves to escape death himself and travels a great distance over mountains and desert to reach the entrance to the underworld, believed to be near modern-day Bahrain. At the end of his journey, Gilgamesh meets Utanapishtim (OO-tah-nah-pish-teem), who tells him that a great ﬂood occurred because the storm-god became angry with humankind and that Utanapishtim escaped when another divinity secretly informed him in time to build a boat. Utanapishtim, a human being to whom the gods granted

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The First Complex Societies in the Eastern Mediterranean, ca. 4000–550 B.C.E.

immortality, tells Gilgamesh the story of the ﬂood, and Gilgamesh realizes that he, like all human beings, must die, and returns to Uruk to rule the city-state.

The ruler of each city-state claimed to rule with the support of the local guardian deity, but an early version of Gilgamesh makes clear that he actually ruled in consultation with one or more assemblies. Faced with a demand from a neighboring kingdom to surrender, Gilgamesh consults with two separate assemblies, one of elders, one of younger men. While the elders oppose Gilgamesh’s decision to go to war, the younger men support him. During the Early Dynastic period, between 2900 and 2334 b.c.e., settlers moved out of Uruk to build new citystates closer to supplies of lumber and precious metals. Because transportation was slow and communication difﬁcult, these satellite cities had their own rulers but maintained trade ties with the mother cities. Thirty-ﬁve different citystates, each with a temple and its own guardian deity, traded and increasingly warred with one another. Higher city walls, increasing numbers of bronze weapons, and more artistic depictions of battle victories indicate regular warfare among these different city-states. The ﬁrst ruler to conquer all the city-states and unify the region was Sargon of Akkad (r. 2334–2279 b.c.e.). Sargon (SAHR-gone) and the Akkadians ruled the world’s ﬁrst empire, deﬁned as a large territory with subject peoples of different languages and different religious traditions. He and his descendents ruled over southern Mesopotamia for slightly over one hundred years until their empire broke apart. As surviving inscriptions show, Sargon changed the language of administration from Sumerian to Akkadian (uh-KAY-dee-uhn), named for his home city of Akkad (AHK-cad). Akkadian was a Semitic language related to modern Arabic and Hebrew. Sumerian, which was not related to any other language, continued to be used as a religious language, but Akkadian replaced it as the language of daily life in the Mesopotamian region. Gilgamesh, like many other literary works originally in Sumerian, was retold and embellished in the Akkadian version.

Sumerian Government

The Warka Vase: The Earliest Example of Narrative Art in the World? Found at Uruk, this limestone vase dates to 3200 B.C.E. and stands over 3 feet (1 m) tall. Like a comic book, it tells a story in different panels; the bottom shows crops and sheep on their way to the temple where they will be presented to the gods; the middle, nude priests carrying more offerings; and the top, the deities, who stand on the back of a ram, receiving all the offerings. (Iraq Museum, Baghdad/Art Resource, NY)

The Babylonian Empire, 1894–1595 B.C.E.

After the fall of the Akkadian empire, Mesopotamia again broke into several different kingdoms. Sometime around 2200 b.c.e., a new city, Babylon, located north of Uruk on the Euphrates, gained prominence. Babylon was a small city-state ruled by a succession of kings until the great military and legal leader Hammurabi

Documenting the Violence of War: The Standard of Ur Like the Warka vase (opposite), this object tells a story of war in different panels read from bottom to top. Notice the trampled bodies of the enemy under the feet of the donkeys on the bottom frame. The battle continues in the middle, and, on the top, ofﬁcials present prisoners to a larger-than-lifesize king. (© British Museum, London/Art Resource, NY) (ham-u-ROB-ee) (r. 1792–1750 b.c.e.) uniﬁed much of Mesopotamia. Surviving lists give the king’s name and how long he ruled, enabling historians to count backwards to determine the exact dates of a given ruler’s reign. Hammurabi is famous, even today, for the laws that he issued. Many people have heard of a single provision in Hammurabi’s law—“an eye for an eye”—but few realize that the original document contained nearly three hundred articles on a host of topics, including the treatment of slaves, divorce, criminal punishments, and interest rates on loans. Hammurabi’s laws were inscribed onto stone tablets over 7 feet (2 m) tall. Although they are often called a “code,” the texts of many surviving decisions indicate that judges did not actually consult them. The king carved different legal cases in stone as proof of his divine rule and as model cases for future kings to study. The laws recognized three different social groups, who received different punishments for the same crime. The most privileged group included the royal family, priests, merchants, and other free men and women who owned land. In the middle were commoners and peasants, and at the bottom were slaves. The original wording of the famous eye-for-an-eye clause says, “If an awa¯lu [freeman] should blind the eye of another awa¯lu [freeman], they shall blind his eye.”2 At the most basic level this is the law of exact retaliation: if you bring harm to someone else, the identical wound shall be your punishment. It operated only among social equals, however. If a freeman destroyed the eye of a commoner, he paid only a moderate ﬁne. If he destroyed the eye of a slave or broke one of his bones, then he had to pay the owner half of the slave’s value, an even lesser amount. The laws stipulated the payment of ﬁnes in ﬁxed amounts of silver or grain because coins did not yet exist. As trade increased in the years after 2000 b.c.e., the Babylonian law codes on regulations governing commerce became more detailed. The main trading partners

• Sargon of Akkad (r. 2334–2279 b.c.e.) The ﬁrst ruler to unify Mesopotamia. Changed the language of administration to Akkadian. • empire

A large territory in which one people rule over other subject peoples with different languages and different religious traditions.

Primary Source: The State Regulates Healthcare: Hammurabi’s Code and Surgeons Consider the various rewards and punishments for surgeons who either succeed or fail at their job in 1800 B.C.E.

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The First Complex Societies in the Eastern Mediterranean, ca. 4000–550 B.C.E.

of the Babylonians lay to the southeast and included communities in the Persian Gulf and modern-day Afghanistan, who exported copper, the blue semiprecious mineral lapis lazuli, and other metals and precious stones in exchange for Mesopotamian textiles. Hammurabi’s laws also provide insight into marriage and the roles and status of women. Marriage had to be recorded in a written contract to be legally valid. Women were entitled to a share of their father’s and/or mother’s property, either as a gift when they married or as a share of the father’s wealth upon his death. Punishment for adultery was severe: if a wife was found “lying with” someone other than her husband, she and her lover were tied together and thrown into water to drown; she was permitted to live if her husband allowed it. At the same time, the law afforded women certain legal rights: if a woman was accused of adultery and denied it (and was not found with a lover), she could take an oath of innocence before a god and return to her husband’s house unpunished. A wife could initiate divorce on the grounds that her husband failed to support her or had committed adultery. If the judge found that her husband had taken a lover but she had not, the divorce would be granted. The tablets reveal only how the king hoped his laws would operate, not how they actually did. One case, recorded shortly before Hammurabi’s reign on a clay tablet found at Nippur, shows how the legal system actually functioned. Three men—a barber, a gardener, and a third person whose occupation is not mentioned—killed a temple ofﬁcial named Lu-Inanna. They confessed to the victim’s wife, but she, for unstated reasons, failed to report the crime. Eventually the murderers were apprehended and the case came before the assembly of Nippur. A group of about ten men, including a bird-hunter, a porter, and a gardener, argued against the murderers: “They who have killed a man are not worthy of life. Those three males and that woman [the widow] should be killed in front of the chair of Lu-Inanna.” An ofﬁcial and a gardener, whose different social ranks show the mixed composition of the assembly, spoke on the wife’s behalf: “Granted that the husband . . . had been killed, but what had the woman done that she should be killed?”3 The assembly decided that the murderers should be punished but that the wife was innocent. Hammurabi’s dynasty left a permanent imprint on southern Mesopotamia, which came to be known as Babylonia. Yet his dynasty was short-lived. Babylonia reverted to a city-state after his death, and the dynasty ofﬁcially ended in 1595 b.c.e., when the Hittites (see page 50) sacked the city. Although the pace and extent of trade continued to increase, between 3300 and 1500 b.c.e. Mesopotamia remained politically apart from the other kingdoms of the eastern Mediterranean, as well as from Egypt, its neighbor to the west.

Egypt During the Old and Middle Kingdoms, ca. 3100–1500 B.C.E.

omplex society arose in Egypt at about the same time as in Mesopotamia— 3100 b.c.e.—but under much different circumstances. The people of Egypt never lived in city-states but rather in a uniﬁed kingdom made possible by the

Egypt During the Old and Middle Kingdoms, ca. 3100–1500 B.C.E.

natural geography of the Nile River Valley. Their god-king was called the pharaoh. Although Egypt did not have the large cities so characteristic of early complex societies, its society was highly stratiﬁed, with great differences between the poor and the rich. Large construction projects, like the building of the pyramids, required the same kind of occupational specialization so visible in Mesopotamian cities. The less tangible aspects of complex societies—the belief that the ruler governed with the support of the gods and that his subjects owed him their surplus—were also present in ancient Egypt. In certain periods Egypt was uniﬁed under strong rulers, while in others someone with the title of pharaoh presided over Egypt but did not actually govern the entire region. Historians call the periods with strong governments “kingdoms” and those with weak governments “intermediate periods.” The pharaohs of the Old Kingdom, between 2686 and 2181 b.c.e., ruled the Nile Valley from the Delta to the ﬁrst impassable rapids; those who ruled during the Middle Kingdom, between 2040 and 1782 b.c.e., controlled an even larger area.

• pharaoh

The godking who ruled the uniﬁed kingdom of Egypt since at least 3100 b.c.e.

The Central Role of the Nile

The Egyptian climate is mild, and the country is protected by natural barriers: deserts on three sides and the Mediterranean Sea on the fourth. Fed by headwaters coming from Lake Victoria and the Ethiopian highlands, the Nile ﬂows north, and its large delta opens onto the Mediterranean. Along the river are six steep, perilous, unnavigable rapids called cataracts (see Map 2.1). Lying 620 miles (1,000 km) upstream, the First Cataract formed a natural barrier between Egypt and Nubia, an ancient kingdom that straddled modern Egypt and Sudan (see page 48). Egypt was divided into three parts: Lower Egypt (the Delta region north of present-day Cairo), Upper Egypt (which ran from the First Cataract to the Delta), and Nubia (sometimes called Kush), south of the First Cataract. Because almost no rain falls anywhere along the Nile, farmers must tap the river to irrigate their wheat and barley ﬁelds; thus the Nile Valley waters almost all the arable land in Egypt. Two types of soil ﬁlled the banks of the Nile: averaging one-quarter mile (.65 sq km) on both sides, “the black land” consisted of very fertile soil, each year renewed by the river’s deposits of silt; beyond the black land lay the red land, which was less fertile. Beyond the red land lay uncultivable desert. The Nile, with its annual summer ﬂoods, was a much more reliable source of water than the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia; thus the Egyptians had no equivalent of the vengeful Mesopotamian storm-god who ordered the ﬂood in Gilgamesh. The Egyptians began to cultivate the ﬂood plain of the Nile between 4400 and 4000 b.c.e. Their calendar had three seasons, each 120 days long: “Inundation,” “Emergence of the Fields from Waters,” and “Drought.” During “Emergence,” farmers used irrigation to move the Nile waters to their ﬁelds and planted seeds, which they harvested during the “Drought” season.

Egyptian Government and Society

Scholars have wondered if the Sumerian invention of writing prompted the Egyptians to develop their own writing system. But the hieroglyphs (pictorial and phonetic symbols) of written Egyptian are so different from Sumerian writing that the two societies probably developed writing independently. The Egyptians were writing by 3100 b.c.e., but the surviving record does not explain how writing

• Nubia

Region south of the First Cataract on the Nile, in modern-day Egypt and Sudan; was an important trading partner of Egypt.

• hieroglyphs

The writing system of ancient Egypt, which consisted of different symbols, some pictorial, some phonetic, used on ofﬁcial inscriptions.

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CHAPTER 2

The First Complex Societies in the Eastern Mediterranean, ca. 4000–550 B.C.E.

Old Kingdom (2575–2134 B.C.E.) and Middle Kingdom (2040–1640 B.C.E.) Expansion of Egyptian control during New Kingdom (1532–1070 B.C.E.)

Cyprus

SYRIA

Kadesh 1274 B.C.E.

Tyre Damascus

Major pyramid site Other ancient site

PALESTINE

Oasis

Mediterranean Sea

Giza Saqqâra

30°N

Jordan R.

Jerusalem

Gaza

NILE DELTA

Orontes R.

Major battle

Dead Sea

Avaris Heliopolis

Limestone

Memphis

Faiyum Lake Basalt

SI NAI Turquoise/ Copper

A R AB I AN

Nile R.

Ebla

Ugarit

Areas of contact during New Kingdom

LOW ER EGYPT

tes Euphra

ANATOLIA

D E S E RT

Copper

Akhetaten (Amarna) SE RT

Thebes (Karnak) Luxor

Valley of the Kings Deir el-Bahri

25°N

Alabaster

W E S T E R N U P P ER EGYPT DESERT Abydos

d S e a

LOWER NUBIA Gold NUBIAN DESERT

KI N GD OM OF KU SH Gold

4th Cataract Napata

5th Cataract

i le

UPPER NUBIA

Blu R le Ni

100

200 Km.

White Nile R.

PUNT

35°E

15°N

R. ra ba At

Meroë 6th Cataract

30°E

Gold

3rd Cataract Kerma

20°N

Copper

Abu Simbel 2nd Cataract Gold

Copper

Granite

SEA

1st Cataract

Tropic of Cancer

Copper/ Gold

Edfu Elephantine

S A H A R A

100

200 Mi.

MAP 2.1 Ancient Egypt and Nubia The Nile River lay at the heart of ancient Egypt, but one could not sail all the way from its headwaters in Lake Victoria and the Ethiopian highlands to the delta at the Mediterranean. Because no boat could cross the sheer vertical rapids called cataracts, the First Cataract formed a natural barrier between Egypt and the Nubia, the region to the south where many gold ﬁelds were. Interactive Map

developed in Egypt because the Egyptians used a perishable writing material, papyrus. Papyrus (pah-PIE-rus) was a reed that grew along the banks of the Nile. After removing the outer stem, the Egyptians layered strips of the inner stem horizontally and vertically. When they placed a weight on the reeds and left them to dry, the ﬁbers bonded to form a lightweight, convenient writing material that was far more fragile than the clay tablets of Mesopotamia. Most of the surviving sources for Egyptian history were carved into stone, which was much more durable than papyrus. Ancient historians credited the legendary founder of the First Dynasty (3200–3000 b.c.e.), Narmer, with consolidating the entire Nile Valley into a single kingdom, but many scholars today think that Egypt may have been uniﬁed as early as 3500– 3200 b.c.e. It seems likely that Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt originally formed two separate regions. Over time various rulers of Upper Egypt gradually conquered more of the Delta until they uniﬁed Egypt. The lack of certainty about these basic events shows that important gaps persist in our knowledge of Egypt. In the third century b.c.e., the Egyptian historian Manetho listed thirty separate dynasties without explaining what caused one dynasty to end and another to begin. Even today, after comparing Manetho’s list with others, historians do not agree about the dates of individual dynasties. Thus the dates given in this book, although accepted by many, are only approximate.4 One of the earliest records, possibly recording the uniﬁcation of Lower and Upper Egypt, is a piece of slate. At the top is a horizontal catﬁsh (pronounced “nar”) suspended above a chisel (“mer”). These hieroglyphs indicate the king’s name, Narmer (NAR-mer), and the piece is called the Narmer Palette. (See the feature “Visual Evidence: The Narmer Palette.”) In other contexts these hieroglyphs could be used to mean catﬁsh or chisel; one can determine their use only from the context, which makes deciphering hieroglyphs difﬁcult. By 2500 b.c.e., Egyptians were using two writing systems: a pictorial script, called hieroglyphs, and a cursive form, called hieratic (“priestly”). Hieroglyphs were reserved for public writing on monuments and plaques. Certainly after 3050 b.c.e., and possibly even before then, Egypt was united under the rule of one man, the pharaoh. As a god-king, the pharaoh presided over rituals to the Egyptian gods. In theory,

Egypt During the Old and Middle Kingdoms, ca. 3100–1500 B.C.E.

the pharaoh removed the gods’ statues from their shrines in each temple, dressed them, fed them, and prayed to them. In the evening he fed them again before returning them to their shrines. In practice, the pharaoh performed these rites in the capital and delegated his duties to priests throughout Egypt. Egypt was one of the few cultures that did not observe the incest taboo. Since the pharaoh’s family members shared his semidivine status, pharaohs often married their closest kin, including their sisters and mothers. They also took multiple wives. The frequency of intermarriage meant that a single woman could simultaneously be the wife of the serving pharaoh, the mother of the future pharaoh, and the daughter of the previous one. For example, the wife of King Tutankhamen (too-tunk-AH-muhn), Ankhesenamen (ON-kays-ah-muhn), was also his half-sister. The pharaoh’s chief adviser, the vizier, was the only person permitted to meet with the pharaoh alone. Since the pharaoh was often occupied with ritual duties, the vizier handled all matters of state. He was assisted by a variety of higher- and lower-ranking ofﬁcials, many of whom came from the same small group of families. Egypt was divided into some forty smaller districts, each ruled by a governor with his own smaller establishment of subordinate ofﬁcials and scribes. Scribes were among the few Egyptians who could read and write. Legendary for its record keeping, the Egyptian government employed a large number of scribes to keep detailed papyrus records of every conceivable item. The demand for scribes was so great that the government often hired people from nonofﬁcial families, and some of these managed to be promoted to higher ofﬁce, a rare chance for social mobility in Egyptian society. Craftspeople and farmers formed the illiterate majority of Egyptian society. Slavery was not widespread. Those who worked the land gave a share of their crop to the pharaoh, the owner of all the land in Egypt, and also owed him labor, which they performed at ﬁxed intervals on roads and royal buildings.

• papyrus

A convenient but perishable writing material made from a reed that grew naturally along the Nile.

The Old Kingdom and Egyptian Belief in the Afterlife, 2686–2181 B.C.E.

The ﬁve hundred years of the Old Kingdom, between 2686 and 2181 b.c.e., marked a period of prosperity and political stability for Egypt. No invasions occurred during this time. The Old Kingdom is also called the Pyramid Age because government ofﬁcials organized the construction of Egypt’s most impressive monuments at this time, an indication of how complex Egyptian society had become. Egyptians believed that each person had a life-force (ka) that survived on energy from the body. When the body died, Egyptians preserved it and surrounded it with food so that the life-force could continue. The Great Pyramid was built between 2589 and 2566 b.c.e. to house the life-force of the pharaoh Khufu (KOOfu), also called Cheops (KEY-ops). Covering an area of 571,211 square feet (53,067 sq m), the Great Pyramid stands 480 feet (147 m) tall. It contains an estimated four million stone blocks ranging from 9.3 tons (8,445 kg) to 48.9 pounds (22.2 kg) in weight.5 By pouring water into channels forming a grid, Egyptian architects managed to construct a base that was perfectly level. They also used a system of ramps and poles to move the large blocks, since they had no system of levers. An estimated ﬁfteen to twenty thousand laborers, both male and female, worked on the pyramids at any single time. None of these laborers were slaves. About ﬁve thousand skilled workers and craftsmen worked full-time, while the remaining ﬁfteen thousand unskilled workers

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THE NARMER PALETTE

ound buried in a temple in southern Egypt, the Narmer Palette portrays the conquest of Lower and Upper Egypt by the ruler Narmer (ca. 3200– 3000 B.C.E.) on a 25-inch-long (63.5-cm-long) piece of slate only half an inch (1.27 cm) thick. The slate is shaped like an ordinary palette, the word archaeologists apply to stone dishes that were used to mix ground minerals such as malachite for make-up or medicinal purposes. Palettes were usually about 6 inches (15 cm) long. This palette has a place for mixing minerals on the front face and is much larger than ordinary palettes, an indication that it was used as a ceremonial object.

Although very early, the Narmer Palette employs many artistic conventions familiar to us from later Egyptian art. Narmer, the pharaoh, stands larger than either his servant or his defeated enemies. The artist presents Narmer in a classic pose with his chest facing forward but with his head and legs sideways. The palette documents the early use of hieroglyphs. Scholars can decipher Narmer’s name because they know that catﬁsh was pronounced “nar” and chisel “mer,” but they do not know what the hieroglyph label reading “Wash” on the defeated enemies means. Various proposals have been put forward

This framed box, which resembles a walled palace, holds two hieroglyphs: a catﬁsh (nar) and a chisel (mer) that together form Narmer’s name. The top frame of the palette, which appears on both the front and back faces, contains two bull’s heads with human facial features; these bulls represent Narmer. Narmer, identiﬁable by the catﬁsh-andchisel hieroglyphs to the right of his face, wears the chair-shaped crown used by the ruler of Lower Egypt. Behind him stands a servant; in front of him is an ofﬁcer leading shorter soldiers. On the right lie ten fallen enemy soldiers in two horizontal rows, with their cut-off heads between their feet. Two servants hold back the reins connected to the long, serpentine necks of two felines. The circular space between their entwined necks provides the area for the mixing of minerals, indicating that this is the front of the oversized palette. Here a bull, representing Narmer, knocks down fortiﬁed walls and tramples on an enemy. (Both photos: Egyptian Museum,

Cairo/Werner Forman/Art Resource, NY)

about their identity, but no one is certain: Were they the residents of a certain region? Could they have lived outside Egypt? However, scholars concur on the basic meaning of the palette: Narmer is claiming victory over his enemies. On one face of the palette, he wears the conical crown of Upper Egypt, and on the reverse, the chairshaped crown of Lower Egypt. Because the palette dates to around 3100 B.C.E. and because historians believe that Egypt was uniﬁed at that time, they accept Narmer’s claim as put forward by the palette’s artist.

The themes of Narmer’s palette are exactly those we would expect of a society in the early stages of becoming a complex society. Narmer rules with the support of the deities, including the sky-god, who appears as a falcon. His subjects owe him labor, as represented by his servants and soldiers, and goods, such as papyrus, because he, like a powerful bull, defends them by clubbing, decapitating, castrating, and trampling enemy troops. The ruler’s task is exactly that of the two servants who rein in the felines in the central image on the face of the palette: to restrain the forces of disorder.

The largest picture of Narmer shows him wearing the conical crown of the ruler of Upper Egypt. His right hand raises a club to hit his kneeling victim, whose hair he clutches and who is labeled with undeciphered hieroglyphs reading “Wash.” Above the victim is a falcon, the symbol of the sky-god protector of kings, who perches on a group of papyrus plants growing from a human body.

These two soldiers beneath Narmer’s feet have been defeated. The penis of the ﬁgure on the right is visible, while that of the left ﬁgure is not, suggesting that he has been castrated. Both men are probably dead.

QUESTION FOR ANALYSIS How did Egyptian and Mesopotamian artists who made the Narmer Palette and the Warka Vase portray their different understandings of what the ruler owes his subjects and what they owe him in return?

CHAPTER 2

The First Complex Societies in the Eastern Mediterranean, ca. 4000–550 B.C.E.

came to the site during the Inundation season to perform their labor service and then returned home, to be replaced by a new group of workers the following year.6 The size of his funerary monument provides a tangible measure of each ruler’s power. The government had to organize the labor of all the workers and coordinate the shipment of large stones to the site of the pharaoh’s tomb. Projects like the building of the Great Pyramid required a level of social organization and occupational specialization characteristic of early complex societies; at the same time, they also contributed to the growing complexity of these ancient societies. During the Old Kingdom, only the pharaoh and his family could afford to preserve his corpse for eternity, but in later centuries, everyone in Egypt, whether rich or poor, hoped to travel to the next world with his or her body intact. The earliest surviving examples of Egyptian mummiﬁcation date to 2400 b.c.e., just after the time of the Great Pyramid, yet detailed descriptions date from much later, around 450 b.c.e., when the Greek traveler Herodotus (he-ROD-uh-tuhs) visited Egypt (see Chapter 6). Embalmers offered their customers three options, Herodotus explained, depending on how much money they could spend. In the most expensive process, embalmers removed the brain through the nose with a hook and pulled out the internal organs through an incision in the abdomen. Then they rinsed the body

Great Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops): How did the Egyptians Do It? The Great Pyramid contains some four million stone blocks, which the builders moved by means of a system of ramps and poles. They managed to construct a perfectly level base by pouring water into a grid of channels, some still visible here. (Photos.com/Jupiter Images)

Egypt During the Old and Middle Kingdoms, ca. 3100–1500 B.C.E.

and covered it with natron (NAY-tron), a crystallized form of potassium carbonate that kept the corpse dry. After forty days, bandagers spent two weeks wrapping the body in linen before placing it in a cofﬁn. The earliest surviving mummy, from 2400 b.c.e., happens to be one of the best preserved, with his facial features and even a callus on his foot still visible. In the less expensive option, the embalmers simply injected the body with cedar oil, which caused the internal organs to decay and to be expelled through the anus. Bandaging and burial followed. The poorest Egyptians could only afford to have the unbandaged corpse prepared and buried. Egyptians believed that the dead had to appear before Osiris (oh-SIGH-ruhs), the god of the underworld, who determined who could enter the realm of eternal happiness. Compiled in the sixteenth century b.c.e. yet drawing on materials dating back to 2400 b.c.e., the Book of the Dead contained detailed instructions for what the deceased should say on meeting Osiris. At the moment of judgment, the deceased should deny having committed any crime:

Primary Source: The Egyptian Book of the Dead’s Declaration of Innocence Read the number of potential sins that would likely tarnish a journeying spirit and prevent entrance into the realm of the blessed.

I have not committed evil against men. I have not mistreated cattle. I have not committed sin in the place of truth [that is, a temple or burial ground] I have not blasphemed a god. . . . I have not made (anyone) sick. I have not made (anyone) weep. I have not killed. . . . I have not held up water in its season [that is, denied ﬂoodwaters to others]. I have not built a dam against running water. . . .7

The list reveals the offenses thought most outrageous by the Egyptians: diverting water from the irrigation channels belonging to one’s neighbor constituted a major infraction. During the First Intermediate Period (2180–2040 b.c.e.), Old Kingdom Egypt broke apart into semi-independent regions ruled by rival dynasties. The pharaoh was unable to appoint regional governors because certain families refused to give up government posts they had retained for multiple generations. Nor could the pharaoh collect as much revenue as his predecessors, possibly because sustained drought reduced agricultural yields.

Egyptian Expansion During the Middle Kingdom, 2040–1782 B.C.E.

In 2040 b.c.e. the ruler based in Thebes (modern-day Luxor) reunited Egypt and established what became known as the Middle Kingdom (2040–1782 b.c.e.), the second long period of centralized rule. Egypt’s trade with other regions increased dramatically. Like Mesopotamia, Egypt had few natural resources and was forced to trade with distant lands to obtain wood, copper, gold, silver, and semiprecious stones. Its main trading partners were modern-day Syria and Lebanon to the north and Nubia to the south. At the height of the Middle Kingdom, the pharoah sent his armies beyond Egypt for the ﬁrst time, conquering territory in Palestine and Nubia. Various Middle Kingdom rulers conquered and governed the regions south of the First and Second Cataracts. Sometime around 2000 b.c.e., Egyptian sources begin to mention the kingdom of Kush, another name for Nubia, whose capital lay south of the Third Cataract.

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CHAPTER 2

The First Complex Societies in the Eastern Mediterranean, ca. 4000–550 B.C.E.

Since the cataracts of the Nile could not be crossed in a ship, merchants hired bearers to unload goods and carry them to the next stage of the river. During the Middle Kingdom, trade goods coming from sub-Saharan Africa, including panther and other rare animal skins, gold, ivory from elephant tusks, and slaves, traveled through Nubia, overland around the cataracts, and down the Nile to Egypt. By 1720 b.c.e., the Middle Kingdom had weakened, most likely because a group of immigrants from Syria and Palestine, whom the Egyptians called Hyksos (HICK-sos) (literally “chieftains of foreign lands”), settled in the Delta. Historians call the years between 1782 and 1570 b.c.e. the Second Intermediate Period. The Hyksos had horse-drawn chariots with spoked wheels as well as strong bows made of wood and bone, while the Egyptians had no carts and only wooden bows. The Hyksos formed an alliance with the Nubians and ruled Egypt from 1650 to 1570 b.c.e.

The International System, 1500–1150 B.C.E.

round 1500 b.c.e., western Asia entered a new stage of increasingly sophisticated material cultures and extensive trade. During the third period of centralized rule in Egypt, the New Kingdom (1570–1069 b.c.e.), Egypt had more dealings with the other kingdoms of the eastern Mediterranean than in previous periods. Pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty (1570–1293 b.c.e.) exchanged diplomatic envoys with rulers in Crete, Cyprus, and Anatolia and brought captured foreigners from the Mediterranean and Nubia to serve in the Egyptian army and to work as slaves. Egypt’s main rivals in the region were the Hittites (see page 50), who were based in Anatolia, Turkey, and Syria (see Map 2.2). Smaller kingdoms also arose in southern and northern Mesopotamia, eastern Iran, the Aegean islands, and Syria and Palestine. Egypt reached its greatest extent at this time, governing a swath of territory that included Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Nubia. For ﬁve hundred years, the states of the eastern Mediterranean enjoyed a period of relative tranquility as they intensiﬁed their trade and diplomatic contacts to form what has been called the ﬁrst international system.

New Kingdom Egypt and Nubia, 1570–1069 B.C.E.

During the New Kingdom period, Egypt continued to expand into Nubia. After eliminating the kingdom of Kush as a rival, Egypt destroyed its capital and extended control all the way to the Fourth Cataract. Nubia’s most valuable natural resource was gold, which the pharaohs required in large amounts. The pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty venerated the sun-god Amun-Ra (AH-muhn–RAH) above all other deities because they believed that he had enabled them to expel the Hyksos from Egypt and establish their dynasty. They built an enormous temple at Karnak to house the image of Amun-Ra. Every day the temple’s priests carried the bathed image around the temple, and once a year they sent the main image of Amun-Ra in an elaborate barge along the Nile to the capital at Thebes.

The International System, 1500–1150 B.C.E.

40°N

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Ebla MITANNI M E S ASSYRIA SYRIA Ashur O PO Byblos R TA O Mari S M Euph I M Kadesh ra A TS t es 1274 B.C.E. R. Dur-Kurigalzu .

Hittite homeland

Babylon

Extent of Hittite influence Egyptian homeland Extent of Egyptian influence

ELAM

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Babylonian Kingdom Major battle Journey of Wen Amon, ca. 1130 B.C.E.

A R A B I A N

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Probable ancient coastline

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MAP 2.2 The International System, ca. 1500–1250 B.C.E. Wen-Amun’s journey from Egypt to Lebanon and Cyprus in around 1130 B.C.E. shows the ease with which individuals moved in the region of the eastern Mediterranean. International credit networks made it possible for Egyptian merchants to send gold, silver, linen, and papyrus to Lebanon, meaning that Wen-Amun did not have to return to Egypt to collect them.

50°E

Interactive Map

The Egyptians believed that the most appropriate offerings to Amun-Ra were made from gold because gold was the color of the sun. Being indestructible, gold also represented immortality. Living people who wore gold became like gods, and the Egyptians buried the dead with multiple gold ornaments in the hope that they would live forever. While Egypt had some gold mines (see Map 2.1), Nubia had many more, and New Kingdom pharaohs were able to exploit these mines to the fullest extent. After conquering Nubia, the pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty worked to transform Nubia into an Egyptian society: they brought the sons of Nubian chiefs to Egypt, where they studied the Egyptian language, wore Egyptian linen clothing made from the ﬂax plant, received Egyptian names, and worshiped Egyptian deities like Amun-Ra. When they returned home, they served the Egyptians as administrators. Egypt continued to trade with Nubia and other regions during the reign of Hatshepsut (hat-SHEP-soot) (r. 1473–1458 b.c.e.), the only woman pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Older women, whether mothers and aunts, occasionally served as regents when the pharaoh was too young to rule on his own, but Hatshepsut ruled for a full ﬁfteen years as pharaoh. She imported gold, ebony, and cedar

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CHAPTER 2

The First Complex Societies in the Eastern Mediterranean, ca. 4000–550 B.C.E.

to add new rooms at Amun-Ra’s temple at Karnak and build a spectacular new temple in the Valley of the Kings, where the New Kingdom pharaohs were buried. She was particularly proud of an expedition that she dispatched to Punt (in modern-day Ethiopia), which brought back to Egypt exotic goods such as monkeys and myrrh trees. One ruler near the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty, Akhenaten (Ah-kenAHT-n) (r. 1352–1336 b.c.e.), introduced an important change to Egyptian religion. Rather than accepting Amun-Ra as the supreme deity, he worshiped a different form of the sun-god, whom he called the “living sun-disk,” “Aten” (AHT-n) in Egyptian. Artists of his reign portrayed Aten as a circular disk whose rays ended with small human hands extending downward to the pharaoh and his wife. The art of Akhenaten’s reign was also new: realistic portraits showed him frontally, with stomach protruding, rather than in proﬁle. In the past analysts erroneously thought Akhenaten worshiped Aten as the only god. In fact, he continued to worship other gods as well, even though Aten clearly ranked highest among them. After Akhenaten’s death, Egyptians restored Amun-Ra to his position as the most important deity. During the New Kingdom period, Egypt established a series of alliances with the various powers in the region and occasionally went to war with them. An extraordinary ﬁnd of 350 letters concerning diplomatic matters at Amarna, where the pharaoh Akhenaten (see above) established his capital, makes it possible to reconstruct the international system of the time. Akhenaten addressed the rulers of Babylonia, Assyria, and Anatolia, who governed kingdoms as powerful as Egypt, as “brother,” an indication that he saw them as his equals, while he reserved the term “servant” for smaller, weaker kingdoms in Syria and Palestine. Many of the letters concern marriage. Akhenaten tried to persuade other rulers to send their daughters to marry Egyptian men, but he did not ask for their sons because Egyptians would not allow Egyptian women to marry nonEgyptians. Even though the arrangement was unequal, the rulers usually sent their daughters because they wanted gold, and only Egypt had gold (obtained from Nubia).

The Kingdom of Nubia, 800 B.C.E.–350 C.E.

Much weaker after 1293 b.c.e., when the Eighteenth Dynasty ended, Egypt eventually lost control of Nubia. For several centuries no centralized power emerged in Nubia, but around 800 b.c.e. a political center formed at Napata, the administrative center from which the Egyptians had governed Nubia during the New Kingdom. Seeing themselves as the rightful successors to the pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty, the rulers of Nubia conquered Egypt under King Piye (r. 747–716 b.c.e.). King Taharqo (690–664 b.c.e.) ruled over Nubia at its peak. The builder of an elaborate cult center to Amun-Ra, King Taharqo also revived the building of pyramids, a practice that had long since died out in Egypt. His pyramid was the largest ever built by the Nubians, standing 160 feet (49 m) tall (see the photo opposite). The Nubians continued to erect pyramids even after 300 b.c.e., when they shifted their capital from Napata to Meroë. Initially the Nubians, like the Egyptians, used hieroglyphs for monuments and hieratic script for less important matters, but by 300 b.c.e. they had developed their own writing system, called Meroitic

The International System, 1500–1150 B.C.E.

Nubia, Land of Pyramids Modern Sudan has more pyramids—a total of 223— than Egypt. Modeled on those of Old Kingdom Egypt, the Nubian tombs are steeper and originally had a layer of white plaster on their exterior. Starting in the mid-700s B.C.E. and continuing to 370 C.E., the Nubian rulers of Kush built pyramids over their tombs, which were in the ground—unlike the Egyptian tombs, which were constructed above ground and inside the pyramids (contrast with Cheops’ tomb shown on page 44). (Photograph courtesy of SacredSites.com) (mer-oh-IT-ick), which combined hieroglyphs with hieratic script. Scholars know how to pronounce the Meroitic script because it is phonetic, but they cannot understand it because it is not related to any living language. The royal cemetery at Meroë contains the pyramids of thirty kings and eight queens. As was common throughout sub-Saharan Africa, the Nubian dynasties practiced matrilineal succession in which the king was succeeded by his sister’s son. (In a patrilineal system, the son succeeds the father.) If the designated successor was too young to rule, the king’s sister often ruled in his place. Nubian queens did everything the male kings did, including patronizing temples, engaging in diplomacy, and ﬁghting in battle. The kingdom of Meroë thrived because it was able to tax the proﬁtable trade between sub-Saharan Africa and the Mediterranean, but it broke apart in the fourth century c.e., possibly because the trade was diverted to other sea routes it did not control. Located south of Egypt, Nubia had little contact with the different states of the eastern Mediterranean to the north of Egypt. Accordingly, it did not

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CHAPTER 2

The First Complex Societies in the Eastern Mediterranean, ca. 4000–550 B.C.E.

actively participate in the system of international alliances that had begun to take shape as early as 1500 b.c.e.

The Hittites, 2000–1200 B.C.E.

• Hittites A people based in Anatolia, Turkey, and Syria who spoke the IndoEuropean language of Hittite and learned to work iron around 2000 b.c.e. The Hittite Empire reached its greatest extent between 1322 and 1220 b.c.e. and ended around 1200 b.c.e.

During the New Kingdom period, Egypt’s rulers frequently wrote to the rulers of a powerful new kingdom based in Anatolia and Syria, the Hittites. The language of the Hittites belonged to the Indo-European language family, meaning that its structure resembled that of Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit (see Chapter 3). The Hittites were the ﬁrst speakers of an Indo-European language to establish a complex society in western Asia. The Hittites were able to do so because, sometime around 2000 b.c.e., they learned how to work iron, which had a much higher melting point (2,786 degrees Fahrenheit, 1,530 degrees Celsius) than other metals, including bronze. The high melting point meant that iron could not be melted and then poured into molds like bronze. Metalsmiths heated iron and hammered it into the shape of the tool or weapon needed, a process that removed impurities in the metal. Much stronger than bronze weapons, the iron weapons of the Hittites were much prized. The Hittite Empire reached its greatest extent between 1322 and 1220 b.c.e., when the Hittites controlled all of Anatolia and Syria. In the thirteenth century b.c.e. the Hittite ruler wrote to the ruler of the Assyrians to apologize for not sending any unworked iron. Instead he sent a single blade, an indication of iron’s value at the time. The Hittites had another advantage over their enemies: they had mastered the art of chariot warfare. Two horses pulled a chariot that carried three men (a driver and two warriors). While consolidating their rule in Anatolia, the Hittites sent only a small number of chariots into battle. Thus in 1750 b.c.e., the Hittite king commanded only 40 chariots. But by the Battle of Kadesh in 1285 b.c.e., when the Hittites faced the Egyptians, the ruler commanded 2,500 chariots.8 Egyptian documents claim that the pharaoh Ramesses II (r. 1290–1224 b.c.e.) had triumphed, but Egypt gained no territory, an indication that the Hittite and Egyptian forces were probably evenly matched. After the Battle of Kadesh, Egypt signed a treaty with the Hittites, who sent a Hittite princess to marry Ramesses II. The Hittite kingdom came to an end in 1200 b.c.e. when their capital fell to outsiders. Historians are not certain who the invaders were, but they note a period around 1200–1150 b.c.e. of prolonged instability throughout western Asia. Egyptian sources mention attacks by “sea peoples,” and Egypt lost control of both Syria-Palestine to the north and Nubia to the south.

Wen-Amun’s Voyage to Lebanon and Cyprus, 1130 B.C.E.

In the centuries after 1200, Egypt continued to enjoy extensive trade relations with the Mediterranean, as we can see in the earliest detailed account of an actual voyage, recorded on a torn papyrus dating to 1130 b.c.e.9 In that year, an Egyptian priest named Wen-Amun (one–Ahmuhn) traveled ﬁrst to Cairo, where he caught a ship across the Mediterranean to Lebanon to buy cedar for the Amun-Ra temple at Karnak, which had so much money and land that it was independent of the pharaoh’s authority. On arriving at a port in modern-day Lebanon, Wen-Amun realized that a shipmate had stolen almost 9 pounds (4 kg) of gold and silver—all the money Wen-

Syria-Palestine and New Empires in Western Asia, 1200–500 B.C.E.

Amun had with him to buy the lumber for the ceremonial boat. Desperate, he sailed to the next port, where he stole some silver. When the victims reported the theft to their king, he refused to allow Wen-Amun to land. Then something unusual happened. A young boy at court was suddenly afﬂicted by seizures, and the king’s advisers concluded that Amun-Ra was responsible. Their explanation reveals that the Egyptian deity’s reputation had spread far beyond Egypt. The local ruler made a proposal: if Wen-Amun sent to his home temple for funds, he would be allowed to depart. The credit network of the local merchants was sufﬁciently sophisticated that Wen-Amun was able to write home to request that another ship bring him gold, silver, ten linen garments, and ﬁve hundred rolls of papyrus to cover the cost of the lumber. When Wen-Amun set off for home, his ship was blown off course to the island of Cyprus. There he met an Egyptian interpreter, who explained his predicament to the ruler, and Wen-Amun managed somehow to make his way back. Thus even during this time of instability, the international system of the time functioned smoothly enough that people could obtain credit and travel in the eastern Mediterranean.

Syria-Palestine and New Empires in Western Asia, 1200–500 B.C.E.

everal kingdoms occupied the land along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean where modern-day Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, and Syria are located. They participated in the international system, but always as minor players in a world dominated by kings of larger powers such as Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, and Anatolia. Around 1000 b.c.e. a smaller complex society arose in the eastern Mediterranean that was notable for its innovation in religion. This lightly populated and politically weak region was important because it was the homeland of the ancient Hebrews or Israelites. The Hebrews were the ﬁrst people in the eastern Mediterranean to practice monotheism, or belief in only one god, whom they called Yahweh (YAH-way) in Hebrew (God in English). Belief in a single god underlay the religious teachings recorded in the Hebrew Bible (called the Old Testament by Christians). Hebrew monotheism would profoundly shape both Christian and Islamic teachings (see Chapters 7 and 10).

• monotheism

Belief

in only one god.

The History of the Ancient Hebrews According to the Hebrew Bible

Geographers call the region bordering the eastern Mediterranean the Levant (see Map 2.3). The most populated section of the Levant was the strip of land between 30 and 70 miles (50–110 km) wide along the Mediterranean coast. The northern section, between the Orontes River and the Mediterranean, formed Lebanon, while the land west of the Jordan River formed Israel and Palestine. Israel and Palestine stretched only 250 miles (400 km) from north to south, with the southern half consisting almost entirely of desert. Its population around 1000 b.c.e. has been estimated at 150,000, and its largest city, Jerusalem, reached its maximum population of 5,000 in 700 b.c.e.10

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CHAPTER 2

The First Complex Societies in the Eastern Mediterranean, ca. 4000–550 B.C.E.

Historians and archaeologists of Israel and Palestine disagree sharply about the value of the N 0 200 400 Mi. Bible as a historical source. Some view everything in the Bible as true, while others do not credit the accounts of the Bible unless they are conﬁrmed by other documentary or archaeologCAU Black CA SU Sea ical evidence. World historians rarely have as S MT S. much material for a given society as they have 40°N URARTU for ancient Israel and Palestine, and they often ANATOLIA (ARMENIA) . Kanesh rely on orally transmitted sources far more reS Tigris MT R US TAUR cent than the Hebrew Bible, which was written Dur Sharrukin Nineveh sometime around 700 b.c.e. and whose current ASSYRIA MEDIA Kalhu Z at AG es R Ashur Aradus M . R text dates to around 500 b.c.e.11 E Cyprus Byblos OS SO SYRIA PO Mari M TA TS M e d i t e r r a n e an Sidon The ﬁrst book of the Hebrew Bible, Genesis, MI . Damascus A Tyre Sea Susa ELAM Babylon traces the history of the ancient Hebrews from ISRAEL PHILISTINES BABYLONIA Jerusalem PERSIA the earth’s creation. The Hebrew Bible contains JUDAH 30°N a later version of the ﬂood story that closely reProbable Memphis ARABIAN ancient n coastline sembles that in Gilgamesh. After the ﬂood, YahG DESERT ul EGYPT f N weh makes a promise, called a covenant, to Noah that he will not bring another ﬂood. The anThebes 50°E cient Hebrews, like many of the other peoples of Assyrian homeland the eastern Mediterranean, believed that certain SAHARA Growth of the Assyrian individuals, whom they respected as prophets, Empire to 660 B.C.E. NUBIA could speak directly with God and also speak for Neo-Babylonian Empire 20°N at its greatest extent, him. Archaeologists have not found evidence of 612 B.C.E.–539 B.C.E. 30°E 40°E a single ﬂood as described in either Gilgamesh or the Hebrew Bible; most think the ﬂood narrative collapses repeated ﬂoods in the Tigris and EuMap 2.3 phrates into a one-time calamity. (See the feaThe Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empires at ture “Movement of Ideas: The Flood Narrative in Their Greatest Extent The rulers of the Assyrian the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Hebrew Bible.”) empire were the ﬁrst in the eastern Mediterranean to The most important event in their history, resettle subject populations. Their successors, the the ancient Hebrews believed, was God’s choice Neo-Babylonians, continued the practice and resettled of Abraham to be the leader of his people. Abramany subject peoples, including the Hebrews, in their ham, like his direct ancestor Noah, spoke directly capital at Babylon. to God and agreed to be the leader of his people. Abraham’s father had brought the ancient HeInteractive Map brews from the city-state of Ur to Haran, Genesis reports, and Abraham then brought them from Haran to Canaan, or modernday Israel. God, in turn, made Abraham promise that all his descendants would be circumcised. Although God designated Abraham as the leader of his community, the Hebrew Bible teaches, he and his wife Sarah had no children. God promised that Sarah would give birth to a son, even though Abraham was 100 years old and Sarah 90. When their son Isaac was born, she was overjoyed. Abraham had one son, Ishmael, with Sarah’s maid Hagar, but Sarah sent Hagar away after the birth of Isaac. God then subjected Abraham to the most severe test of all: he asked him to sacriﬁce his son Isaac as an offering. Abraham led his young son up into the mountains and prepared the sacriﬁcial altar. At the moment when he was about to kill 0

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Syria-Palestine and New Empires in Western Asia, 1200–500 B.C.E.

Isaac, the Bible records, God, speaking through an angel, commanded: “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me” (Genesis 22:12). Abraham untied Isaac and allowed him to go free. The Bible’s dramatic account of Isaac’s rescue reﬂects a crucial change in Israelite religious observance. In an earlier time, the ancient Hebrews sacriﬁced animals and perhaps even children to their gods. An inscription dating to the eighth century b.c.e. from modern-day Lebanon records that during a plague the priests advised the local ruler to sacriﬁce a son or a grandson, in addition to an animal offering, to end the disease.12 In later times, when the Isaac story was recorded, the Hebrews abandoned child sacriﬁce. The Bible gives no dates for the events it describes. After the ancient Hebrews came to Israel, the book of Exodus claims that they went to Egypt and then returned to Israel under the leadership of the patriarch Moses. Since no archaeological evidence conﬁrms that a single migration out of Egypt occurred, many scholars suggest that the Exodus may have been a series of migrations.

The History of the Ancient Hebrews According to Archaeological Evidence

The earliest archaeological evidence of the ancient Hebrews dates to between 1300 and 1100 b.c.e. In 1300 b.c.e. approximately twelve to ﬁfteen thousand people lived in three hundred small villages on previously unoccupied hillsides in the southern Levant; by 1100 b.c.e. the population had mushroomed to seventy-ﬁve to eighty thousand.13 No urban centers existed. Most of the residents had tools made of bronze, ﬂint, and occasionally iron. Archaeologists have analyzed the bones they deposited in refuse pits and found no more than 1 percent are pig, an indication that the taboo on eating pork that is recorded in the Hebrew Bible may already have been in effect. The few inscriptions found so far reveal that the residents wrote ancient Hebrew, a Semitic language. An Egyptian inscription dated 1210 b.c.e. lists several different defeated peoples living in modern-day Lebanon, one of whom it calls “Israel peoples,”14 most likely the residents of the hill country. Although the Bible portrays the ancient Hebrews as practitioners of monotheism from ancient times on, archaeological evidence indicates that they, like all the other peoples of the eastern Mediterranean, worshiped several different deities. The most important were the storm-god, called El or Ba‘al (BAHL), and his wife, a fertility goddess. In this early period, some of the Israelites also worshiped a stormgod named Yahweh. The Bible describes the ancient Hebrews as living under a united monarchy that linked both the north and the south. King David built a shrine to Yahweh in Jerusalem, which his successor Solomon (r. 960–920 b.c.e.) rebuilt and expanded. After Solomon’s death the kingdom broke into two parts: Judah in the south with its capital at Jerusalem, and Israel in the north. Archaeologists have not found evidence of a united kingdom under the rule of either David or Solomon. But a signiﬁcant change did occur sometime between 1000 and 900 b.c.e., when complex society ﬁrst took shape in the region. The main evidence, as in Mesopotamia, is the formation of large urban centers with massive walls and impressive gates. At this time what had been a loose tribal confederacy

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MOVEMENT OF IDEAS

The Flood Narrative in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Hebrew Bible

he striking similarities in the two versions of the ﬂood story demonstrate that the Hebrew Bible drew on oral traditions circulating throughout Mesopotamia. The most complete version of the Epic of Gilgamesh was written in 700 B.C.E., but it drew on written versions dating to at least 2100 B.C.E. and even earlier oral traditions. Like the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Bible had a long history of oral transmission before being recorded in its current version around 500 B.C.E. Some of its oldest content may have circulated orally as early as 1200 B.C.E., when the ancient Hebrews ﬁrst settled what is now modern Israel.

The two accounts of the ﬂood differ most notably in their depiction of the divine. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, multiple gods squabble and the god Enki warns Utanapishtim that the storm-god Enlil is sending the ﬂood to destroy his home city of Shuruppak. In the Bible, one god decides to punish all of humanity except for Noah and his family. Sources: Benjamin R. Foster, The Epic of Gilgamesh: A Norton Critical Edition (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), pp. 85–89; Genesis 6:11– 19, Genesis 7:17–18, Genesis 8:1–3, Genesis 8:6–12 (New Revised Standard Version).

The Flood Story in Gilgamesh Instructions to Utanapishtim for Building the Ark O Man of Shuruppak, son of Ubar-Tutu, Wreck house, build boat, Forsake possessions and seek life, Belongings reject and life save! Take aboard the boat seed of all living things. The boat you shall build, Let her dimensions be measured out: Let her width and length be equal, Roof her over like the watery depths.

The Length of the Flood Six days and seven nights The wind continued, the deluge and windstorm leveled the land. . . . The sea grew calm, the tempest stilled, the deluge ceased.

The End of the Flood When the seventh day arrived, I [Utanapishtim] brought out a dove and set it free.

The dove went off and returned, No landing place came to its view so it turned back. I bought out a swallow and set it free, The swallow went off and returned, No landing place came to its view, so it turned back. I brought out a raven and set it free, The raven went off and saw the ebbing of the waters. It ate, preened, left droppings, did not turn back. I released all to the four directions, I brought out an offering and offered it to the four directions. I set up an incense offering on the summit of the mountain, I arranged seven and seven cult vessels, I heaped reeds, cedar, and myrtle in their bowls.

The Flood Story in the Bible Instructions to Noah for Building the Ark Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was ﬁlled with violence. And God saw that the earth was corrupt; for all ﬂesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth. And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all ﬂesh, for the earth is ﬁlled with violence because of them; now I am going to destroy them along with the earth. Make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its width ﬁfty cubits, and its height thirty cubits•. Make a roof for the ark, and ﬁnish it to a cubit above; and put the door of the ark in its side; make it with lower, second, and third decks. For my part, I am going to bring a ﬂood of waters upon the earth, to destroy from under heaven all ﬂesh in which is the breath of life; everything that is on the earth shall die. But I will establish my covenant with you; and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. And of every living thing, of all ﬂesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female.”

The Length of the Flood The ﬂood continued forty days on the earth; and the waters increased, and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. The waters swelled and

increased greatly on the earth; and the ark ﬂoated on the face of the waters. . . . But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and all the domestic animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided; the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained, and the waters gradually receded from the earth. At the end of a hundred ﬁfty days the waters had abated.

The End of the Flood At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent out the raven; and it went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. Then he sent out the dove from him, to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground; but the dove found no place to set its foot, and it returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took it and brought it into the ark with him. He waited another seven days, and again he sent out the dove from the ark; and the dove came back to him in the evening, and there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf; so Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth. Then he waited another seven days, and sent out the dove; and it did not return to him any more.

• cubit Approximately 450 feet (137 m) long, 75 feet (23 m) wide, 45 feet (14 m) tall.

QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS 쑺 What are the similarities between the two versions of the ﬂood story? What are the differences? Explain why the later version diverges from the original.

CHAPTER 2

The First Complex Societies in the Eastern Mediterranean, ca. 4000–550 B.C.E.

became a small kingdom, complete with a bureaucracy and intermediate-level cities. The residents of both Judah and Israel worshiped Yahweh, but in the ninth century two distinct groups formed. One, consisting of the rulers and probably most of their subjects, continued to worship Yahweh as one of many gods. The other, called the prophetic school, strongly believed that Yahweh was the most important god.

The Assyrian Empire, 911–612 B.C.E.

The two kingdoms of Israel and Judah remained separate and independent until 721 b.c.e., when the Assyrians, whose homeland was in northern Mesopotamia, conquered southern Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Like the Hittites, the Assyrians had iron weapons. In addition, their cavalry was particularly powerful because it was the ﬁrst true army on horseback. The cavalry soldiers rode bareback since neither saddles nor stirrups had been invented. Unlike the various conquerors of the eastern Mediterranean before them, the Assyrians did not simply send in armies and subjugate enemy territory. Because the Assyrian ruler saw himself as the representative of the gods, he asked the rulers of foreign territories to submit voluntarily to him and his deities. Those who surrendered he treated gently, but his troops were infamous for their cruel treatment of those who resisted. Soldiers skinned captives alive, removed their eyes or cut off their hands and feet, and impaled others on stakes. These atrocities served as a warning to those who had not yet been conquered: if they surrendered quickly, they could avoid such barbarities. Such treatment was justiﬁed, the Assyrians believed, because the subject populations were resisting the gods, not just a human king. Once the Assyrians had conquered a given region, they forcibly resettled the conquered rulers and skilled craftsmen to another part of the empire. The original intent in the ninth century was to ﬁll up the lightly populated sections of the empire; later, resettlement was simply a demonstration of the ruler’s power. Several hundred thousand people were resettled in this way, including many people from Israel and Judah who were sent to Assyria. The last Assyrian king, Asshurbanipal (as-shur-BAH-nee-pahl) (r. 668–627 b.c.e.), built one of the world’s earliest libraries, which consisted of over 1,500 texts for his own private use. In the 1850s, British excavators found the most complete set of clay tablets of the Gilgamesh epic, and the basis of all modern translations, in the ruins of Asshurbanipal’s palace.

The Babylonian Captivity and the Recording of the Bible, 612–539 B.C.E.

The Neo-Babylonians conquered the Assyrians and established their capital at Babylon. Their most powerful ruler was Nebuchadnezzar II (r. 605–562 b.c.e.), who rebuilt the city of Babylon, repaired its temples, and constructed magniﬁcent hanging gardens. They were so beautiful that the second-century b.c.e. compilers of the Seven Wonders of the World included them with the Great Pyramids (the only wonder still standing). Nebuchadnezzar II (nab-oo-kuhd-NEZ-uhr) extended his empire all the way to Syria, Palestine, and Lebanon. He sacked Jerusalem twice, in 597 and 586 b.c.e., and destroyed much of the city. He leveled Solomon’s Temple and, like the Assyrians, deported thousands of Hebrews to Babylon, in what is known today as the Babylonian Exile or Babylonian Captivity.

Syria-Palestine and New Empires in Western Asia, 1200–500 B.C.E.

The exiled Hebrews living in Babylon were not allowed to return to Israel, but otherwise they had some freedom of movement, and some seem to have prospered as merchants or farmers. The exiled community reached a new understanding of their past. Many of the tales they told, including those about Noah and Abraham, included episodes in which God punished the ancient Hebrews for failing to follow his instructions, and they interpreted the Assyrian and NeoBabylonian conquests in the same light. The Israelite community, the prophets explained, had strayed from righteousness, which they deﬁned as ethical behavior. The Hebrew Bible took shape during these years. Some parts, such as the book of Deuteronomy, already existed in written form, but the exiles recorded the core of the modern Hebrew Bible, from Genesis to 2 Kings. The ﬁrst ﬁve books of the Bible, known either as the Torah in Hebrew or the Pentateuch in Greek, stress that God is the only god and that he will not tolerate the worship of any other gods. This pure monotheism was the product of speciﬁc historical circumstances culminating in the Babylonian Exile and the recording of the Bible. The Neo-Babylonians were the last dynasty to rule from Babylon. In 539 b.c.e. Cyrus the Great, the leader of the Persians, conquered Mesopotamia, and the entire Neo-Babylonian empire came under Persian rule (see Chapter 6). In 538 b.c.e. Cyrus allowed the Hebrews to return to Judah, bringing the Babylonian Captivity to an end, and he ordered the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem. The word “Jew,” derived from the Hebrew Yehudhi, literally means a member of the nation of Judah. After 538 b.c.e., it came to refer to all Hebrews. The Mesopotamians, along with the Egyptians, were the ﬁrst people to use writing to record the past. A gulf of several thousand years separates the people of the Mesopotamian city-states and Egypt from the present, yet their literature and documents vividly capture the experience of the world’s ﬁrst peoples in complex societies. The next chapter will contrast their complex society with that of India.

• Jew

A term (derived from Hebrew) that originally meant a member of the nation of Judah and later came to refer to all Hebrews.

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Chapter Review

KEY TERMS Mesopotamia (28) Gilgamesh (28) complex society (31) city-state (32) bronze (32) Sumer (33) cuneiform (34) Sargon of Akkad (36) empire (36) pharaoh (39) Nubia (39) hieroglyphs (39) papyrus (40) Hittites (50) monotheism (51) Jew (57)

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omplex society arose in the eastern Mediterranean. Gilgamesh prided himself on the splendors of the city of Uruk. Society at Uruk fulﬁlled the deﬁnition of a complex society: living in a large city, the residents specialized in different types of labor and were socially stratiﬁed.

What were the similarities in political structures, religion, and social structure in Mesopotamia and Egypt? What were the main differences? In both Mesopotamia and Egypt human kings ruled with the assistance of ofﬁcials and bureaucrats. Both societies worshiped many different deities and believed a few gods were more powerful than all the others. Both societies had distinct social classes: the ruler and his or her relatives at the top, ofﬁcials and priests below, and the vast majority of ordinary people at the bottom. Mesopotamia and Egypt also differed in important ways. The Mesopotamian kings were believed to be intermediaries between their subjects and the gods; the Egyptian pharaohs were thought to be living gods. The Mesopotamians lived ﬁrst in city-states and then in regional empires after Sargon ﬁrst uniﬁed the region around 2300 b.c.e. Egypt never had city-states, since the ﬁrst pharaohs ruled both Lower and Upper Egypt.

When did the international system of the eastern Mediterranean take shape, and how did it function? Starting around 1500 b.c.e. an international system took shape throughout the eastern Mediterranean that included the New Kingdom in Egypt, the Assyrians in northern Mesopotamia, and the Hittites in Anatolia. The rulers of these kingdoms corresponded with each other frequently, usually to arrange marriages among the different royal families, and also traded goods with one another.

How did monotheism arise among the ancient Hebrews, and under what circumstances did they record their beliefs? The ancient Hebrews had worshiped Yahweh as one of many deities since at least 2000 b.c.e. After 1000 b.c.e., one group of ancient Hebrews came to believe that they should worship Yahweh as the most important god. In the sixth century b.c.e. they recorded their monotheistic beliefs in the core of the Hebrew Bible, which took shape in Babylon during the Babylonian Exile and was written down in about 500 b.c.e.

Chapter Review

For Further Reference

WEB RESOURCES

Andrews, Carol. Egyptian Mummies. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984.

Pronunciation Guide

Brewer, Douglas J., and Emily Teeter. Egypt and the Egyptians. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Casson, Lionel. Travel in the Ancient World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. Dever, William G. What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? What Archaeology Can Tell Us About the Reality of Ancient Israel. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 2001. Foster, Benjamin R. The Epic of Gilgamesh: A Norton Critical Edition. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001. Kramer, Samuel Noah. History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-nine Firsts in Recorded History. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981. Manzanilla, Linda, ed. Emergence and Change in Early Urban Societies. New York: Plenum Press, 1997.

Interactive Maps MAP 2.1 Ancient Egypt and Nubia MAP 2.2 The International System, ca. 1500–1250 B.C.E. MAP 2.3 The Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empires at Their Greatest Extent

Primary Sources Chapter Objectives ACE Multiple-Choice Quiz Flashcards Websites

Postgate, J. N. Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the Dawn of History. New York: Routledge, 1992. Richards, Janet, and Mary Van Buren, eds. Order, Legitimacy, and Wealth in Ancient States. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Shaw, Ian. The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. van de Mieroop, Marc. A History of the Ancient Near East, ca. 3000–323 b.c. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing, 2004.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (http://www.metmuseum.org/). Important collections of Egyptian, Nubian, and Mesopotamian art. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (www.mfa.org). Important collections of Egyptian, Nubian, and Mesopotamian art. The Nubian Museum in Aswan (http://www.touregypt.net/nubiamuseum.htm). Introduction to the museum with photographs of artifacts.

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CHAPTER

Ancient India and the Rise of Buddhism, 2600 B.C.E.–100 C.E. The Origins of Complex Society in South Asia, 2600–500 B.C.E. (p. 60) The Rise of Buddhism (p. 71) The Mauryan Empire, ca. 320–185 B.C.E. (p. 76) South Asia’s External Trade (p. 83)

When he had been consecrated eight years the Beloved of the Gods, the king Ashoka, conquered Kalinga. A hundred and ﬁfty thousand people were deported, a hundred thousand were killed and many times that number perished. Afterwards, now that Kalinga was annexed, the Beloved of the Gods very earnestly practiced dharma, desired dharma, and taught dharma. On conquering Kalinga the Beloved of the Gods felt remorse, for, when an independent country is conquered the

ASHOKA AND HIS WIFE DISMOUNTING FROM ELEPHANT

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(Vidya Dehejia, Unseen Presence: The Buddha and Sanchi (Mumbai: Marg Publications, 1996)

or the ﬁrst eight years he was king, Ashoka (r. 268–232 b.c.e.) led his armies on a series of campaigns in north and central India that culminated in a ferocious struggle in Kalinga (kuh-LING-uh) in modern-day Orissa on India’s eastern coast. Victorious at last but appalled by the losses on both sides, Ashoka (uh-SHO-kuh) made a decision that would affect world history long after his Mauryan (MORE-ee-ahn) dynasty (ca. 320–185 b.c.e.) came to an end: he decided to embrace the teachings of Buddhism. Because the ancient Indians used perishable materials like palm leaves as writing material, we have no written documents before the third century b.c.e. from South Asia (including the modern countries of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and the Maldives). However, throughout his reign, Ashoka had his ideas carved on both large and small stones, called rock edicts, and later on stone pillars. Thus Ashoka’s inscriptions provide the fullest record of a single individual’s thoughts and movements in South Asia before the modern era. Ashoka explained why in an inscription carved in 260 b.c.e., shortly after conquering Kalinga:

The Travels of Ashoka B A CT R IA D HIN

Ashoka’s journeys Mauryan Empire under Ashoka, ca. 260 B.C.E. Area under direct Mauryan control Ashokan rock edict Ashokan pillar edict Indian Ocean trade routes

SH U KU

ass b er P Khy

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Taxila

I N D O- G R E E K S .

H sR

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I N D O- G R E E K S

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G an

G o da vari R.

Meets religious leaders, ca. 258 B.C.E.

Bodh Gaya

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Ashoka conquers Kalinga, 261 B.C.E., and suffers remorse.

500 Km.

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Ashoka rebuilds Buddhist stupa Sanchi to express his devotion.

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1000

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Lifetime of Ashoka 304 232 Late Harappan culture

POLITICS 1300 AND (from 1700) Indo-European speakers arrive in north India TRADE 1500

Navigators harness monsoon winds

First coins ca. 500

ca. 100 C.E. Mauryan Empire 320

1000 Lifetime of the Buddha

RELIGION AND CULTURE

Composition of Upanishads

Oral composition of Rig Veda 1500

1000

900

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Composition of Periplus ca. 50 C.E.

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CHAPTER 3

Ancient India and the Rise of Buddhism, 2600 B.C.E.–100 C.E.

slaughter, death, and deportation of the people is extremely grievous to the Beloved of the Gods, and weighs heavily on his mind. Today if a hundredth or a thousandth part of those people who were killed or died or were deported when Kalinga was annexed were to suffer similarly, it would weigh heavily on the mind of the Beloved of the Gods.1

• Ashoka (r. 268–232 b.c.e.) The third king of the Mauryan dynasty (ca. 320–185 b.c.e.), the ﬁrst Indian ruler to support Buddhism.

• dharma A Sanskrit term meaning correct conduct according to law or custom; Buddhists, including Ashoka, used this concept to refer to the teachings of the Buddha.

The concept of dharma occurs repeatedly in Ashoka’s inscriptions. The word dharma here means the teachings of the Buddha, but more broadly it means correct conduct according to law or custom, which is how many people in South Asia would have understood it. Dharma was also an important concept in Hinduism, the major religion that arose in India after Buddhism declined (see Chapter 8). Ashoka governed an unusually large area. Riding on an elephant, he traveled along the trunk roads that radiated out like spokes on a bicycle wheel from his capital at Pataliputra (puh-TAH-lee-poo-truh). For much of its history South Asia was divided into separate regions governed by various rulers; only a few dynasties, like the Mauryan, succeeded in uniting the region for brief periods. Although not politically uniﬁed, Indians shared a common cultural heritage: living in highly developed cities, many spoke Sanskrit or related languages, used religious texts in those languages, and conceived of society in terms of distinct social ranks. In contrast to rulers of the city-states of ancient Mesopotamia, the kingdom of ancient Egypt, and the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires, South Asian rulers exercised much less direct control over their subjects. Instead, leaders like Ashoka ruled by example, often patronizing religion to show what good monarchs they were. Indeed, religion provided one of the major unifying forces in the oftendisunited South Asia. This chapter ﬁrst discusses the ancient Vedic religion of India and then the exciting alternatives that appeared around the ﬁfth century: Buddhism and Jainism (JINE-is-uhm). It concludes by discussing the Indian Ocean trade network.

Focus Questions

What evidence survives of social stratiﬁcation at the Indus Valley sites? How did the Indo-Aryans describe the social stratiﬁcation in their society? What were the main teachings of the Buddha? Why did Ashoka believe that supporting Buddhism would strengthen the Mauryan state? Who were the main actors in the Indian Ocean trade? What types of ships did they use? Along which routes? To trade which commodities?

The Origins of Complex Society in South Asia, 2600–500 B.C.E.

e can glimpse the origins of South Asian social structures and religious traditions from archaeological evidence in the Indus River Valley dating between 2600 and 1700 b.c.e. One of the most important urban sites lies near the modern Pakistan village of Harappa (ha-RAHP-pa). The Harappan culture, with its brick cities, elaborate water systems, fertility deities, and extensive trade, extended over a wide area that included parts of present-day Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan (see Map 3.1). The people of the Indus Valley society used the same script, but, because archaeologists have not deciphered their writing system, we do not know what cultural forces bound them together. We learn more about ancient Indian society from evidence dating to 1500 b.c.e., when people in India, though never politically uniﬁed, came to share certain religious beliefs and conceptions of society. The pattern they established at that time held for much of Indian history.

Complex Society in the Indus River Valley, 2600–1700 B.C.E.

• monsoon

A term referring both to seasonal winds in South Asia blowing northeast in spring and early summer and southwest in fall and winter, and to the heavy seasonal rains they bring.

Long before the continents assumed their current conﬁguration, India was a separate, diamond-shaped island located south of what would become the Eurasian landmass. Over time, the tectonic plate carrying India shifted north until it 80°W 70°W collided with the Eurasian landmass, forming a masExtent of the Indus Valley civilization sive chain of mountains, the Himalayas. Mount EverTrade routes C est, at 29,028 feet (8,848 m), is the highest mountain S Shells C in this chain. The South Asian landmass, often called L Lapis lazuli C C Carnelian a subcontinent, can be divided into three geographiRopar 30°N C Harappa cal regions: the high and largely uninhabited moun60°W L Alamgirpur s u Ga tains to the north, the heavily populated plains of nd ng Mohenjo-daro I RT S E Delhi E the Indus and Ganga (GUN-ga) Rivers, and the southD SI ND C R A Sutkagendor ern peninsula, which is not as densely settled. TH L S S The Indian subcontinent has two great rivers: Tropic of Ca ncer C the Indus to the west and the Ganga to the east. The Lothal S R. C KATHIAWAR headwaters of both rivers start in the high mountain ada PENINSULA Narm A rabi an S e a 20°N chain of the Himalayas and drain into the sea, with N the Indus ﬂowing into the Arabian Sea and the Ganga 0 300 600 Km. into the Bay of Bengal. The earliest farmers planted 0 300 600 Mi. wheat and barley on the hillsides of what is now western Pakistan. The domestication of plants and MAP 3.1 animals, sometime between 6500 and 5000 b.c.e., Indus River Valley Society Between 2600 and made it possible for the people to create larger settle1700 B.C.E., the Indus River Valley society covered a ments in the valley of the Indus River. large area in modern-day India and Pakistan. The most India’s pattern of rainfall differed from that in important sites were at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa. Mesopotamia and Egypt. Much of the annual rainfall The region exported carnelian and lapis lazuli to came in several months in late summer or fall, called Mesopotamia, to the northeast, and imported shells the monsoon season, and a second period came in return. in the winter months. Indus Valley farmers had to build water storage tanks and measure out the water Interactive Map R. es

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CHAPTER 3

• Indus River Valley Site of the earliest complex society on the Indian subcontinent (2600–1700 b.c.e.), characterized by brick cities, drainage systems, open plazas, and broad avenues.

The “Great Bath” at Mohenjo-daro, Pakistan One of the most impressive ruins from the Harappan period (2600–1700 B.C.E.), the Great Bath is misnamed. It was a water tank—not a pool or a bathing area. It held water for the ritual use of the city’s residents, who bathed in a nearby building. (Borromeo/Art Resource, NY)

Ancient India and the Rise of Buddhism, 2600 B.C.E.–100 C.E.

carefully until the next monsoon came. Like the Mesopotamians and the Egyptians, the Indus Valley residents learned to make pottery and to work metal, usually copper and bronze. In the 1920s British and Indian archaeologists began to excavate huge mounds of brick and debris near the town of Harappa in the Indus River Valley. They uncovered the remains of a large urban settlement built from mud brick, complete with walls, drainage systems, open plazas, and avenues several yards (meters) across. Subsequent excavations have revealed that at its height Harappa had an area of over 380 acres (150 hectares) and a population between forty and eighty thousand.2 Archaeologists have found over ﬁfteen hundred settlements belonging to the Indus River Valley society, the largest complex society of its time on the Indian subcontinent.3 Mohenjo-daro (mo-HEN-juh DAH-ro), the second-largest site of the Harappan settlements, was perhaps the most impressive. The city’s great bath measured 40 feet (12 m) high and 23 feet (7 m) wide and was “without doubt the earliest public water tank in the ancient world.” Although it resembles a swimming pool, complete with staircases at either end, it was actually the source of water for eight bathing rooms in an adjacent building. Unlike other cities of the ancient world, the cities of the Indus River Valley provided drinking water, bathing facilities, and sewer drains to all their residents, not just a privileged few. We know frustratingly little about the people who occupied the Harappan sites because their script has yet to be deciphered. Seals with the same signs have been found at different sites throughout the Indus River Valley, suggesting that the region shared a common writing system. Archaeologists have identiﬁed 400 to 450 signs. But this number is puzzling; 400 signs is more than an alphabet (most alphabets contain fewer than 50 letters) yet fewer than a pictorial writing system (the earliest, simplest phase of Sumerian writing had 700 signs). Scholars wonder whether these mysterious signs stood for an individual word, syllable, or sound.

The Origins of Complex Society in South Asia, 2600–500 B.C.E.

Can You Decipher the Harappan Seals of Mohenjo-daro, Pakistan? These ﬁve seals have Indus Valley writing above several ﬁgures (from top left to right, clockwise): a unicorn, a rhinoceros, an elephant, a water buffalo, and a short-horned bull. A water fountain, possibly with a square sieve on top, stands below the unicorn’s mouth; other animals eat from feeding troughs on the ground. No one has yet deciphered the symbols of the Indus Valley writing system. (Copyright J. M. Kenoyer. Courtesy Department of Museum and Archaeology, Government of Pakistan)

Since no key giving their meaning in another language has yet been found, they are almost impossible to decipher. A seal made in the Indus River Valley was found at the Mesopotamian citystate of Ur from a level occupied in 2600 b.c.e. The ancient peoples of the Indus River Valley were heavily involved in trade, and the people of Mesopotamia were among their most important trading partners. The residents of ancient Mesopotamia imported carnelian and lapis lazuli from the Indus Valley (see Chapter 2), and shells traveled in the opposite direction (see Map 3.1). The absence of written documents makes it difﬁcult to reconstruct either the social structure or the religious practices of the residents of the Indus River Valley. As in Mesopotamia, craftsmen who made similar goods seem to have lived in the same residential quarter. There is clear archaeological evidence of social stratiﬁcation, one of the hallmarks of cities and complex societies. The people who had more possessions than others lived in bigger houses and were buried in graves with more goods. Beginning in 1900 b.c.e., the large urban sites of the Harappan society become smaller. Archaeologists have different explanations: one possibility is that a slight environmental change adversely affected farmers, who were no longer able to supply urban dwellers with foodstuffs. The characteristic Indus River pottery vessel types give way to new shapes and decorative patterns. Some of the pots have grafﬁti markings in Indus Valley script, indicating that the script remained in use. We know too little about the Indus Valley peoples to identify any particular practices that continued in later periods. With incontrovertible evidence of social stratiﬁcation, occupational specialization, and large urban centers, the Indus River Valley sites certainly meet our deﬁnition of a complex society, including a writing system. Although the people were probably not united under a single ruler, they shared a common system of weights and measures, standardized brick size, and urban planning. Shared cultural practices in the absence of political uniﬁcation characterized later South Asian societies as well.

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CHAPTER 3

Ancient India and the Rise of Buddhism, 2600 B.C.E.–100 C.E.

Our understanding of the South Asian past becomes much clearer with the ﬁrst textual materials in the Indo-European language of Sanskrit. Linguists place languages whose vo• Sanskrit A language, such as cabulary and grammatical structures are most closely related Latin, Greek, and Enginto the same language family. If you have studied French or Spanish, you know lish, belonging to the that many words are related to their English counterparts. English, French, and Indo-European language family and spoken by Spanish all belong to the Indo-European language family, as do ancient Greek, Indo-Aryan migrants to Latin, Hittite, and Sanskrit. The Indo-European languages contain many core vonorth India around cabulary words related to English, such as the words for mother, father, and brother 1500–1000 b.c.e. (see Table 3.1). If you study a non-Indo-European language, like Chinese or Arabic, few words will resemble any word in English, and word order may be different. Sometime in the distant past, thousands of years ago, a group of herding peoples who spoke Indo-European languages began to leave their homeland. The migrations took place long before the introduction of writing, so even today we cannot be certain where the homeland of the Indo-European speakers was or when they left. Horse-drawn carts gave these peoples a technological edge because they could cover far more ground than most of their contemporaries, who did not know how to breed horses or drive wheeled carts. The distribution of Indo-European languages over Eurasia shows how far these peoples went: Russia, most of Europe, Iran, and north India, but not southern India or East Asia (see Map 3.2). By at least 2000 b.c.e., those going west reached Anatolia, where they spoke Hittite (see Chapter 2); they reached the island of Crete in the Mediterranean Sea at about the same time (see Chapter 6). Those going east passed through Iran and arrived in north India sometime between 1500 and 1000 b.c.e., where they spoke Sanskrit. The modern inhabitants of the region speak a range of Indo-European languages descended from Sanskrit, including Hindi (HIN-dee), while those in south India speak Dravidian (druh-VID-ee-uhn) languages, which belong to a different language family. Most people living in the northern regions of modern South Asia speak IndoEuropean languages, including Hindi and Urdu, while those living in the south speak Dravidian languages like Tamil and Telegu. The dominance of Indo-European languages in much of today’s Eurasia is the result of migrations occurring over three thousand years ago. When linguists ﬁrst discovered the similarities among Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit in the early nineteenth century, they assumed that the speakers of IndoEuropean languages invaded and wiped out the indigenous peoples. Modern scholars have since proposed variations on the original conquerand-destroy model. Perhaps, when the Indo-European Table 3.1 Related Words in Various speakers migrated into a new region, their superior techIndo-European Languages nology convinced the local peoples to adopt the newcomers’ language. English Latin Greek Sanskrit

The Spread of Indo-European Languages

mother father brother sister me two six seven

mater pater frater soror me duo sex septem

meter pater phrater (unrelated) me duo hex hepta

matar pitar bhratar svasar ma duva shat sapta

The Indo-European Migrations and Vedic Culture, 1500–1000 B.C.E.

The Indo-European migrants left us the Rig Veda (RIGVAY-duh), a collection of 1,028 hymns that were preserved because the priests who sang them passed them down orally from one generation to the next. They date to around 1500 to 1000 b.c.e., the

60°E

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MAP 3.2 Distribution of Languages in Modern South Asia Most people living in the northern regions of modern South Asia speak Indo-European languages, including Hindi and Urdu, while those living in the south speak Dravidian languages like Tamil and Telegu. The dominance of Indo-European languages in much of today’s Eurasia is the result of migrations occurring over three thousand years ago. probable time of the Indo-European migrations to South Asia, yet they were not written down until more than two thousand years later, perhaps in 1000 c.e.4 The word hymn is slightly misleading, since hymns touch on many everyday activities, including sex and gambling. Accordingly, they reveal much about ancient society. Linguists have concluded that the Sanskrit of the older hymns varies slightly from the later hymns, making it possible to determine the order of their composition. The earlier hymns mention many place names to the west of those included in the later hymns, an indication that the migrants came ﬁrst to northwest India and later to all of north India. These migrants sometimes called themselves “Aryan,” a Sanskrit word whose meaning is “noble” or “host.” While modern researchers think that many and varied peoples spoke Indo-European languages, the propagandists of Nazi Germany wrongly imputed a racial unity to what was a linguistic group. Always mindful that we know nothing of their appearance, it is best to refer to these migrants as Indo-Aryans because their language belonged to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family.

• Rig Veda A collection of 1,028 Sanskrit hymns, composed around 1500 to 1000 b.c.e. yet written down around 1000 c.e. One of the most revealing sources about IndoEuropeans who settled in north India.

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CHAPTER 3

• Vedic religion Religious belief system of Indo-European migrants to north India; involved animal sacriﬁce and elaborate ceremonies to ensure that all transitions in the natural world—day to night, or one season to the next— proceeded smoothly.

• nomads A term for people who migrate seasonally from place to place to ﬁnd grass for their herds. They do not usually farm but tend their herds full-time. Primary Source: The Rig Veda Read how Indra, “the thunder-wielder,” slew Vritra, “ﬁrstborn of dragons,” and how Purusha created the universe through an act of ritual sacriﬁce.

Ancient India and the Rise of Buddhism, 2600 B.C.E.–100 C.E.

Scholars have named the religion of the Indo-Aryans Vedic (VAY-dick), from the Rig Veda. The roots of Hinduism, a major religion in modern South Asia, lie in Vedic religion, but the religious practices of the early Indo-Aryans differed from later Hinduism, which will be discussed in Chapter 8. Many scholars of South Asian religion date the rise of Hinduism to the seventh century c.e., after the decline of Buddhism.5 Many Vedic rituals focused on the transition between day and night or between seasons. A priest had to make the correct offering to the appropriate deity to ensure that the sun would rise each day or that at the winter solstice the days would begin to grow longer. The deities mentioned in the Rig Veda include the war-god, Indra (IN-druh), who carried a thunderbolt and led large conquering armies, the god of ﬁre, the sun-god, and the god of death, as well as many minor deities. Often the rituals involved ﬁre, thought to be the purest of the elements. Rituals honoring these gods could last several days and involve intricate sequences of steps, including animal sacriﬁce, and the ritual specialists who performed them, the Brahmin (BRAH-min) priests, were paid handsomely by local rulers. There was no single ruler in Vedic society. Instead a number of kings ruled small territories by collecting taxes from farmers to ﬁnance these lavish ceremonies. The Rig Veda provides a few valuable hints about social organization. The original Indo-European migrants were nomads who migrated seasonally from place to place to ﬁnd grass for their herds. Carrying their tents with them, they usually did not farm but tended their herds full-time. The most important animal in their society was the horse, which pulled the carts that transported their families and possessions across Eurasia. According to some hymns, some people began to cultivate grain after settling in India. One early hymn, addressed to Indra, gives a clear sense of the diverse occupations of the Indo-European speakers: Our thoughts bring us to diverse callings, setting people apart: the carpenter seeks what is broken, the physician a fracture, and the Brahmin priest seeks one who presses Soma.6

Soma was an intoxicating beverage, possibly made from ephedra (AY-fay-druh) leaves, that was drunk at ceremonies. This poem shows that Vedic society included carpenters, doctors, Brahmin priests, and people who prepared the ritual drink. The position of women in Vedic society was probably not much lower than that of men. Girls could go out unsupervised in public. Both girls and boys received an education in which they memorized hymns and studied their meaning, yet only male specialists recited hymns in public ceremonies. One hymn instructs educated girls to marry educated husbands. Girls could sometimes even choose their own husbands, provided they had obtained permission from their mother and father. Women could inherit property, and widows could remarry.

• varna

From the Sanskrit word for “color”: the four major social groups of ancient Indian society, ranked in order of purity (not wealth or power): Brahmin priests at the top, then warriors, then farmers and merchants, and ﬁnally dependent laborers.

Changes After 1000 B.C.E.

The later hymns, composed perhaps around 1000 b.c.e., indicate that social roles in Vedic society became more ﬁxed, and women’s freedom declined, as the former nomads settled down to a life of agriculture. Eventually people came to be classed into four different social groups, called varna (VAR-nuh), that were determined by birth. The literal meaning of varna is “color,” reﬂected in the modern English word varnish. One hymn, “The Hymn of the Primeval Man,” explains that when the gods dismembered a cosmic giant, they created each varna from a different part of his body:

The Origins of Complex Society in South Asia, 2600–500 B.C.E.

When they divided the man, into how many parts did they apportion him? What do they call his mouth, his two arms and thighs and feet? His mouth became the Brahmin; his arms were made into the Warrior, his thighs the People, and from his feet the Servants were born.

This passage sets out the major social groups of late Vedic society, ranked in order of purity (not wealth or power): Brahmin priests at the top, then warriors, then farmers and merchants (“the People”), and ﬁnally dependent laborers. Brahmins were the purest because they conducted Vedic rituals; the warrior category included the kings who sponsored the rituals. The farmers and merchants were supposed to farm the land and tend the herds. The fourth varna of dependent laborers, many of whom were the region’s original residents, served all the varna above them. Like all documents, however, this hymn has a distinct point of view: a Brahmin priest composed it, and it is not surprising that he placed Brahmins at the top of the social hierarchy. India’s caste system has changed greatly over the last three thousand years. There is no exact equivalent in Indian languages of the English word caste, which comes from the sixteenth- to seventeenth-century Portuguese word castas, meaning breed or type of animal or plant. Most Indians would say that the word jati ( JAH-ti), sometimes translated as “subcaste,” comes closest. People in a jati sometimes specialize in a certain occupation, but many jati have members with many different occupations, and some jati have completely given up their traditional occupations in favor of something new. (See the feature “World History in Today’s World: The Modern Caste System and Its Ancient Antecedents.”) Different changes took place in the centuries after circa 1000 b.c.e., when the later poems in the Rig Veda were composed. Iron came into widespread use, and iron tools proved much more effective at clearing land than bronze or copper ones. Between 1000 and 500 b.c.e. the residents of the lower Ganga Valley cleared much of the forest cover so that they could intensively pursue agriculture there. The sedentary peoples, armed with horses and iron weapons, continuously extended the area of cultivated land. Higher agricultural yields prompted an increase in population and a boom in trade, as shown by the appearance of the ﬁrst coins around 500 b.c.e., at the same time as in China (see Chapter 4) and the Persian Empire (see Chapter 6). This time period also saw other challenges to the old order. Composed between 900 and 600 b.c.e., the Upanishad (oo-PAHN-ih-shahd) texts claim to be linked to the Vedic tradition but introduce entirely new ideas. These texts turn inward, away from costly sacriﬁcial rituals. One new and exciting idea was that souls transmigrated: according to the doctrine of karma, people’s acts in this life determined how they would be reborn in the next. New gods appeared and are still worshiped by Hindus today. Unlike the gods of the Rig Veda, these gods intervene actively in human affairs and sometimes assume human form. The Mahabharata (muh-HAH-bah-ruh-tuh) and the Ramayana (ruh-MAH-yuhnuh), the two great Sanskrit epics, began to be composed at this time, although they were recorded only in the fourth century c.e. The Mahabharata, over 100,000 verses in length, describes a long-running feud between two clans. Its major theme is dharma, or right conduct. The epic vividly enacts some of the most basic conﬂicts in the human psyche as the characters struggle to understand what it means to be good and what the consequences of evil actions might be. We see men and women struggling with the question of whether it even matters if a person is

• jati

A term, sometimes translated as “subcaste,” for groups of 5,000 to 15,000 people in modern India. Many, but not all, Indians marry someone from the same jati and share meals on equal footing only with people of the same jati.

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WORLD HISTORY in TODAY’S WORLD

The Modern Caste System and Its Ancient Antecedents

f asked to identify their own caste, most South Asians would name their jati ﬁrst and then perhaps add the varna to which they think they belong. Varna is the general term describing the same four groups as in Vedic times: Brahmin, warrior, farmer or merchant, and dependent laborer. People often disagree about the varna ranking of a given jati; for example, one person may think a given jati belongs to the warrior category, while another may place it within the merchant and farmer varna. These disagreements can result in actual disputes between members of different jati. Not all jati ﬁt neatly into the four-varna classiﬁcation. Approximately 15 percent of modern Indians belong to government-listed castes and 7.5 percent to government-listed tribes (two groups previously considered untouchables). Although India’s constitution, adopted in 1949, abolishes untouchability and forbids discrimination against untouchables, both groups continue to suffer widespread discrimination. However, today government quotas ensure them a certain number of university places and civil service positions in proportion to their size. Most outside observers tend to exaggerate the rigidity of caste in modern India. The caste system

is most powerful in small communities, such as villages, in which everyone recognizes everyone and people marry people from families they know well. Politicians frequently invoke jati identity to get votes. Of course, as soon as someone enters a large city, no one can tell simply from that person’s appearance to which jati or varna he or she belongs. Still, it is possible to make an educated guess because members of lower-ranked jati often continue to practice their traditional occupations, like sweeping, by force of circumstance. Jati usually range in size from ﬁve thousand to ﬁfteen thousand people. Many, but not all, people in modern South Asia ﬁnd their spouse through arranged marriages with people from the same jati. Because each generation tends to marry within its own jati, the jati have developed into social groups with strong identities. People socialize within their own jati and share meals together. They naturally turn to others in their jati to ask for jobs, loans, and assistance with their problems. Castelike groups exist within other modern societies, too, although we do not realize how many people in non-Indian societies, including the United States, also tend to marry spouses from similar social and economic backgrounds.

actively trying to change the world, or whether perhaps everything is simply fated to be the way it is. One part of the Mahabharata, the Bhagavad Gita (bug-GAH-vud GEEH-tuh), was often read as an independent work. Composed around 200 c.e., it tells the story of a battle between two armies. One leader hesitates before the battle: his dharma is to ﬁght, but he will not be able to escape from the cycle of death and rebirth if he kills any of his relatives ﬁghting on the other side. The deity Krishna, in human form as a chariot driver, argues that each person should fulﬁll his dharma, or his given role, in life. Then Krishna appears as a deity and urges the warrior to devote himself fully to worshiping him. Krishna’s teaching later become a key tenet in Hinduism. The much-shorter Ramayana tells of a great king, Rama (RAH-muh), whose wife is abducted by a demon king. Rama ﬁghts to get Sita (SEE-tuh) back, but when he defeats the demon king he greets her coldly and explains that he cannot take her back because, although a married woman, she has lived alone with her

The Rise of Buddhism

captors. After ordering a pyre of wood to be built, she jumps into the ﬂames, but the ﬁre-god lifts her from the ﬂames and presents her to Rama. Only then does he accept that she has remained loyal to him. Some have seen this as evidence that widows committed suicide by immolating themselves at their husbands’ cremations. (The ﬁrst detailed evidence of widow immolation, from the early nineteenth century, indicates that the practice was limited to speciﬁc regions and small social groups.) In the centuries after their initial composition, both the Mahabharata and the Ramayana spawned many versions throughout South Asia and even Southeast Asia, and today’s television versions captivate millions of viewers. Different teachers continued to debate new religious concepts in succeeding centuries. Between the sixth and fourth centuries b.c.e., Jainism, an Indian religion with some two million followers today, took shape. Mahavira, the founder of the Jains ( JINES), went from place to place for twelve years, testing himself and debating ideas with other ascetics. After thirteen months he stopped wearing even a single garment and wandered naked for eleven years before reaching liberation from the bondage of human life. He died, it is thought, in his seventies after voluntarily renouncing food and water. Jains believe in right faith, right knowledge, and right conduct, and they emphasize the obligation to harm no living beings. They abstain from eating and drinking at night, when it is dark, so that they will not kill any insects by mistake.

The Rise of Buddhism

lso living in this time of religious ferment was the founder of the Buddhist religion, Siddhartha Gautama (sid-DAR-tuh gow-TA-muh), or the Buddha. The word Buddha literally means “the enlightened or awakened one.” The religion that he founded became one of the most inﬂuential in the world, and Ashoka’s decision to support Buddhism marked a crucial turning point in the religion’s history. Buddhism spread to Sri Lanka, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and eventually to China and Japan, where it continued to thrive after it declined in its Indian homeland. Today Japan, Tibet, and Thailand have signiﬁcant Buddhist populations, and growing Buddhist communities live in Europe and North America. We know many details about the Buddha’s life but cannot be sure which are facts and which myths because all our sources date to several centuries after his death and were recorded by Buddhist monks and nuns. Born at a time when India was not politically uniﬁed, the Buddha did not intend to found a religion that would bind Indian society together. His stated goal was to teach people how to break out of the endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.

• Buddha The founder of the Buddhist religion, Siddhartha Gautama (ca. 600–400 b.c.e.); also called the Buddha, or the enlightened one.

The Life of the Buddha

Even the dates of the Buddha’s life are uncertain. Born along the southern edge of the Himalaya Mountains in today’s Nepal, the Buddha lived to almost eighty. Sri Lankan Buddhist sources point to a death date of 543 b.c.e., while Chinese and Tibetan Buddhist sources suggest either 486 b.c.e. or 370 b.c.e. Scholarly consensus now puts the death of the Buddha closer to 400 b.c.e. than to 500 b.c.e.

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CHAPTER 3

Ancient India and the Rise of Buddhism, 2600 B.C.E.–100 C.E.

The legend of his life, known to all practicing Buddhists, recounts that his mother dreamed of a white elephant with a lotus ﬂower in his trunk. The wise men she consulted explained that she was going to give birth to either a great monarch or a great teacher. One seer predicted that, if he learned about human problems, he would become a teacher, prompting his parents to raise him inside a walled palace precinct so that he would never see any signs of suffering or illness. He grew up, married, and fathered a child. One day when he was driving inside the palace park with his charioteer, he noticed an extremely elderly man. Later he glimpsed a feverish man who was so ill that his skin was covered with growths. His third encounter with human suffering came when he saw a corpse being taken away to be cremated. The fourth encounter, with a wandering ascetic who wore a simple robe but who looked happy, gave him hope, and he resolved to follow his example. For six years he subjected himself to all kinds of self-mortiﬁcation. Then he decided to stop starving himself and meditated under a tree, later known as the Tree of Wisdom (also called a bodhi tree), for forty-nine days. He gained enlightenment and explained how he had done so.

The Teachings of the Buddha

Primary Source: Setting in Motion the Wheel of Law Siddhartha’s ﬁrst sermon contains the core teaching of Buddhism: to escape, by following the Middle Path, the suffering caused by desire.

• nirvana

A Sanskrit word that literally means “extinction,” as when the ﬂame on a candle goes out. In Buddhism the term took on broader meaning: those who followed the Eightfold Path and understood the Four Noble Truths would gain true understanding.

According to much later Buddhist tradition, the Buddha preached his ﬁrst sermon in the Deer Park near Benares (buh-NAR-us) in the Ganga Valley to ﬁve followers, who, like him, were seeking enlightenment. First he identiﬁed two incorrect routes to knowledge: extreme self-denial and complete self-gratiﬁcation. The Buddha preached that his listeners should leave family life behind and follow him, and they should live simple lives, avoiding the strenuous fasts and self-mortiﬁcation advocated by other ascetic groups. He explained that one could escape from the endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth by following a clear series of steps, called the Noble Eightfold Path. Like a doctor, the Buddha diagnosed suffering in the First Noble Truth, analyzed its origins in the Second Noble Truth, stated that a cure exists in the Third Truth, and explained that cure in the Fourth Noble Truth: to follow the Noble Eightfold Path. This path consists of right understanding, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right meditation. When people follow the Noble Eightfold Path, their suffering will end because they will have escaped from the cycle of life and rebirth by attaining nirvana. The word nirvana literally means “extinction,” as when the ﬂame on a candle goes out, but in the Buddha’s teachings it took on a much broader meaning: those who followed the Eightfold Path and understood the Four Noble Truths would gain true understanding. Buddhism shared with Jainism much that was new. Both challenged Brahminic authority, denied the authority of the Vedic hymns, and banned animal sacriﬁces. Vedic religious practice did not address the question of individual liberation; the goal of Vedic ritual was to make sure that the cosmos continued to function in an orderly way. In contrast, the Buddha preached that salvation was entirely the product of an individual’s actions. He focused on the individual, outside of his or her family unit and any social group and without regard to his or her varna ranking. The people who heard the Buddha preach naturally wanted to know how they could attain nirvana. He urged them to leave their families behind so that they could join him as monks in the Buddhist order. Those who followed him went from place to place, begging for their daily food from those who did not join the

The Rise of Buddhism

order. They lived nowhere permanently except during the monsoon months, when it was not practical to live by begging. The early monastic orders reached decisions by consensus. When the members of the Buddhist order did not agree, they voted, and the leader of the group implemented the decision. Only those monks who joined the Buddhist order could attain nirvana, the Buddha taught. His ﬁrst followers were all men, but Buddhist sources record that the Buddha’s aunt asked to join the Buddhist order. The Buddha refused her until his star disciple Ananda (uh-NAN-duh) intervened and persuaded him to change his mind. Women did become Buddhist nuns, but they were always subordinate to men. The Buddha assumed that the people who could not become monks and nuns would donate food and money instead. Those outside the order could not attain nirvana, but they could gain merit by making such donations, the Buddha taught, and many kings and merchants gave large gifts in the hope of improving their lives, either in this world or in future rebirths. This teaching marked a major departure from the pre-existing Vedic religion. According to the Rig Veda, Brahmins stood at the top of the ritual hierarchy, and those who ranked below them could do nothing to change their position. The Buddhists took a radically different view: a merchant, a farmer, or even A Mix of Sculptural Traditions a laborer who made a donation to the Buddhist order could from Gandhara, Afghanistan enhance his or her standing. From its very earliest years, Bud- This Gandharan statue’s posture is classically dhists attracted merchant support, and communities of Bud- Buddhist: his legs are crossed so that both dhists often lived near cities, where merchants had gathered. feet face up, the left hand grasps his robe, The Buddha forbade his followers from worshiping stat- and the right makes a gesture meaning ues or portraits of him. Instead, they worshiped at the four to dispel fear. But the facial expression, sites that had been most important during the Buddha’s life: hair, and overall posture are drawn from where he was born, where he gained enlightenment, where he Greco-Roman models already familiar to preached the ﬁrst sermon, and where he died. Before his death Gandharan sculptors for several centuries. the Buddha had instructed his followers to cremate him and Neither Buddhist nor Greco-Roman, the bury his ashes under a bell-shaped monument built over a spokes in the halo behind the Buddha’s burial mound, called a stupa (STEW-pah). The ﬁrst generation head probably represent the sun’s rays. of Buddhists divided the Buddha’s remains under many dif- (The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift of Moneichi ferent stupas, where they honored him by circling them in a Nitta, 2003) clockwise direction, in a practice called circumambulation (pradaksina) (pra-DUCKSH-ee-nah). To gain merit, they walked with their right arm, thought to be more pure than the left, facing the stupa for a ﬁxed number of times. They also left ﬂowers, incense, and clothing on the stupas, where they lit lamps and played music as an expression of their devotion. (See the feature “Visual Evidence: The Buddhist Stupa at Sanchi.”) The depictions of the Buddha changed in later centuries. Beginning in the ﬁrst and second centuries c.e., sculptors began to make images of the Buddha himself. One group in north India portrayed the Buddha as a young man, while another, active in the Gandhara (gahn-DAHR-ah) region of modern Pakistan and Afghanistan, was inﬂuenced by later copies of Greek statues brought by Alexander the Great and his armies in the fourth century b.c.e. They made statues of the Buddha, often in a sitting position, with noticeably Greek-looking facial features (see photo).

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THE BUDDHIST STUPA AT SANCHI

he oldest and best-preserved stupa in India is at Sanchi (SAN-chee), near Bhopal, India. The Buddha never visited Sanchi during his lifetime, but Ashoka chose it as the site of a new stupa because it lay on the main route between Pataliputra and the western coastal ports and had frequent visitors. Ashoka ordered the remains of the Buddha removed from their original resting place and placed in a new burial mound. He covered the mound with a layer of sandstone and erected a wooden railing around it. He also placed a pillar edict on the site. The site today looks the way it did after extensive renovations done during the ﬁrst century B.C.E. A square stone wall with a central gate on each side surrounds the main burial mound; beautifully carved stone pillars decorate each of the gates (see opposite). In addition to the main stupa, Sanchi contains two other large stupas and hundreds of smaller ones, where monks seeking to share the Buddha’s merit were buried. Buddhists believe that visiting a stupa holding someone’s remains brings them closer to the deceased. Built in the ﬁrst century B.C.E., the Eastern Gate at Sanchi contains three horizontal sections held up by the two main vertical posts. The carvings of people and animals worshiping the Buddha are wonderfully lifelike. The artists carved scenes from the Buddha’s life but never the Buddha himself. In his dying instructions, the Buddha forbade his followers to worship representations of him.

The top horizontal scene shows Buddhists standing with hands folded in a position of reverence facing a series of stupas, each of which represented the Buddha. In the middle horizontal scene depicting the Great Departure, when the Buddha left his father’s palace, the Sanchi artists showed ﬁve riderless horses at increasing distances from the palace, each scene portraying a moment in continuous action. At the right end of the frame, the artists carved a pair of footprints under a parasol, a convention the viewers would have understood to represent the Buddha. The beautifully carved frieze on the lowest horizontal section depicts an Indian monarch, most likely Ashoka, at a royal procession. Ashoka and his wife have dismounted from a crouching elephant, and they pause to observe musicians. At the center of the scene is a depiction of the Tree of Wisdom under which the Buddha gained enlightenment. A structure protects the base of the tree, where people are praying and making offerings. After looking at the friezes on the front and back of the gate, worshipers followed the path leading them through an outer wall to the stupa itself, climbing a ﬂight of steps to reach a railed walkway that led all the way around the stupa. The pillars and gates at Sanchi contain hundreds of inscriptions from Ashoka’s time and later, recording the names of those making a donation to pay for part of a railing or a frieze in the hope of gaining merit. All those who circumambulated the stupa shared the same goal.

Question for Analysis How did people of different social ranks—Ashoka, monks, nuns, and ordinary people—express their devotion to Buddhism at different places—the friezes of the gates, the pillars, the walkways, and the stupa itself—at the site of Sanchi?

The Eastern Gate was built in the ﬁrst century B.C.E. The high quality of the carvings makes this one of the greatest surviving monuments of Buddhist art in India, as well as one of the earliest. This buxom woman beneath a mango tree is a local female deity, credited with the ability to help women conceive and undergo easier childbirth. Buddhist monuments often incorporated local deities in subordinate positions. This railing surrounds the interior walkway on which worshipers circumambulated the stupa. Individual stones bear the names of contributors—including monks, nuns, and merchants—who made donations to ﬁnance the building of the walkway.

(Dinodia Photo Library)

The stupa mound was ﬁrst built over the remains of the Buddha in the third century B.C.E. and attained its current size—120 feet (36.5 m) in diameter and 54 feet (16.5 m) high—one hundred years later.

CHAPTER 3

Ancient India and the Rise of Buddhism, 2600 B.C.E.–100 C.E.

The Mauryan Empire, ca. 320–185 B.C.E. • Mauryan dynasty (ca. 320–185 b.c.e.) A dynasty that uniﬁed much of the Indian subcontinent. Relying on trunk roads, it exercised more control in the cities than in the countryside.

uring the Buddha’s lifetime, Buddhism was but one of many different teachings circulating in India. The support of Ashoka, the third ruler of the Mauryan dynasty, founded by Ashoka’s grandfather, transformed Buddhism into the most inﬂuential religion of its day. Ashoka’s adoption of Buddhism as the state religion promoted cultural unity as well as strengthened his political control. The Mauryans came to power at a time when trade was increasing throughout the region, and Buddhism was able to succeed because it appealed to merchants. The Mauryans created the ﬁrst large state in India, extending over all of north India (see the map on page 61). Surprisingly few materials about the Mauryans survive. As a result, historians continue to debate the amount of control the Mauryan Empire exercised over the regions it conquered. Local rulers may have retained considerable power. In addition to archaeological excavations, our major sources are the partial report of a Greek ambassador named Megasthenes (ME-gas-thuh-nees), written after 288 b.c.e., and Ashoka’s rock edicts.

Life and Society in the Mauryan Dynasty, ca. 300 B.C.E.

In 320 b.c.e. the grandfather of Ashoka, a general named Chandragupta (chuhn-druh-GOOP-tuh) Maurya (r. ca. 320–297 b.c.e.), defeated another general and gained control of his territory and his capital Pataliputra (modern-day Patna [PUTT-nuh]), located on the Ganga. After Chandragupta Maurya took power, his forces fought those of Seleucus I (321–281 b.c.e.), a general who succeeded Alexander the Great (see Chapter 6) in Mesopotamia. After making peace, Seleucus (seh-LOO-kuhs) sent an ambassador named Megasthenes to the Mauryan court at Pataliputra in 302 b.c.e., where he stayed for fourteen years. Megasthenes wrote a work entitled Indika (IN-dick-uh), which provides a detailed description of Pataliputra in approximately 300 b.c.e., some thirty years before Ashoka ascended to the throne. Unfortunately, Megasthenes’s original work does not survive; we know it only from passages quoted by later Greek and Roman writers.7 Pataliputra’s size impressed Megasthenes deeply. This city stretched in the inhabited quarters to an extreme length on each side of eighty stadia [nearly 10 miles or 16 kilometers], and that its breadth was ﬁfteen stadia [nearly 2 miles or 3.2 kilometers], and that a ditch encompassed it all round, which was six hundred feet in breadth and thirty cubits [45 feet or 14 meters] in depth, and that the wall was crowned with 570 towers and had four-and-sixty gates.

This description of the city’s size is plausible. Archaeological excavations early in the twentieth century around Patna revealed clear evidence of large fortiﬁcation walls, including large reinforcing wooden trusses. The Mauryans exercised considerable control within the capital. Most of their ofﬁcials supervised trade and commerce, the major source of Mauryan revenue. Market ofﬁcials regulated weights and measures to ensure that no one was cheated.

The Mauryan Empire, ca. 320–185 B.C.E.

They encouraged merchants to sell only one type of good by charging them twice as much tax as if they sold more, and they levied ﬁnes on those merchants who passed off old goods as newly made. The Mauryans concentrated their ofﬁcials at marketplaces in the capital, where they could regulate measures and prices at the same time that they collected taxes. The passages that have come down to us take a detached tone: Megasthenes includes no personal anecdotes. His account of the ofﬁcials who watched over the foreigners comes closest to describing his own life in Pataliputra: Those of the second branch attend to the entertainment of foreigners. To these they assign lodgings, and they keep watch over their modes of life by means of those persons whom they give to them for assistants. They escort them on the way when they leave the country, or, in the event of their dying, forward their property to their relatives. They take care of them when they are sick, and if they die bury them.

We may surmise that city ofﬁcials gave Megasthenes a servant. According to Megasthenes, the military section of the government was the same size as the urban section: thirty men, divided into six branches, each with its own area of responsibility—navy, supplies, infantry, cavalry, war chariots, and elephants. Elephants fascinated Megasthenes, who devoted many lines to their capture, training, loyalty to their masters, and general care; when on active duty, he reports, they consumed rice wine and large quantities of ﬂowers. Megasthenes’s descriptions of Indian society have long puzzled analysts. He identiﬁes seven ranks within Indian society: (1) philosophers, (2) farmers, (3) herdsmen, (4) artisans, (5) soldiers, (6) spies, and (7) councillors. This overlaps only slightly with the varna scheme described in the Rig Veda some seven hundred years earlier (discussed above), with its four ranks of Brahmin, warriors, merchants and farmers, and dependent servants. Three of Megasthenes’s groups (herdsmen, artisans, and spies) do not even appear in the varna ranking. The top-ranking group, according to Megasthenes, was the smallest: the king’s advisers, military generals, and treasury ofﬁcials, who were “the most respected on account of the high character and wisdom of [their] members.” Megasthenes’s ranking suggests that this was the group he probably encountered directly. Ranking second were the “philosophers,” or religious practitioners. They performed sacriﬁces and funerals, and Megasthenes explains that the Brahmins among them married and had children but lived simply. Another group of religious practitioners underwent various privations, such as abstaining from sexual intercourse or sitting in one position all day. The Jains would have belonged to this group. Finally, a third group followed the Buddha, “whom they honor as a god on account of his extraordinary sanctity.” Although the Buddha had taught his followers not to worship him as a god, Buddhist devotees began to credit him with divine capabilities soon after his death, as we can see from Megasthenes’s report. Megasthenes devotes only a few sentences to the Buddhists, an indication that the Buddhists had only a small following in 300 b.c.e. Conceptions of caste, Megasthenes suggests, were much more ﬂuid than many of our surviving sources, which almost always place Brahmins at the top, would indicate. Megasthenes lists ﬁve other groups (farmers, herdsmen, artisans, soldiers, and spies) without ranking them in any way. The farmers, the largest group, were exempt from military service but paid a land tax to the king as well as one-quarter

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CHAPTER 3

Ancient India and the Rise of Buddhism, 2600 B.C.E.–100 C.E.

of all their crops. The military was the second-largest group. Megasthenes concludes his list by saying, “No one is allowed to marry out of his own caste, or to exercise any calling or art except his own.”

Mauryan Control Outside the Capital

The Mauryans exercised close supervision over the rural areas in the immediate vicinity of the capital, but not over all of north India. Megasthenes reports that the kingdom contained three different types of territory: those ruled directly by the Mauryan king, those territories where the local king was allowed to remain in place with reduced powers, and local republics. This description of the Mauryans suggests an empire quite different from that of the Assyrians (see Chapter 2). Whereas the Mauryans exercised direct rule in only a limited area, the Assyrians sometimes forcibly resettled large groups of people throughout their empire. The Ashokan inscriptions, written after Megasthenes left India (most likely between 260 and 232 b.c.e.), provide more information about the extent of Mauryan control outside the capital. Some of the inscriptions were written on tall pillars, while others were carved on boulders (shown on the map on page 61). They were placed in the capital, in northwest India in the Punjab (PUHN-juhb) region, on the east and west coasts, and in central India. Earlier analysts have often assumed that one could connect the different monuments with a line, with the territory inside the line being that of the Mauryan Empire. Recently, however, historians have realized that since not all empires were able to exercise a uniform control over a large area, the Mauryan Empire should be mapped differently. The region about Pataliputra should have the darkest shade to indicate where Mauryan control was greatest. The trade routes linking the capital with outlying trade centers should also be shaded dark because the Mauryans could have dispatched ofﬁcials to markets to collect sales taxes. But the regions lying in between the trade routes should remain lightly shaded, if at all.

An Ashokan Column from Vaishali, Bihar, India This pillar, made of polished red sandstone, stands 60 feet (18.3 m) high. Capped with a lion, it was visible in all four directions. This and the other stone columns Ashoka commissioned are the ﬁrst monuments worked in stone anywhere in ancient India. Some scholars have wondered if Ashoka knew of other stone monuments in neighboring regions like Iran. (Dinodia Photo Library)

The Mauryan Empire, ca. 320–185 B.C.E.

The Mauryan Empire remained a decentralized one in which local people continued to speak their own languages. Ashoka drafted the texts of his inscriptions in his native language of Magadhi (muh-GUH-dee), a language related to Sanskrit. They were then translated into the different Prakrit (PRAH-krit) vernaculars used in north India, which are all descended from Sanskrit. Some in the northwest were translated into Greek, a European language, and Aramaic, a western Asian language, because the local population spoke both languages. Ashoka drafted short, medium, and lengthy versions of each edict so that his local ofﬁcials could decide which one to use. Ofﬁcials sometimes left out passages from the original to save space, Ashoka realized, and the ofﬁcials at Kalinga did not even put up the text cited at the beginning of this chapter about Ashoka’s bloody conquest of the region, possibly because they did not want to antagonize the local population. The inscriptions report that Ashoka sent ofﬁcials to inspect outlying regions every three to ﬁve years. He claims to have built new roads, along which his men planted trees and dug wells, and he encouraged his ofﬁcials to discover new medicinal herbs and plant them where they had not previously been cultivated. Ashoka and the other Mauryan rulers did not mint their own coins; rulers in each locality did.

Ruling by Example: The Ceremonial State

Ashoka was the ﬁrst major Indian ruler to support Buddhism. The ideal ruler followed Buddhist teachings and made donations to the Buddhist order, which he did not join. Nor did he renounce his family. The Buddhists called such a ruler a chakravartin (chuh-kruh-VAR-tin), literally “turner of the wheel,” a broad term indicating that the sovereign ruled over a wide territory. Although Ashoka does not use the word, his inscriptions fully express his ideal of ruling by example. Every measure he took had the same goal: to encourage his subjects to follow dharma, which he described in this way: There is no gift comparable to the gift of dharma, the praise of dharma, the sharing of dharma, fellowship in dharma. And this is—good behavior towards slaves and servants, obedience to mother and father, generosity towards friends, acquaintances, and relatives and towards shramanas [shrah-MUHnuhz; Buddhists and other renunciants] and Brahmins, and abstention from killing living beings.8

Many subsequent rulers, particularly in South and Southeast Asia, followed Ashoka’s example. Historians call this type of rule a “ceremonial state” to contrast it with empires in which rulers exercised more direct control. The ruler of a ceremonial state sponsored religious observances and contributed money for the construction of religious ediﬁces in the hope that his subjects would recognize his generosity and willingly acknowledge him as their leader. Ashoka’s inscriptions permit us to see how his devotion to Buddhism increased over time. Before the battle of Kalinga (discussed at the beginning of the chapter) in 260 b.c.e., he was not yet a Buddhist, and so he was able to lead his armies into battle and kill thousands of enemy soldiers. At the end of the battle the huge number of deaths ﬁlled him with remorse and he made a decision to follow the teachings of the Buddha. In the following year he promised to uphold the ﬁve most important precepts—not to kill, steal, commit adultery, lie, and drink alcohol—

• ceremonial state States whose rulers sponsored religious observances and construction of religious ediﬁces in the hope that their subjects would willingly acknowledge them as rulers. Usually contrasted with rulers who depended on sheer force to govern.

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MOVEMENT OF IDEAS

The First Sermon of the Buddha and Ashoka’s Fourth Major Rock Edict

fter gaining enlightenment under the Tree of Wisdom at Bodh Gaya, the Buddha preached his ﬁrst sermon at the Deer Park at Benares. The Buddha’s sermon presented the main teachings of Buddhism in a capsule form that could be translated into other languages when Buddhism spread beyond India to East and Southeast Asia. Because the language is easy to understand, this would have worked well as a spoken sermon, with repetition of important concepts to ensure the comprehension of his ﬁve followers, or bhikkhus (BEAK-kooz), whom he addressed. This text was transmitted orally by Buddhists in north India. Hundreds of monks met, ﬁrst following the Buddha’s death and then one hundred years later, to make sure that they were reciting the standard version of the sermon. The text was committed to writing only in the ﬁrst century B.C.E. by

monks in modern-day Sri Lanka, evidence that Buddhism had spread to south India and beyond by that time. The Fourth Major Rock Edict provides a summary of Ashoka’s beliefs. Some overlap with the Buddha’s teachings in the First Sermon, while others differ. Although Ashoka himself embraced Buddhism, he reached out to both Buddhist and nonBuddhist subjects by erecting pillar and rock throughout India (see page 78). The location of his edicts provides a rough indication of how far Buddhist teachings reached during his reign. Sources: Walpola Sri Rahula, What the Buddha Taught (New York: Grove Press, 1974), pp. 92–94; Romila Thapar, A´soka and the Decline of the Mauryas (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 251–252. (Some changes in spelling and capitalization made for the sake of consistency.)

The First Sermon of the Buddha Thus I have heard. The Blessed One was once living in the Deer Park at Isipatana (the Resort of Seers) near Varanasi (Benares). There he addressed the group of ﬁve bhikkhus: Bhikkhus, these two extremes ought not to be practiced by one who has gone forth from the household life. What are the two? There is devotion to the indulgence of sense-pleasures, which is low, common, the way of ordinary people, unworthy and unproﬁtable; and there is devotion to self-mortiﬁcation, which is painful, unworthy and unproﬁtable. Avoiding both these extremes, the Tathagatha [the Buddha] has realized the Middle Path: it gives vision, it gives knowledge, and it leads to calm, to insight, to enlightenment, to nirvana. And what is that Middle Path . . . ? It is simply the Noble Eightfold Path, namely, right view, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. . . . The Noble Truth of suffering (dukkha) is this: Birth is suffering; aging is suffering; sickness is suffering; death is suffering; sorrow and lamenta-

tion, pain, grief and despair are suffering; association with the unpleasant is suffering; dissociation from the pleasant is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering—in brief, the ﬁve aggregates of attachment are suffering. The Noble Truth of the origin of suffering is this: It is this thirst (craving) which produces reexistence and re-becoming, bound up with passionate greed. It ﬁnds fresh delight now here and now there, namely, thirst for sense-pleasures; thirst for existence and becoming; and thirst for non-existence (self-annihilation). The Noble Truth of the cessation of suffering is this: It is the complete cessation of that very thirst, giving it up, renouncing it, emancipating oneself from it, detaching oneself from it. The Noble Truth of the path leading to the cessation of suffering is this: It is simply the Noble Eightfold Path, namely right view; right thought; right speech, right action; right livelihood; right effort; right mindfulness; right concentration. “This is the Noble Truth of Suffering (dukkha)”; such was the vision, the knowledge,

the wisdom, the science, the light, that arose in me with regard to things not heard before. “This suffering, as a noble truth, should be fully understood”; such was the vision, the knowledge, the wisdom, the science, the light, that arose in me with regard to things not heard before. “This suffering, as a noble truth, has been fully understood”; such was the vision, the knowledge, the wisdom, the science, the light, that arose in me with regard to things not heard before. . . . As long as my vision of true knowledge was not fully clear . . . regarding the Four Noble Truths, I did not claim to have realized the per-

fect Enlightenment that is supreme in the world. . . . But when my vision of true knowledge was fully clear . . . regarding the Four Noble Truths, then I claimed to have the perfect Enlightenment that is supreme in the world. . . . And a vision of true knowledge arose in me thus: My heart’s deliverance is unassailable. This is the last birth. Now there is no more re-becoming (rebirth). This the Blessed One said. The group of ﬁve bhikkhus was glad, and they rejoiced at his words.

The Fourth Major Rock Edict In the past, the killing and injuring of living beings, lack of respect towards relatives, Brahmins and shramanas had increased. But today, thanks to the practice of dharma on the part of the Beloved of the Gods, the king Ashoka, the sound of the drum has become the sound of dharma, showing the people displays of heavenly chariots, elephants, balls of ﬁre, and other divine forms. Through his instruction in dharma abstention from killing and non-injury to living beings, deference to relatives, Brahmins and shramanas, obedience to mother and father, and obedience to elders have all increased as never before for many centuries. These and many other forms of the practice of dharma have increased and will increase.

The Beloved of the Gods, the king Ashoka, his sons, his grandsons and his great grandsons will advance the practice of dharma, until the end of the world and will instruct in the law, standing ﬁrm in dharma. For this, the instruction in the law, is the most valuable activity. But there is no practice of dharma without goodness, and in these matters it is good to progress and not to fall back. For this purpose, the inscription has been engraved—that men should make progress in this matter, and not be satisﬁed with their shortcomings. This was engraved here when the Beloved of the Gods, the king Ashoka, had been consecrated twelve years.

QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS 쑺 What are the Four Noble Truths taught by the Buddha, and what is the relationship among them? 쑺 What are the signs that the First Sermon was transmitted orally? 쑺 Which Buddhist teachings did Ashoka think most important? What did he mean by dharma?

CHAPTER 3

Ancient India and the Rise of Buddhism, 2600 B.C.E.–100 C.E.

and became a lay Buddhist (upasaka). Anyone could become a lay Buddhist; one simply had to vow to uphold the ﬁve precepts and then continue in one’s normal profession while living with one’s family. Four distinct groups formed the early Buddhist order: monks and nuns were ordained, while male and female lay Buddhists were not. In the tenth year of his reign, around 258 b.c.e., Ashoka visited the site at Bodh Gaya where the Buddha had gained enlightenment and decided to increase his devotion to Buddhism even further. Presumably along with learned Buddhists, he conducted a series of meetings with non-Buddhist “ascetics” engaged in different austerities, as well as with Brahmin priests, who continued to sacriﬁce animals. Ashoka discussed the teachings of the Buddha and gave them gifts to encourage them to convert to Buddhism. He used the same combination of persuasion and gift giving with elderly people and with ordinary people in the countryside. (See the feature “Movement of Ideas: The First Sermon of the Buddha and Ashoka’s Fourth Major Rock Edict.”) Ashoka visited the Deer Park in Benares as well as the site of the Buddha’s birth in present-day Nepal, where he built a stone fence and erected a stone pillar in memory of the Buddha. Another legend records that, as a sign of his devotion to Buddhism, Ashoka paid for the construction of 84,000 stupas, none of which survive, and later Buddhist rulers often emulated him by building monuments to express their devotion to Buddhism. Ashoka’s style of governing was very personal. One inscription describes how seriously he took the business of ruling and explains that his ofﬁcials were free to interrupt him with public business no matter what he was doing. “And whatever I may order by word of mouth, whether it concerns a donation or a proclamation, or whatever urgent matter is entrusted to my ofﬁcers, if there is any dispute or deliberation about it in the Council, it is to be reported to me immediately, at all places and all times.” We learn that some ofﬁcers could speak directly to the king and that there was a council, but not how it functioned. Ashoka claimed to exercise inﬂuence over lands far from north India because of his support for dharma: The Beloved of the Gods considers victory by dharma to be the foremost victory. And moreover the Beloved of the Gods has gained this victory on all his frontiers to a distance of six hundred yojanas [about 1,500 miles, or 2400 km], where reigns the Greek king Antiochus [in Syria], and beyond the realm of that Antiochus in the lands of four kings named Ptolemy [in Egypt], Antigonus [in Macedonia], Magas [of Cyrene], and Alexander [of Epirus]; and in the south over the Colas and the Pandyas as far as Ceylon.

This inscription, composed between 256 and 254 b.c.e., claims that Ashoka had brought about “victory by dharma” far beyond his frontiers, as far west as the realms of Greek rulers in Egypt and Greece, and as far south as the island of Ceylon, modern Sri Lanka. Modern scholars concur that he may have sent missionaries, particularly to Sri Lanka, where oral accounts record their names. Otherwise, there is no independent evidence of Buddhism spreading outside the Indian subcontinent in Ashoka’s reign. We must keep in mind that Ashoka wrote his inscriptions and had them carved into huge, dramatic monuments to remind his subjects that he had the right to rule over them. The only external conﬁrmation of their veracity comes from later Buddhist sources, which mention Ashoka’s devotion to Buddhism. If

South Asia’s External Trade

Ashoka had violated his Buddhist vows, or if a certain region had risen up in rebellion during his reign, we can be sure that the inscriptions would not mention it. One recent analysis suggests that the inscriptions not be seen “as solid blocks of historical fact, but as ﬂightier pieces of political propaganda, as the campaign speeches of an incumbent politician who seeks not so much to record events as to present an image of himself and his administration to the world.”9 After Ashoka’s death in 232 b.c.e., the Mauryan Empire began to break apart; the Mauryans lost control of the last remaining section, the Ganga Valley, around 185 b.c.e. Few documents survive from this time. Historians wonder if the central government was unable to raise the funds it needed to support its sizable army, without which it could not control the massive territory that Chandragupta and Ashoka had conquered. A series of regional kingdoms gained control, as was the usual pattern for much of South Asian history.

South Asia’s External Trade

ndia’s geographic proximity to western Asia meant that outsiders came to South Asia in very early times, and, conversely, Indian culture, particularly Buddhist teachings, traveled out from India on the same paths. In ancient times travelers seeking to enter South Asia had a choice of routes. Although the Himalaya Mountains in the north and extensive mountains in the northeast prevented large-scale overland trade, regular cultural contacts and the movement of valuable goods always remained possible. Land routes through the Hindu Kush (HIHN-doo KOOSH) in the northwest, including the Khyber (KAI-ber) Pass, allowed more extensive contacts between South Asia and Central Asia through what is today Afghanistan. These are the routes that allowed the expansion of Indo-European languages and that Megasthenes used when he came to India. However, the most important mode of communication between South Asia and the rest of the world was by sea. By 100 c.e., if not earlier, mariners from South and Southeast Asia had learned to capture the monsoon winds blowing northeast in the spring and early summer, and southwest in the fall and winter, to carry on regular commerce and cultural interaction with Southwest Asia and Africa. Finds of Harappan artifacts in the archaeological assemblages of early Sumer testify to the importance and age of these ancient sea routes. Because no written descriptions of the ancient trade exist, archaeologists must reconstruct the trade on the basis of excavated commodities. Natural reserves of the semiprecious blue stone lapis lazuli exist only in the Badakhshan (BAH-duckshan) region of northern Afghanistan, so we know that, by 2600 b.c.e., if not earlier, trade routes linked Badakhshan with ancient Sumer, where much lapis lazuli has been found. Similarly, the red-orange semiprecious stone carnelian traveled from mines in Gujarat (GOO-juh-ruht), India, to Mesopotamian sites. The presence of Harappan seals and clay pots at Sumer reveals that the trade included manufactured goods as well as minerals. These goods traveled overland or by boat down the Indus River to the Arabian Sea, where they hugged the coast as they traveled west to the Persian Gulf. Ancient sea routes across the Indian Ocean connected India with Mesopotamia, the Arabian Peninsula, and East Africa (see the map on page 61).

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CHAPTER 3

• dhows Small sailboats used in the Indian Ocean made from teak planks laid edge to edge, fastened together with coconut ﬁber twine, and caulked to prevent leaking.

Ancient India and the Rise of Buddhism, 2600 B.C.E.–100 C.E.

The monsoon winds changed direction two times a year, so if one caught them going west on a summer departure, one could return in the following winter as they blew east. They varied enormously in their intensity. Merchants traveling in the Indian Ocean usually sailed in small boats called dhows. Dhows (DOWZ) were made from teak planks laid edge to edge, fastened together with coconut ﬁber twine, and then caulked to prevent leaking. This method of construction gave them greater ﬂexibility during storms than boats made from nailed wooden planks. We learn much about the Indian Ocean trade during the ﬁrst century c.e. from an unusual work called the Periplus (PAY-rih-plus) (literally “around the globe”), written in colloquial Greek not by a scholar but by an anonymous merchant living in Egypt around 50 c.e. By the ﬁrst century c.e., navigators from Egypt had learned how to harness the monsoon winds and travel by boat to India. The Periplus describes the routes sailors took and the goods they traded at Indian ports. Written explicitly for merchants, the Periplus is organized as a guidebook: port by port, down the East African coast, around the Arabian Peninsula, and then to India. One-quarter of the book describes the trade with East Africa, one-quarter with Arabia, and one-half with India, the most important trading destination. In African and Arabian ports sailors could purchase ivory or gum resins like frankincense and myrrh, which were prized for their fragrance, but India offered far more goods than either Arabia or Africa. The author says almost nothing about social structure and little about government, other than the names of local rulers; he is much more interested in which commodities were for sale. Analyzed carefully, however, the descriptions in the Periplus have much to tell us. For example, it summarizes the import trade on India’s southwestern Malabar (MAH-lah-bar) coast. At the markets one could buy a yellow gem called peridot (PAY-ree-doh), clothing and textiles, coral, raw glass, copper, tin, lead, and wine. The author instructs his readers to bring money, and lots of it, to the southwestern coast because there were few opportunities for barter. Thousands of Roman silver and gold coins have been found on the south coast but not farther north, suggesting that the traders could barter in the north but had to pay Roman coins in the south (see Chapter 7, “The Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity”). The author continues his discussion of the southwest coast by explaining the goods the region exported. Most of the items on the list, like pepper, pearls, ivory, and precious stones, are valuable even today, and nard and malabathron (MAH-labath-ruhn) were two indigenous plants used for their fragrance or as ingredients in drugs. Aimed at non-Indian readers, the Periplus gives the misleading impression that the Indian Ocean trade was controlled by foreigners, possibly because its author was a Greek living in Egypt who used Roman coins to purchase Indian goods. In fact, though, Indian merchants played an active role in the Indian Ocean trade. The author offers much briefer descriptions of the ports on the east coast of South Asia because foreign ships were too big to travel through the shallow channels separating India from Sri Lanka. Greek and Roman geographers exaggerated the size of Sri Lanka for centuries because no one had actually sailed around the island. At the end of the Periplus, the author describes one ﬁnal destination: Beyond this region, by now at the northernmost point, where the sea ends somewhere on the outer fringe, there is a very great inland city called Thina from which silk ﬂoss, yarn, and cloth are shipped by land . . . and via the

Chapter Review

Ganga River. . . . It is not easy to get to this Thina; for rarely do people come from it, and only a few.10

Thina? The spelling makes sense when one realizes that ancient Greek had no letter for the sound “ch,” so the author had to choose either a “th” or an “s” for the ﬁrst letter of the place whose name he heard from Indian traders. He opted for Thina. We cannot be sure how the word was pronounced in local ports, but China was pronounced “CHEE-na” in Sanskrit (and is the source of our English word China). The author thought Thina was a city, not a country, but he knew that silk was made there and exported in three forms: yarn, ﬂoss, and woven cloth. The Periplus closes with the admission that China lay at the extreme edge of the world known to the Greeks: “What lies beyond this area, because of extremes of storm, bitter cold, and difﬁcult terrain and also because of some divine power of the gods, has not been explored.” The India described in the Periplus, then, was a major trade center linking the familiar Roman Empire with the dimly understood China.

Chapter Review

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etween 2600 b.c.e. and 100 c.e. South Asia was seldom uniﬁed, and, even during the rare intervals when a ruler like Ashoka managed to conquer a large amount of territory, their rule was decentralized, granting much authority to local rulers. Yet political disunity did not result in cultural disunity. Different cultural elements, particularly Vedic religion and Buddhism, bound together the people living under various rulers in different regions.

What evidence survives of social stratiﬁcation at the Indus Valley sites? How did the Indo-Aryans describe the social stratiﬁcation in their society? At the time of the Indus Valley society (2600–1700 b.c.e.), people lived in enormous cities with clear evidence of social stratiﬁcation. The wealthy occupied bigger houses than the poor, and when dead, graves with more goods. Because the Indus Valley writing system is still undeciphered, we do not know exactly how the people conceived of these social differences. Written evidence survives from one of the great mass migrations of antiquity, sometime between 1500 and 1000, when the Indo-Aryans entered north India. The Indo-Aryans created a forerunner of the modern caste system, ranking different occupational groups. The late hymns of the Rig Veda, dating perhaps to 1000 b.c.e., equate four social groups, called varna, with parts of a mythic body: at the top, Brahmins form the mouth; warriors, the arms; farmers and merchants, the

KEY TERMS Ashoka (60) dharma (60) monsoon (63) Indus River Valley (64) Sanskrit (66) Rig Veda (66) Vedic religion (68) nomads (68) varna (68) jati (69) Buddha (71) nirvana (72) Mauryan dynasty (76) ceremonial state (79) dhows (84)

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CHAPTER 3

Ancient India and the Rise of Buddhism, 2600 B.C.E.–100 C.E.

thighs; and servants, the feet. Today, we may not understand all the details of the ancient caste system, but we know that different people, even within South Asia, understood it in various ways and that it evolved over time.

What were the main teachings of the Buddha? The Buddha founded a religion that challenged the caste system and the primacy of Brahmin priests, who had been so inﬂuential in Vedic times. He taught that one could escape the sufferings of this life by adhering to the Four Noble Truths. His new religion welcomed members of all social groups, and merchants found the religion particularly appealing because they could improve their social position by making large donations to the Buddhist order.

Why did Ashoka believe that supporting Buddhism would strengthen the Mauryan state? Ashoka made extensive donations to the Buddhist order because he wanted to fulﬁll the Buddhist ideal of the chakravartin ruler. As the ruler of a ceremonial state, Ashoka led by example: he sponsored religious observances and contributed money to build Buddhist structures in the hope that his subjects would support his Mauryan Dynasty. This style of ruling inﬂuenced later dynasties. Ashoka, unlike any South Asian ruler before or since, erected stone pillars bearing his inscriptions through his empire. Uncannily, some forty years later, the founder of the Qin dynasty (r. 221–210 b.c.e.) in China also carved royal pronouncements on gigantic rocks throughout his empire, as we shall see in the next chapter.

Who were the main actors in the Indian Ocean trade? What types of ships did they use? Along which routes? To trade which commodities? Though separated from the rest of Eurasia by high mountains, India in ancient times traded goods and ideas with people far to the west. Carnelian and lapis lazuli from South Asia have been found all over Mesopotamia and Egypt, evidence of active trade networks linking South Asia to the outside world in at least 2600 b.c.e., and the trade continued long after the collapse of the Mauryans at the end of the second century b.c.e. Traders, both foreign and Indian, sailed to the ports of the Indian Ocean in dhows and purchased semiprecious stones, metals, spices, and textiles. Few traveled beyond India to China.

Chapter Review

For Further Reference Basham, A. L. The Wonder That Was India: Survey of the Culture of the Indian Sub-continent Before the Coming of the Muslims. New York: Grove Press, 1959. Casson, Lionel. The Periplus Maris Erythraei Text with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. Elder, Joe. “India’s Caste System.” Education About Asia 1, no. 2 (1996): 20–22. Fussman, Gerard. “Central and Provincial Administration in Ancient India: The Problem of the Mauryan Empire.” Indian Historical Review 14 (1987–1988): 43–72. Kenoyer, Mark. Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1998.

WEB RESOURCES Pronunciation Guide Interactive Maps MAP 3.1 Indus River Valley Society MAP 3.2 Distribution of Languages in Modern South Asia

Primary Sources Chapter Objectives ACE Multiple-Choice Quiz Flashcards

Liu, Xinru. Ancient India and Ancient China: Trade and Religious Exchanges, a.d. 1–600. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988. O’Flaherty, Wendy Doniger. The Rig Veda: An Anthology. New York: Penguin Books, 1981. Pearson, Michael. The Indian Ocean. New York: Routledge, 2003. Thapar, Romila. A´soka and the Decline of the Mauryas. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1973. Thapar, Romila. Early India: From the Origins to ad 1300. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.

Websites Homepage of the Wales Professor of Sanskrit, Harvard: Michael Witzel (http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage. htm). Information on various topics in ancient Indian history, including Harappan society. An Introduction to Buddhism (http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/buddhaintro.html). Detailed information on Buddhism and Buddha from a faculty member at Shippensburg University, Pennsylvania. Sanchi (Madhya Pradesh) Berger Foundation (http://www.bergerfoundation.ch/wat4/museum1? museum=Sanchi&col=pays&country=Inde&genre= %&cd=7256-3191-2328:7256-3191-2325:7256 -3191-2326&cdindex=1). Excellent collection of sharp, clear photographs from Sanchi.

Films The Little Buddha.

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CHAPTER

Blueprint for Empire: China, 1200 B.C.E.– 220 C.E. The Origins of Chinese Civilization, 1200–221 B.C.E. Qin Rulers Unify China, 359–207 B.C.E. The Han Empire, 206 B.C.E.–220 C.E.

(p. 91)

(p. 100)

(p. 106)

Extending Han Rule (p. 109)

n His twenty-sixth year [221 B.C.E.] He ﬁrst uniﬁed All under Heaven— There was none who was not respectful and submissive. He personally tours the distant multitudes, Ascends this Grand Mountain And all round surveys the world at the eastern extremity. . . . May later ages respect and follow the decrees He bequeaths And forever accept His solemn warnings.1

FIRST EMPEROR OF THE QIN DYNASTY

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(British Library, London/HIP/Art Resource, NY)

n 221 b.c.e., the First Emperor of the Qin dynasty (259–210 b.c.e.) united China for the ﬁrst time and implemented a blueprint for empire that helped to keep China united for much of the following two thousand years. Born in the Qin (CHIN) territory in the town of Xianyang (SHYEN-yahng) in Shaanxi (SHAHN-shee) province, western China, the future emperor was named Zheng ( JUHNG). Prince Zheng’s father, one of more than twenty sons of a regional ruler in west China, lived as a hostage in the eastern city of Handan (HAHNdahn) because it was customary for younger sons to be sent to the courts of allied rulers. Two years after Zheng’s birth, during an attack on Handan, his father escaped home, and his mother and the young prince went into hiding. Six years later they returned to Xianyang, and in 246 b.c.e., on the death of his father, Prince Zheng ascended to the Qin throne at the age of 13. For the ﬁrst nine years he governed with the help of adult advisers until he became ruler in his own right at the age of 22. During his reign he went on ﬁve different expeditions. At the top of each mountain he climbed, he erected a stone tablet describing his many accomplishments and asserting widespread support for his dynasty. One of these tablets read as follows:

The Travels of the First Emperor

XIONGNU EMPIRE

First journey Second journey Third journey Fourth journey Fifth journey Qin Empire, 221 B.C.E.

I GOB

Yellow Sea

Salween

Zheng defeats Qi, unifies China, and takes the title First Emperor, 221 B.C.E.

Handan Anyang

QI N EMPIRE Wei R.

Birthplace of Prince Zheng and tomb of the Qin emperor.

Luoyang Chang’an

HUBEI

Xianyang

P E KO R N I N EA N SU LA

Ji (Beijing)

SHAANXI

Zheng travels to solidify imperial rule.

ong

Se a of Jap an

Huang H e R.

GAN S U

Mek

N A RI U N C H AI N PL A

E ast Chi na Se a

ZHEJIANG g Yan

zi R.

Chengdu

Sanxingdui Site

N wad

t ra

dy R.

I r ra

B ra h

map

Xi R.

South China Sea AN NAM (VI ETNAM)

150

1200 B.C.E.

600

400

200

300 Km. 150

300 Mi.

1 C.E.

200 C.E.

Lifetime of First Emperor

POLITICS AND WAR

Shang dynasty

259

210

256

206

Zhou dynasty

Wang Mang interregnum

Han dynasty

(from 1045 1766)

Shang Yang’s reforms

Qin dynasty

359

221 207

Reign of Emperor Wu 140–87

220

9 23

Qin legal texts 217 Earliest surviving writing on oracle bones

RELIGION AND 1200 CULTURE

Lifetime of Confucius 551

479

First money circulates ca. 500

Earliest Daoist texts ca. 300

Invention of paper ca. 150 Imperial Academy founded 124

Lifetime of Ban Zhao ca. 45

120

CHAPTER 4

• First Emperor of the Qin dynasty Founder of the Qin dynasty (221–207 b.c.e.) and the ﬁrst ruler to unify ancient China. Eliminated regional differences by creating a single body of law and standardizing weights and measures.

Blueprint for Empire: China, 1200 B.C.E.–220 C.E.

The new emperor traveled overland in a sedan-chair carried by his servants and along rivers by boat. By the time he ﬁnished his last journey, he had crisscrossed much of the territory north of the Yangzi (YAHNG-zuh) River in modernday China. His unusual childhood must have affected Prince Zheng, but surviving sources convey little about his personality except to document his single-minded ambition. For the next ﬁfteen years, he led the Qin armies on a series of brilliant military campaigns. They fought with the same weapons as their enemies—crossbows, bronze armor, shields, and daggers—but their army was organized as a meritocracy. A skilled soldier, no matter how low-ranking his parents, could rise to become a general, while the son of a noble family, if not a good ﬁghter, would remain a common foot soldier for life. The Qin was the ﬁrst dynasty to vanquish all of its rivals, including six independent kingdoms, and unite China under a single person’s rule. The First Emperor eliminated regional differences by creating a single body of law for all his subjects, standardizing all weights and measures, and even mandating a standard axle width for the ox- and horse-drawn carts. He coined a new title, First Emperor (Shi Huangdi), because he felt that the word king did not accurately convey his august position. The First Emperor intentionally stayed remote from his subjects so that they would respect and obey him. On his deathbed, the First Emperor urged that his descendants rule forever, or “ten thousand years” in Chinese phrasing. Instead, peasant uprisings brought his dynasty to an end in three years. The succeeding dynasty, the Han dynasty (see below), denounced the Qin but used Qin governance to rule for four centuries. Subsequent Chinese rulers who aspired to reunify the empire always looked to the Han as their model. Unlike India, which remained politically disunited for most of its history, the Chinese empire endured for over two thousand years. Whenever it fell apart, a new emperor put it back together.

Focus Questions

What different elements of Chinese civilization took shape between 1200 and 221 B.C.E.? What were the most important measures in the Qin blueprint for empire? How did the Han rulers modify the Qin blueprint, particularly regarding administrative structure and the recruitment and promotion of ofﬁcials? Which neighboring peoples in Central, East, and Southeast Asia did the Han dynasty conquer? Why was the impact of Chinese rule limited?

The Origins of Chinese Civilization, 1200–221 B.C.E.

griculture developed independently in several different regions in China circa 7000 b.c.e. In each region, as was true elsewhere in the world (see Chapters 2 and 3), people began to harvest seeds on an occasional basis before progressing to full-time agriculture. By 1200 b.c.e., several independent cultural centers had emerged. One, the Shang (SHAHNG) kingdom based in the Yellow River Valley, developed the Chinese writing system. Many elements of Chinese civilization— the writing system, the worship of ancestors, and the Confucian and Daoist systems of belief—developed in the years before China was united in 221 b.c.e.

The First Agriculture, 7000–1200 B.C.E.

North China was particularly suited for early agriculture because a ﬁne layer of yellow dirt, called loess (less), covers the entire Yellow River Valley, and few trees grow there. The Yellow River carries large quantities of loess from the west and deposits new layers each year in the last 500 miles (900 km) before the Paciﬁc Ocean. As a result, the riverbed is constantly rising, often to a level higher than the surrounding ﬁelds. Sometimes called “China’s River of Sorrow,” the Yellow River has exhibited a dangerous tendency to ﬂood throughout recorded history. Three major climatic zones extend east and west across China (see the map on page 89). Less than 20 inches (50 cm) of rainfall each year falls on the region north of the Huai (HWHY) River; about 40 inches (1 m) per year drops on the middle band along the Yangzi River; and over 80 inches (2 m) a year pours on the southernmost band of China, including Guangzhou (GWAHNG-joe) and Hong Kong. This differential pattern of rainfall is due to the monsoon winds off the ocean: the water-laden winds ﬁrst cross south China, where they drop much of their water; by the time they reach the north, they are carrying much less water. The climate of the Yellow River was probably hotter and wetter than it is today. Elephants and rhinoceros both lived there as late as 1000 b.c.e. Agriculture was not limited to the Yellow River Valley. Wheat and millet cultivation extended as far north as Manchuria and as far south as Zhejiang ( JEHjeeahng), near the mouth of China’s other great river, the Yangzi. The peoples living farther south raised rice; some hunted and gathered while others depended on agriculture. The different implements found in various regions suggest great cultural diversity within China between 7000 and 2000 b.c.e. These different peoples evolved from small, egalitarian tribal groups who farmed intermittently to larger settled groups with clearly demarcated social levels living in large urban settlements, demonstrating all the elements of civilization described in Chapter 2. A given people can be identiﬁed as Chinese when they use Chinese characters, because only then can archaeologists be certain that they spoke Chinese. Some pots dating to circa 2000 b.c.e. are illustrated with different pictures, but these were probably potters’ marks and not written characters (see Chapter 2 about ﬁrst writing).

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CHAPTER 4

Blueprint for Empire: China, 1200 B.C.E.–220 C.E.

The ﬁrst identiﬁable Chinese characters appeared on bones dating to around 1200 b.c.e. The discovery and deciphering of these bones mark one of the great in• Shang dynasty tellectual breakthroughs in twentieth-century China. China’s ﬁrst historic In 1899 the city of Beijing experienced an outbreak of malaria for which there was dynasty. The earliest surviving records date to no known cure. In desperation the city’s residents turned to an untried remedy: 1200 b.c.e., during the so-called dragon bones. When a scholar examined one of these bones, he realized Shang. The Shang king that the scratchy lines on it were not magical symbols but vestiges of writing. The ruled a small area in the bones came from near the modern city of Anyang (AHN-yahng) in the central vicinity of modern Anyang, in Henan provChinese province of Henan (HUH-nahn), the core region of China’s ﬁrst historic ince, and granted lands dynasty, the Shang dynasty (1766–1045 b.c.e.). to allies in noble Scholars call the excavated bones “oracle bones” because the Shang ruler families. used them to forecast the future. Like many ancient peoples around the world who used oracles to consult higher powers, the Shang The Earliest Records of Chinese Writing placed a heated poker on cattle shoulder blades and Starting around 1200 B.C.E., ancient Chinese kings turtle shell bottoms, or plastrons, and interpreted the used the clavicle bones of cattle (as shown here) resulting cracks. They then recorded on the bone the and the bottom of turtle shells to ask their name of the ancestor they had consulted, the topic of ancestors to advise them on the outcomes of future inquiry, and the outcome. It was an extremely difﬁcult events, including battles, sacriﬁces, their wives’ feat, and we still do not know how the ancient Chinese pregnancies, and even their own toothaches. After incised characters on these bones with the bronze tools applying heat, the fortunetellers interpreted the available to them. resulting cracks and wrote their predictions—in the Since 1900 over 200,000 oracle bones, both whole most ancient form of Chinese characters—directly and fragmented, have been excavated in China. The on the bones and turtle shells. (Lowell Georgia/Corbis) quantities are immense, with 1,300 oracle bones concerning rainfall in a single king’s reign, and their language is grammatically complex, suggesting that the Shang scribes had been writing for some time, possibly on perishable materials like wood. Scholars have deciphered the bones by comparing the texts with one another and with the earliest known characters. Shang dynasty characters, like their modern equivalents, have two elements: a radical, which suggests the broad ﬁeld of meaning, and a phonetic symbol, which indicates sound. Like Arabic numerals, Chinese characters retain the same meaning even if pronounced differently: 3 means the number “three” even if some readers say “trois” or “drei.” During the Shang dynasty only the king and his scribes could read and write characters. Presenting the world from the king’s vantage point, some oracle bones treat affairs of state, like the outcomes of battles, but many more touch on individual matters, such as his wife’s pregnancy or his own aching teeth. The major religion of the time was ancestor worship. The Shang kings believed that their recently dead ancestors could intercede with the more powerful long-dead on behalf of the living. They conducted frequent rituals in which they offered food and drink to the ancestors in the hope of receiving help.

Early Chinese Writing in the Shang Dynasty, ca. 1200 B.C.E.

WORLD HISTORY in TODAY’S WORLD

The Use of Component Parts in Chinese Food

ave you ever wondered how even a small Chinese food stand staffed by a single person quickly turns out so many distinctive dishes? Using a technique developed in at least 1200 B.C.E., if not before, chefs in today’s Chinese restaurants combine component parts in various ways to produce a slightly different product each time. They start with a variety of precut meats and vegetables. When a customer gives the order for chicken in peanut sauce, the chef tosses chicken cubes and peppers into a wok, stir-fries them, and adds sauce as the ﬁnal touch. The chef modiﬁes the same technique to cook precut meat and vegetables in an array of sauces to make a large number of dishes, each with a different name and recognizable taste. Chinese people eat these dishes with an accompanying starch, usually white rice in south China and noodles, dumplings, or wheat gruel in the north. Since the beginnings of agriculture, people in north China have eaten millet and wheat as their main starches, while those living in south China have almost always eaten rice.

This division between dishes and starch gave Chinese cuisine great ﬂexibility. The poor could eat a single vegetable dish with whatever starch was cheapest, and the Chinese even developed laborintensive recipes, like boiled almond shells, for normally inedible foods that could be prepared during famines. The rich could eat many dishes made from expensive delicacies with only a small amount of starch. However, even today, the most lavish banquets end with a bowl of plain white rice. Shang dynasty cooks used many of the same tools as today’s cooks—knives, stirring utensils, and bronze cooking pots. However, rather than stirfrying, they steamed and braised food. Those who presided over Shang rituals used chopsticks, one of the hallmarks of East Asian culture, to move food from large serving vessels to smaller plates. People then ate the food with their hands. Ordinary diners began to use chopsticks as eating utensils sometime around 200 B.C.E., the time of the ﬁrst stirfried food.

The peoples living in China used two types of vessels: ﬂat bronze vessels for grain (usually wheat or millet) and baskets and wooden and pottery vessels for meat and vegetables. The division between starch and dishes made from cut-up meat and vegetables continues to the present day: Chinese chefs always prepare the starch separately from the meat and vegetable dishes. (See the feature “World History in Today’s World: The Use of Component Parts in Chinese Food.”) Historians of China have ingeniously combined the information in oracle bones with careful analysis of Shang archaeological sites to piece together the outlines of early Chinese history. Like the Mesopotamians, the early Chinese lived inside walled cities. They mastered the exacting technology of mixing copper, tin, and lead in differing ratios to cast impressive bronze vessels. The earliest bronze vessels, from circa 2000 b.c.e., predate the ﬁrst writing, but bronze-casting techniques reached full maturity around 1200 b.c.e. Ancient Chinese bronze casters made ritual vessels, farm implements, mirrors, chariot ﬁttings, and daggers.

Shang Dynasty Relations with Other Peoples

Oracle bones have allowed scholars to understand how Shang government and society functioned between 1200 and 1000 b.c.e. Until then, the main source for early Chinese history was a book entitled Records of the Grand Historian, written by Sima Qian (SUH-mah CHEE-EN) (145– ca. 90 b.c.e.) in the ﬁrst century b.c.e. Combining information drawn from several extant chronicles, Sima Qian wrote a history

• oracle bones

The earliest surviving written records in China, scratched onto cattle shoulder blades and turtle shell bottoms, or plastrons. These record the diviners’ interpretations of the future.

• ancestor worship The belief in China that dead ancestors could intercede in human affairs on behalf of the living. Marked by frequent rituals in which the living offered food and drink to the ancestors in the hope of receiving help.

CHAPTER 4

Blueprint for Empire: China, 1200 B.C.E.–220 C.E.

of China from its legendary founding sage emperors through to his lifetime. He gave the founding date of the Shang dynasty as 1766 b.c.e. and listed the names of the Shang kings but provided little detail about them. Setting a pattern for all future historians, Sima Qian believed that there could be only one legitimate ruler of China at any time and omitted any discussion of regional rulers who coexisted with the Shang and other dynasties. In fact, though, the Shang exercised direct control over a relatively small area, some 125 miles (200 km) from east to west, and the Shang king sometimes traveled as far as 400 miles (650 km) away to ﬁght enemy peoples. Beyond the small area under Early Chinese Bronze-working The ancient Chinese direct Shang control lived many different combined copper, tin, and lead to make intricate bronze non-Shang peoples whose names appear on vessels like this wine container, which dates to circa 1050 B.C.E. the oracle bones but about whom little is and was found buried in the hills of Hunan, in southern known. Shang kings did not have a ﬁxed capChina. Analysts are not sure of the relationship between the ital but simply moved camp from one place tiger-like beast and the man it embraces. The man’s serene to another to conduct military campaigns face suggests that the beast is communicating some kind of against these other peoples. teaching—not devouring him. (Musée Cernuschi, Paris/Scala/Art Many oracle bones describe battles beResource, NY) tween the Shang and their enemies. When the Shang defeated an enemy, they took thousands of captives. The fortunate worked as laborers, and the less fortunate were killed as an offering. One oracle bone asks the ancestors’ opinion about the number of human sacriﬁces necessary—ten? twenty? thirty?—and gives the name of the conquered people. Shang subjects interred their kings in large tombs with hundreds of sacriﬁced corpses. Even in death they observed a hierarchy. Placed near the Shang king were those who accompanied him in death, with their own entourages of corpses and lavish grave goods. Royal guards were also buried intact, but the lowest-ranking corpses, most likely prisoners of war, had their heads and limbs severed. The Shang were but one of many peoples living in China around 1200 b.c.e. Yet, since only the Shang left written records, we know much less about the other peoples. Fortunately an extraordinary archaeological ﬁnd at the Sanxingdui (SAHNshing-dway) site near Chengdu (CHUHNG-dew), in Sichuan (SUH-chwan) province, offers a glimpse of one of the peoples contemporary with the Shang. Inside the ancient city walls, archaeologists found two grave pits ﬁlled with bronze statues, bronze masks, and elephant tusks that had been burnt and cut into sections. Like the Shang, the people at the Sanxingdui site lived in small walled settlements and cast various bronze tools. The people of Sanxingdui also made bronze masks more than a yard across with huge protruding eyes, whose signiﬁcance no one can explain satisfactorily.

• Sima Qian

The author of Records of the Grand Historian, a history of China from ancient legendary times to the ﬁrst century b.c.e.

The Origins of Chinese Civilization, 1200–221 B.C.E.

Early Bronze-working Outside the Core of Ancient China Found in Sanxingdui, Sichuan, over 1,000 miles (1600 km) west of the Shang dynasty heartland, this statue looks completely different from anything made at Anyang, in the Yellow River Valley. This priest (or king or deity?) stands over 6 feet (1.8 m) tall. His enlarged hands originally held some type of round object—an elephant tusk?—and he stands on a base made from four elephant heads. Scholars now recognize that many distinct regional cultures coexisted in China at the same time as the Shang dynasty, in about 1200 B.C.E. (Sanxingdui Museum, Guanghan, Sichuan Province/Cultural Relics Publishing, Beijing)

Whereas the Shang made no human statues, the most impressive artifact from Sanxingdui is a statue of a man. Unlike the Shang, the people at Sanxingdui do not seem to have practiced human sacriﬁce, nor do they appear to have had a writing system, although some archaeologists hope in the future to ﬁnd samples of their writing.

The Zhou Dynasty, 1045–256 B.C.E.

The oracle bones are most plentiful during the period from 1200 to 1000 b.c.e. and diminish in quantity soon after. In 1045 b.c.e. a new dynasty, the Zhou dynasty, overthrew the Shang. The Grand Historian Sima Qian wrote the earliest detailed account of the Zhou ( JOE) conquest in the ﬁrst century b.c.e., long after the fact, and historians question his account. Claiming that 48,000 Zhou troops were able to defeat 700,000 Shang troops because the Shang ruler was corrupt and decadent, Sima Qian alleged that the last Shang ruler killed his enemies and roasted them on a rack or cut them into mincemeat before eating them. Sima Qian’s description set a pattern followed by all subsequent historians: vilifying the last emperor of the fallen dynasty and glorifying the founder of the next. According to Sima Qian, the Zhou king was able to overthrow the Shang because he had obtained the Mandate of Heaven. A new god, worshiped by the Zhou ruling house but not previously worshiped by the Shang, Heaven represented the generalized forces of the cosmos, rather than the abode of the dead. China’s rulers believed that Heaven would send signs—terrible storms, unusual astronomical events, famines, even peasant rebellions—before withdrawing its mandate. But because the recipient of the Mandate of Heaven could only be known after the fact, it often served as a retrospective justiﬁcation for overthrowing a dynasty by force. Many other states coexisted with the Zhou dynasty (1045–256 b.c.e.), the most important being the Qin, who ﬁrst uniﬁed China. The long period of Chinese history known as the Zhou dynasty is usually divided into the Western Zhou, 1045–771 b.c.e., when the capital was located in the Wei (WAY) River Valley, and the Eastern Zhou, 771–256 b.c.e., when, after defeat in battle, the Zhou rulers were forced to move east. Throughout the long years of Zhou rule, the people writing Chinese characters gradually settled more and more territory at the expense of other peoples. Because the ﬁnal centuries of the Zhou were particularly violent, the period from 481 to 221 b.c.e. is commonly called the Warring States Period. Yet constant warfare brought beneﬁts, such as the diffusion of new technology. Iron tools spread throughout China, and people were able to use iron farm implements to plow the

• Zhou dynasty

The successor dynasty to the Shang that gained the Mandate of Heaven and the right to rule, Chinese historians later recorded. Although depicted by later generations as an ideal age, the Zhou witnessed considerable conﬂict.

• Mandate of Heaven The Chinese belief that Heaven, the generalized forces of the cosmos (not the abode of the dead), chose the rightful ruler. China’s rulers believed that Heaven would send signs before withdrawing its mandate.

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CHAPTER 4

Blueprint for Empire: China, 1200 B.C.E.–220 C.E.

• Confucius (551–479 b.c.e.) The founder of Confucianism, a teacher who made his living by tutoring students. Known only through The Analects, the record of conversations with his students that they recorded after his death.

• Confucianism The term for the main tenets of the thought of Confucius (551–479 b.c.e.), which emphasized the role of ritual in bringing out people’s inner humanity (a quality translated variously as “benevolence,” “goodness,” or “man at his best”). Primary Source: The Book of Documents Read this Confucian classic to discover how rulers gain or lose the right to rule, an authority known as the Mandate of Heaven.

land more deeply. Agricultural productivity increased, and the ﬁrst money—in the shape of knives and spades but not round coins—circulated around 500 b.c.e., at roughly the same time as in India. Changes in warfare brought massive social change. Since the time of the Shang, battles had been fought with chariots, and only boys who grew up in wealthy households had the time and the resources to learn how to guide a galloping horse pulling a chariot with three men into battle. But in the sixth and ﬁfth centuries b.c.e., as they went farther south, armies began to ﬁght battles in muddy terrain where chariots could not go. Instead, generals began to use large armies of foot soldiers. Some of the most successful generals were not necessarily the sons of powerful families, but those, regardless of family background, who could lead armies of ten thousand soldiers into battle. At this time ambitious young men studied strategy and general comportment with tutors, one of whom became China’s most famous teacher, Confucius (551–479 b.c.e.).

Confucianism

Confucius was born in 551 b.c.e. in Shandong (SHAHN-dohng) province. His family name was Kong (KOHNG); his given name, Qiu (CHEE-OH). (Confucius is the English translation of Kong Fuzi [FOO-zuh], or Master Kong, but most Chinese refer to him as Kongzi [KOHNG-zuh], which also means Master Kong.) Acutely aware of living in a politically unstable era, Confucius was a professional teacher who lived off fees from his students. They have left us the only record of his thinking, a series of conversations he had with them, which are called The Analects, meaning “discussions and conversations.” Recently scholars have begun to question the authenticity of the later Analects (especially chapters 10–20), but they agree that the ﬁrst nine chapters probably date to an earlier time, perhaps just after Confucius’s death in 479 b.c.e. Confucianism is the term used for the main tenets of Confucius’s thought. The optimistic tone of The Analects will strike any reader. Teaching students in one of the most chaotic periods in Chinese history, Confucius did not advocate violence. Instead, he emphasized the need to perform ritual correctly. Ritual is central because it allows the gentleman, the frequent recipient of Confucius’s teachings, to express his inner humanity (a quality sometimes translated as “benevolence,” “goodness,” or “man at his best”). Since Confucius is speaking to his disciples, he rarely explains what kind of rituals he means, but he mentions sacriﬁcing animals, playing music, and performing dances. Confucius’s teachings do not resemble a religion so much as an ethical system. Filial piety, or respect for one’s parents, is its cornerstone. If children obey their parents and the ruler follows Confucian teachings, the country will right itself because an inspiring example will lead people toward the good. (See the feature “Movement of Ideas: The Analects and Sima Qian’s Letter to Ren An.”) Confucius was also famous for his refusal to comment on either the supernatural or the afterlife: Zilu [ZUH-lu; a disciple] asked how to serve the spirits and gods. The Master [Confucius] said: “You are not yet able to serve men, how could you serve the spirits?” Zilu said: “May I ask you about death?” The Master said: “You do not yet know life, how could you know death?”2

If we deﬁne religion as the belief in the supernatural, then Confucianism does not seem to qualify. But if we consider religion as the offering of rituals at different

The Origins of Chinese Civilization, 1200–221 B.C.E.

turning points in one’s life—birth, marriage, and death—then Confucianism can be considered a religion. Confucius’s immediate followers made offerings to their ancestors and other gods.

Daoism

Many of Confucius’s followers were also familiar with the teachings of Daoism (DOW-is-uhm) (alternate spelling Taoism), the other major belief system of China before uniﬁcation in 221 b.c.e. The earliest Daoist texts excavated so far, dated to 300 b.c.e., were found in tombs alongside Confucian texts, an indication that the deceased did not necessarily think of Daoism and Confucianism as separate religions. Both Confucius and the leading Daoist teachers spoke about the “Way,” a concept for which they used the same word, dao (DOW). For Confucius, the Way denoted using ritual to bring out one’s inner humanity. In contrast, the Way of the early Daoist teachers included meditation, breathing techniques, and special eating regimes. They believed that, if one learned to control one’s breath or the life-force present in each person, one could attain superhuman powers and possibly immortality. Some said that immortals shed their human bodies much as butterﬂies cast off pupas. Such people were called Perfect Men. One early Daoist text, Zhuangzi ( JUAHNG-zuh), named for the author of its teachings, Master Zhuang ( JUAHNG), describes such people: “The Perfect Man is godlike. Though the great swamps blaze, they cannot burn him; though the great rivers freeze, they cannot chill him.”3 Zhuangzi is one of the funniest and most ironic books ever written in China. It describes many paradoxes, including this well-known anecdote:

• Daoism

A Chinese belief system dating back to at least 300 b.c.e. that emphasized the “Way,” a concept expressed in Chinese as “dao.” The Way of the early Daoist teachers included meditation, breathing techniques, and special eating regimes.

Once Zhuang Zhou [Zhuangzi] dreamt he was a butterﬂy, a butterﬂy ﬂitting and ﬂuttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Zhuang Zhou. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuang Zhou. But he didn’t know if he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterﬂy, or a butterﬂy dreaming he was Zhuang Zhou.

The question of knowledge—of how we know what we think we know—permeates Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi often mocks those who fear death because they cannot know what death is actually like; he dreams that a talking skull asks him, “Why would I throw away more happiness than that of a king on a throne and take on the troubles of a human being again?” Zhuangzi’s amusing tales underline how profoundly gloomy was the Daoist view of death, which pictured it as a series of underground prisons from which no one could escape. The other well-known Daoist classic, The Way and Integrity Classic, or Daodejing (DOW-deh-jing), combines the teachings of several different masters into one volume. It urges rulers to allow things to follow their natural course, or wuwei (WOO-way), often misleadingly translated as “nonaction”: “Nothing under heaven is softer or weaker than water, and yet nothing is better for attacking what is hard and strong, because of its immutability.”4 In the centuries leading up to 221 b.c.e., no Daoist church had a recognized leader, but many Daoist masters had disciples, and Zhuangzi and The Way and Integrity Classic offer a glimpse of the wide variety of teachings circulating alongside Confucian teachings in China at that time.

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Blueprint for Empire: China, 1200 B.C.E.–220 C.E.

Qin Rulers Unify China, 359–207 B.C.E.

hile Confucian and Daoist thinkers were proposing abstract solutions to end the endemic warfare, a third school, the Legalists, took an entirely different approach based on their experience governing the Qin homeland in western China. In 359 b.c.e., the statesman Shang Yang (SHAHNG yahng), the major adviser to the Qin ruler, implemented a series of reforms reorganizing the army and redeﬁning the tax obligations of all citizens. Those reforms made the Qin more powerful than any of the other regional states in China, and it gradually began to conquer its neighbors. The First Emperor implemented Shang Yang’s blueprint for rule both as the regional ruler of the Qin and as emperor after the uniﬁcation of China in 221 b.c.e.

Prime Minister Shang Yang’s Reforms, 359–221 B.C.E.

In 359 b.c.e., Prime Minister Shang Yang focused on the territory under direct Qin rule. The government sent ofﬁcials to register every household in the Qin realm, creating a direct link between each subject and the ruler. Once a boy resident in the Qin region reached the age of 16 or 17 and a height of 5 feet (1.5 m), he had to serve in the military, pay land taxes (a ﬁxed share of the crop), and perform labor service, usually building roads, each year. To encourage people to inform on each other, Shang Yang divided the population into mutual responsibility groups of ﬁve and ten: if someone committed a crime but was not apprehended, everyone in the group was punished. Most people in ancient China took it for granted that the son of a noble was destined to rule and the son of a peasant was not, but the Legalists disagreed. Rejecting the Confucian values of ritual and benevolence and renouncing a special status for “gentlemen,” they believed that the ruler should recruit the best men to staff his army and his government. Qin ofﬁcials recognized no hereditary titles, not even for members of the ruler’s family. Instead the Qin ofﬁcials introduced a strict meritocracy, which made their army the strongest in China. A newly recruited soldier might start at the lowest rank, but if he succeeded in battle, he could rise in rank and thereby raise the stature of his household. Because Qin rules tolerated no value judgments, which could be biased, a soldier had to present the heads of all those enemy soldiers he had killed before he could advance. The more heads he presented, the higher he rose in the army. This reorganization succeeded brilliantly because each soldier had a strong incentive to ﬁght. Starting in 316 b.c.e., the Qin polity began to conquer neighboring lands and implement Shang Yang’s measures in each new region. Legalist philosophers valued the contributions of the farmer-soldiers most highly because they paid taxes and were the backbone of the army. Accordingly, Legalist thinkers ranked peasants just under government ofﬁcials, or scholars, who could read and write. Because artisans made objects peasants needed, like baskets and tools, they ranked third, and merchants, who neither worked the land nor manufactured the goods they traded, ranked at the bottom of society. This ranking reﬂected how Legalist thinkers thought society should be, not how it actually was. Any Chinese peasant would gladly have changed places with a merchant because merchants did not perform arduous physical labor and could

Qin Rulers Unify China, 359–207 B.C.E.

101

afford better clothes and food. Although the Legalist ranking, like the explanation of varna in the Indian “Hymn of Primeval Man,” did not reﬂect reality, it persisted throughout Chinese history.

The Policies of the First Emperor, 221–210 B.C.E.

In 246 b.c.e., Prince Zheng, the future First Emperor, ascended to the Qin throne and launched a series of military conquests that culminated with the defeat of his ﬁnal rival, the ruler of Qi (modern-day Shandong) in 221 b.c.e. He then named himself First Emperor. Determining what happened during the Qin founder’s eleven-year reign (221–210 b.c.e.) poses great challenges because immediately after his death Sima Qian portrayed him as one of the worst tyrants in Chinese history who murdered his opponents, suppressed all learning, and adamantly opposed Confucian virtues. This view of the First Emperor prevails today, but the evidence from his reign (as opposed to that composed after it) suggests that the First Emperor conceived of himself as a virtuous ruler. After 221 b.c.e., the emperor placed stone tablets on high mountaintops that recorded his view of his reign: The way of good rule is advanced and enacted; The various professions achieve their proper place, And all ﬁnd rule and model. His great principle is superb and shining.5

Each line invoked Confucian learning. “Superb and shining” is a title used by the ﬁrst ruler of the Zhou, and the First Emperor adopted it because he, too, hoped to be perceived as the virtuous founder of a new dynasty. To compose the stone inscriptions, the Qin emperor commissioned a team of scholars who drew on all the classical learning of China’s different regions that had taken shape in the previous millennium, including Confucius’s teachings. One of their inscriptions claims, “The way of ﬁlial piety is brilliantly manifest and shining!” According to Confucian teachings, the ruler’s main role was to lead his subjects in ritual, and the Qin emperor assumed this role each time he put up a stone tablet. The Qin emperor placed these monuments in the far corners of his realm to demonstrate that he directed all of his subjects, both those in the Qin homeland and those recently conquered, in correct ritual observance. Unlike the Ashokan inscriptions in different languages, all the Qin inscriptions were written in Chinese because the Qin enforced linguistic standardization throughout their empire. And whereas Ashoka’s inscriptions were phrased colloquially, the Qin inscriptions were rigidly formal, consisting of thirty-six or seventy-two lines, each with exactly four characters. Although Ashoka’s inscriptions were completed within the Qin emperor’s lifetime, northern India lay some 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from the western edge of the Qin emperor’s realm, and no evidence of direct contact between the Mauryan and Qin Empires survives. The inscriptions use the characteristic Chinese technique of manufacture: their authors placed component parts, or characters, in various combinations to produce a slightly different text for each inscription. Each Qin stone text runs exactly the same length and covers the usual themes, but no two inscriptions are identical.

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Qin dynasty sources demonstrate clearly that the First Emperor exercised far more control over his subjects than had his predecessors. Using government registers listing all able-bodied men, the First Emperor initiated several enormous public works projects. Hundreds of thousands of conscripts built 4,000 miles (6,400 km) of roads, roughly as many as the Romans did,6 as well as long walls of pounded earth, the most readily available building material. (The Great Wall that one sees today was built of stone in the ﬁfteenth through seventeenth centuries c.e. along the foundations of the Qin dirt walls.) The Qin emperor also used conscript labor to build his tomb, where he was buried in 210 b.c.e. (See the feature “Visual Evidence: The Terracotta Warriors of the Qin Founder’s Tomb.”) Many Qin subjects left their homes either to perform labor service on these different projects or to serve in the army, which had several hundred thousand conscripts and which traveled as far north to modern-day Mongolia or south to Vietnam (see below). The central government sent supplies overland to its armies on the roads it built, but when the armies traveled too far, it became difﬁcult to sustain their supply lines, and many died far from home in unsuccessful military campaigns.

The Great Wall Then and Now Few people realize that the Great Wall that we see today (right) was built during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), not during the Qin dynasty (221–207 B.C.E.). The Qin emperor ordered the construction of the Great Wall by linking together many preexisting dirt walls. The remains of the Qin wall, which was made largely from pounded earth, survive in only a few places in China (left). (left: © Zhao Guangtian/Panorama Media (Beijing) Ltd./Alamy; right: © Graham French/Masterﬁle)

Qin Rulers Unify China, 359–207 B.C.E.

The Qin ruler viewed the establishment of laws as one of his most important accomplishments. According to one inscription, he “created the regulations and illuminated the laws” as soon as he became emperor. Viewing law as a tool for strengthening the realm, the Legalists advocated treating all men identically, regardless of birth, because they believed that only the systematic application of one set of laws could control man’s inherently evil nature. Subjects could not use law to challenge their ruler’s authority because the only law for Legalists was the law of the ruler. They did not acknowledge the existence of a higher, divine law. In place for only fourteen years, the Qin dynasty (221–207 b.c.e.) did not have time to develop a governmental system for all of China, but it did create a basic framework. The First Emperor appointed a prime minister as the top ofﬁcial in his government. Different departments in the capital administered the emperor’s staff, the military, and revenue. The Qin divided the empire into over forty military districts called commanderies, each headed by a governor and a military commander. They in turn were divided into districts, the smallest unit of the Qin government, which were governed by magistrates with the help of clerks. All these ofﬁcials were charged with carrying out the new laws of the Qin. Later historians described Qin laws as arbitrary and overly harsh; they were also surprisingly detailed, clearly the product of a government deeply concerned with following legal procedures carefully. Archaeologists working in Shuihudi (SHWAYwho-dee) town, in Hubei (WHO-bay) province, found a partial set of Qin dynasty laws dating to 217 b.c.e. in the tomb of a low-ranking clerk. We know only his last name, Xi. Clerk Xi was buried with a set of model cases illustrating legal procedures. All were written on bamboo slips preserved in stagnant water, with holes punched into them. They were then sewn together to form sheets that could be rolled up, similar to a modern placemat made from cord and reeds. Some writers used silk, but most used bamboo because silk was ruined if one’s brush slipped. Each model case described in the Shuihudi materials is equally complex, pointing to the existence of established procedures for ofﬁcials to follow before reaching a judgment. One text begins as follows:

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Legalism and the Laws of the Qin Dynasty

• Qin dynasty (221– 207 b.c.e.) The ﬁrst dynasty to rule over a uniﬁed China; heavily inﬂuenced by Legalist teachings that promoted soldiers and ofﬁcials strictly on the basis of accomplishment, not birth.

Report. A, the wife of a commoner of X village, made a denunciation, saying, “I, A, had been pregnant for six months. Yesterday, in the daytime, I fought with the adult woman C of the same village. I, A, and C grabbed each other by the hair. C threw me, A, over and drove me back. A fellow-villager, D, came to the rescue and separated C and me, A. As soon as I, A, had reached my house, I felt ill and my belly hurt; yesterday evening the child miscarried.”7

The text provides detailed instructions for investigating such a case. The legal clerk, someone like Clerk Xi, had to examine the fetus and consult with the local midwife; he also had to interrogate A and the members of her household to determine her condition. The Shuihudi tomb also contained sections of the Qin legal code that make ﬁne distinctions: the penalties for manslaughter (inadvertently killing someone) were lighter than those for deliberate murder. Ofﬁcials had to examine the murder weapon: a determination of manslaughter hinged on whether the assailant had used an object lying at hand or had concealed his weapon, which indicated intent to murder. The ﬁne legal distinctions among different types of murder resemble

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THE TERRACOTTA WARRIORS OF THE QIN FOUNDER’S TOMB

he Qin emperor’s tomb, sometimes called the eighth wonder of the world, was discovered in 1973 by a farmer digging a well. The enormous tomb is so big that archaeologists have to dig test pits to probe its dimensions. Test pit #1, shown to the right, contains over seven thousand soldiers of four types—foot soldiers, archers, charioteers, and soldiers riding on horseback—who staffed the emperor’s terracotta army. Because the Qin emperor expected the afterlife to be exactly the same as his life, his tomb formed a miniaturized world in which he could pursue his usual activities, including commanding his troops in battle. The terracotta warriors do not resemble the ﬁgurines placed in any Chinese tomb before or since, prompting much speculation about the identity of their creators. One intriguing possibility, recently proposed, is that the emperor used his plumbers, because the soldiers’ legs greatly resemble clay water pipes found in the ruins of the Qin palace. Over one thousand soldiers bear labels stamped into the clay by eighty-ﬁve foremen, who were presumably responsible for supervising their construction. One estimate suggests that it took eleven years for these foremen, each supervising some ten men, to make the entire army of over seven thousand ﬁgures.* How did the Qin craftsmen make so many different soldiers in such a short time? Like chefs in today’s Chinese restaurants, they arranged thousands of prefabricated parts in various combinations to make

a slightly different product each time. Archaeologists have identiﬁed two types of feet, three types of shoes and four types of boots, two types of legs, eight types of torso, and two types of armor used to make the mass-produced soldiers, whose bodies range from 5 feet 11 inches to 6 feet 5 inches (180 to 195 cm) tall. Once a soldier’s body was completed, a craftsman used clay to make his facial features. All the soldiers have individual faces, as if the craftsmen worked from living models. Yet the faces are idealized: no soldier has any wounds or scars. When the soldiers were completed, craftsmen painted them with bright colors, most of which has ﬂaked off on the surrounding dirt. The core of the tomb, where the Qin emperor himself was buried, has yet to be excavated, but writing one hundred years later, Sima Qian described it: “Artisans were ordered to install mechanically triggered crossbows set to shoot any intruder. With mercury the various waterways of the empire, the Yangzi and Yellow Rivers, and even the great ocean itself were created and made to ﬂow and circulate mechanically.”† Sima Qian also claimed that the son of the Qin founder ordered that the craftsmen who worked on the tomb be buried alive so that the tomb’s exact location would remain secret. Archaeologists have not found human remains, but they continue to announce new discoveries, most recently of clay wrestlers and tumblers who performed for the emperor’s pleasure in the next world.

*Lothar Ledderose, Ten Thousand Things: Module and Mass Production in Chinese Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 69–70.

†Maxwell K. Hearn, “The Terracotta Army of the First Emperor of Qin,” in The Great Bronze Age of China: An Exhibition from the People’s Republic of China, ed. Wen Fong (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1980), p. 357.

Question for Analysis How do the terracotta warriors illustrate the Chinese technique of using prefabricated component parts to mass-produce multiple objects that differ from each other?

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This ordinary soldier’s head was made by combining molded forms of the front and the back and smoothing them together. Like all Chinese, he did not cut his hair, considered to be a gift from his parents, but bound it in intricate patterns on the back and top of his head.

His headdress indicates that this ﬁgure is an ofﬁcer. This group of nine statues includes at least three ofﬁcers who stand at the front of their unit so that they can lead their subordinates into battle.

A roof of wooden beams was originally built over the entire army and then covered with mats, a layer of sand and chalk, and ﬁnally a layer of dirt. This missing head reveals how the hollow statues were made. The armor, lower skirt, and legs were made from sheets of clay in a construction technique originally used by palace plumbers for water pipes.

Each Qin soldier wore a uniform consisting of a gown to the knees, leather armor on the upper torso, short pants, leg guards, and a headdress (never a helmet).

This ofﬁcer’s hands originally held weapons, most likely wooden spears or staffs, which have since disintegrated.

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those in Hammurabi’s laws (see Chapter 2). However, whereas in Babylon an assembly decided whether the murder victim’s wife was guilty of killing her husband, in China the presiding ofﬁcial or clerk determined an individual’s guilt. Qin punishments were grisly. One could have one’s foot cut off or one’s nose severed for various offenses, and many of those sentenced to hard labor were not “complete,” meaning that they were missing a limb. But if we consider the punishments in use elsewhere in the world at the time, such as Roman cruciﬁxion, the Qin punishments do not seem unusual.

The Han Empire, 206 B.C.E.–220 C.E. • Han dynasty (206 b.c.e.–220 c.e.) The immediate successor to the Qin dynasty. Han rulers denounced Legalist governance but adopted much of the Qin blueprint for empire. Because of its long rule, the Han dynasty was a model for all subsequent dynasties.

he Qin dynasty came to a sudden end in 207 b.c.e. with the suicide of the First Emperor’s son. The following year, in 206 b.c.e., the new emperor founded the Han dynasty. Although the Han founder always depicted the Qin as a brutal dynasty, he drew on many Legalist precedents to create a blueprint that allowed him and his descendants to rule for four hundred years. The Han modiﬁed the Qin structure of central and local government, developed a mechanism for recruiting ofﬁcials, and linked education with bureaucratic advancement for the ﬁrst time in Chinese history. Starting in 140 b.c.e. and continuing throughout the dynasty, Han emperors encouraged students and future ofﬁcials to study the Confucian classics. The dynasty’s support of learning encouraged the spread of Confucianism throughout the empire. The Confucian emphasis on education was so strong that the Chinese of that era schooled not only their sons but also, when they could, their daughters. Yet because the Han continued many policies of the Qin, we should recognize the Han as a Legalist dynasty with a Confucian exterior, not a genuinely Confucian dynasty.

Han Government and the Imperial Bureaucracy

The Qin forces had conquered an enormous swath of territory, but some regions, sensing weakness at the center, rebelled against the unpopular second Qin emperor and asserted their independence. Gradually one man, formerly a low-ranking ofﬁcial under the Qin named Liu Bang (LEO bahng) (r. 206–195 b.c.e.), emerged as leader of the rebels and founded the Han dynasty in 206 b.c.e. Liu Bang was one of only two emperors (the other founded the Ming dynasty in 1368) to be born as a commoner. When he and his forces entered the Qin capital, he assured the capital’s residents: You elders have long suffered under the harsh laws of Qin. . . . I make an agreement with you that the law shall consist of only three sections: He who kills others shall die; he who harms others or steals from them shall incur appropriate punishment. For the rest, all other Qin laws shall be abolished.8

Like a modern politician’s campaign promise, this statement does not provide an accurate description of Han law, which actually retained many provisions of Qin law. When the Han forces took power, they faced the immediate problem of stafﬁng a government large enough to govern the empire. They adopted the Legalist struc-

The Han Empire, 206 B.C.E.–220 C.E.

ture of a central government with the emperor at the head and a prime minister (sometimes called a chancellor) as the top ofﬁcial. Underneath the prime minister were the different sections of the central government, which had three main divisions: collection of taxes, supervision of the military, and recruitment of personnel. The Han dynasty ruled for four hundred years, with only one interruption by a relative of the empress, named Wang Mang (WAHNG mahng), who founded his own short-lived Xin (SHIN) (“new”) dynasty (9–23 c.e.). During the ﬁrst two hundred years of the Han, the capital was in Chang’an (CHAHNG-ahn); historians refer to this period as the Former Han or the Western Han (206 b.c.e.–9 c.e.). After Wang Mang was deposed, the original ruling family of the Han dynasty continued to govern, but in the new capital of Luoyang (LWAW-yahng). The Later Han (25– 220 c.e.) is also called the Eastern Han because Luoyang was some 300 miles (500 km) east of Chang’an. The Han Empire exercised varying amounts of control over the sixty million people under its rule. The emperor managed to regain control of distant regions through a combination of military conquest and administrative ﬂexibility. Immediately after taking over, the Han founder ceded about half of Qin territory to independent kings. He divided the remaining territory into one hundred commanderies and subdivided them into ﬁfteen hundred prefectures. Each prefecture was headed by a magistrate whose task was to register the population, collect revenues, judge legal disputes, and maintain irrigation works. To get a government position during the Han dynasty, the ﬁrst step was to get a referral. Men already serving in the government suggested younger men of good reputation, usually from wealthy families with large landholdings, to staff lower positions in prefectural ofﬁces. There they could learn how government functioned. Not content to recruit men who could read and write and knew how to draft documents, the Han was the ﬁrst Chinese dynasty to require that ofﬁcials study classical writings on ritual, history, and poetry, as well as The Analects. Although these texts did not teach the nuts-and-bolts workings of local government, which remained Legalist in all but name, ofﬁcials embraced the Confucian view that knowledge of these classic texts would produce more virtuous, and thus better, ofﬁcials. In 124 b.c.e., one of the most powerful Han emperors, Emperor Wu (also known as Han Wudi) (r. 140–87 b.c.e.), established the Imperial Academy to encourage the study of Confucian texts. At ﬁrst the Academy consisted of ﬁve scholars, called Academicians, who specialized in the study of a given text, and the ﬁfty students who studied with them. Within one hundred years the number of students at the Academy ballooned to several thousand. Ambitious young men already in the government realized that knowledge of Confucian texts, demonstrated by success in examinations conducted by the Imperial Academy, could advance their careers. The study of Confucian texts was aided by the invention of paper. The earliest examples of Chinese paper found by archaeologists date to the second century b.c.e. Ragpickers who washed and recycled old fabric left ﬁbers on a screen to dry and accidentally discovered how to make paper. Initially, the Chinese used paper for wrapping fragile items, not as a writing material. But by 200 c.e. paper production had increased so much that people used paper, not bamboo slips, for letter writing and books. With the adoption of paper as the primary writing material, the culture of learning in China shifted from an oral to a written one. In the early years, Han

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• Imperial Academy Established in 124 b.c.e. by the Han emperor, Emperor Wu (r. 140–87 b.c.e.), to encourage the study of Confucian texts. Initially consisted of ﬁve scholars, called Academicians, specializing in the study of a given text.

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dynasty teachers taught students to memorize texts and recite them orally, but by the end of the dynasty they were reading books. When one poet in the ﬁrst century b.c.e. submitted a written poem to the court as a gift, the emperor could not imagine that someone would commit a poem to writing without ﬁrst reciting it in person. By the end of the dynasty, though, writing literary works on paper without reciting them had become commonplace. Paper was one of China’s most important inventions; it spread from China to the Islamic world in the eighth century c.e. and ﬁnally to Europe only in the eleventh century.

Ban Zhao’s Lessons for Women

• Ban Zhao (45–120 c.e.) A historian and the author of Lessons for Women, a book that counseled women to serve men and advocated education for girls starting at the age of 8.

Primary Source: Lessons for Women Discover what Ban Zhao, the foremost female writer in Han China, had to say about the proper behavior of women.

During the ﬁrst century c.e., the Later Han capital of Luoyang became an important literary center where young men came to study. One of the most famous literary families was that of the poet and historian Ban Biao (BAHN-beeow) (d. 54 c.e.), who had three children: twin boys and a daughter. One of the boys followed in his father’s footsteps, while his twin became a successful general. Their sister, Ban Zhao (BAHN jow) (ca. 45–120 c.e.), was the most famous woman writer of her day. She is best known for her work Lessons for Women, which Chinese girls continued to read for centuries after her death. Ban Zhao wrote Lessons for Women when in her mid-50s. It contained everything she would like to have known when she married at age 14. Ban Zhao’s main theme is clear: women exist to serve their husbands and their in-laws, whom they should always obey and with whom they should never quarrel. Yet Ban Zhao’s ideal woman was also literate. She began her book by advising her readers to copy down her instructions, sure evidence that they could read and write. She also criticized men who taught only their sons to read: Yet only to teach men and not to teach women—is that not ignoring the essential relation between them? . . . It is the rule to begin to teach children to read at the age of eight years. . . . Only why should it not be that girls’ education as well as boys’ be according to this principle?9

This is an eloquent call to teach girls to read at the same age as boys at the age of 7 (8 in Chinese reckoning includes the time in the womb). We must remember that Ban Zhao differed from her contemporaries in several ways. For one, she had studied with her father the historian and was sufﬁciently skilled that she completed his manuscript after he died. When married, she bore children, but she was widowed at a young age and became a tutor to the women at the imperial court. When an infant emperor ascended the throne in 106 c.e., his 25-year-old wife became regent, and Ban Zhao advised her on matters of state. A year later, the infant died, but the female regent retained power over the new emperor. These two women did not have typical careers. Still, their unusual lives show that it was possible for women to take on male roles under certain circumstances. The literacy rate during the ﬁrst century could not have exceeded 10 percent among men, but Lessons for Women was read, and Ban Zhao’s ideal of literate women stayed alive in subsequent centuries. Well-off families made every effort to educate their daughters, if only to allow them to study a few years with their brothers’ tutors; of course, few laboring people could afford to do so.

Extending Han Rule

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Extending Han Rule

s the Qin and Han dynasties left their successors with a blueprint of how to govern the empire, the territories they conquered established boundaries that would deﬁne the geographical idea of China for centuries to come. After conquering six independent kingdoms to form their empire (see the map on page 89), the Qin controlled most of the land watered by the Yellow and Yangzi Rivers. If one compares Qin dynasty China with Han dynasty China, the most visible difference is that the Han rulers controlled a narrow stretch of territory in the northwest, now Gansu (GAHN-sue) province and the Xinjiang (SHIN-jyahng) Autonomous Region. Han armies also extended the empire’s borders northeast to control much of the Korean peninsula and south to modern-day Vietnam (see Map 4.1).

Han Dynasty Conﬂict with the Xiongnu Nomads, 201–60 B.C.E.

The Han dynasty gained much of this territory during its wars between 201 and 60 b.c.e. with the Xiongnu (SHEE-AWNG-new), a northern nomadic people who moved across modern-day Mongolia in search of grass to feed their sheep and horses. Only the Xiongnu had an army sufﬁciently powerful to threaten the Han, and they tried to conquer Chinese territory for the ﬁrst century and a half of Han rule. Their military strength derived from their quick-footed horses and brilliant horsemanship, which enabled them to defeat the Chinese in battle after battle. The Xiongnu language is completely lost. The Chinese word Xiongnu may be a translation of the same word as the Latin word Hun. If Xiongnu and Hun are different forms of the same word (scholars disagree sharply on this point), then the Xiongnu were an earlier, eastern branch of the nomadic peoples who invaded western Europe in the ﬁfth century c.e. Having formed a confederation of the different tribal peoples living in Mongolia in Qin times, the Xiongnu fought their ﬁrst battle with the Han soon after the founding of the dynasty. The Xiongnu won. The treaty settling this conﬂict brought only a temporary peace because the Xiongnu continued to launch military campaigns into China. In 139 b.c.e. Emperor Wu dispatched an envoy named Zhang Qian ( JAHNG chee-en) to Central Asia to persuade the Yuezhi (YOU-EH-juh) people to enter into an alliance against the Xiongnu. Zhang Qian reached the Yuezhi only after being held hostage by the Xiongnu for ten years. When he returned to China, he explained to the emperor that he had been unable to secure an alliance against the Xiongnu, but he had visited local markets. There, to his surprise, he had seen Chinese goods for sale, certain evidence that merchants carrying Chinese goods had preceded him. Today most Chinese regard Zhang Qian as the person who discovered the Silk Road (see Chapter 8). The Xiongnu supplied the Chinese with animals, hides, and semiprecious gems, particularly jade; in return the Chinese traded silk. The Chinese never succeeded, at least within the Chinese heartland, in breeding horses as strong as those the Xiongnu bred in the Mongolian steppe, probably because they did not have comparable grasslands. The Xiongnu threat came to a sudden end in 60 b.c.e., not because of any military victory by the Han, but because the huge Xiongnu confederation broke apart

• Xiongnu

Northern nomadic people who moved across modernday Mongolia in search of grass for their sheep and horses. Their military strength derived from brilliant horsemanship. Defeated the Han dynasty in battle until 60 b.c.e., when their federation broke apart.

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into ﬁve warring groups. Much to the relief of the Han emperors, the Xiongnu never again posed a serious threat to their dynasty, but other nomadic peoples living in the grasslands to the north, like the Mongols, intermittently threatened later dynasties.

Han Expansion to the North, Northwest, and South

The Han dynasty ruled China for over four hundred years. In certain periods, it was too weak to conquer new territories, but in other periods, particularly during the long reign of Emperor Wu, the army was so strong that the emperor launched military campaigns into border areas. Once the Han army had conquered a certain region, it established garrisons in the major towns. Chinese ofﬁcials and merchants in these towns led Chinese-style lives, eating Chinese food and speaking Chinese, while the indigenous peoples largely continued to live as they had before. The ofﬁcials living in the garrison towns exercised

MAP 4.1 The Han Empire at Its Greatest Extent, ca. 50 B.C.E. The Han dynasty inherited all the territory of its predecessor, the Qin dynasty, and its powerful armies conquered new territory to the north in the Korean peninsula, to the west in the Taklamakan Desert, and to the south in modern-day Vietnam.

Boundary of Qin Empire, 210 B.C.E.

Great Wall

Territory of Han dynasty, ca. 50 B.C.E.

Silk Road

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only tenuous control over the indigenous peoples, and, if a local army retook a city, Chinese control could end suddenly. Han armies managed to take parts of the Taklamakan Desert, Korea, and Vietnam, but they ruled these borderlands only brieﬂy. When the Xiongnu confederation collapsed in 60 b.c.e., the Han dynasty brieﬂy took control of its headquarters and established garrisons in some of the oasis kingdoms ringing the Taklamakan Desert. After 127 c.e., Chinese supply lines were unable to reach troops in the northwest, and the Chinese ceded control to a succession of local kingdoms. But a Han garrison remained at the city of Dunhuang (DUHN-hwahng), the staging point for going farther west and the outermost point of Chinese control. The region south of China, extending from modern-day Fujian (FOO-jee-en) province to Vietnam, differed from the northwest because one could reach it overland or, more easily, by sea. Much like camel caravans visited oases in their voyage west across the Taklamakan Desert, small boats, many propelled by oars, visited ports on the South China Sea, which offered a chance to rest, trade, and buy provisions for the next leg of the journey. Like all the rivers in Vietnam, the most important river, the Red River, drained from the mountains in the west to the South China Sea. High mountain chains separated the different river valleys, making overland transport much more difﬁcult than sea travel. The Vietnamese language belongs to the Austroasiatic language family, a different family from Chinese. The modern Chinese provinces of Guangdong (GWAHNG-dohng), Guangxi (GWAHNG-shee), and Yunnan (YUHN-nahn) were home to a regional people that the Chinese called Yue (YOU-EH), the ancestors of the Vietnamese. The Yue people had early (about 8000 b.c.e.) developed the cultivation of rice and were also avid sailors. Yue cultural practices differed signiﬁcantly from the Chinese. For example, they traced their descent through both their mothers and their fathers (see Chapter 8). Chinese historians writing before the Qin uniﬁcation called them the people with “tattooed foreheads,” a label that later Vietnamese historians thought pejorative because tattooing clearly violated the Confucian teaching that one should not physically alter one’s body, a gift from one’s parents. The sparse population in these southern regions also prompted Chinese historians to call the region the “Empty Land.” When the Qin armies conquered Vietnam before 207 b.c.e., they established centers of Chinese control in garrison towns. After 207 b.c.e., an independent kingdom also ruled by a Chinese leader, called the Southern Kingdom of Yue (Nam Viet), took over from the Qin. The kingdom was home to ﬁshermen and traders who specialized in unusual goods like ivory tusks, pearls, tortoise shells, and slaves. After several attempts, the Han armies defeated this ruler and established garrison towns in 110 b.c.e., which they retained throughout the Han dynasty. While Vietnam marked the southern extent of Han territory, Korea marked the northern extent. Korea did not receive as much rainfall as Vietnam, and its climate was much cooler. Large, dense forests covered the region, and most early settlements were along rivers or on the coast, where residents could easily ﬁsh. Before 300 b.c.e., the region was home to several tribal confederations; then, during the third century b.c.e., the Old Choson ( JOE-sohn) kingdom united much of the Korean peninsula north of the Han River, in what is today’s North Korea. Qin armies defeated the Old Choson kingdom, and Han armies again conquered the region in 108 b.c.e., soon after gaining control of China. Although ofﬁcially under Han rule, the local people exercised considerable independence. Many local men held positions of authority in the Chinese

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administration. Ofﬁcials and merchants lived in a garrison city located in modernday Pyongyang (BYOHNG-yahng), but the people outside the garrison were much less affected by the Chinese presence. Since no written documents from this period survive, archaeologists must study burials to reconstruct religious practices. Large, wealthy graves suggest that the people living on the Korean peninsula believed that the dead would travel to another realm. In one region they were buried with large bird wings so that they could ﬂy to the next world. In later periods (see Chapter 8), these three regions—northwest China, Vietnam, and Korea—would all join the Chinese cultural sphere and adopt the Chinese writing system. But during the Qin and Han dynasties Chinese inﬂuence was limited because the Chinese presence consisted only of military garrisons. The most obvious signs of the Qin and the Han legacy are the words used today for “China” and “Chinese.” China entered English via the Sanskrit word Chee-na, the Indian pronunciation of Qin. Ask your classmates studying Chinese what the modern Chinese word for the Chinese language is. The answer should not surprise you: Hanyu, literally, “the language of the Han.” Almost all Chinese say that they are Hanren, “people of the Han.” In a sense they are. If the Han dynasty had not modiﬁed the First Emperor’s blueprint for empire, there might not be a China today.

Chapter Review KEY TERMS First Emperor of the Qin dynasty (88) Shang dynasty (92) oracle bones (92) ancestor worship (92) Sima Qian (93) Zhou dynasty (95) Mandate of Heaven (95) Confucius (96) Confucianism (96) Daoism (97) Qin dynasty (103) Han dynasty (106) Imperial Academy (107) Ban Zhao (108) Xiongnu (109)

Download the MP3 audio ﬁle of the Chapter Review and listen to it on the go.

ollowing the lead of the First Emperor, the Qin and Han dynasties created a blueprint for imperial rule that lasted for two thousand years. In the centuries after the fall of the Han, China was not always uniﬁed. But subsequent Chinese rulers always aspired to reunify the empire and conceived of China’s physical borders as largely those of the Han dynasty at its largest extent.

What different elements of Chinese civilization took shape between 1200 and 221 B.C.E.? The culture tying the people of China together had deep roots. Their shared diet, with its division of starch and meat-and-vegetable dishes, dated to at least 1200 b.c.e. That was also the time of the ﬁrst written characters, whose descendants are still in use today. Around 500 b.c.e., Confucius taught the importance of obeying both one’s parents and the ruler, yet since Confucius refused to say anything about the other world, many Chinese turned to Daoist teachings, which offered immortality to a rare few and eternal detention in underground jails to everyone else.

What were the most important measures in the Qin blueprint for empire? The Qin dynasty introduced a blueprint for empire that tied their subjects to local ofﬁcials far more tightly than anywhere else in the world. Qin ofﬁcials recorded the names of all their subjects and assigned them to mutual responsibility groups. They

Chapter Review

implemented a single law code for their entire empire and standardized the writing system and all weights and measures. They also created a strict meritocracy in both the army and the government that promoted only those who demonstrated success, not those born to powerful families.

How did the Han rulers modify the Qin blueprint, particularly regarding administrative structure and the recruitment and promotion of ofﬁcials?

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WEB RESOURCES Pronunciation Guide Interactive Maps MAP 4.1 The Han Empire at Its Greatest Extent, ca. 50 B.C.E.

Primary Sources Chapter Objectives ACE Multiple-Choice Quiz Flashcards

The successors to the First Emperor, including the Han rulers, did not acknowledge the path-breaking role of the Qin dynasty. Yet even as succeeding rulers maligned the First Emperor, they all adopted the Qin title emperor. Han emperors created different administrative districts from those in use under the Qin and also recruited ofﬁcials in a different way, appointing new ofﬁcials to the lowest ranks on the recommendation of those already in ofﬁce. After 140 b.c.e., ofﬁcials could be promoted only after demonstrating knowledge of Confucian texts in written examinations.

Which neighboring peoples in Central, East, and Southeast Asia did the Han dynasty conquer? Why was the impact of Chinese rule limited? Han dynasty armies conquered and brieﬂy controlled parts of northwest China, Vietnam, and Korea, but their inﬂuence was limited because the Chinese military rarely ventured beyond their garrison towns.

For Further Reference The Analects of Confucius. Translated by Simon Leys. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997.

Twitchett, Denis, and Michael Loewe, eds. The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 1, The Ch’in and Han Empires 221 b.c.–a.d. 220. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Eckert, Carter, et al. Korea Old and New: A History. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990. Hansen, Valerie. The Open Empire: A History of China to 1600. New York: W. W. Norton, 2000.

Websites

Keightley, David N. Sources of Shang History: The Oracle Bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.

Asian Art Museum, San Francisco (http://www.asianart.org/collection.htm). An introduction to one of America’s most important collections of Asian art.

Kern, Martin. The Stele Inscriptions of Ch’in Shih-huang: Text and Ritual in Early Chinese Imperial Representation. New Haven: American Oriental Society, 2000.

The First Emperor: China’s Terracotta Warriors (http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/all_current_ exhibitions/the_ﬁrst_emperor/exhibition_overview .aspx). A short history of the terracotta warriors including downloadable images.

Ledderose, Lothar. Ten Thousand Things: Module and Mass Production in Chinese Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Schwartz, Benjamin. The World of Thought in Ancient China. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985. Swann, Nancy Lee. Pan Chao: Foremost Woman Scholar of China. New York: American Historical Association, 1932. Tao Te Ching: The Classic Book of Integrity and the Way. Translated by Victor Mair. New York: Bantam Books, 1990. Tarling, Nicholas, ed. The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Metropolitan Museum of Art (http://www.metmuseum.org/TOAH/hd/cgrk/hd_cgrk .htm). Detailed description of Chinese gardens and collector’s rocks. See the museum website for other Asian art.

Films The First Emperor of China from the Canadian Film Board. USA orders: 800-542-2164.

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CHAPTER

The Americas and the Islands of the Paciﬁc, to 1200 C.E. The First Complex Societies of Mesoamerica, 8000 B.C.E.–500 C.E. (p. 117) C.E.

(p. 120)

B.C.E.–1200 C.E.

(p. 131)

The Classic Age of the Maya, 250–910 The Northern Peoples, 500

The Peoples of the Andes, 3100

B.C.E.–1000 C.E.

(p. 132)

The Polynesian Voyages of Exploration, 1000 B.C.E.–1350 C.E. (p. 135)

vast area of the globe—North and South America and the islands of the Paciﬁc—developed in almost total isolation from Eurasia because, after approximately 7000 b.c.e., much of the ice covering the world’s surface melted and submerged the Beringia ice bridge linking Alaska to Siberia (see Chapter 1). Since few of the peoples living in this area have left written records, archaeologists and historians have exercised great ingenuity in reconstructing the different paths they took to complex society, each very different from those of Eurasian peoples. Scholars know more about the Maya (MY-ah), a Central American people whose writing system was translated only in the 1970s. Yet because the deciphering of Mayan is ongoing, experts continue to debate the exact meaning of surviving texts, rarely translating word for word. Here one professor paraphrases an inscription describing a 152-day trip a ruler named Yax K’uk Mo’ (YASH cook moh) took to Copán in what is now Honduras:

he top of Altar Q here tells the story of Yax K’uk Mo’ really. It begins up here with a date, and it’s a date that comes around the early ﬁfth century. And it says that on that particular day in that time, he took the emblems of ofﬁce, he took the kingship. The place where he took that kingship is recorded in the next glyph, and we’ve known for a long time that this glyph has some sort of connection to Central Mexico. . . . Then we have his name here, and then the date’s three days later. And three days later he leaves that location.

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YAX K’UK MO’ FROM ALTAR Q

This icon will direct you to interactive activities and study materials on the Voyages website: www.cengage.com/history/hansen/voyages1e

RE S I E R R A MA D

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Pánu

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The Travels of Yax K’uk Mo’

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AL E NT

Possible starting point Tuxpan of journey, ca. 426

Dzibilchaltun Chichén Itzá

YUCATÁN Tulum PENINSULA

Jaina Teotihuacan

Possible coastal route

Lake Texcoco

Tehuacan R.

Kalak’mul

Monte Alban R DE A M L SU ADR Atoya R E c R.

Palenque

Possible overland route

La Venta

Pa p a l

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Tikal

Gulf of Honduras

Caracol

Bonampak

Tehuantepec

rÿ

Gulf o f Te hua nte p e c

alv

Lake Izabal

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Quingua

Kaminaljuyu Copán

Yax K’uk Mo’ arrives in Copán, ca. 426.

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Lifetime of Yax K’uk Mo’ ca. 377 437 Teotihuacan flourishes

Olmec culture

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Tiwanaku culture

Settlement of Hawai‘i 200

500 Settlement of Easter Island 400

700

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The inscription goes on to say something really remarkable. A hundred and ﬁftythree days after he leaves this place where he’s become a king, then, on this day, he “rests his legs,” or “rests his feet,” and “he is the West Lord.” It’s a title that Yax K’uk Mo’ has throughout his references at Copán. And then ﬁnally it says “he arrived” at Copán. So, I think the conclusion from this is that Yax K’uk Mo’ came a long way before he arrived at Copán.1

• Yax K’uk Mo’

The king of Copán during the classic period of the Maya (250–910 c.e.). Founded a dynasty that lasted at least sixteen generations, until 776 c.e.

Yax K’uk Mo’ must have walked or was carried, since the Maya, like all the peoples of Americas and unlike the peoples of Eurasia, did not use the wheel or ride animals. Maya scholars are not certain where Yax K’uk Mo’ began his journey. Some feel that he set out from somewhere near modern-day Mexico City, while others contend that he stayed within the territory of the Maya (see the map on page 115)—in the region known as Mesoamerica, which includes much of Mexico and Central America. Because the Maya developed one of the few writing systems used in the Americas before 1500, they differed from almost every other people of the Americas and the islands of the Paciﬁc. Some earlier peoples living in modern-day Mexico developed notational systems; much later, the Mexica (MAY-shee-kah) people, or the Aztecs, of Mexico used a combination of pictures and visual puns to record events, but their writing system was not fully developed (see Chapter 15). Complex societies arose in Mexico, the Andes, and the modern-day United States at different times and in different ways than in Eurasia. Because hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years elapsed between agriculture and the rise of cities, archaeologists pay close attention to the American peoples who built large earthworks or stone monuments. Their rulers had the ability to command their subjects to work on large projects. Similarly, although the peoples of the Paciﬁc never built large cities, they crossed the Paciﬁc Ocean, possibly all the way to Chile. The lack of navigational instruments did not prevent them from conducting some of the world’s longest ocean voyages. By 1350 they had reached New Zealand, the ﬁnal place on the globe to be settled by humans. Since the Maya had a writing system, archaeologists know more about them than any other society in the Americas or the Paciﬁc Islands. Accordingly, this chapter begins with the precursors of the Maya in modern-day Mexico and then proceeds to the Maya themselves.

Focus Questions

How did the development of agriculture and the building of early cities in Mesoamerica differ from that in Mesopotamia, India, and China?

The First Complex Societies of Mesoamerica, 8000 B.C.E.–500 C.E.

117

What has the decipherment of the Maya script revealed about Maya governance, society, religion, and warfare? What were the similarities between the complex societies of the northern peoples and those of Mesoamerica? What do they suggest about contact? How did the history of complex society in the Andes differ from that in Mesoamerica? Where did the early settlers of the Paciﬁc Islands come from, and where did they go? What vessels did they use, and how did they navigate?

The First Complex Societies of Mesoamerica, 8000 B.C.E.–500 C.E.

nlike in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China, agriculture in the Americas arose not in river valleys but in a plateau region, the highlands of Mexico. The ﬁrst planting occurred around 8000 b.c.e., two thousand years after it had in western Asia. The residents of Mexico continued to hunt and gather for thousands of years as they slowly began to cultivate corn, potatoes, cocoa beans, and other crops that grew nowhere else in the world. Large urban centers, one of the markers of complex society, appeared in Mexico around 1200 b.c.e.

The Development of Agriculture, 8000–1500 B.C.E.

The people of Tehuacán (tay-WAH-káhn) in the modern state of Puebla (PWAY-bla), Mexico, initially harvested wild grasses with tiny ears of seeds. Their grinding stones, the ﬁrst evidence of cultivation in the Americas, date to 8000 b.c.e. Just as the Natuﬁans of western Asia had gradually domesticated wheat by harvesting certain wild plants with desirable characteristics (see Chapter 1), the residents of Tehuacán selected different grasses with more rows of seeds until they eventually developed a domesticated variety of maize sometime around 7000 b.c.e. (Specialists prefer the term maize to corn because it is more speciﬁc.) Unlike the early farmers of western Asia, the people of Tehuacán used no draft animals. Maize spread from the Tehuacán Valley throughout the region of Mesoamerica, which includes the southern two-thirds of modern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. Located between the Atlantic and Paciﬁc Oceans, Mesoamerica is bounded by barren desert north of modern Mexico. More rain falls in the east than in the west; because of the uneven rainfall, residents used irrigation channels to move the water. Maize later spread north to Canada and south to the tip of South America. Once planted, maize required little tending until the harvest, when the hard husk on each kernel made it very difﬁcult to eat. The dried kernels were ground or boiled and mixed with ground limestone to make a paste, called nixtamal (NISHta-mal), that was used to make unleavened cakes. As the proportion of cultivated

• Mesoamerica

The region that includes the southern two-thirds of modern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica.

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crops in the diet increased, the Mesoamericans gradually abandoned hunting and gathering. Eating little meat because they raised no animals, they cultivated squash and beans along with maize, three foods that together offered the same nutritional beneﬁts (amino acids and vitamin B12) as meat. The systematized cultivation of maize made it possible to support larger populations. By 2500 b.c.e., the population of Mesoamerica had increased by perhaps twenty-ﬁve times; the largest settlements had several hundred residents who both farmed and continued to hunt. Most of the peoples living in Mesoamerica had given up hunting and gathering and adopted full-time agriculture by 1500 b.c.e., the date of the earliest agricultural villages in the region. If an ancient farmer from anywhere in Mesopotamia, China, or India had visited at this time, he or she would have been amazed to see that no one in Mesoamerica employed the basic tools of farming so familiar to them—the plow, the wheel, or draft animals. Instead of the plow, the Mesoamericans used different types of digging sticks, and they dragged or carried things themselves because they did not have draft animals or the wheel. (The only wheels in the Americas appear on children’s toys around 500 c.e.)

• Olmec

A complex society (1200–400 b.c.e.) that arose on the Gulf of Mexico coast from modern-day Veracruz to Tabasco. Known particularly for the massive colossal heads hewn from basalt.

The Olmecs and Their Successors, 1200–400 B.C.E.

The Olmec peoples (1200–400 b.c.e.) built the ﬁrst larger settlements along a 100-mile (160-km) stretch on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico from Veracruz to Tabasco (see Map 5.1) Raising two maize crops a year, the Olmec produced a large agricultural surplus, and the population may also have increased because of the nutritional beneﬁts of the nixtamel diet. Surviving colossal heads testify to the Olmec rulers’ ability to mobilize their subjects for large labor projects. The Olmecs used stone hammers to hew these heads from basalt. They are 5 to 10 feet (1.5–3 m) tall, and the largest weighs over 40 tons (36 metric tons). The nearest source of basalt lay more than 50 miles (80 km) to the northwest, and archaeologists surmise that Olmec laborers carried the rock overland (they did not have the wheel) and built rafts to transport it along local rivers. The peoples of Mesoamerica used two methods to count days: one cycle ran 365 days for the solar year, while the ritual cycle lasted 260 days. The solar year had 18 months of 20 days each with 5 extra days at the end of the year; the 260-day ritual cycle had 13 weeks of 20 days each. This complex calendrical system developed after the Olmec urban centers had already begun to decline around 400 b.c.e.

Drawing of La Mojarra Stele This monument shows a warrior-king who ruled along the coast of Mexico in the second century C.E. He wears an elaborate headdress showing a bird deity. The glyphs, not all of which have yet been deciphered, describe how he became king with the assistance of a ritual specialist. The middle of the inscription uses the telltale bars and dots of the Long Count to give the date of 159 C.E. (Drawing by George Stuart, from the Boundary End Archaeology Research Center)

The First Complex Societies of Mesoamerica, 8000 B.C.E.–500 C.E.

SI E R RA

Gulf of Mexico B ay of Campeche

MAD

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Major Olmec sites, ca. 1200–400 B.C.E. Olmec-influenced site Chavín cultural zone, ca. 1200–200 B.C.E. Chavín-influenced site

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MAP 5.1 Complex Societies in the Americas, ca. 1200 B.C.E. Starting around 1200 B.C.E., complex societies arose in two widely separated regions in the Americas. In modern-day Mexico the Olmec hewed giant heads from basalt; in modern-day Peru, the Chavin built large temples decorated with statues combining human and animal body parts. Interactive Map

S OU TH AM E R ICA

Lake Titicaca 80°W

70°W

If one combined the two ways of counting time so that both cycles started on the same day and ran their full course, 18,980 days, or 52 years, would pass before the two cycles converged again. The 52-year cycle had one major drawback: one could not record events occurring more than 52 years earlier without confusion. Accordingly, the peoples of Mesoamerica developed the Long Count, a calendar that ran cumulatively, starting from a day far in the mythical past (whose equivalent is August 13, 3114 b.c.e.) and continuing to the present. The Long Count came into use in the ﬁfth and fourth centuries b.c.e., when the successors to the Olmecs built several monuments bearing Long Count dates. The inscriptions use a mix of bars and dots to show the different units of the calendar: 400 years, 200 years, 1 year, 20 days, and 1 day. These monuments contain texts written in at least three different languages used in Mexico after 400 b.c.e.: one near Oaxaca (WAH-ha-kah), another on the coast in the core Olmec areas, and Mayan in the Yucatán. These difﬁcult texts have been partially deciphered because the local Amerindians speak languages descended from those used in the inscription and because some of the words are the same as in Mayan (see page 121).

• Long Count

A calendar that ran cumulatively, starting from a day equivalent to August 13, 3114 b.c.e. and continuing to the present. Came into use in the ﬁfth and fourth centuries b.c.e., when inscriptions of bars and dots showed different calendar units.

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Teotihuacan, ca. 200 B.C.E.–600 C.E.

• Teotihuacan

The largest city in the Americas before 1500, covering 8 square miles (20 sq km) and some 30 miles (50 km) northeast of modern-day Mexico City. Was occupied from around 200 b.c.e. to 650 c.e. and had an estimated population at its height of 40,000 to 200,000.

At the same time that the peoples along the coast were developing the Long Count and using glyphs, a huge metropolis, covering an area of 8 square miles (20 sq km) arose at Teotihuacan (tay-oh-tee-WAH-kahn), some 30 miles (50 km) northeast of modern-day Mexico City. Founded around 200 b.c.e., the city continued to grow until the year 650 c.e. Estimates of its population range between 40,000 and 200,000, certainly enough to qualify as a complex society. Teotihuacan’s population made it the largest city in the Americas before 1500 but smaller than contemporary Rome’s one million (see Chapter 7) or Luoyang’s 500,000 during the Han dynasty (see Chapter 4). (See the feature “Visual Evidence: The Imposing Capital of Teotihuacan.”) On Teotihuacan’s neatly gridded streets, ordinary people lived in one-story apartment compounds whose painted white exteriors had no windows and whose interiors were covered with colorful frescoes. Divided among several families, the largest compounds housed over a hundred people; the smallest, about twenty. A plumbing system drained wastewater into underground channels along the street, eventually converging in aboveground canals. The compounds show evidence of craft specializations: for example, one was a pottery workshop. One residential district in the city has atypical rounded houses instead of the more common apartment compounds and contains pottery similar to that in the Veracruz region. Since this type of dwelling has been found in many sites along the Gulf of Mexico, archaeologists surmise that this was a community of migrant workers from the Veracruz region that continued to make the characteristic pottery of their homeland. Some monuments in Teotihuacan have glyphs similar to those found elsewhere in Mexico, but scholars have not succeeded in deciphering them. Accordingly, we do not know whether Teotihuacan served as the capital of an empire, but it was deﬁnitely a large city-state. Sometime around 600 c.e. a ﬁre, apparently caused by an internal revolt, leveled sections of the city, causing the residents to gradually move away.

The Classic Age of the Maya, 250–910 C.E. • Maya

Indigenous people living in modernday Yucatán, Belize, Honduras, and Guatemala. Their complex society reached its height during the classic period, when they used a fully developed written language.

he Maya, like the other peoples of the Americas, differed from the Eurasian empires in that they created a remarkable complex society unaided by the wheel, plow, draft animals, or metal tools. But did the residents of Teotihuacan, the successors to the Olmecs, and the Maya people inﬂuence each other or develop separately? Scholars sharply disagree. Some see the Olmecs as a mother culture that gave both the Teotihuacan and Maya peoples their calendar, their writing system, and even their enormous ﬂat-topped stepped pyramids—perhaps temples, perhaps palaces—of limestone and plaster packed with earth ﬁll. These scholars believe that Yax K’uk Mo’ traveled to Copán from Teotihuacan and introduced Teotihuacan’s ways to the Maya. Others argue that the Olmecs, Teotihuacan, and Maya were neighboring cultures that did not directly inﬂuence each other. They think it more likely that Yax K’uk Mo’ traveled only within Maya territory. Maya

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studies is a lively ﬁeld, made even more exciting by the stream of new discoveries and new decipherments that may some day resolve these ongoing debates. Some scholars also thought the Maya were a peace-loving people governed by a religious elite, until inscriptions dating between 250 and 910 c.e. were deciphered in the 1970s. The Maya today are seen rather as unrelentingly violent but no different from the Assyrian Empire and Shang dynasty China. Maya victors removed the ﬁngernails of war captives, cut their chests open to remove their hearts, and publicly beheaded them as sacriﬁces to their deities.

The Deciphering of Maya Writing

One of the great intellectual breakthroughs of the twentieth century was the decipherment of the Mayan script. (Scholars today use the word Maya to refer to the people and Mayan for the language they spoke.) Mayan glyphs did not look like any of the world’s other writing systems. They were so pictorial that many doubted they could represent sounds. In 1952, Yuri Knorosov, a Russian linguist, suggested that the Maya combined phonetic elements in different combinations to form words. Using dictionaries of various dialects spoken in the Maya heartland, he deciphered a few words that resembled their modern forms. His breakthrough meant that scholars were trying to decipher a living language, or at least the ancestor tongue of living languages, and not a dead language. Linguists suddenly wanted to do ﬁeldwork among the 7.5 million living native speakers of Mayan dialects in Mexico and Guatemala. For twenty years, a group of scholars and devoted amateurs—mostly Americans, but also Russians, Canadians, and Australians—pored over all known Maya ruins, making rubbings and sketching the glyphs they saw, and studying modern Mayan dialects. In 1973 they met at an academic conference held in Mexico, where for ten days they collectively deciphered the Mayan script. The conference participants realized that one could write a single Mayan word several different ways: entirely phonetically, entirely pictorially, or using a combination of both phonetic sounds and pictures. For example, the artists who made Altar Q wrote the name of Yax K’uk Mo’ by using both pictures of the quetzal (KATE-zahl) (k’uk) and macaw (mo’) birds and syllables representing the sounds “yax” and “k’inich” (k-ih-niche). Combined, they spell the name K’inich Yax K’uk Mo’, or Great Sun Lord Quetzal Macaw (see the photo on page 114). It is as if one , or writing h + a + t, could write hat in English by drawing a picture of a hat h + @ + t, or simply h + @. Scholars specializing in Maya studies refer to the period from 250 to 910 as the classic age, because there are written inscriptions on monuments, and the period before 250 as the pre-classic age. Recent discoveries of Mayan inscriptions with earlier dates are forcing scholars to reconsider these labels. In the early classic period, between 250 and 550, Teotihuacan may have exerted political inﬂuence on various Maya kingdoms, including that of Yax K’uk Mo’, before Teotihuacan’s prosperity came to a sudden end. In some Maya cities, such as Tikal (TEE-kal), but not in others, such as Copán, construction of monuments and inscriptions stopped between 550 and 600, possibly because of a political or ecological crisis. This half century marks the division between the early classic period (250–550) and late classic period (600–800), when the building of monuments resumed. The latest Maya monument with an inscription is dated 910, marking the end of the terminal classic period (800–910).

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THE IMPOSING CAPITAL OF TEOTIHUACAN

he three magniﬁcent pyramids of Teotihuacan, 30 miles (50 km) northeast of Mexico City, impress visitors even today. Lined with smaller pyramids, the broad Avenue of the Dead runs from the Pyramid of the Moon past the Pyramid of the Sun to the Feathered Serpent Pyramid. All of these names, including Teotihuacan, which means “the abode of the gods,” were given by Nahuatl-speaking settlers from the north after their arrival sometime in the twelfth century (see Chapter 15). Since we do not know what the original residents of the city called these structures and since no one has deciphered the few glyphs that appear on scattered stones, archaeologists have exercised great ingenuity in trying to understand the city’s layout. Teotihuacan is unusual in that none of the city’s rulers built monuments to themselves. Because deities of later peoples, like the Maya (see below), were often associated with stars and planets, most concur that the city’s orientation must have been astronomical, based on the different phases of Venus, the Morning Star honored by so many peoples in the Americas.

The discovery of more than two hundred skeletons under the Feathered Serpent Pyramid has shed new light on the building’s purpose. The group with the most valuable jewelry appears to have the highest social status; another group that wears less valuable shell beads seems to rank lower. A third group of women had even less jewelry, while a fourth group consisted of uniformed men buried with large quantities of projectile points, most likely an army. The people in these groups assume different postures, some with their hands tied behind their backs, as if they had been killed before burial, possibly with the accompanying obsidian knives, blades, and piercing implements. Because looters dug two large trenches in the center of the Feathered Serpent Pyramid, archaeologists cannot be certain who was originally buried there, but the mass burials and valuable grave goods make it likely that this was the ruler’s tomb. The dead buried at Teotihuacan, like the terracotta warriors of the Qin founder (see Chapter 4), appear to have served as a sacriﬁcial army for the deceased ruler, who was buried circa 200 C.E. at the time of the pyramid’s completion.

The World’s Largest Pyramids Name

Site

Date

Material

Height

Great Pyramid Pyramid of the Sun Tarharqa’s Pyramid Pyramid of the Moon Pirámide Mayor

Giza, Egypt Teotihuacan Nuri, Nubia Teotihuacan Caral

2580 B.C.E. 200 C.E. 664 B.C.E. 200 C.E. 2600 B.C.E.

stone volcanic rubble and earth stone volcanic rubble and earth brick and earth

480 ft (146 m) 216 feet (66 m) 160 ft (49 m) 140 feet (43 m) 60 ft (18 m)

Question for Analysis Compare and contrast the site of Teotihuacan with the urban centers of other early complex societies in the Americas (Caral, Olmec, Maya) and in Eurasia (Sumer, Indus River Valley, Shang dynasty).

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With sides over 700 feet (213 m) long at the base, and over twenty stories high, the Pyramid of the Sun is the largest structure in the Americas made before 1500. The Feathered Serpent Pyramid, also called the Quetzalcoatl Temple, has staircases up the side of the monument with stone facades and elaborate serpent heads dividing the different terraces.

The Citadel, facing the Feathered Serpent Pyramid, was the political center of the city.

(Georg Gerster/Photo Researchers, Inc.)

The Avenue of the Dead, 50 yards (50 m) wide, extends for more than 3 miles (5.2 km) and connects the different pyramids of Teotihuacan.

Laborers made the Pyramid of the Moon in the same way that they made the Pyramid of the Sun: they piled up earth and rubble to form a pyramid shape, leveled off horizontal terraces, and then faced the surface with adobe and stone.

This modern ring road, the Periférico, was built in the 1960s to steer trafﬁc away from the monuments.

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Since 1973 Mayanists have learned to read about 85 percent of all surviving glyphs. Since inscriptions follow a set format, beginning with the rise of a particular ruler, it is possible to understand inscriptions at ruins throughout the Maya region. So far the focus on the history of royal dynasties unfortunately reveals little about ordinary people. Analysts are trying to bridge that immense information gap by ingeniously combining inscriptions and paintings from the classic period with information from European observers in the sixteenth century (see Chapter 15) and even ethnographic data on Maya peoples alive today.

• Copán

A typical Maya city-state. At its peak in the eighth century, Copán had a population of eighteen to twenty thousand divided into sharply demarcated groups: the ruling family, the nobility, ordinary people, and slaves.

Maya Government and Society

Copán, where Yax K’uk Mo’ founded his dynasty, provides a good example of a typical Maya city-state. At its peak in the eighth century, when the sixteenth king commissioned Altar Q to commemorate his sixteen dynastic predecessors, Copán had a population of eighteen to twenty thousand. The population was divided into sharply demarcated groups: the ruling family, the nobility, ordinary people, and slaves. As the ruler of Copán and commander of the army, Yax K’uk Mo’ ranked higher than everyone else. He decided when to ally with other city-states and when to ﬁght them, as well as how to allocate the different crops and taxes received from the populace. When a ruler died, a council of nobles met to verify that his son or his younger brother was ﬁt to rule. If a ruler died without an heir, the council appointed someone from one of the highest-ranking noble families to succeed him. We can understand something of Yax K’uk Mo’s status from his tomb. (See the feature “World History in Today’s World: The World’s First Chocolate.”) Lying on a stone platform, the body of Yax K’uk Mo’ had a jade chest ornament like that shown in his portrait on Altar Q (see page 114). In his Altar Q portrait he wears a shield on his right arm; the shattered right arm of the corpse indicates that he badly wounded this arm, perhaps in battle. Archaeologists have compared the levels of certain unusual isotopes of strontium in his bones with soil samples from different regions and have found that he was a native of neither Teotihuacan nor Copán. He most likely spent time in other Maya cities and Teotihuacan before coming to Copán in 426 near the age of 50. Archaeologists working at Copán found an even more lavish grave near that of Yax K’uk Mo’ that held a tripod vessel painted with a picture of a Teotihuacanstyle pyramid and over ten thousand jade beads. They initially assumed that it was another king’s tomb, yet analysis of the pelvis indicated that the person was a 50-year-old woman who had given birth to at least one child. Since her tomb contains no glyphs, archaeologists are not certain of her identity, but the grave’s central location suggests that she was the wife of Yax K’uk Mo’. Ranking just below the members of the ruling family, the nobles of Maya society lived in large, spacious houses such as those found in the section of Copán known as the House of the Ofﬁcials. One typical compound there contains between forty and ﬁfty buildings surrounding eleven courtyards. In judging a man’s prominence, the Maya considered all of his relatives on both his father’s and mother’s side. The Mayan word for “nobles” means “he whose descent is known on both sides.”2 Literate in a society where few could read or write, scribes came from the highest ranks of the nobility. When the king’s armies did well in battle, the scribes

WORLD HISTORY in TODAY’S WORLD

The World’s First Chocolate

hen scientists tested the residue found on a deer-shaped vessel from Yax K’uk Mo’s tomb, they discovered traces of theobromine, a caffeinelike molecule found only in chocolate. They guess that Mesoamericans started preparing drinks made from pounded seeds from the cacao (ka-ka-wa in Mayan) tree, perhaps as early as 600 B.C.E. and certainly by the early ﬁfth century, when Yax K’uk Mo’ was buried at Copán. The origins of the English word chocolate are much disputed; the word probably comes from the combination of the Mayan word for “hot” (chocol) with “water” (atl) used by the Nahuatl peoples of Mexico. The Maya did not sweeten the cacao drink but added spices and crushed chile peppers to make a variety of drinks they prized for their foam. When Spaniards introduced chocolate to Europeans in the sixteenth century, they added sugar to the cacao paste and heated it to make it more palatable. The addition of sugar made chocolate irresistible. The annual consumption of chocolate in the United States averages 11.3 pounds (5.13 kg) per person, or 1.5 million tons (1.33 million metric tons).

The Maya believed that cacao could cure a variety of ills, including hemorrhoids and nervous tension. Some Amerindian tribes in Panama have surprisingly low blood pressure, possibly because they consume cacao with every meal. Fresh cacao contains ﬂavonol, a naturally occurring chemical that lowers blood pressure and possibly LDL (“bad cholesterol”). In the past few years, the Mars chocolate bar company and the U.S. National Institutes of Health have cosponsored research to see if they can make either a chocolate beverage or a candy bar that lowers blood pressure. Unfortunately, it is difﬁcult to manufacture a chocolate product with as much ﬂavonol as fresh cacao beans. Some skeptics think the potential beneﬁts in lowered blood pressure or cholesterol, which have yet to be demonstrated conclusively, may be more than offset by the likely weight gain. Although Americans name chocolate as their favorite snack, demand has been ﬂat for the past ﬁve years in weight-conscious America. Sources: New York Times, June 10, 2003, ﬁrst Science page, p. 2; New York Times, February 17, 2004, pp. F5, F10; Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe, The True History of Chocolate (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1996).

enjoyed the best treatment that the king could give them. When the king’s armies lost, they were often taken prisoner. Only those scribes with mathematical skills could maintain the elaborate calendar. Having developed the concept of zero, Maya ritual specialists devised an extraordinarily sophisticated numerical system. Astronomers observed the stars and planets so closely that they could predict eclipses. They were particularly skilled in tracking the movements of Venus, which during some seasons appeared ﬁrst in the evening before any stars, and in others was the last to disappear in the morning. The Maya used their knowledge of celestial bodies to determine auspicious days for inaugurating rulers, conducting elaborate religious ceremonies, or starting wars. The most prosperous ordinary people became merchants specializing in longdistance trade. Salt was the one necessity the Maya had to import because their diet did not provide enough sodium to prevent a deﬁciency. They collected salt from the Yucatán beaches and shipped it in canoes along the ocean’s shore and on interior rivers until it had to be carried by hand. Some of the items traded were luxury goods like jade, shells, and quetzal bird feathers, which ﬂickered blue, gold, or green in the light. The craft specialists who transformed these raw materials into ﬁnely worked goods lived in the small houses of ordinary people. The Maya ﬁrst encountered

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• obsidian

A naturally occurring volcanic glass used by different peoples in the Americas to make ﬁne art objects, dart tips, and knife blades sharper than modern scalpels. The most important good traded by the Maya.

The Americas and the Islands of the Paciﬁc, to 1200 C.E.

gold around the year 800 and learned to work it, yet they made few items from it. They preferred green jade, which they carved and smoothed with saws made of coated string and different types of sandpaper. The most important trade good in the Maya world was obsidian, a naturally occurring volcanic glass. The best material available to the Maya for making tools, obsidian could be worked into ﬁne art objects, dart tips, and knife blades sharper than modern scalpels. Obsidian shattered easily though, and so the Maya also made tools from chert, a ﬂintlike rock that was more durable. Outside the city lived the farmers who provided Copán’s residents with their food supply, since the urban inhabitants could not raise enough food to feed themselves. Their diet consisted of large amounts of maize and smaller amounts of beans, squash, and chili peppers. City dwellers had fruit gardens and were able occasionally to hunt wild game. Since the Maya had no draft animals, most cultivators worked land within a day or two’s walk from the urban center. Their ﬁelds probably marked the limit of each city-state’s direct political control. The Maya practiced swidden agriculture (sometimes called slash-and-burn farming), meaning they farmed the same place for only one or two seasons. Once the fertility of a given plot gave out, cultivators moved to a new site, where they cleared ﬁelds by cutting down trees. They waited for the felled trees and plants to dry, set ﬁre to the brush, and then planted maize in the fertile ashes. Recently, aerial photographs of the Yucatán, Mexico, and Belize have revealed raised ﬁelds dating back to the time of the Maya, which were farmed season after season. The lowest-ranking people in Maya society were the slaves, who were forced to work in the ﬁelds after being taken as prisoners of war. Higher-ranking prisoners of war, drawn from the nobles, were almost always killed in public displays.

The Religious Beliefs of the Maya

• Popul Vuh

One of the few surviving sources in the Mayan language, this oral epic features a series of hip ballgames between the gods and humans. Originally written in Mayan glyphs, it was recorded in the Roman alphabet in the 1500s.

Many Maya rituals featured the spilling of royal blood, which the Maya considered sacred. Surviving paintings from throughout the Maya region depict women pulling thorny vines through their tongues and kings sticking either a stingray spine or a pointed bone tool through the tips of their penises. No surviving text explains exactly why the Maya thought blood sacred, but blood offerings clearly played a key role in their belief system. One of the few Mayan sources that survives, an oral epic named Popul Vuh (POPE-uhl voo), or “The Council Book,” features a series of games in which players on two teams moved the ball by hitting it with their hips and tried to get it past their opponents’ end line. The Maya believed that the earth was recreated each time the hip ballgame was played, and the side seen as being tested by the gods, usually prisoners of war, always lost, after which their blood was spilled in an elaborate ceremony. (See the feature “Movement of Ideas: The Ballgame in Popul Vuh.”) Recorded nearly one thousand years after the decline of the Maya, the Popul Vuh preserves only a part of their rich legends, but scholars have used it in conjunction with surviving texts to piece together the key elements of the Maya belief system. All Maya gods, the Popul Vuh explains, are descended from a divine pair. The Lizard House, the father, invented the Mayan script and supported all learning, while his wife, Lady Rainbow, was a deity of weaving and medicine who also helped women endure the pain of childbirth. Their descendants, the Maya believed, each

The Classic Age of the Maya, 250–910 C.E.

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presided over a different realm: separate gods existed for merchants, hunters, ﬁshermen, soldiers, and the ruling families. Maya rulers sacriﬁced their prisoners of war as offerings to these deities. The Maya communicated with the dead using various techniques. Caves served as portals between the world of the living and the Xibalba (SHE-bal-ba) Underworld described in Popul Vuh. One cave is 2,790 feet (850 m) long; its walls are decorated with drawings of the Hero Twins, the ballgame, and sexual acts. The Maya who visited this and other caves employed enemas to intoxicate themselves so they could see the dead. They performed these enemas by attaching bone tubes, found in large quantities at Maya sites, to leather or rubber bags ﬁlled with different liquids. Surviving drawings make it impossible to identify the liquids, but anthropologists speculate that the enema bags were ﬁlled with wine, chocolate, or hallucinogens made from the peyote cactus.

War, Politics, and the Decline of the Maya

In the past few decades, scholars have Watching a Ballgame Seven contestants devoted considerable energy and inplay the ballgame in front of an attentive genuity to sorting out the relationaudience seated on all four sides. Spectators lean ships among the sixty or so Maya forward with great interest; mothers watch with city-states. Much hinges on the interpretation of a few their arms draped over their children’s shoulders. key phrases that appear in inscriptions: some rulers are This clay model was found in a tomb in Nayarit, said to be someone else’s king, an indication that they ac- in western Mexico, and dates to between cepted another king as their overlord or ruler. It is not 100 B.C.E. and 250 C.E., making it one of the clear what ties bound a subordinate ruler to his superior: earliest representations of the game ever marriage ties, loyalty oaths, military alliances, or perhaps found. (Yale University Art Gallery) a mixture of all three. Because various rulers vied continuously to increase their territory and become each other’s lord, the different Maya city-states devoted considerable resources to war. Armies consisted of foot soldiers, commoners who wore light protection made from either animal skins or padded cotton. Their weapons included spears with obsidian points, slingshots, and darts propelled by a spearthrower. The Maya did not have the bow and arrow, which appeared among the Mississippian peoples to the north around 900 c.e. On the most informal level of conﬂict, a group of soldiers might steal into enemy territory to take captives, while in formal battles, two opposing armies of infantry faced off and showered each other with darts or stones from slingshots. Traps and ambushes were common, and the ﬁghters used both daggers and spears in hand-to-hand combat. The goal of all Maya warfare was to obtain captives. Low-born captives were assigned to work in the maize ﬁelds of nobles, while prisoners of higher status, particularly those from noble families, were held in captivity for long periods of time, sometimes as much as twenty years. In inscriptions rulers brag about how many captives they held at any one time because they wanted to appear more powerful. Rulers also staged public spectacles in which they tore out the hearts of the defeated prisoners or publicly beheaded them.

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MOVEMENT OF IDEAS

The Ballgame in Popul Vuh

he detailed narrative of the Maya epic Popul Vuh describes the destruction of multiple previous worlds and the creation of a new one. The complicated plot involves two sets of ball-playing twins: after disturbing the gods with their play, one pair go to the Xibalba Underworld (derived from the Mayan word for “fear,” “trembling”), where they die at the hands of One and Seven Death, the head lords of Xibalba. The severed head of one of these twins hangs on a tree from which its spittle magically impregnates Lady Blood, who gives birth to the second set of twins, Hunahpu (HOO-nah-pooh) and Xbalanque (sh-bal-on-kay). These Hero Twins, far more skillful than their father and uncle, at ﬁrst trick the gods of the Underworld repeatedly and then defeat them in the ballgame described in the episode below. Eventually they also die, but because the gods grant them another life, they rise at the end of the narrative to become the sun and the moon, creating the upper world or cosmos. The earliest archaeological evidence of the game comes from the Olmec site of El Manatí, located 6 miles (10 km) east of San Lorenzo, where a dozen rubber balls dating to around 500 B.C.E. were found. Almost every Maya city-state had a ball court, usually in the shape of L, with walls around it, located near a major temple. The Maya played this soccer-like game with heavy rubber balls measuring 12 or 18 inches (33 or 50 cm) across. The Maya cooked liquid rubber from latex trees and allowed it to cool and solidify into a heavy mass.

First they entered Dark House. And after that, the messenger of One Death brought their torch, burning when it arrived, along with one cigar apiece. “‘Here is their torch,’ says the lord. ‘They must return the torch in the morning, along with the cigars. They must return them intact,’ say the lords,” the messenger said when he arrived. “Very well,” they said, but they didn’t burn the torch—instead, something that looked like ﬁre was substituted. This was the tail of the macaw, which looked like a torch to the sentries.

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Sometimes the ball-makers used a human skull to make a hollow, less lethal, ball. The game spread throughout the Maya core region and as far north as Snaketown near Phoenix, Arizona, the home of an early Anasazi people who had two ball courts and rubber balls. Since ball courts and balls do not provide enough information to understand how the game was played, anthropologists are closely studying the modern hip ballgames in the few villages near Mazatlán (ma-zát-LAN), Sinaloa (sin-A-loh-a) State in northwestern Mexico, where the game is still played. Two opposing teams of three to ﬁve players try to get the ball past the other team’s end line. After serving with their hands, they propel the heavy rubber balls with their hips. Although players covered their hips with padding, called a “yoke” below, the hips of modern players develop calluses and often become permanently bruised a deep-black color. We cannot be sure that everyone who played the game knew the story of the Hero Twins, but many players probably understood the game as a contest between two teams, one representing good, life, or the hero twins, and the other evil, death, or Xibalba, which was always victorious. This passage from the Popul Vuh describes the ﬁrst test the twins must endure. Source: Popul Vuh: The Deﬁnitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings, trans. Dennis Tedlock (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), pp. 119–122.

And as for the cigars, they just put ﬁreﬂies at the tips of those cigars, which they kept lit all night. “We’ve defeated them,” said the sentries, but the torch was not consumed—it just looked that way. And as for the cigars, there wasn’t anything burning there—it just looked that way. When these things were taken back to the lords: “What’s happening? Where did they come from? Who begot them and bore them? Our hearts are really hurting, because what they’re doing to us is no good. They’re different in looks and different

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in their very being,” they said among themselves. And when they had summoned all the lords: “Let’s play ball, boys,” the boys were told. And then they were asked by One and Seven Death: “Where might you have come from? Please name it,” Xibalba said to them. “Well, wherever did we come from? We don’t know,” was all they said. They didn’t name it. “Very well then, we’ll just go play ball, boys,” Xibalba told them. “Good,” they said. “Well, this is the one we should put in play, here’s our rubber ball,” said the Xibalbans. “No thanks. This is the one to put in, here’s ours,” said the boys. “No it’s not. This is the one we should put in,” the Xibalbans said again. “Very well,” said the boys. “After all, it’s just a decorated one,” said the Xibalbans. “Oh no it’s not. It’s just a skull, we say in return,” said the boys. “No it’s not,” said the Xibalbans. “Very well,” said Hunahpu. When it was sent off by Xibalba, the ball was stopped by Hunahpu’s yoke [hip-pad]. And then, while Xibalba watched, the White Dagger came out from inside the ball. It went clattering, twisting all over the ﬂoor of the court. “What’s that!” said Hunahpu and Xbalanque. “Death is the only thing you want for us! Wasn’t it you who sent a summons to us, and wasn’t it your messenger who went? Truly, take pity on us, or else we’ll just leave,” the boys told them. And this is what had been ordained for the

boys: that they should have died right away, right there, defeated by that knife. But it wasn’t like that. Instead, Xibalba was again defeated by the boys. “Well, don’t go, boys. We can still play ball, but we’ll put yours into play,” the boys were told. “Very well,” they said, and this was time for their rubber ball, so the ball was dropped in. And after that, they speciﬁed the prize: “What should our prize be?” asked the Xibalbans. “It’s yours for the asking,” was all the boys said. “We’ll just win four bowls of ﬂowers,” said the Xibalbans. “Very well. What kinds of ﬂowers?” the boys asked Xibalba. “One bowl of red petals, one bowl of white petals, one bowl of yellow petals, and one bowl of whole ones,” said the Xibalbans. “Very well,” said the boys, and then their ball was dropped in. The boys were their equals in strength and made many plays, since they only had very good thoughts. Then the boys gave themselves up in defeat, and the Xibalbans were glad when they were defeated: “We’ve done well. We’ve beaten them on the ﬁrst try,” said the Xibalbans. “Where will they go to get the ﬂowers?” they said in their hearts. “Truly, before the night is over, you must hand over our ﬂowers and our prize,” the boys, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, were told by Xibalba. “Very well. So we’re also playing ball at night,” they said when they accepted their charge. And after that, the boys entered Razor House, the second test of Xibalba.

QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS 쑺 What tricks do the hero twins play on the lords of the Xibalba underworld? How do the Xibalba lords retaliate? 쑺 What happens that is unexpected? Why do the twins lose?

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Celebrating a Maya Victory in Battle This colorful fresco in a Maya tomb in Bonampak, Mexico, commemorates the victory of the ruler, who wears an elaborate headdress and a jacket made from jaguar skin. He relentlessly thrusts his spear downwards and grasps the hair of a prisoner whose outstretched hand implores his captor. These murals, which reveal so much about the lives of the Maya, were suddenly abandoned around 800, a time when work on many other monuments stopped abruptly, marking the end of the classic era. (© Charles and Josette Lenars/Corbis)

At the peak of Maya power in 750, the population reached eight to ten million. Sometime around the year 800, the Maya city-states entered an era of decline, evident because site after site has produced unﬁnished monuments abruptly abandoned by stoneworkers. So sudden was the decline that workers at some sites seem to have stopped carving after completing a single face of a square monument. Archaeologists have different explanations for the Maya decline. In the seventh and eighth centuries, two city-states, Tikal in northern Guatemala and Kalak’mul (KA-lack-muhl) 60 miles (100 km) to the north, formed blocs of allied city-states that engaged in unending warfare. The drain on resources may have depopulated the Maya cities. The fragile agricultural base, with its heavy use of slash-and-burn farming, depleted the nutrients in the ﬁelds close to the political centers. In some places, a sustained drought between 800 and 1050 may have dealt

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the ﬁnal blow to the ecosystem. Some residents of the different Maya city-states may have relocated to defensible locations in the northern Yucatán after 910. Maya culture revived during the post-classic period (910–1300), and the city of Chichen Itza (CHEE-chen It-za) in the northern Yucatán, which ﬂourished between 1000 and 1200, combined classic elements of Maya and central Mexican architecture and city planning. The ball court at Chichen Itza measures 545 feet (166 m) by 223 feet (68 m), making it the largest ball court in the Americas. The Maya continued to create monuments, but instead of carving them in stone, they used paint, which has since worn off. Although Maya culture did not die out after 1200, the Maya never again matched the social stratiﬁcation, specialized occupations, and large urban centers of the classic period.

The Northern Peoples, 500 B.C.E.–1200 C.E.

omplex society arose north of the Rio Grande, in the area occupied by the modern United States and Canada, relatively late—after the decline of the Maya—and possibly because of contact with Mesoamerica. The North Americans planted maize as the Mesoamericans did, and their cities resembled their Maya counterparts. The ﬁrst complex societies in North America, both dating to after 700 c.e., were the Mississippian culture in the central United States and the Anasazi (AH-nah-sah-zee) culture in the southwest United States. Until about 500 b.c.e., the peoples living to the north continued to hunt and gather in small bands of around sixty people, much like the residents of Monte Verde, Chile (see Chapter 1), and, as a result, their communities remained small. A major change occurred when the Adena (uh-DEE-nuh) (500 b.c.e.–100 c.e.) created earthworks along the Ohio River Valley in Ohio and Illinois. Their settlements were not large urban centers, but these earthworks demonstrate that their leaders could organize large-scale labor projects. The Adena peoples built mounds containing rich burials, most likely of their leaders, a sign of increasing social stratiﬁcation. Some mounds form perfect circles, while others are in the shape of animals, like the famous 1,300-foot (400-m) Serpent Mound of Ohio that portrays a snake eating an egg. Living in circular houses constructed from tree trunks and bark, the Adena ate a diet of wild animals, ﬁsh, and plants they gathered in the forest. They did not farm. The successors to the Adena, the Hopewell peoples (200 b.c.e.–500 c.e.), built larger earthworks in the valleys of the Ohio, Illinois, and Mississippi Rivers. They occupied a wide region extending from western New York to Kansas and from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes. Unlike the Adena, the Hopewell peoples cultivated maize, beans, and squash. Taller and more elaborate than the Adena mounds, the Hopewell earthworks formed clusters of circles, rectangles, and polygons linked by dirt causeways. These earthworks also contained graves of their leaders, who were buried with various goods. Archaeologists have reconstructed the Hopewell trade routes by locating the sources of unusual items, such as alligator teeth and skulls from Florida, mapping the sites where those items appear, and then inferring the trade routes by linking the source with its various destinations. The Hopewell trading networks, more

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extensive than those of the Adena, extended from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean; with their neighbors to the south in modern-day Mexico, they traded conch shells, shark teeth, and obsidian. The Mississippian peoples (800–1450) were the ﬁrst northern people to build the large urban centers that characterize complex society. They occupied over a hundred different sites concentrated in the Mississippi River Valley. Mississippian towns followed a Maya plan, with temples or palaces on earthen mounds around a central plaza. The Mississippian peoples were the ﬁrst in the Americas to develop the bow and arrow, sometime around 900 c.e. The largest surviving mound, in the Cahokia (kuh-HOKE-ee-uh) Mounds of Collinsville, Illinois (just east of Saint Louis), is 100 feet (30 m) high and 1,000 feet (300 m) long and was built in fourteen stages. The sheer magnitude of this earthwork testiﬁes to the power the leaders had over their subjects. Cahokia, with a population of thirty thousand, held eighty-four other mounds, some for temples, some for mass burials. One mound contained the corpses of 110 young women, evidence of a sacriﬁcial cult to either a leader or a deity. The other major complex society of the north appeared in modern-day Colorado, Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico: the Anasazi. Their centers also show signs of contact with the Maya, most notably in the presence of ball courts. During the Pueblo period (700–1300), the Anasazi built two kinds of houses: pit houses carved out of the ground and pueblos made from bricks, mortar, and log roofs. One pueblo structure in Chaco, New Mexico, had eight hundred rooms in ﬁve stories, home to one thousand residents. After 1150 the Anasazi began to build their pueblos next to cliff faces, as at Mesa Verde, Colorado. They used irrigation to farm, and their craftspeople made distinctive pottery, cotton and feather clothing, and turquoise jewelry. These two North American complex societies postdate the Maya, and their many similarities to the Maya suggest extensive contact with them. Like so many other urban centers in the Americas, Cahokia Mounds and Mesa Verde declined suddenly after 1200 c.e., when their populations dispersed, and archaeologists do not know why.

The Peoples of the Andes, 3100 B.C.E.–1000 C.E.

everal complex societies arose, ﬂourished, and collapsed between 3100 b.c.e. and 1000 c.e. in the Andean region, which includes modern-day Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, and Chile in South America. These complex societies predated the ﬁrst Mesoamerican complex society of the Olmecs by nearly two thousand years, indicating that the two regions developed independently of each other. All the Andean complex societies built city-states with large urban centers, though never on the scale of Teotihuacan. Archaeologists have identiﬁed the largest urban centers and know when they reached their greatest population, but, since there are no documents, they know less about the cities and their relationships to the surrounding villages.

The Peoples of the Andes, 3100 B.C.E.–1000 C.E.

The Andean mountain chain runs up the center of the Andean region, which extends east to the edge of the dense Amazon rainforest and west to the Paciﬁc coast. Although at a higher altitude than Mesoamerica, this region has a similarly uneven distribution of rainfall. In the east, rain falls heavily, while to the west, almost none falls. When agriculture spread from Mexico to these dryer regions, the residents collected rainwater and brought it to their ﬁelds by a system of channels. The main staple of the diet was potatoes, supplemented by squash, chili peppers, beans, and sometimes maize, which could grow only at lower altitudes. The earliest strains of domesticated squash date to about 8000 b.c.e. Sometime around 5000 b.c.e., the Andeans domesticated the llama and the alpaca. Both animals could carry loads of approximately 100 pounds (50 kg) over distances of 10 to 12 miles (16–20 km) a day. The Andeans never rode these animals or raised them to eat. Their main source of animal protein was the domesticated guinea pig. The earliest large urban settlement in the Americas, at the site of Caral (KA-ral) in the Andes, lies some 100 miles (160 km) north of Lima, the capital of modern Peru, and only 14 miles (22 km) from the Paciﬁc coast. People have known about the site since the early twentieth century because its structures are prominent and so clearly visible from the air, but only in 2001 did archaeologists realize that it dated to 3100 b.c.e. Since then they have found more than twenty satellite communities around Caral.

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• Caral

The earliest complex society (3100– 1800 b.c.e.) in the Americas, whose main urban center was located at Caral, in modern-day Peru, in the Andes Mountains.

Latin America’s First Civilization at Caral, Peru Since 1900 people have known about the Caral site, with its ﬁve smaller pyramids and one large central structure, but only recently were archaeologists able to date the site to 3100 B.C.E. Caral was a large city-state, with some twenty smaller communities in the immediate neighborhood. Archaeologists have found clear signs of social stratiﬁcation: the wealthiest residents lived on the tops of the pyramids while the poorer lived on lower levels or on the outskirts of the town. (© George Steinmetz)

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• Chavin

CHAPTER 5

Andean complex society (1200– 200 b.c.e.) in modernday Peru. Best known for its temples and large stone sculptures of animals.

The Americas and the Islands of the Paciﬁc, to 1200 C.E.

The Caral site contains ﬁve small pyramid-shaped structures and one large one: the Pirámide Mayor (PI-ra-me-day my-your), which stands 60 feet (18 m) tall and covers 5 acres (.02 km) (see the table “The World’s Largest Pyramids,” included in the feature “Visual Evidence: The Imposing Capital of Teotihuacan”). Inside the pyramid, archaeologists found a set of thirty-two carved ﬂutes made from condor and pelican bone with decorations showing birds and monkeys, possibly deities. The three thousand or so people at the site included wealthy residents living in large dwellings on top of the pyramids, craftsmen in smaller houses at their base, and unskilled laborers in much simpler dwellings located around the perimeters of the town. Caral, like Uruk in Mesopotamia or Harappa in India, showed clear signs of social stratiﬁcation. It was probably a city-state, not an early empire. The history of the site reﬂects the rise-and-fall pattern so common to the early cities of the Americas and also to the Indus Valley (see Chapter 3). Agricultural improvements led to dramatic urban growth, followed by sudden decline. Usually no direct evidence reveals why a given city was abandoned, but drought and overfarming may have caused agricultural productivity to decline and food to run out. Caral was abandoned in 1800 b.c.e. In 1200 b.c.e., more than one thousand years after Caral was occupied, a major urban center arose at Chavin (cha-VEEN), about 60 miles (100 km) north of Caral (see Map 5.1). Chavin cities have large temples, some in the shape of a U, and impressive stone sculptures. The statues at the temple in Chavin combine elements of different animals such as jaguars, snakes, and eagles with human body parts to create composite human-animal sculptures, possibly of deities. In 350 b.c.e., during the last years of the Chavin culture, several distinct regional cultures arose on the south coast of Peru that are most famous for the Nazca (NAZ-ka) lines, a series of earthworks near the modern town of Nazca. The Nazca people scraped away the dark surface layer of the desert to reveal a lighter-colored soil beneath; they then used the dark earth to build embankments along the trenches. No one knows how people working on the ground created these designs, which are still visible from the air today. Some of the Nazca lines run 6 miles (10 km) in a straight line through the desert; others form elaborate designs of spiders, whales, and monkeys, which may have been offerings to or depictions of their gods. No large cities of the Nazca people have been found, but the Nazca lines, like the earthworks of the Adena and Hopewell peoples, show that their rulers were able to mobilize large numbers of laborers. Occupied between 600 and 1000 c.e., the biggest Andean political center was at Tiwanaku (TEE-wan-a-koo), 12 miles (20 km) south of Lake Titicaca (tit-tee-kaka), southern Bolivia, at the high altitude of 11,800 feet (3,600 m) above sea level. The rulers of the Tiwanaku city-state, archaeologists surmise, exercised some kind of political control over a large area extending through modern-day Bolivia, Argentina, northern Chile, and southern Peru. At its peak, Tiwanaku was home to some forty thousand people. Its farmers could support such a large population because they used a raised-ﬁeld system: the irrigation channels they dug around their ﬁelds helped to keep the crops from freezing on chilly nights. Sometime around 700 to 800 c.e., the Andean peoples, alone among the peoples living in the Americas, learned how to work metal intensively. Unlike the Maya, the Andeans discovered how to extract metallic ore from rocks and heat different metals to form alloys. They made bronze both by combining copper with tin, as was common in Eurasia, and also by combining copper with arsenic.

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One site in Peru, in continuous use after 700, had draft furnaces in which families melted fuel and metal ore together, producing slag with copper in it, which they extracted and worked into ingots, small sheets, or “ax money”—ax-shaped pieces of metal tied together in bundles and placed in tombs as an offering for the dead. Andean graves have produced the only metal tools found so far in the Americas. Some are oversized, some unﬁnished, yet all were clearly designed for display. Most Andean metal was used to make decorations worn by people or was placed on buildings, not for tools or weapons. The Andean use of metal challenges yet another preconception prompted by the complex societies of Eurasia. In Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China, people switched to metal tools—ﬁrst bronze, then iron—as soon as they learned to mine metal ore and make alloys. But the Andean peoples continued to use their traditional tools of wood and stone and used their new discovery of metal quite differently: for ceremonial and decorative purposes.

The Polynesian Voyages of Exploration, 1000 B.C.E.–1350 C.E.

lmost all the societies of the Americas discussed above, including the Maya, were land-based. Their residents used canoes for trips on inland waterways and for occasional voyages hugging the ocean shore, but they focused their energies on farming and building cities. In contrast, the peoples of the Paciﬁc, who lived on the islands inside the Polynesian Triangle, spent much of their lives on the sea. Like the residents of the Americas, they developed in isolation from Eurasia, and like them, they developed quite differently from the Eurasians. Although their urban centers never became the large cities of complex societies, their societies were stratiﬁed and their leaders mobilized large numbers of their subjects for labor projects, often the construction of stone monuments. Humans had reached Australia in about 60,000 b.c.e. (see Chapter 1), and they ventured into the Paciﬁc sometime after that. Starting around 1000 b.c.e., when the Fiji islands of Tonga and Samoa were ﬁrst settled, early voyagers crossed the Paciﬁc Ocean using only the stars to navigate and populated most of the islands of the Paciﬁc. Their voyages resulted in one of the longest yet least-documented seaborne migrations in human history. How and why did these ancient voyagers travel so far? These questions have excited a century of lively debate and are far from settled.

The Settlement of the Polynesian Triangle

The islands of the Paciﬁc fall into two groups: those lying off Australia and Indonesia—Micronesia (mike-ro-NEEzhuh), Melanesia (mel-uh-NEE-zhuh), and New Guinea— and those within the Polynesian Triangle, an imaginary triangle with sides 4,000 miles (6,500 km) long linking Hawai‘i, Easter Island, and New Zealand (see Map 5.2). With seventy times more water than islands, the Polynesian Triangle contains several thousand islands ranging in size from tiny

• Polynesian Triangle An imaginary triangle with sides 4,000 miles (6,500 km) long linking Hawai‘i, Easter Island, and New Zealand and containing several thousand islands.

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120°E

160°E

140°E

180°

160°W

140°W

ASIA Taiwan

Philippine Sea

Tropic of Cancer

Hawaiian Islands (300 C.E.)

Mariana Islands

Philippine Islands

Guam

M I C R O N E S I A

Borneo

NORTH AMERICA 20°N

Saipan

Palau Islands

120°W

PA CIF IC OCEA N

Marshall Islands

Caroline Islands Bismark Archipelago (1500 B.C.E.)

Kiribati

New Guinea

Equator 0°

Solomon Islands

M E L A N E S I A Coral Sea

Vanuatu

New Caledonia

Fiji Islands (1500 B.C.E.)

AUSTRALIA

Marquesas Islands

Samoa (1000 B.C.E.)

Tuamotu Archipelago Tahiti

Cook Tonga Islands Islands (1000 B.C.E.)

20°S Mangareva

Austral Islands

Tropic of Capricorn Rapa Nui (Easter Island) (400 C.E.)

Origin of Austronesian migration Polynesia Melanesia

Aotearoa (New Zealand) (1350 C.E.)

40°S

Micronesia Pacific migrations July 1976 re-creation of Tahiti-Hawai‘i voyage (1000 B.C.E.) Date of settlement

Interactive Map

0 0

500 1000 Km. 500

1000 Mi.

MAP 5.2 Paciﬁc Migration Routes Before 1500 Starting around 1000 B.C.E., the peoples living in Micronesia and Melanesia began to go to islands lying to the east in the Paciﬁc Ocean. At ﬁrst, they took canoes to the islands they could see with the naked eye. But later they traveled thousands of miles without navigational instruments, reaching Hawai‘i before 300 C.E., Easter Island by 400 C.E., and New Zealand in 1350 C.E.

uninhabited atolls to the largest, New Zealand, with an area of 103,695 square miles (268,570 sq km). The triangle’s vast area can hold the continental United States twice over with room to spare. The islands lying close to Indonesia and Australia were settled ﬁrst. As the discovery of Mungo Man in Australia, which dates to circa 60,000 b.c.e., showed (see Chapter 1), ancient peoples could go from one island to the next in small crafts. Since the islands of Micronesia and Melanesia were located close together, the next island was always within sight. But as these ancient settlers ventured farther east, the islands became farther apart: between Easter Island and Peru lie 2,250 miles (3,600 km) of open ocean. Sometime before 300 c.e. the ﬁrst settlers reached Hawai‘i, and after the year 400 c.e. they had reached Easter Island, or Rapa Nui (RA-pah nwee). Their ﬁnal destination, in 1350 c.e., was New Zealand. All the spoken languages within the Polynesian Triangle belong to the Oceanic language family, a subset of the Eastern Austronesian family. (Western Austronesian languages, including Vietnamese [see Chapter 4], are spoken in Southeast Asia.) Languages within the Oceanic family differ only slightly among themselves; while the Tahitians say, “tabu,” meaning “forbidden” or “prohibited,” the Hawaiian pronunciation is “kabu.” (This word has entered English as taboo.)

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The Polynesian Voyages of Exploration, 1000 B.C.E.–1350 C.E.

The most distinctive artifact that reveals the direction of migration in the Paciﬁc is low-ﬁred brown pottery with lines and geometric decorations made with a pointed instrument. This Lapita pottery is named for a site in Melanesia. The oldest examples found so far were unearthed on sites in the Bismarck Archipelago, northeast of New Guinea. Since pottery with Lapita (la-PEE-tuh) designs appear ﬁrst on Melanesia in 1500 b.c.e. and then 500 years later on Tonga and Samoa, archaeologists have reconstructed the ancient route of migration starting from Asia’s Paciﬁc coast and traveling east.

Polynesian Seafaring Societies

While historians concur on the overall direction of travel, they disagree about almost everything else. Did the settlers intentionally explore the distant islands of the Paciﬁc? Or were these mariners simply blown off course in the easterly direction of the prevailing winds? Since they had no nautical instruments, how did they know where they were going? Most observers agree that the original settlers must have traveled by canoe. Unlike in a rowboat, rowers in a canoe can face forward and see where they are going. It is not known when canoes ﬁrst were developed, but once their shape was perfected, it continued to be used for hundreds of years with no major modiﬁcations. Different peoples have used various coverings stretched over a light wooden frame: bark in heavily wooded areas like the temperate United States, and skins farther north, where trees were scarce. Today’s ﬁberglass canoes have the same basic design. However, in rough water canoes are not stable and can easily capsize. Sometime in the ﬁrst century c.e., the peoples of the Paciﬁc developed a double canoe, which consisted of two canoes connected by a wooden frame lashed together with rope. Much more stable than single canoes, double canoes could also carry more cargo on the platform between the two boats. A modern double canoe 50 feet (15 m) long can carry a load weighing 18,000 pounds (8,165 kg). Double canoes were propelled by a sail, an essential requirement for long ocean voyages, and could reach speeds of 100 to 150 miles (160–240 km) per day. Double canoes, however, had drawbacks. Since they had no roofs, mariners would get wet during rainstorms. If one canoe sprang a leak and began to ﬁll with water, it would sink, pushing the other canoe higher and the sinking canoe even lower. In storms the two canoes could easily break apart, resulting in the loss of all the baggage on the platform. The people of Tahiti and Hawai‘i were using this type of vessel in the eighteenth century when the Europeans ﬁrst sketched them. Many historians assume that Polynesian life in earlier centuries resembled that in the early European descriptions of the villages of Tahiti and Hawai‘i. The predominantly male chiefs and their kin lived lives of leisure, supported by gifts of food from the lower-ranking populace. Ordinary people tended crops in ﬁelds, which were often irrigated, and also hunted wildlife, mostly small birds. Although some earlier scholars wondered if the settlement of the Paciﬁc was the purely accidental result of boats being blown off course, many modern analysts think it resulted from both deliberate settlement and accidental exploration. They know that the early settlers of both sexes were traveling in boats, because if no women had traveled, the settlers could not have reproduced and the different islands would not have been populated. They also know that the settlers carried dogs and small rats because these animals became the main sources of protein for the settlers on the islands.

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• Lapita pottery Named for a site in Melanesia, a low-ﬁred brown pottery with lines and geometric decorations made with a pointed instrument. In use between 1500 and 1000 b.c.e., it reveals the direction of migration into the Paciﬁc.

• double canoe

A sailing vessel made by connecting two canoes with rope to a wooden frame. Used by the ancestors of modern Polynesians for ocean voyages. Capable of speeds of 100 to 150 miles (160–240 km) per day.

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A Double Canoe on the Paciﬁc This painting of masked rowers in the Sandwich Islands is one of the earliest Western paintings of a double canoe, the primary mode of transportation throughout the Paciﬁc. Notice that a wooden frame connected two canoes of identical size. The sail gave the canoes additional speed. (National Library of Australia)

The voyagers also carried plants, most likely in pots, to all the islands they reached. The staple crops of the Polynesian diet, breadfruit and taro, dispersed throughout the Paciﬁc. Breadfruit, a seedless fruit with the texture of bread when baked, can be quite ﬁlling; taro is an edible starchy root plant that is pounded before being eaten. The distribution of two other plants points to early contacts between the Polynesian islands and South America: the sweet potato and the coconut. It seems most likely that the sweet potato originated in South America and later spread throughout the Paciﬁc; the coconut, in contrast, appears ﬁrst in Asia and later in Latin America. A recent archaeological ﬁnd provides further evidence that the voyagers traveled all the way to Chile. Bones found at the site of El Arenal (ell AH-ray-nahl) in Chile show that chickens occupied the site between approximately 1304 and 1424. Chickens did not originally live in the Americas. Prior to this ﬁnd, many scholars believed that European settlers introduced chickens to the Americas in the 1500s (see Chapter 15), but the similarities between the Chilean and Polynesian chickens suggest that American chickens originally came from Polynesia. The Polynesians may have followed large sea mammals, possibly orca or bottlenose dolphins, as they migrated for long periods of time over great distances. The ﬁrst European observers were struck by the Polynesians’ ability to travel long distances—sometimes up to several hundreds of miles or kilometers—to go deepsea ﬁshing. Most puzzling to modern observers is how the Polynesians were able to travel such large distances using only the stars for navigation. In 1976, an anthropologist at the University of Hawai‘i and several others decided to see if it was possible to sail, without navigational aids, the full distance of 2,400 miles (3,800 km) from Hawai‘i to Tahiti. They built a facsimile of a traditional double canoe out of modern materials like ﬁberglass.

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Because no one in Hawai‘i knew the traditional method of navigation by the stars, the Polynesian Voyaging Society sought the help of a skilled sailor who lived in Micronesia, “Mau” Pius Piailug (MOW pee-US PEE-eye-luke). Identifying the prevailing winds through careful study of the waves, he used the changing position of the stars each day to determine the boat’s position. He guided the boat all the way to Tahiti on a voyage that took thirty-three days to complete and that many Paciﬁc peoples celebrated as evidence of their ancestors’ accomplishments. Piailug did not make the return trip home, but in 1980 the Polynesian Voyaging Society sponsored a second voyage, this time piloted by a Hawaiian native, that made the round trip from Hawai‘i to Tahiti. Once navigation by the stars brought boats close to land, observant navigators used other means to pinpoint the exact location of the islands. They became skilled at following the ﬂight routes of migratory birds. Certain birds nest on land and then ﬂy far out to sea each day to look for ﬁsh before returning to their nests in the evening. Boobies ﬂy 30 to 50 miles (50–80 km) each day; terns and noddies, 18 to 25 miles (30–40 km). When sighting these birds, ancient sailors knew whether land was nearby and how close it was. Although the history of the Eastern Hemisphere may suggest that long ocean voyages required large boats and navigational instruments like a compass, the Polynesian Voyaging Society sailings showed that the ancestors of the Polynesians could cross the Paciﬁc in double canoes. They used nonmechanical means of navigation, like observing the movements of birds, ocean currents, and the position of stars. Like the peoples of the Americas who farmed without the wheel, the plow, or draft animals, the Polynesians remind us that the peoples of the Western Hemisphere developed different ways of adapting to their environments than those living in the Eastern Hemisphere, from whom they remained isolated.

The Mystery of Easter Island

These techniques may have sufﬁced to reach the island chains of Hawai‘i and Tahiti, but no one has a good explanation for how the ancestors of the Polynesians reached Easter Island. The easternmost inhabited island in the Paciﬁc, Easter Island lies 1,300 miles (2,100 km) southeast of its nearest neighbor, Pitcairn Island, and 2,250 miles (3,600 km) off the coast of Chile. These distances are less than the 2,400 miles (3,800 km) between Hawai‘i and Tahiti, but since Easter Island is a single island only 14 miles (23 km) across at its widest point, not part of an island chain, it would have been extremely difﬁcult for ancient navigators to locate. It was probably settled in 300 c.e. by a small party of Polynesians blown far off their original course. Since linguists believe that the Easter Island language retains many more archaic features than that of its neighbors, the early settlers probably had little contact with the other peoples of Oceania after they arrived on Easter Island. Easter Island has two names, neither of which is original. Most English speakers refer to it as Easter Island because a Dutch navigator ﬁrst glimpsed the island on Easter Day, 1722. In the nineteenth century Polynesian sailors named the island Rapa Nui after the Polynesian Island Rapa, 2,400 mi (3,850 km) to the west, the name currently in use by Polynesian speakers. The people of Easter Island, like those elsewhere in the Paciﬁc, subsisted on a diet of sweet potatoes, taro, and sugarcane supplemented by chicken, their only domesticated animal. Their garbage pits contain bones of dolphin, porpoise, and

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tuna, an indication that they also engaged in deep-sea ﬁshing. With no metal, they had tools of stone, wood, and bone. All early European visitors to Easter Island noticed the huge statues of volcanic tufa stone, called moai (MOH-ai), that dot the island, some taller than 70 feet (21 m). The islanders began to construct the statues during the island’s most prosperous period, starting in 1000 c.e., when the population reached some ﬁfteen thousand. The most recent count of the moai statues is 887.3 Some stand on platforms that hold up to ﬁfteen statues. The average weight is around 10 tons (9 metric tons), but the heaviest weighs a massive 270 tons (245 metric tons) (it was never moved from its quarry). No two statues are identical. Some have designs showing tattoos and loincloths. Local oral traditions hold that the statues portray Moai Figures, Easter Island The giant stone ancestral leaders. When alive, the leaders commissioned ﬁgures, or moai, of Easter Island portray ancestral a statue of themselves that remained horizontal; after leaders. When alive, the leaders commissioned a they died, the statues were placed in an upright posistatue of themselves that remained horizontal. After tion and inlays of coral and other rock were inserted they died, the statues were placed in an upright into the eye sockets. Many of these faces were topped position, and eye inlays of coral and other rock were with a chunk of red stone to represent a headdress or a inserted into the eye sockets. The chunk of red stone hat with red feathers. The island was divided into small on the top of this moai represents a headdress. bands, whose leaders built the monuments as an ex(Andreas M. Gross/Westend 61/Alamy) pression of their power. Competition would account for the variation in height of the monuments; as leaders sought to outbuild one another, they erected everhigher statues. How could a Stone Age people with no metal tools make statues of such size and transport them? Earlier analysts proposed that the statues must have been brought by outsiders from South America or even outer space, but modern scholars concur that these statues were built and erected by indigenous peoples with no outside assistance. Sculptors used stone choppers and water to hew each statue’s basic shape from the soft volcanic rock. In 1998, Jo Anne Van Tilburg designed an experiment as innovative as the Polynesian Voyaging Society’s sailing from Hawai‘i to Tahiti. She found that between ﬁfty and seventy people working ﬁve hours a day for a week could move a 12-ton (11-metric-ton) statue 9 miles (14.4 km). Some think that once the stone was at its destination, the Easter Islanders made a series of ramps from dirt, each steeper than the next, to move the statues into a standing position; others think they must have used ropes to hoist the statues into place. Tilburg’s ﬁndings suggest that the islanders used a wooden frame, giant logs that functioned as rollers, or both to pull the statues from the quarry to their destinations. Although the island has no trees now, it did in the past. One of the largest was a palm tree that grew over 65 feet tall (20 m).

• moai

The name for the 887 statues, probably of ancestral leaders, made from tufa volcanic rock and erected on Easter Island around 1000 c.e. The largest are more than 70 feet (21 m) high and weigh more than 270 tons.

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Sometime around 1600 the Easter Islanders stopped making moai. In the end, the different chiefs made war against each other so intensively and for so long, pausing only to create these monuments, that they used up their resources. The activities of the Easter Islanders resulted in the total degradation of their environment: no trees or large animals remained in the eighteenth century. The only large bones available on the island were those of humans, which the islanders worked into ﬁshhooks, and they used human hair to make ropes, textiles, and ﬁshnets, a chilling demonstration of survival with few natural resources.

The Impact of Humans on New Zealand

New Zealand was the ﬁnal island in the Paciﬁc to be settled by humans. The ﬁrst artifacts made by humans appear in a layer of volcanic ash dating to circa 1350. Studies of mitochondrial DNA (see Chapter 1) show that the indigenous Maori people of New Zealand were descended from some seventy different female ancestors, indicating a founding population of more than one hundred settlers. These settlers had a profound effect on the New Zealand environment. Like the Easter Islanders, they demonstrated that environmental damage is not simply a modern development. Within a century after their arrival, twenty different species of birds had died out, and hunters had killed more than 160,000 giant moa birds. Surviving skeletal remains indicate that some twenty different species of moa once ﬂourished on the island; the tallest stood over 10 feet (3 m) tall. After the residents had eliminated the large birds, they preyed on large mammals like seals and sea lions until those populations were also depleted. The hunters then targeted smaller animals. As the supply of wild animals dwindled, the residents became more dependent on slash-and-burn agriculture for their food supply, destroying an estimated 40 percent of the island’s forest cover.4 We do not know about the social structure of the original settlers because, like all other Polynesian peoples, they had no writing system. When the ﬁrst Europeans arrived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they found many small warring bands leading an arduous existence that was the unintended result of their ancestors’ overhunting and overﬁshing.

Chapter Review

Download the MP3 audio ﬁle of the Chapter Review and listen to it on the go.

he experience of the peoples living in the Americas, including Yax K’uk Mo’, and the islands of the Paciﬁc repeatedly demonstrates that the path taken to complex society by peoples of the Eastern Hemisphere was not the only possible one. After 7000 b.c.e. the peoples of the Americas and the Paciﬁc Islands lived in almost total isolation from Eurasia. During the long period of separation, they developed very different techniques of adapting to their environments.

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KEY TERMS Yax K’uk Mo’ (114) Mesoamerica (117) Olmec (118) Long Count (119) Teotihuacan (120) Maya (120) Copán (124) obsidian (126) Popul Vuh (126) Caral (133) Chavin (134) Polynesian Triangle (135) Lapita pottery (137) double canoe (137) moai (140)

The Americas and the Islands of the Paciﬁc, to 1200 C.E.

How did the development of agriculture and the building of early cities in Mesoamerica differ from that in Mesopotamia, India, and China? The ﬁrst agriculture in Mesoamerica arose on the high plateau of Mexico, not in river valleys. The ﬁrst farmers used digging sticks instead of the plow or the wheel so common in Eurasia, and they had no domesticated animals. Even so, they built imposing cities like Teotihuacan and the unusual colossal heads of the Olmecs.

What has the decipherment of the Mayan script revealed about Maya governance, society, religion, and warfare? The decipherment of the Mayan writing system in the 1970s brought new understanding of the period between 250 and 910 c.e. Rulers like Yax K’uk Mo’ stood at the top of social hierarchy; below them were their royal kin, then nobles, ordinary people, and, most pitiable of all, war captives who became either slaves or sacriﬁcial victims. The many Maya rulers were locked in constant warfare, hoping to capture their enemies and dreading capture themselves. Capture might mean having to play the ballgame in an unequal contest: when the captive ﬁnally admitted defeat, the triumphant captors would hold a ceremony and spill his blood. The Maya gods played this game as well; the creation of the world, the Popul Vuh narrative reveals, resulted from the defeat of human twins in a cosmic ballgame by the gods of the underworld.

What were the similarities between the complex societies of the northern peoples and those of Mesoamerica? What do they suggest about contact? Like the Mesoamericans, the northern peoples at Cahokia Mounds and Mesa Verde planted maize, beans, and squash, and their cities contain characteristically Mesoamerican architectural elements, such as a central plaza and ball courts. Later than the Maya, both complex societies may have developed as a result of contacts with Mesoamerica.

How did the history of complex society in the Andes differ from that in Mesoamerica? Certain striking differences distinguished the Andean complex societies from those in Mesoamerica. The Andean diet was potato-based, and the residents only occasionally ate maize, the Mesoamerican staple, which they grew at lower altitudes. Also unlike the Mesoamericans, the Andeans domesticated animals—the llama and the alpaca—and they knew how to mine metal and make alloys. These differences all suggest that there was little contact between the Andean peoples and those living in Mesoamerica.

Where did the early settlers of the Paciﬁc Islands come from, and where did they go? What vessels did they use, and how did they navigate? Starting sometime before 1000 b.c.e., the ancestors of the Polynesians departed from mainland Southeast Asia and moved from one island in the Paciﬁc to the

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next. Traveling in double canoes, navigating by the stars, WEB RESOURCES and observing ocean currents and bird ﬂight patterns, they landed ﬁrst in Hawai‘i and then in Easter Island. The Pronunciation Guide ﬁnal place in the world to be settled, circa 1350 c.e., was Interactive Maps New Zealand, which lay far from any continental landMAP 5.1 Complex Societies in the Americas, mass. The early settlers of both Easter Island and New Zeaca. 1200 B.C.E. land overﬁshed the nearby waters and exterminated many MAP 5.2 Paciﬁc Migration Routes Before 1500 of the large animals on the islands, leaving themselves Primary Sources with seriously depleted food supplies. Chapter Objectives The settlement of New Zealand marked the close of ACE Multiple-Choice Quiz the ﬁrst long chapter in world history: the settlement of Flashcards all habitable regions of the globe that had begun over a million years earlier with the departure of the earliest hominids from Africa. After 1350, no unoccupied land was left other than Antarctica, where humans can survive only with the help of modern technology. After that date, people migrating from their homeland to anywhere else in the world always encountered indigenous peoples, with conﬂict almost always being the result.

For Further Reference Coe, Michael D. The Maya. 6th ed. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1999.

Websites Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. (http://www.famsi.org/research/pohl/pohl_aztec6. html). A description of the daily life of the Aztecs.

Coe, Michael D. Mexico: From the Olmecs to the Aztecs. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1984. Flenley, John, and Paul Bahn. The Enigmas of Easter Island: Island on the Edge. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Howe, K. R. The Quest for Origins: Who First Discovered and Settled the Paciﬁc Islands? Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2003.

Polynesian Voyage Society (http://pvs.kcc.hawaii.edu/welcome.html). Introduction to attempts to reconstruct Polynesian sea travel in modern times.

Jennings, Jesse D., ed. The Prehistory of Polynesia. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1979.

The Sport of Life and Death: The Mesoamerican Ballgame (www.ballgame.org). Interactive and educational introduction to the Maya ballgame.

Martin, Simon, and Nikolai Grube. Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens: Deciphering the Dynasties of the Ancient Maya. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2000.

Teotihuacan: The City of the Gods (http://archaeology.la.asu.edu/teo/). the site of Teotihuacan.

Oliphant, Margaret. The Atlas of the Ancient World: Charting the Civilizations of the Past. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1998.

Films

Introduction to

Nova movie about Easter Island in “Secrets of Lost Empires” series.

Popol Vuh: The Deﬁnitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings. Translated by Denis Tedlock. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.

“Nova: Lost King of the Maya” (the source of the chapteropening quote).

Schele, Linda, and Mary Ellen Miller. The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art. Fort Worth: Kimball Art Museum, 1986. Stuart, George E. “The Timeless Vision of Teotihuacan.” National Geographic 188, no. 6 (December 1995): 3–38. Sugiyama, Saburo. Human Sacriﬁce, Militarism, and Rulership: Materialization of State Ideology at the Feathered Serpent Pyramid, Teotihuacan. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

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New Empires in Iran and Greece, 2000 B.C.E.–651 C.E. The Rise of the Achaemenids in Iran, 1000–330 B.C.E. (p. 147) Ancient Greece and the Mediterranean World, 2000–334 B.C.E. (p. 157) Alexander the Great and His Successors, 334 B.C.E.–30 B.C.E (p. 166) The Parthians and the Sasanians, Heirs to the Achaemenids, 247 B.C.E.–651 C.E. (p. 169)

ake the three forms of government we are considering— democracy, oligarchy, and monarchy—and suppose each of them to be the best of its kind; I maintain that the third is greatly preferable to the other two. One ruler: it is impossible to improve upon that—provided he is the best. His judgment will be in keeping with his character; his control of the people will be beyond reproach; his measures against enemies and traitors will be kept HERODOTUS secret more easily than under other forms of government. . . . To sum up: where did we get our freedom from, and who gave it us? Is it the result of democracy, or oligarchy, or of monarchy? We were set free by one man, and therefore I propose that we should preserve that form of government, and, further, that we should refrain from changing ancient ways, which have served us well in the past.1

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(Antikensammlung Staatische Museen zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany/ Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY)

n September 29, 522 b.c.e., Darius (r. 522–486 b.c.e.) led six conspirators in a plot to kill the pretender to the throne of Iran, who ruled ancient Persia. Writing nearly one hundred years later, the Greek historian Herodotus (ca. 485–425 b.c.e.) recounted a lively discussion among the seven about the best form of government. While one suggested the democracy of the Greek citystate of Athens, another spoke up for rule by a few, or oligarchy (OLL-ih-gahrkey), the governing system of the city-state of Sparta. Darius (duh-RYE-uhs), the future king, vigorously defended rule by one man, or monarchy:

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• Darius (r. 522–486 b.c.e.) The third Achaemenid ruler, who succeeded to the throne by coup. Conquered much territory in Eurasia but was unable to defeat the Scythians south of the Black Sea or the Greeks. Reformed the empire’s administrative structure.

• Herodotus (ca. 485– 425 b.c.e.) A Greekspeaking historian born in Halicarnassus. Author of The Histories, an investigation of the history, folklore, geography, plants, and customs of the known world. Known as the “father of history.”

• Achaemenids The ruling dynasty in Iran between 550 and 330 b.c.e. At its height in the ﬁfth century b.c.e. it governed a population estimated at thirty to thirty-ﬁve million people.

New Empires in Iran and Greece, 2000 B.C.E.–651 C.E.

Many have wondered how Herodotus (heh-ROD-uh-tuhs) could have possibly known what was said in a secret conversation that occurred long before his birth in Persian, a language that he did not speak. Herodotus must, they conclude, have created this dialogue to enliven his narrative. No one doubts, though, that he articulated a question of great interest to his contemporaries and of equal importance to anyone studying history today: what was the most effective form of government for an empire? Herodotus, a native speaker of Greek, was born to a well-to-do literate family in Halicarnassus (modern Bodrum), a city on the southwest coast of modern-day Turkey. Part of the Persian Empire, Halicarnassus (HAH-lee-kar-nuh-suhs) was home to a large Greek-speaking community that had settled there several centuries earlier. As a young man, Herodotus received a traditional education, and he wrote his life’s great work, The Histories, in Greek. The title Herodotus chose, Historia (hiss-TOR-ee-uh), means “inquiry” or “investigation,” not necessarily about the past; it is the root of the English word history. Unlike other historians of his time, Herodotus makes it clear when he is including a hearsay account rather than his own observations and openly expresses doubt about some of the taller tales he presents. For this reason, the Roman orator Cicero (SIS-erh-oh) (106–43 b.c.e.) called Herodotus the father of history, a label he retains to this day. Not a ﬁrst-person travel account, The Histories presents the history, folklore, geography, plants, and customs of the known world in Herodotus’s day. Herodotus went to Athens, where he recited sections of the book before live audiences, who loved to hear poetry, stories, and plays performed aloud. He must have traveled as well along the Aegean coast of Turkey and to Italy, if not as far as Egypt, the Crimean peninsula on the Black Sea, Sicily, Babylon, and North Africa, all places The Histories claims that he visited in person (see the map on page 145). Herodotus recorded his book on long rolls of papyrus sometime after 431 b.c.e. and died soon after, most likely around 425 b.c.e. Herodotus devoted his life to explaining the success of the Persian Empire, easily the largest and certainly the most powerful empire of its time. From 550 to 330 b.c.e. the Achaemenid (a-KEY-muh-nid) dynasty of Iran governed the entire region extending from modern-day Egypt and Turkey through Iran and Iraq and as far east as Samarkand. Between thirty and thirty-ﬁve million people lived in the Achaemenid Empire.2 Up to around 500 b.c.e., the greatest western Asian empires—the Akkadians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians—had been based in the Tigris and Euphrates River valleys (see Chapter 2); for more than a thousand years after 500 b.c.e., some of the largest empires were in Iran. The Greeks were among the few who managed to defeat the powerful Persian army and resist conquest. In Athens, during the sixth and ﬁfth centuries b.c.e., a new political system emerged, a system the Athenians called democracy, or rule by the people. Some 30,000 men, but no slaves and no women, made decisions affecting the estimated 300,000 people living in Athens, 1 percent or less of the total population of the Persian Empire. The Achaemenid rulers developed a ﬂexible type of empire that allowed them to conquer and rule the many different peoples of western Asia for more than two centuries until their defeat in 331 b.c.e. by the Macedonian king Alexander the

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Great. When Alexander came to power, democracy in Athens had already failed, and he took over Persian conceptions and structures of kingship intact. Unable to match the Achaemenid feat of governing for two centuries, his empire broke apart after only thirteen years. Many different governments rose and fell in western Asia, but those that ruled the most territory for the longest periods of time—the successor states to Alexander, the Parthians, and the Sasanians—were all monarchies that drew much from the Achaemenid Empire. Note that many of the answers this chapter proposes must be based on the work of Greek writers, including Herodotus, because so few sources in Persian survive.

Focus Questions

What military and administrative innovations enabled the Achaemenid dynasty to conquer and rule such a vast empire? What were the important accomplishments of the Greek city-states? Consider innovations in politics, intellectual life, ﬁne arts, and science. Who was Alexander, and what was his legacy? How did the Parthians and the Sasanians modify the Achaemenid model of empire?

The Rise of the Achaemenids in Iran, 1000–330 B.C.E.

fter departing from their homeland somewhere in southern Russia (see Chapter 3), the Indo-European migrants broke into different branches, one of which arrived in the region of modern-day Iran in approximately 1000 b.c.e. These tribal people were largely nomads who did not plant crops but moved their sheep and camel ﬂocks from pasture to pasture seeking fresh grass. Their language, IndoIranian, belonged to the same language family as Sanskrit, and their caste system resembled that of Vedic India (see Chapter 3) but had only three ranks: priests, rulers or warriors, and ordinary herders or farmers. Their herding way of life took maximum advantage of the high plateau environment of Iran, which had no major river valley comparable to the Nile, the Indus, or the Yellow Rivers. The tall mountains of Iran contain streams that drain into the high plateaus; many end in either salt lakes or trickle out into the desert. Farming was only possible if farmers dug irrigation channels to collect water, and the ﬁrst people who did so lived in the region of Persis (the origin of the English word Persian) in southwestern Iran. (Iran is the name of the larger geographic unit, while Persia refers to the smaller region, the heartland, of Persis.)

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• satrap

The third Achaemenid ruler, Darius, divided his empire into provinces called satrapies, each administered by a governor, or satrap. The ofﬁcials under the satrap were recruited locally, a hallmark of the Persian system.

• The Avesta

A book, probably dating to circa 1000 b.c.e. and ﬁrst recorded in writing around 600 c.e., whose title means “The Injunction of Zarathustra.” Contains hymns attributed to Zarathustra himself, which provide our best guide to his original thought.

• Zoroastrianism Iranian religion named for its founding prophet Zarathustra (in Persian; Zoroaster in Greek), who may have lived around 1000 b.c.e. He taught that a host of good deities and evil demons, all in perpetual conﬂict, populate the spiritual world.

• Ahura Mazda

The name of the supreme deity of Zoroastrianism, the Lord of Truth, who created heaven and earth, day and night, and darkness and light. On the day of judgment, Zoroastrians believe, Ahura Mazda will judge each person’s good and bad deeds.

New Empires in Iran and Greece, 2000 B.C.E.–651 C.E.

Starting in 550 b.c.e. the Achaemenids created an empire far larger than any the world had seen before. Their realm contained some of the world’s most advanced cities, such as Babylon and Susa, and some of its most barren stretches, like the deserts of Central Asia. The key innovation in Achaemenid rule was the use of satraps: after conquering a region, they appointed a local governor, or satrap (SAHtrap), who was responsible for collecting taxes from the defeated and forwarding them to the capital at Susa. This ﬂexible system suited the many different peoples of western Asia far better than the system used by the Qin and Han Empires, which had identical districts all over China (see Chapter 4).

Zoroastrianism

Our best source for understanding the early migrants to Iran is The Avesta (uh-VEST-uh), a book that contains the core teachings of their religion, Zoroastrianism (zo-roe-ASS-tree-uhn-iz-uhm). Zoroastrianism, like Vedic religion, featured hymn singing and the performance of elaborate rituals but also held that the world was governed by two opposing forces: good and evil. Describing pastoral nomads active in eastern Iran, The Avesta portrays ancient Iran as having no cities or any political unit larger than a tribe. Zoroastrianism is named for its founding prophet Zarathustra (za-ra-THOOstra) (in Persian; Zoroaster in Greek), who lived in the region of Herat, a city in the Iranian highland plateau now located in modern Afghanistan. With only The Avesta as their guide, scholars have no way to determine when Zarathustra lived, and informed estimates diverge widely, from 1500 to 700 b.c.e. Sometime around 1000 b.c.e. seems a reasonable compromise. Three thousand years old, Zoroastrianism is one of the world’s most ancient religions still practiced today. Written in an extremely ancient form of Indo-Iranian, The Avesta, which means “The Injunction of Zarathustra,” contains a group of hymns attributed to the prophet Zarathustra himself, so its earliest contents probably date to circa 1000 b.c.e. The written version was ﬁrst recorded sometime around 600 c.e., and the earliest surviving manuscript copies date to the thirteenth century c.e. These hymns provide our best guide to Zarathustra’s original thought. Zarathustra believed in a supreme deity, Ahura Mazda (ah-HURR-uh MAZZduh), the Lord of Truth, who created heaven and earth, day and night, and darkness and light. But Ahura Mazda was not the only spiritual force. He gave birth to twin entities, the good spirit and the evil spirit. Zoroastrianism is dualistic because it posits two equal, opposing entities: a host of good deities and evil demons, all in perpetual conﬂict. Each person, whether male or female, Zarathustra taught, had to prepare for the day of judgment when everyone would appear before Ahura Mazda. Zarathustra ﬁrmly believed in the ability of human beings to shape their world by choosing between the good and the bad. People who chose the good had to think good thoughts, do good deeds, and tell the truth. Herodotus remarked that young boys were taught to “speak the truth,” the fundamental Zoroastrian virtue. Whenever anyone lied or did a bad deed, the evil spirit gained ground. Much of Zoroastrian ritual involved the worship of ﬁre. The Zoroastrians built three permanent ﬁre altars, each dedicated to a different caste group. At each site, male hereditary priests called Magi (MAH-jai) tended the ﬁre to make sure that it never went out. If it did, an elaborate ritual was performed to relight the ﬁre. Towns had ﬁre altars, as did individual households, and worshipers fed ﬁres ﬁve times a day, when they recited prayers.

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Zoroastrians also recited prayers at the daily preparation of the intoxicating, sacred potion made from the desert plant ephedra, which was called haoma (HOWmuh) in Persian and soma in Sanskrit (see Chapter 3). The potion was thought to bring various desired outcomes—victory in battle, wealth, or children, and even immortality. This practice of reciting prayers ensured the transmission of the original wording of the sacred hymns for a full two thousand years before they were written down. (See the feature “Movement of Ideas: Doing What Is Right in The Avesta and the Bible.”) The funerary practices of the Zoroastrians differed from those of almost all other ancient peoples. Whereas most peoples buried their dead, Zoroastrians, believing that dead ﬂesh polluted the ground, left corpses outside so that scavenging birds and dogs could eat the ﬂesh; then they collected the cleaned bones and buried them.

The Military Success of the Achaemenid Empire, 550–486 B.C.E.

In the centuries after Zarathustra formulated his teachings, Iran remained a tribal society that had little contact with the neighboring empires of western Asia. In 612 b.c.e., an Iranian tribe called the Medes captured the Assyrian capital and brought Assyrian rule to an end. The Medes began to expand beyond Iran’s borders into western Asia. In 550 b.c.e. the leader of a different tribe, Cyrus (r. 558–530 b.c.e.), defeated the Medes and founded the Achaemenid dynasty, named for his ancestor Achaemenes. Since Cyrus was from Persis and natives of Persis staffed many of the important positions in the empire, the Achaemenid Empire is often called the Persian Empire. Cyrus employed many Medes in high positions as well. When Cyrus founded his dynasty, his soldiers from Persis were obliged to serve in the king’s army and to provide their own equipment. They served as foot soldiers, cavalrymen, archers, or engineers. They were not paid but were entitled to a share of the spoils from the cities they conquered. As Cyrus’s army conquered new territory, the structure of the military changed. The army of citizen-soldiers became a paid full-time army staffed by Persians and other Iranians, the conquered peoples, and large contingents of Greek mercenaries. The most prestigious unit, the king’s bodyguard, was called the “Immortals, because it was invariably kept up to strength,” Herodotus explains. “If a man was killed or fell sick, the vacancy he left was at once ﬁlled, so that its strength was never more nor less than 10,000.” No records of the size of the army survive in Persian; Greek observers, prone to exaggerate, give ﬁgures as high as 2.5 million men, but the army certainly numbered in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. To bind their empire together physically, the Persians built an extensive network of roads that allowed them to supply the army no matter how far it traveled. The military stored food in designated warehouses where horse-drawn supply carts could be replenished. The Persians were fortunate to inherit a system of roads from earlier dynasties in the region: some were simple caravan tracks through the desert, while others, usually in or just outside the main cities like Babylon, were paved with bricks or rock. The main road, the Royal Road, linked the cities near the Aegean coast with the capital at Susa.

• Cyrus (r. 558–530 b.c.e.) Founder of the Achaemenid dynasty in Iran. A native of Persis, Cyrus staffed his administration with many Persians as well as Medes, the tribe he defeated when he took power.

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MOVEMENT OF IDEAS

Doing What Is Right in The Avesta and the Bible

he ancient core texts of Zoroastrianism are still recited by one of the most active communities of Zoroastrian believers today, the Parsis of modern Bombay, India. The Parsis (also spelled Parsees, which means Persian) left Iran after the Islamic conquest and moved to India sometime between the eighth and tenth centuries C.E. Ever since then they have recited the two prayers of the ﬁrst selection in the ancient Indo-Iranian language and continued to sing a small group of ancient hymns as they maintain the Zoroastrian tradition of ﬁre worship and truth-telling. The ﬁrst prayer stresses that both the Lord of Truth, Ahura Mazda, and his true judgment should be chosen by mankind for the good of the world. These choices result in establishing a worldly sovereignty founded on good thinking that will beneﬁt both “the Wise One” (Ahura Mazda) and “the pastor for the needy dependents” (Zarathustra) in this world. The second prayer focuses on the truth. It simply says that truth is the highest good and that everyone has the ability to follow and promote the truth.

The second selection is a prayer in The Book of Tobit, from the Apocrypha. All the Apocryphal texts originally circulated as part of the Hebrew Bible but were not included in certain later versions. Composed in the third or fourth centuries B.C.E., this book tells the story of an ordinary man named Tobit, a Jew who lived in exile in the Assyrian capital of Nineveh. Tobit continued to perform the ritual observances required of Jews, but the Hebrew God subjected him to various trials, including blindness, to test his devotion. Scholars think it likely that the text was written by a Jew in exile who had some knowledge of Zoroastrianism. After going blind, Tobit remembers that he deposited a large sum of money in the town of Rages in Iran, near modern-day Teheran, and sends his son there to retrieve the money. The advice he gives his son clearly reﬂects the inﬂuence of Zoroastrianism. Source: The translation from The Avesta of the prayers in selection 1 is courtesy of Stanley Insler, Edward E. Salisbury Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology at Yale University (email dated September 4, 2002). Second selection from Tobit 4:5–21 (New Revised Standard Version).

The Avesta (1) Just as the lord in accord with truth must be chosen, so also the judgment in accord with truth. Establish a rule of actions stemming from an existence of good thinking for the sake of the Wise One and for the lord whom they established as pastor for the needy dependents.

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(2) Truth exists as the very best good thing. It exists under your will. Desire the truth for what is the very best truth.

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The Book of Tobit Revere the Lord all your days, my son, and refuse to sin or to transgress his commandments. Live uprightly all the days of your life, and do not walk in the ways of wrongdoing; for those who act in accordance with truth will prosper in all their activities. To all those who practice righteousness, give alms from your possessions, and do not let your eye begrudge the gift when you make it. Do not turn your face away from anyone who is poor, and the face of God will not be turned away from you. If you have many possessions, make your gift from them in proportion; if few, do not be afraid to give according to the little you have. So you will be laying up a good treasure for yourself against the day of necessity. For almsgiving delivers from death and keeps you from going into the Darkness. Indeed, almsgiving, for all who practice it, is an excellent offering in the presence of the Most High. . . . For in pride there is ruin and great confusion. And in idleness there is loss and dire poverty, because idleness is the mother of famine. Do not keep over until the next day the wages of those who work for you, but pay them at once. If you serve God you will receive payment. Watch yourself, my son, in everything you do, and disci-

pline yourself in all your conduct. And what you hate, do not do to anyone. Do not drink wine to excess or let drunkenness go with you on your way. Give some of your food to the hungry, and some of your clothing to the naked. Give all your surplus as alms, and do not let your eye begrudge your giving of alms. Place your bread on the grave of the righteous, but give none to sinners. Seek advice from every wise person and do not despise any useful counsel. At all times bless the Lord God, and ask him that your ways may be made straight and that all your paths and plans may prosper. For none of the nations has understanding, but the Lord himself will give them good counsel; but if he chooses otherwise, he casts down to the deepest Hades. So now, my child, remember these commandments, and do not let them be erased from your heart. And, now my son, let me explain to you that I left ten talents of silver in trust with Gabael son of Gabrias, at Rages in Media. Do not be afraid, my son, because we have become poor. You have great wealth if you fear God and ﬂee from every sin and do what is good in the sight of the Lord your God.

QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS 쑺 What is the single most important value of the Zoroastrians? 쑺 What does Tobit tell his son to do? Which of Tobit’s instructions show the inﬂuence of Zoroastrianism?

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A system of government couriers made excellent use of these roads, as Herodotus remarks: There is nothing on earth faster than these couriers. The service is a Persian invention, and it goes like this, according to what I was told. Men and horses are stationed a day’s travel apart, a man and a horse for each of the days needed to cover the journey. These men neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stay from the swiftest possible completion of their appointed stage.

• Lydian coins

The ﬁrst metal coins in the world, dating to ca. 600 b.c.e. Made from electrum, a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver collected from the riverbeds in Lydia, a region on the Aegean coast of modernday Turkey.

Traveling at a breathtaking 90 miles (145 km) each day, government couriers could cover the 1,600 miles (2,575 km) of the Royal Road in less than twenty days, and ordinary travelers, also allowed to use the road, could do so in three months.3 The couriers were crucial to the army’s success because generals could communicate easily with one another across large expanses of territory. The Persian army was responsible for a long string of military conquests. Cyrus began from his base in Persis and headed north to Ecbatana (ek-buh-TAH-nuh) (modern-day Hamadan) in central Iran. In 547–546 b.c.e., his troops then moved north and west into Anatolia (modern-day Turkey), a region called Lydia in ancient times whose capital was Sardis. A busy commercial center in an enormously wealthy region, Sardis became the most important city in the western part of the empire. The riverbeds near Sardis had large deposits of electrum, a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver. Around 600 b.c.e., the local people gathered the electrum and used it to mint Lydian coins, the ﬁrst metal coins made anywhere in the world. After a series of successful military campaigns, Cyrus conquered the various Ionian ports on the eastern Aegean, Syria, Palestine, and Babylon. He did not attempt to change their cultures but made offerings to local gods and allowed his subjects to continue to worship as they had before. He allowed the Jews, who had been forcibly deported to Babylon, to return home, ending the sixty-year-long Babylonian Captivity (see Chapter 2). Modern scholarship indicates that the Hebrew concepts of the afterlife and of the Devil arose after the Babylonian Captivity, and some attribute these new ideas to the inﬂuence of Zoroastrianism. The Persian army was not invincible. In 530 b.c.e. it entered the unfamiliar terrain of Central Asia and attacked the Massagetae (mass-uh-GET-aye) peoples east of the Amu Darya River. The Persians, Herodotus reports, were able initially to gain the advantage by offering the Massagetae tribes wine so that they fell drunk, but the ﬁerce Massagetae recovered and defeated the Persians in hand-to-hand combat. Cyrus died while campaigning in Massagetae territory.

Darius’s Coup, 522 B.C.E.

Cyrus’s son Cambyses (kam-BEE-zuhs) resumed the conquests and conquered Egypt and Ethiopia before dying in 522 b.c.e. A group of Zoroastrian priests kept his death secret, placed a Magi priest named Gaumata (GOW-mah-tah) on the throne, and ruled brieﬂy in Cambyses’s name. In the same year Darius I led a group of conspirators who killed the pretender. At the time of the murder the conspirators had not yet agreed on the political system they would implement. Persuaded by Darius that monarchy was the best system (see chapter opener), they agreed to choose the future king by seeing whose horse neighed ﬁrst after the sun came up. Darius’s wily groom made sure that his master’s horse did so ﬁrst, and Darius became king of kings, the Persian term for the ruler of the empire. Darius commemorated his accession to power in an extraordinary inscription at Behistun, the site of a steep cliff. Stone steps led 300 feet (100 m) from the road to the cliff face, but they were removed after the inscription was completed.

The Rise of the Achaemenids in Iran, 1000–330 B.C.E.

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Darius’s Victory: The Stone Relief at Behistun, Iran In 522 B.C.E., Darius ordered this stone relief commemorating his victory over his rivals to be carved over 300 feet (100 m) above the road below. In it, Darius triumphantly places his left foot on the deposed Magi priest Gaumata, who lies dead on his back with his arms pointing vertically upward. The eight tribal leaders that Darius defeated are shown on the right; the larger ﬁgure with the pointed hat was added later. Above the human ﬁgures ﬂoats the winged Ahura Mazda, who looks on approvingly. (Henry Rawlinson, The Persian Cuneiform Inscription at Behistun, 1846)

This large rock relief was 18 feet (5.5 m) long and 10 feet (3 m) tall, with blocks of text in different languages around it bragging of the murder of the imposter-king. At the simplest level, Darius’s message was obvious: if you oppose me, this is what will happen to you. Darius justiﬁed Gaumata’s murder by appealing to a higher authority: There was not a man, neither a Persian nor a Mede nor anyone of our family, who could have taken the kingdom from Gaumata the Magian. The people feared him greatly. . . . There was no one who dared say anything about Gaumata the Magian until I came. Then I prayed to Ahura Mazda. Ahura Mazda bore me aid. . . . Then I with a few men slew that Gaumata the Magian. . . . Ahura Mazda bestowed the kingdom upon me.4

Darius’s inscription differs from those of Ashoka (see Chapter 3) and the Qin founder (Chapter 4), both of whom had inherited the throne from their fathers. Darius, however, had killed the reigning king, and his distant family ties to Cyrus did not entitle him to the throne. He married Artystone (AR-tih-stoe-nay), daughter of Cyrus and half-sister of Cambyses, to bolster his claim to the Achaemenid throne. Darius’s use of languages also differed from that of Ashoka and the Qin founder. The text framing the Behistun relief appears in three languages: Elamite (EE-luhmite), the original language of administration of the Achaemenids; Babylonian, the language they adopted as their administrative language; and Old Persian, which

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THE PARADE OF NATIONS AT DARIUS’S PALACE AT PERSEPOLIS

o document his accomplishments, Darius built an enormous audience hall in Persepolis in modernday Iran. The hall held 10,000 people and was 62,500 square feet (5,800 sq m), with a roof supported by columns more than 60 feet (20 m) high. Although the original wooden buildings, which were lavishly decorated with curtains, tiles, and paintings, no longer stand, the surviving stone reliefs show the many different peoples of the Achaemenid Empire coming to pay homage to their ruler. The stairways leading to the audience hall have been called “perhaps the most perfect ﬂight of stairs ever built.”* Alongside the staircases, stone masons carved reliefs of twenty-three distinct peoples bringing gifts to the king to celebrate the coming of spring, one of the most important ritual occasions in the Zoroastrian calendar. On one side of the staircase the masons depicted the peoples of the empire as seen from the left, and on the facing side, as seen from the right. Each view of the procession occupies three tiers stretching 300 feet (92 m) long, making the frieze the largest mirror image in the world. The top register, now partially destroyed, shows different regiments in the Achaemenid army: the Persians and the Medes have different headdresses. The soldiers lead the king’s horse, two empty chariots, a tent, and the throne for the king. The king himself is not shown. On the lower tiers, trees divide the friezes into frames that show a small group of men from each

place, wearing their native dress and led by a Persian or Median envoy. They carry local products as gifts for the king and guide a native animal. The animals reﬂect the great reach of the empire: horses from Syria, a humped bull and a wild donkey from Pakistan, a two-humped camel from Central Asia, and an antelope and a giraffe from Ethiopia. The animals are more detailed than the people, whose faces are the same and can be distinguished only by their clothing and different hairstyles. The portraits capture the essence of the Achaemenid Empire. Each subject people occupies the same amount of space in the tableau; tall animals like giraffes are scaled down so that they take as much space as smaller animals like sheep and horses. Each group wears its national dress and offers its own distinctive gifts, while participating in a single procession designed to honor the Persian ruler. The timing of the monument reveals something important about the Achaemenid concept of empire. Darius began construction in 515 B.C.E., soon after he came to power, and the complex provided vivid testimony of his conquests of many different peoples. Xerxes completed the monument after the 480 B.C.E. defeat at Salamis, but the Achaemenid vision of empire remained unchanged. The omission of certain Greek peoples is the only indication that the expansion of the Persian Empire had come to an end. The facing page shows a small section of the frieze taken from the left side of the staircase.

Question for Analysis How did the Persians and the Greeks illustrate their differing concepts of empire at Persepolis and the Acropolis? *R. Ghirshman and E. Herzfeld, Persepolis: The Achaemenian Capital (Tehran: Mirdashti Farhangsara, 1999), p. 33.

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These Scythians, from the region north of the Black Sea, wear their characteristic pointed hoods and offer a ﬁne horse.

This magniﬁcent twohumped Bactrian camel follows Central Asians bearing cups and other gifts from the region east of the Caspian Sea.

These seven men from the impoverished Assyrian empire, defeated in 612 B.C.E., offer low-cost objects: a pair of rams, animal skins, and bowls.

The Ionians, from the Aegean coast of modernday Turkey, offer folded bolts of cloth, and bowls, most likely of gold.

These trees, like vertical lines in a comic strip, divide the different delegations in the Parade of Nations from one another. Each delegation is led by either a fully robed Mede, as in the bottom panel, or a barechested Persian guide, as directly above.

This Armenian groom keeps a close watch on this ﬁne steed, while the countrymen behind him carry bolts of cloth.

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the royal family spoke at home. All three were written in cuneiform script. The Qin founder used a single language, conﬁdent that he could communicate with his subjects in Chinese; Ashoka had the same text translated into the different languages spoken in the various parts of the Mauryan Empire. But Darius ruled a multilingual empire in which people living in the same place spoke different languages. For this reason, Darius had rubbings of the inscription made and distributed translations of it throughout the empire; fragments of an Aramaic translation on papyrus have even been found in Egypt. Most of Darius’s subjects were illiterate; even the king had to have the Old Persian text read aloud to him. When Darius commissioned the Behistun inscription, he had no way of knowing that his dynasty would last. His account largely matches Herodotus’s except for a few details (they agree on the names of six of the conspirators, but not the seventh), but Herodotus has the advantage of hindsight: he knew that Darius became one of the most important Achaemenid rulers. During his reign, the empire expanded to include Thrace in northern Greece and the Indus Valley in presentday Pakistan, but not the Scythian peoples living south of the Black Sea or the Greeks in Athens (see page 162).

Achaemenid Administration

Fully aware of the challenges of governing his large empire, Darius instituted a series of far-reaching administrative reforms that held the Persian Empire together for the better part of two centuries. He established a ﬂexible administrative and taxation system and implemented a uniform law code for all his subjects. Seeing himself as transmitting Ahura Mazda’s laws to all his subjects, Darius appointed judges for life to administer those laws in his name. Just as on the day of judgment Ahura Mazda would judge each person’s good and bad deeds, Persian judges were supposed to examine lawsuits carefully. They were to inquire deeply into the facts of a dispute and to reach a judgment that took into account the previous conduct. Accordingly, a man who had adhered to Zoroastrian teachings and told the truth his entire life was treated more leniently than one who had not. As they reformed the courts, the Achaemenids also changed the system of taxation. Herodotus explains: During the reign of Cyrus and Cambyses there was no ﬁxed tribute at all, the revenue coming from gifts only; and because of his imposition of regular taxes, and other similar measures, the Persians called Darius a huckster, Cambyses a master, and Cyrus a father; the ﬁrst being out for proﬁt wherever he could get it, the second harsh and arrogant, and the third, merciful and ever working for their well-being.5

We must remember that Cyrus had died nearly a century before Herodotus was writing and that Cambyses was reputed to be insane, a judgment with which Herodotus enthusiastically concurred. The view of Darius as a huckster, though, contains an important element of truth: in seeking to put his empire on sound ﬁnancial footing, Darius revolutionized the way the Persians collected taxes. Darius divided his empire into provinces called satrapies, each administered by a governor, or satrap. The ofﬁcials under the satrap were recruited locally, a hallmark of the Persian system. Darius required each satrap to submit a ﬁxed amount of revenue each year, and the taxes due from many of the different regions were assessed in silver. Silver was more convenient because government administrators could use a single system to calculate the empire’s revenue and expenses. Darius

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allowed several regions to pay some of their taxes in other items: Egypt, the empire’s breadbasket, was required to forward 120,000 bushels of grain each year. The Indians, Herodotus explains, paid in gold dust, which they collected from riverbeds, while the Ethiopians submitted an annual quota of “two quarts of unreﬁned gold, two hundred logs of ebony, and twenty elephant tusks.” Archaeologists have found over three thousand baked clay tablets giving the day-to-day accounts of the empire in the ruins of Persepolis (per-SEH-poe-lis), the site of the royal ritual center some 200 miles (360 km) west of Susa. Darius had several wives, but his favorite was Artystone, who possessed her own palace and wielded genuine authority within her own estate. The tablets record her orders to organize banquets and trips, and sometimes the king would even take her with him on military campaigns. Darius frequently gave his wives gifts of food or wine. One such order reads: “King Darius has instructed me: 100 sheep from my property are to be delivered to Queen Artystone.” The friezes at Persepolis illustrate beautifully how Darius ruled over such a diverse empire (see the feature “Visual Evidence: The Parade of Nations at Darius’s Palace at Persepolis”). After Darius died in 486 b.c.e., his son Xerxes (ZERK-sees) succeeded him, ruled for twenty years, and completed the complex at Persepolis. But in 465, Xerxes’ younger son killed both his father and his elder brother, the designated heir, so that he could succeed to the throne. Royal assassinations occurred frequently over the next one hundred years, and the Achaemenids conquered no new territory, but the administrative structure they originated allowed them to hold on to their empire until 331 b.c.e., when Alexander defeated them (see below).

Ancient Greece and the Mediterranean World, 2000–334 B.C.E.

branch of the Indo-European speakers reached the Greek peninsula around 2000 b.c.e., earlier than they arrived in either India (see Chapter 3) or Iran (see above) but the same time as the Hittites reached Anatolia. The Greek speakers, as well as the Phoenicians (FOE-knee-shuns) (see page 158), were active traders in the Mediterranean. Although historians sometimes speak of the Phoenician and Greek “empires,” neither people had a centralized administration governing many different peoples. Instead, both lived in scattered city-states, whose residents sailed across the seas to establish new outposts that retained their ties to the mother city-state. Although we tend to think of Greece as a single Greek-speaking entity, whether in earlier times or today, there was no uniﬁed nation called “Greece” in the ancient world. Greek speakers thought of themselves as citizens of Athens, Sparta, or the city-state where they lived. By the year 500 b.c.e. Athens emerged as the largest of over one hundred different Greek city-states, and only Athens had a democracy in which all male citizens, some 10 percent of the city’s population, could participate equally. In addition to being a military power, Athens was also a cultural center famous for its drama, art, and philosophy.

Greek Expansion in the Mediterranean, 2000–1200 B.C.E.

When the Indo-European speakers arrived in Greece, they found that the rocky land of the Greek peninsula, the Aegean coast of Turkey, and the islands of the

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Mediterranean offered little grass for their herds. No major rivers ﬂowed in these areas. As the Indo-European migrants shifted from herding to farming, they used irrigation channels to distribute water over their ﬁelds. They usually planted barley, which was sturdier than wheat, in the lowlands, olive trees in the foothills, and grapes on the hillsides. It required so much labor to terrace the rocky soil and make ﬁelds suitable for cultivation that often the most efﬁcient way to obtain new land was to set sail for the nearest land, frequently visible across a body of water. The earliest trading centers of the Mediterranean have left ample archaeological evidence. Between 2000 and 1500 b.c.e., the Mediterranean island of Crete was home to a civilization with lavish palaces, well-built roads, bronze metallurgy, and a writing system called Linear A, which has not been deciphered. The archaeologist who discovered the site in the early twentieth century named the residents the Minoans (mih-NO-uhns) after the king Minos (mih-NOHS) who, Greek legends recounted, ruled a large empire with many ships. Archaeologists have found pottery made in the Minoan style all over the Mediterranean and western Asia, evidence of a wide-reaching Minoan trade network. The remains of the Minoan civilization came to an abrupt end in 1500 b.c.e., probably because the Minoans were conquered by the Mycenaeans (1600–1200 b.c.e.), the earliest ancient civilization based on mainland Greece in the city of Mycenae. The Mycenaeans (my-see-NEE-uhns) used Linear B script, which remained undeciphered until 1952. In that year, an architect and amateur cryptographer, Michael Ventris, realized what no one else had: Linear B was a dialect of Greek. He used his high school ancient Greek to decipher four thousand surviving clay tablets, which unfortunately reveal much about the palace accounting system but little about Mycenaean society. Archaeologists are not certain whether the Trojan Wars between the Greeks and the Trojans living across the Aegean in modern-day Turkey occurred as the poet Homer (ca. 800 b.c.e.) described them centuries later in his epic poems The Odyssey and The Iliad. If they did, it was during the time of the Mycenaean civilization. When the international system broke down in 1200 b.c.e. (see Chapter 2), Linear B fell into disuse, and the ﬁnal archaeological evidence of Mycenaean culture dates to no later than 1200 b.c.e.

• Phoenicians

A seagoing people who, around 900 b.c.e., expanded outward from their base on the Mediterranean coast of modern-day Lebanon. Their alphabet, which used only letters with no pictorial symbols, is the ancestor of the Roman alphabet.

The Phoenicians and the World’s First Alphabet

Around this time, another seafaring people, the Phoenicians, appeared in the western Mediterranean. The Greeks called this people “red men,” Phoinikes, or Phoenicians in English, most likely because they produced an extremely rare reddish-purple dye made from the glands of snails. The Phoenicians began to expand outward from their homeland in modern-day Lebanon around 900 b.c.e. They used a new type of writing system: an alphabet of twenty-two letters, each representing a different consonant. Unlike cuneiform, this alphabet had no pictorial symbols and depicted only sounds. Like many other scripts, Phoenician did not record vowels, which most native speakers can readily supply. (Consider the following sentence from a subway advertisement for a secretarial school: f y cn rd ths, thn y cn lrn t wrt qckly.) The phonetic alphabet was surely one of the most inﬂuential innovations in the ancient world because it was much faster to learn an alphabet than to memorize a symbolic script like cuneiform. By 814 b.c.e., the Phoenicians had established one outpost at Carthage (KARthudge) (modern-day Tunis in Tunisia) and subsequently built others at different ports along the North African coast as well as the southern coast of modern-day

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MAP 6.1 Greek and Phoenician Settlement in the Mediterranean Starting in 900 B.C.E., the Phoenicians expanded westward into the Mediterranean from their base along the eastern shore; they settled on the island of Sardinia and the North African shore. In 800 B.C.E., settlers from different Greek-speaking city-states left their homelands and formed more than 250 city-states in the eastern Mediterranean and Black Seas.

Interactive Map

Spain (see Map 6.1). Herodotus credited the Phoenicians with the discovery that Africa was surrounded by water except where it joins Asia. He described a Phoenician voyage circumnavigating Africa sometime around 600 b.c.e.: “Every autumn they [the voyagers] put in where they were on the African coast, sowed a patch of ground, and waited for next year’s harvest. Then, having got in their grain, they put to sea again, and after two full years rounded Gibraltar in the course of the third, and returned to Egypt.” These early voyagers realized that prevailing winds and currents made sailing clockwise around Africa from the Red Sea much easier than sailing counterclockwise from Gibraltar. The Phoenicians founded new colonies by sending groups of men and women to coastal towns around the Mediterranean and even beyond.6 We learn this from a Greek account about the Phoenician explorer Hanno, who set off from Carthage in 500 b.c.e. with sixty vessels and thirty thousand men and women. Hanno passed a river and two large gulfs and then captured three “gorillas,” probably chimpanzees or baboons. Then he turned back. The vagueness of the description makes it difﬁcult to know how far the Phoenicians traveled, but they may have reached Sierra Leone. The veracity of both of these accounts—the Phoenician circumnavigation of Africa and the Phoenician colonization of West Africa—is much debated because of the lack of independent conﬁrmation, but it is certain that the oceangoing Phoenicians transmitted their knowledge of geography along with their alphabet to the Greeks. The Phoenicians retained control of the western and southern

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Mediterranean throughout the Achaemenid period until their defeat by ancient Rome in 202 b.c.e. (see Chapter 7).

Since no materials in ancient Greek survive from between 1200 and 900 b.c.e., there is a gap in our knowledge. A new era in Greek history starts around 800 b.c.e., when various regions—including mainland Greece, the islands of the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean, and the Aegean coast of Turkey—coalesced into city-states (polis; plural, poleis). The residents of these different places began to farm more intensively, and the resulting increase in agricultural production permitted a diversiﬁcation of labor among the growing population: while the vast majority of people farmed the agricultural land around the cities, a tiny minority were able to settle inside walled cities. These cities had both markets for agricultural goods and temples to different gods. Each of these city-states, including the surrounding agricultural area, was small, with a population of between ﬁve and ten thousand people, but it was self-sufﬁcient, having its own courts, law code, and army (see Map 6.1). These city-states each had a guardian deity whose temple was located within the city walls. The Greeks beWoman Temple Priest in Ancient Athens lieved in a pantheon of many gods headed by Zeus and his wife Hera. Each god possessed speciﬁc traits: Athena, Women temple priests played a major, if not always documented, role in ancient Greek religion. the guardian god of Athens, was a goddess of war and of weaving. The Greeks told many myths about the gods This amphora, dated to the 500s B.C.E., places a woman priest at the center of the painting because and goddesses, often focusing on their attempts to intervene in the human world. of her crucial role in the ritual being performed. The citizens of the city-state gathered during festivals She raises branches and sprinkles water on an to offer animal sacriﬁces to the gods, with whom they altar in preparation for the sacriﬁce of the bull to the goddess Athena (right). This scene may portray communicated through prayers and oracles. The most famous oracle was at Delphi, on the Gulf of Corinth, an actual sacriﬁce performed on the Acropolis, where individuals and city-states consulted Apollo’s where the Parthenon featured a similar giant priests to learn what would happen in the future before statue of the goddess carrying a shield. (Staatliche Museen Antikensamlung 1686. Bildarchiv Preussischer making any important decisions. People traveled all over Kulturbsitz/Art Resource, NY) the Aegean to pray for medical cures and to participate in temple festivals such as the Olympic games, which were held every four years since 776 b.c.e. at the temple to Zeus at Olympia in the Peloponnese (see the feature “World History in Today’s World: The Olympics”). An important breakthrough in shipbuilding occurred around 800 b.c.e. that facilitated such travel. Greek shipbuilders added a partial deck to boats that covered the center but left an open aisle along the sides. (Earlier boats, whether powered by oars or sails, had no decks.) Easily capable of traversing the Mediterranean, these improved boats made it possible for the citizens of the different city-states of Greece to establish more than 250 different city-states along the coasts of the Mediterranean and Black Seas (see Map 6.1). Like Mesopotamian city-states, the Greek city-states remained linked to the mother city through trade. Ships carried olive oil, wine, and pottery produced by

The Rise of the Greek City-State, 800–500 B.C.E.

WORLD HISTORY in TODAY’S WORLD

The Olympics

he Olympic games formally began in 776 B.C.E. (the earliest date that can be veriﬁed in ancient Greek history) at the temple to Zeus in Olympia, in the western Peloponnesus. In 720 B.C.E., one competitor started the race wearing some kind of garment but shed it by the end of the race; after his victory, no competitor ever wore clothes again. At ﬁrst competitors participated in only a 656foot-long (200-m) footrace, but the number of events increased quickly. By the year 600 B.C.E., they included the 1,312-foot-long (400-m) footrace, the pentathlon of ﬁve different events in one, wrestling, boxing, and chariot races. At their height the games ran for ﬁve full days and included the ﬁrst day, set aside for prayers and oath-taking, and a ﬁnal day of competition and of feasting and crowning of the winners. Tens of thousands of people who did not participate traveled from all over the Mediterranean to see the races and to enjoy the feasting and drinking. Only the victor of each event received a prize, always a simple wreath of leaves. Although the award of a wreath makes the Olympics seem an amateur event, most winners also received tangible

rewards from their home city-states. Athletes sometimes competed for city-states where they had not been born simply to attain the higher rewards they offered. Winners from Athens were particularly fortunate: the city-state awarded them the equivalent of two years’ income, a permanent tax break, and free meals for life. Cheating did occur, even though it was considered an insult to the gods and was punished severely by ﬁnes or beatings. Athletes lied about their age so they could compete in the boys’ events, which were less competitive. Wrestlers rubbed oil on their bodies so that their opponents could not get a grip on them. The Olympic games occurred every four years until 393 C.E., when the Roman emperor forbade the worship of pagan gods (see Chapter 7). Inspired by the success of hundreds of festivals bearing the name Olympics, in 1896 a French aristocrat revived the games in Athens with the explicit intention of giving amateur athletes from all over the world a chance to compete. This inclusiveness, though, is new: the ancient games were for Greeks only.

the Greeks to other regions, where they obtained lumber to make more ships. The leaders of the mother city-state appointed a founder to lead the expedition; citizens of the mother city-state were always welcome, as were settlers from other city-states. During this period of vibrant growth and expansion, the Greeks adopted the twenty-two original consonants of the Phoenicians, created vowels by using leftover Phoenician letters for sounds not present in Greek, and added three new letters. The ﬁrst inscriptions in the new Greek alphabet date to 730 b.c.e. This new alphabet underlies many modern alphabets, including that of English, because the vowels and consonants of ancient Greek could be used to represent the sounds of other languages. During the eighth and seventh centuries b.c.e., most Greek city-states were governed by powerful landowning families, but around 600 b.c.e. several citystates enacted reforms. Sparta became one of the ﬁrst to grant extensive rights to its citizens. Only the descendents of original Spartans could be citizen-soldiers, who fought full-time and were not permitted to farm the land or engage in business. A second group, called “dwellers around,” were descended from the ﬁrst peoples to be conquered by the Spartans; entitled to own land, they also worked as craftsmen and traders but could not vote. The lowest-ranking group, full-time state slaves (Helots), cultivated the land of the citizens. Because their husbands were often away at war, Spartan women ran their estates and had more freedom than women in other city-states, yet they did not vote.

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Future Spartan citizens joined the army as young children and received an austere military upbringing; only when successfully completed could they become citizens. Citizens (but not the state slaves) exercised a limited veto over the policies enacted by a council of elders who ruled in conjunction with two kings. This was the government system Herodotus chose as an example of oligarchy (see chapter opener). It took more than one hundred years for Athens to establish democracy. The most famous reformer, Solon (SOH-luhn), became the civilian head of state of Athens in 594 b.c.e. and launched a reform that abolished the obligation to pay one-sixth of one’s crop as tax to the state. He also cancelled debts, which made it possible for former debtors to acquire and farm their own land. Athenian citizens formed four groups, deﬁned by how much property they owned; all citizens could participate in the assembly, the lawmaking body. In 508 b.c.e., a group of aristocrats extended Solon’s reforms further and established direct democracy. All citizens above the age of 20—roughly thirty thousand men, or 10 percent of the population—could join the assembly. Many, however, were too busy to attend the frequent meetings, which occurred as much as forty times a year. Women, who could not serve as soldiers or become citizens, never participated in the assembly. The women who enjoyed the greatest security were married; only children born to such couples were legitimate. Athenian men had many other sexual partners, both male and female: prostitutes whom they visited occasionally, concubines whom they supported ﬁnancially, and slaves who could not say no to their owners. Roughly two-ﬁfths of Athens’s population, some 120,000 people, were slaves, who also did not participate in the assembly. Many different types of slaves existed: those who had skills and lived with their masters had less arduous lives than those who worked in the ﬁelds or in the silver mines, where working conditions were dangerous.

The Greco-Persian Wars, 490–479 B.C.E.

The Athenian army was particularly effective because it consisted of citizen-soldiers with a powerful commitment to defend their home city-state. Greek soldiers, called hoplites (HAHP-lites), could defeat the Persians in hand-to-hand combat because they had better shields, stronger armor, and more effective formations. The soldiers were divided into units, called phalanxes, eight men deep. If the ﬁrst row of soldiers was broken, the row behind them pressed forward to meet the attack. The ﬁrst important Athenian victory came at the battle of Marathon in 490 b.c.e. The Persian ruler Darius sent a force to punish the Athenians for supporting an uprising against the Persians by the Greeks living on the east coast of the Aegean. The Athenian forces of 11,000 men attacked the Persian army of 25,000 when they were foraging for food and, in a stunning reversal of what every informed person expected, won a decisive victory on the plain of Marathon. (The English word marathon comes from a later legend about a messenger running over 20 miles [32 km] from Marathon to Athens to announce the victory.) Herodotus’s tally of the casualties underlines the immensity of the Athenian victory: the Athenians lost 192 men; the Persians, 6,400. After Darius died in 486 b.c.e. (see above), his son Xerxes (r. 486–465 b.c.e.) decided to avenge his father’s defeat and gathered a huge army that he hoped would frighten the Greeks into surrendering. But Sparta and Athens for the ﬁrst time organized a coalition of the Greek city-states that fought the Persians for

Ancient Greece and the Mediterranean World, 2000–334 B.C.E.

control of a mountain pass north of Athens at Thermopylae (thuhr-MOP-uh-lie). The Greeks held the Persians off until an informer told the Persians about a secret path around the pass. Realizing that they had been betrayed, many of the Greeks ﬂed, but three hundred Spartans fought to their deaths. The victorious Persians then sacked the deserted city of Athens. The Greeks regrouped, and the Athenian naval commanders took advantage of their superior knowledge of the local terrain to secure a surprising Greek victory at Salamis. Xerxes fell for a Greek trap: he believed an inﬁltrator who reported that the Greeks planned to retreat from the narrow bay of Salamis (SAH-lah-miss). Xerxes ordered his men to stay up all night to watch for the Greek withdrawal, with the result that the Persians were exhausted when the naval battle began. In recounting the battle, an important turning point in the war, Herodotus highlighted the role of Artemisia (ﬂ. 480 b.c.e.), the woman ruler of Halicarnassus, Herodotus’s hometown, who had become queen on the death of her husband and who, like all conquered peoples in the Persian Empire, fought alongside the Persians. The Persians had a ﬂeet of 1,207 triremes (TRY-reems), three-story boats powered by rowers on each level, of which Artemisia (ar-TEM-ee-zee-uh) commanded 5. “She sailed with the ﬂeet,” Herodotus explains, “in spite of the fact that she had a grown-up son and that there was consequently no necessity for her to do so,” implying that he would not have found her participation worthy of comment if her son had still been a child. Artemisia fascinated Herodotus because she differed so much from well-off Athenian women, who stayed indoors and devoted themselves to managing their households. Herodotus employed contrasts to heighten his comparisons between Greeks and non-Greeks. The Athenians enjoyed the beneﬁts of democracy while the Persians suffered under the tyranny of Xerxes. Greek men were strong while Persian men were weak, which is why Xerxes had to depend on Artemisia. In the inverted world of the war, the only Persian commander worthy of mention in Herodotus’s eyes is the Greek woman Artemisia. Contrary to all expectations, the Greeks defeated the Persians. Defeat, however, had little impact on the Persian Empire except to deﬁne its western edge. Xerxes returned home to an empire just as large as his father’s, and no Achaemenid ruler after Xerxes ever succeeded in adding Greece to his empire.

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• Artemisia (ﬂ. 480 b.c.e.) The woman ruler of Halicarnassus, on the Aegean coast of modernday Turkey, who fought with the Persians against the Greeks at the battle of Salamis.

Politics and Culture in Athens, 480–404 B.C.E.

During the century after the defeat of the Persians, Athens experienced unprecedented cultural growth. The new literary genre of Greek tragedy took shape, and the Athenians constructed the great temple to Athena on the Acropolis (uhKRAW-poe-lis), the great bluff overlooking the city, as a lasting monument to Greek victory against the Persians. In 472 b.c.e., the playwright Aeschylus (525–456 b.c.e.) wrote The Persians, the earliest Greek tragedy surviving today. Set in the Persian capital at Susa, the play opens with a chorus of elderly men speculating about Xerxes’ attempted invasion of Greece because they have had no news for so long. One-quarter of the way through the play, a lone messenger arrives and mournfully announces: A single stroke has brought about the ruin of great Prosperity, the ﬂower of Persia fallen and gone. Oh oh! To be the ﬁrst to bring bad news is bad; But necessity demands the roll of suffering Be opened, Persians.7

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Writing only eight years after the war, Aeschylus (ESS-kih-luhs), himself a veteran, exaggerates the losses to make the audience sympathize with the Persians and emphasize the shared humanity of the Persians and the Greeks. Xerxes’ mother, the Queen, struggles to understand why the Persians have lost: they have violated natural law, she eventually realizes, by trying to conquer what did not belong to them. The Persians is the ﬁrst of over one hundred tragedies written during the ﬁfth century b.c.e. by three great playwrights—Aeschylus, Sophocles (sof-uh-KLEEZ) (496–406 b.c.e.), and Euripides (you-RIP-uh-deez) (ca. 485–406 b.c.e.)—that show individuals, both male and female, struggling to understand their fates. In 478 b.c.e., the Athenians formed the Delian (DEE-lih-yuhn) League, a group of city-states whose stated purpose was to drive the Persians from the Greek world. After several victories in the 470s against the Persians, the Persian threat was eliminated, prompting some of the league’s members to withdraw. Athens invaded these cities and forced them to become its subjects. In the 460s a general named Pericles (PER-eh-kleez) (ca. 495–429 b.c.e.) emerged as the most popular leader in the city, and in 454 b.c.e. the Athenians moved the league’s treasury to Athens, ending all pretence of an alliance among equals. This was the closest that Athens came to having an empire, but its possessions were all Greek-speaking, and its control was short-lived. The Acropolis: A Massive Construction Project Completed In the early years after the victory at in Only Fifteen Years Built between 447 and 432 B.C.E., the Salamis, the Athenians had vowed never Parthenon was a two-roomed building surrounded by columns over to build anything on the Acropolis so 34 feet (10 m) tall; one of the interior rooms held a magniﬁcent statue that they would not forget the Persian of Athena, now lost. Beautiful friezes inside the roofs and above the destruction of their city. But the city’s columns portrayed the legendary battles of the Trojan War, in which mood changed as the memory of the the Greek forces (symbolizing the Athenians and their allies) defeated war receded. In 449 b.c.e., Pericles signed the Trojans (the ancient counterpart of the Persian enemy), whom the a peace treaty with Persia on behalf of Athenians had only recently defeated. (Georg Gerster/Photo Researchers, Inc.) the Delian League and used the league’s funds to ﬁnance a building campaign to make Athens as physically impressive as it was politically powerful. The centerpiece of the city’s reconstruction, the Parthenon, was both a temple to Athena, the city’s guardian deity, and a memorial to those who had died in the wars with Persia. As the many artists and artisans worked together over the course of ﬁfteen years, they developed a collective style that many regard as the pinnacle of Greek artistic achievement. Once completed, the Parthenon expressed the Athenians’ desire to be the most advanced people of the ancient world. The Spartans, however, felt that they, not Athens, should be the leader of the Greeks. Since the 460s, tensions had been growing between the two city-states, and from 431 to 404 b.c.e. Athens and Sparta, and their allied citystates, engaged in the Peloponnesian

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War. Since Athens was a naval power and Sparta a land power, the struggle was protracted, and Sparta, with the help of the Persians, ﬁnally defeated Athens in 404 b.c.e. Much as the long wars between the city-states of Tikal and Kalak’mul resulted in the decline of the Maya (see Chapter 5), the long and drawn-out Peloponnesian War wore both Sparta and Athens down, creating an opportunity for the rulers of the northern region of Macedon to conquer Greece (see below).

Athens as a Center for the Study of Philosophy

Even during these years of conﬂict, Athens was home to several of the most famous philosophers in history: Socrates (469–399 b.c.e.) taught Plato (429– 347 b.c.e.), and Plato in turn taught Aristotle (384–322 b.c.e.). Their predecessors, the earliest Greek philosophers, were active around 600 b.c.e. in the city-state of Miletus, just north of Halicarnassus on the eastern coast of the Aegean Sea. Members of this school argued that everything in the universe originated in a single element: some proposed water; others, air. Their ﬁndings may seem naive, but they were the ﬁrst to believe in rational explanations rather than crediting everything to divine intervention, and the Athenian philosophers developed this insight further. One of the most famous Athenian philosophers, Socrates (sock-ruh-TEEZ), wrote nothing down, so we must depend on the accounts of his student Plato (PLAY-toe). He perfected a style of teaching, now known as the Socratic (suhKRAT-ick) method, in which the instructor asks the student questions without revealing his own views. Many of the dialogues reported by Plato stress the Greek concept of aretê (virtue or excellence), which people can attain by doing right. Virtue was the highest good for Socrates, who believed that wisdom allows one to determine the right course of action. Immediately after Sparta defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War, a small group of men formed an oligarchy in Athens in 404–403 b.c.e., but they were overthrown by a democratic government. Some of those in the new government suspected Socrates of opposing democracy because he had associated with those in the oligarchy. In 399 b.c.e. they brought him to trial on vague charges of impiety (not believing in the gods) and corrupting the city’s youth. Found guilty by a jury numbering in the hundreds, Socrates did not apologize but insisted that he had been right all along. His death in 399 b.c.e. from drinking poisonous hemlock, the traditional means of execution, became one of the most famous infamous executions in history. After his death the Athenians tried to modify their democratic government in various ways, but democratic rule ended in 322 b.c.e. Plato continued Socrates’ method of teaching by asking questions. He founded the Academy, a gymnasium where he could teach students a broad curriculum emphasizing ethics. Gymnasiums had begun simply as an open ground for soldiers to train, but they had evolved into schools for young boys where they engaged in exercise and studied texts. Plato taught that people could choose the just course of action by using reason to reconcile the conﬂicting demands of spirit and desire. Reason alone determined the individual’s best interests. Plato admitted boys to the Academy as well as some girls. Scholars debate the extent of literacy among Greek women; some contend that all well-off women could read and write, while others think that only a small minority could. Plato’s student, Aristotle (AH-riss-tot-uhl) , was not a native of Athens but was born in Macedon, a northern peripheral region. He entered Plato’s Academy at the age of 17 in 367 b.c.e. and studied with him for twenty years. He left Athens after the death of Plato in 347 b.c.e. and returned to Macedon, where he later served as

• Aristotle (384– 322 b.c.e.) Greek philosopher who encouraged his students to observe the natural world and explain logically how they proceeded from their starting assumptions. This system of reasoning shapes how we present written arguments today.

Primary Source: Apologia Learn why Socrates was condemned to death, and why he refused to stop questioning the wisdom of his countrymen.

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Primary Source: Aristotle Describes a Well-Administered Polis Aristotle discusses how a state and its citizens must become virtuous in order to achieve the best form of government.

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a tutor to Alexander, the son of the Macedonian ruler Philip (382–336 b.c.e.). Aristotle did not share Socrates’ and Plato’s optimism that knowledge alone would result in ethical behavior because he did not accept their view that human nature was good. He emphasized, instead, that people had to study hard so that they could gain control over their desires. Aristotle had a broad view of what constituted a proper education. Observing the round shadow the earth cast on the moon during eclipses, he concluded that the earth was a sphere and lay at the center of the universe. He urged his students to observe live animals in nature and was one of the ﬁrst to realize that whales and dolphins were mammals, a discovery ignored for nearly two thousand years. Aristotle required that his students identify their starting assumptions and explain logically how they proceeded from one point to the next. This system of reasoning remained inﬂuential in the Islamic world and Europe long after his death and continues to shape how we present written arguments today.

Alexander the Great and His Successors, 334 B.C.E.–30 B.C.E. • Alexander of Macedon (r. 336–323 b.c.e.) Also known as Alexander the Great. Son of Philip of Macedon. Defeated the last Achaemenid ruler in 331 b.c.e. and ruled the former Achaemenid Empire until his death.

n the course of his lifetime Aristotle witnessed the decline of Athens, which never recovered from the costs of the Peloponnesian War, and the rise of his native region of Macedon. Philip and his son Alexander of Macedon (also called Alexander the Great) were autocrats untouched by the Athenian tradition of democracy: as generals they ordered their professional armies to obey them and governed conquered territory as if the inhabitants were part of their army. Many scholars use the term Helenization to describe the process by which societies, peoples, and places during Alexander’s rule became more Greek (the Greek word for Greece is Hellas). As Alexander’s army conquered territory, his Greek-speaking soldiers encountered many different peoples living in West, Central, and South Asia. Some settled in these regions and built communities that resembled those they had left behind in Greece. Recent historians have questioned this depiction of Alexander as a champion of Greek culture, noting how much he emulated the Persians. After the death of the last Achaemenid ruler, Darius III, Alexander portrayed himself as a defender of the Achaemenid tradition and adopted many Achaemenid practices, sometimes to the dismay of his Greek followers. Newly discovered leather scrolls show that four years after defeating the Achaemenids, Alexander’s government issued orders under his name in the same format and language as the Achaemenids.8 The borders of his empire overlapped almost entirely with those of the Achaemenid Empire, and his army, administration, and tax system were all modeled on those of the Achaemenids. After his death, Alexander’s empire broke into three major sections, each ruled by a successor dynasty which followed Achaemenid practice.

Philip and Alexander: From Macedon to Empire, 359–323 B.C.E.

Lying to the north of Greece, Macedon was a peripheral region with no cities and little farming where Greek was spoken. Originally a barren region, it became a powerful kingdom under Philip II (r. 359– 336 b.c.e.), who reorganized the army into a professional ﬁghting force of paid

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soldiers. Philip and Alexander built empires by amassing wealth from the peoples they conquered. Philip created, and Alexander inherited, an army more powerful than any of its rivals. Philip reorganized his army by training them to use close-packed infantry formations and by arming some of the infantry with pikes 17 feet (5 m) long. Alexander’s infantry, who carried the same long pikes, formed two formidable groups on the battleﬁeld. The infantry phalanx had 15,000 men who fought in rows and were almost invincible; 1,800 cavalry aided them by attacking the enemy on either side. Following his father’s assassination, Alexander defeated the Persian forces in 331 b.c.e., and in 330 b.c.e. one of the Persian satraps killed the reigning Achaemenid emperor Darius III (r. 336–330 b.c.e.). This turn of events allowed Alexander to take over the Persian Empire intact; he did not alter the administrative structure of satrapies. A brilliant military strategist, Alexander led his troops over eleven thousand miles in eight years, going as far as Egypt and north India, but did not signiﬁcantly expand the territory of the Persian Empire (see Map 6.2). Alexander constantly wrestled with the issue of how to govern. Should he rule as a Macedonian or adopt the Achaemenid model? To the horror of his Macedonian troops, he donned Persian clothing and expected them to prostrate themselves before him as the Achaemenid subjects honored the Persian king. When his senior advisers protested, Alexander made one of many compromises during his thirteen-year reign: he required the Persians, but not the Macedonians, to prostrate themselves. Like the Achaemenids, Alexander married women to cement his political alliances; his wife Roxane was a native of Samarkand, one of the cities that most vigorously resisted his rule. The farther they traveled from Greece, the more unhappy Alexander’s men grew. In 326 b.c.e., when they reached the banks of the Hyphasis River in India, they refused to go on, forcing Alexander to turn back. After a long and difﬁcult march along the northern edge of the Indian Ocean, Alexander and the remnants of his army returned to Babylon, where Alexander died in 323 b.c.e.

The Legacy of Alexander the Great

The aftereffects of Alexander’s conquests lasted far longer than his brief thirteen-year reign. Initially the greatest impact came from his soldiers. Thousands traveled with him, but thousands more chose to stay behind in different parts of Asia. Some could not continue at his breakneck pace because of battle wounds or age, and some preferred to live with their local wives. These men were responsible for the spread of Greek culture over a large geographic region. Archaeologists have unearthed an entire Greek city in the Afghan town of Ai Khanum (aye-EE KAH-nuhm), which had all the usual buildings of a Greek town: a theater, a citadel where the army was stationed, a gymnasium, and temples. The temples built by Alexander’s men contained statues of gods made by local artists following Greek prototypes. The population of Ai Khanum and other similar settlements included both the local Iranian peoples and descendants of Alexander’s soldiers. After Alexander’s death, his empire broke into three sections, each ruled by one of his generals: Egypt went to Ptolemy (TOHL-uh-mee), Greece and Macedon to Antigonas (an-TIG-uh-nass), and all other territories—including Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean coast, and satrapies all the way to the Indus River Valley—to Seleucus (seh-LOO-kuhs), who sent Megasthenes as his ambassador to the Mauryans in 302 b.c.e. (see Chapter 3). Each general founded a regional dynasty named

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Persian Empire at its greatest extent Alexander’s Empire, 326 B.C.E.

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Successors to Alexander’s Empire, 326 B.C.E.

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MAP 6.2 The Empires of Persia and Alexander the Great The Achaemenids (550– 330 B.C.E.), the Parthians (247 B.C.E.–224 C.E.), and the Sasanians (224–651) all formed powerful dynasties in Iran. The largest (shown with a green border) was that of the Achaemenids. After conquering it in 330 B.C.E., Alexander of Macedon enlarged its territory only slightly. Under the Achaemenids, this large region remained united for over two hundred years; under Alexander, for only thirteen. After Alexander’s death, the empire split into three. for himself: the Ptolemies (TOHL-uh-meze), the Antigonids (an-TIG-uh-nidz), and the Seleucids (seh-LOO-sidz). These successor regimes continued to administer their territories using the Achaemenid system of administration. The city of Alexandria in Egypt, founded by Alexander in 332 b.c.e., became a major center of learning within the territory of the Ptolemies. At Alexandria, the Ptolemies built the Museum, a temple to the Muses (the goddesses of the arts), and they welcomed scholars in many different ﬁelds, including mathematics, medicine, astronomy, history, and geography. Archaeologists have found thirteen lecture halls of the same size, each with benches for a lecturer and his audience, an indication of the size of the city’s schools. The city’s library was particularly impressive because customs ofﬁcials conﬁscated all papyrus rolls that travelers brought to Alexandria; the library retained the originals and returned copies to the owners. In 240 b.c.e. the Greek astronomer Eratosthenes (eh-ruh-TOSS-thih-nees) was appointed librarian. Since Aristotle, the Greeks had believed that the earth was spherical, but they had no idea how big it was. Eratosthenes devised an ingenious experiment. He had heard that, on the day of the solstice, when the sun shone straight above a city named Syene (SIGH-ee-nee) to the south of

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The Parthians and the Sasanians, Heirs to the Achaemenids, 247 B.C.E.–651 C.E.

Alexandria, it cast no shadow. At high noon on June 21, the day of the solstice, Eratosthenes measured the angle of the sun’s shadow in Alexandria at nearly one-ﬁftieth of a 360-degree circle. He then drew an imaginary triangle connecting Alexandria, Syene, and the center of the earth (see Figure 6.1). He concluded that since Syene was 5,000 stadia (488 miles, 785 km) away from Alexandria, the earth’s circumference must be ﬁfty times larger, or 250,000 stadia (24,427 miles, 39,311 km). The actual circumference of the earth is 24,857 miles (40,000 km), meaning that his error was less than 2 percent. Eratosthenes’ brilliant experiment taught the Greeks that the known world occupied only a small section of the earth’s northern hemisphere. The Romans defeated the last of the Antigonids in 168 b.c.e. when they conquered Macedonia (see Chapter 7) and won Egypt from the Ptolemies in 30 b.c.e., but they never conquered the Iranian Plateau. A people based in northern Iran, the Parthians, broke off from the Seleucids in 247 b.c.e. and took Iran from the Seleucids by 140 b.c.e.

Key:

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7.2° Measuring stick Ray of sunlight 7.2° angle 7.2°

5,000 stadia 7.2° = x 360° EARTH

7.2°

x = 252,000 stadia

FIGURE 6.1

Eratosthenes’ Measurement of the Earth Eratosthenes knew that, on June 21, a ray of light entering a well at the city of Syene cast no shadow because the sun was directly above. At Alexandria, 5,000 stadia away, also at noon, a parallel sun ray cast a shadow of 7.2 degrees on the ground next to a measuring stick. Using the law of congruent angles, Eratosthenes reasoned that 1/50th of the earth’s circumference was 5,000 stadia, and therefore the circumference of the earth was 250,000 stadia. His result (24,427 miles, or 39,311 km) was less than 2 percent from the correct ﬁgure of 24,857 miles (40,000 km). (Illustration by Lydia Stepanek)

The Parthians and the Sasanians, Heirs to the Achaemenids, 247 B.C.E.–651 C.E.

fter the defeat of the Seleucids, two dynasties—the Parthians (247 b.c.e.– 224 c.e.) and the Sasanians (224–651 c.e.)—governed Iran for nearly nine hundred years. The two dynasties frequently emulated the Achaemenids; they built monuments like theirs, retained their military and tax structures, and governed the different peoples under them ﬂexibly. The Parthians followed the Achaemenid precedent closely, while the Sasanians experimented more. The homeland of a seminomadic people who lived near the modern city of Gorgan in northern Iran, Parthia had been a satrapy within both the Achaemenid and Seleucid Empires. In 247 b.c.e., according to a legend, Arsaces I formed a conspiracy to found his own dynasty with six other men. It was no coincidence that he had exactly the number of conspirators that his role model Darius had. Like the Achaemenids, the Parthians were Zoroastrians who worshiped ﬁre, but they allowed their subjects to practice their own religions.

• Parthians (247 b.c.e.– 224 c.e.) The ruling dynasty of Iran, who defeated the Seleucids and took over their territory in 140 b.c.e. Famous for their heavily armored cavalry, they posed a continuous problem for the Roman Empire.

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• Sasanians

The ruling dynasty (224–651 c.e.) of Iran who defeated the Parthians and ruled for more than four centuries until the Islamic conquest of Iran. Introduced innovations such as nonsatrap royal lands and government support of Zoroastrianism.

New Empires in Iran and Greece, 2000 B.C.E.–651 C.E.

The dynastic founder and his successors eventually conquered the Tigris and Euphrates River Valleys and the Iranian Plateau extending up to the Indus River Valley in Pakistan (see Map 6.2). The Parthians were famous for their ﬁne and fast horses, which were heavily coated with armor. Parthian archers tricked the enemy by pretending to retreat and then turning backwards on their mounts to shoot, in a display of archery prowess still known as the Parthian shot. Starting in the ﬁrst century b.c.e. and continuing through the ﬁrst and second centuries c.e., the Romans (see Chapter 7) attacked the Parthians at periodic intervals, but the powerful Parthian military always kept them at bay. Parthian soldiers were retainers to the nobles, for whom they performed military service. The king, who called himself “king of kings” in the Persian tradition, stood at the top of Parthian society, and the upper nobility ranked just below him but above the lower nobility. Though not slaves, the retainers had to perform a certain amount of labor and to pay a ﬁxed amount of goods to the nobles they served. Doctors, artists, singing storytellers, and traders formed a middle level between the nobles and the retainers. Trade was important because the Parthians occupied the territory between the Greco-Roman world and their Asian trading partners. In times of peace with Rome the Parthians traded spices and textiles for Roman metals and manufactured goods, but during the frequent periods of war, trading routes were blocked and smugglers became active. The Parthians ruled for nearly ﬁve hundred years, far longer than the twohundred-year reign of the Achaemenids, and their rule came to an end in 224 c.e. when Ardashir, one of their satraps based in the Iranian heartland of Persis, overthrew them and founded the Sasanian empire (named for his ancestor, Sasan). After defeating the Parthians, the Sasanians incorporated the Parthian forces into their army, of which the armored cavalry continued to be the strongest section. The Sasanian rulers led their powerful army to conquer all the territory of the former Parthian empire in addition to Sogdiana, Georgia, and the northeastern Arabian peninsula (see Map 6.2). Sasanian society remained as hierarchical as in earlier Achaemenid and Parthian times, and the greater number of surviving documents means that we know more about it. The upper nobility was divided into four ranks, with the king’s direct relatives ranking highest and those unrelated to the king lowest. Royal women continued to exercise considerable power, as in Achaemenid times; some of the most powerful rulers’ mothers were called “queen of queens.” Under the upper nobility were a lower group of nobles, some of whom received their lands and positions directly from the king. The middle ranks included craftsmen, traders, doctors, and singers. At the bottom of society were the cultivators, who had to give a share of their crop to the nobles in addition to the taxes they paid. Once the Sasanians conquered a region, they divided the territory into two types of land: some was reserved for the king, while that portion entrusted to a satrap was divided into smaller districts. Only on the royal lands could the king establish cities, which he populated with deported peoples, most often skilled craftsmen, drawn from prisoners of war. The practice of forcible resettlement had a long history in western Asia going back to the Assyrians and the Babylonians (see Chapter 2). The resettled peoples could not leave their assigned cities, but they were free to marry local women, practice their own religions, and speak their native languages. These skilled craftsmen received high pay for their work as weavers and as builders and engineers who constructed roads and bridges. The Sasanians realized that many different peoples lived within their empire, and to propagate knowledge they encouraged the translation of certain books

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from Sanskrit, Greek, and Syriac (the language spoken in Mesopotamia). They appointed ofﬁcials to supervise Zoroastrian observances in each province at the local level, and the state constructed ﬁre altars all over the empire. These government policies made Sasanian Iran actively Zoroastrian, and the Sasanians had difﬁculty managing the great religious diversity of their subjects. By the third century c.e. two new religions, each with sizable followings, appeared in Iran: Christianity (see Chapter 7) and Manichaeism (mah-nih-KEEiz-uhm). Mani (mah-KNEE) (216–ca. 274) was an Iranian preacher born in Mesopotamia who believed that his Manichaean teachings incorporated all the teachings of earlier prophets, including Zarathustra, the Buddha, and Jesus Christ. He deliberately recorded his teachings in written form so that his followers could translate them into other languages to encourage conversion. Like Zoroastrianism, his was a dualistic system in which the forces of light and dark were engaged in a perpetual struggle. Ordinary people could strengthen the forces of light by supporting the Manichaean clergy, who ate only vegetarian food provided by the laity, lived celibate lives, and conducted Manichaean rituals. The Sasanians saw both the Christians and the Manichaeans as threats because they had their own religious hierarchy and refused to perform Zoroastrian rituals. Some kings tried to strengthen Zoroastrianism by commissioning a written version of The Avesta to rival Manichaean scriptures and the Bible. Other rulers directly persecuted members of the two churches: Manichaeism was banned even before Mani’s death, and some Christians, suspected of being allies of the enemy Roman forces, were killed. The third major religious community, the Jews, fared better under the Sasanians than did the Christians and the Manichaeans. The Sasanians allowed the Jews to govern their own communities as long as the Jews paid their taxes. Yet, whenever the Jews united behind a leader who challenged the legitimacy of Sasanian rule, the Sasanians put down the rebellion. Adherence to the Achaemenid model of ﬂexible empire allowed the Sasanians to rule for over four centuries. Surviving several military defeats and forfeiting large chunks of their empire, the Sasanians ruled until 651, when their capital at Ctesiphon fell to the Islamic armies of the caliphate (see Chapter 9). For over a thousand years, the model of a ﬂexible empire based on satrapies was so successful that the Achaemenids, Alexander, the successor states, the Parthians, and The Sasanian Palace, Ctesiphon, Iran The ruins of the the Sasanians all used it to govern their empires. During this time, a Sasanian palace at Ctesiphon demonstrate the ingenuity and great skill very different empire and a power- of the brickmasons, who came from all over the empire and were ful military rival to both the Par- resettled there by the emperors. The vaulted arch stands 118 feet (36 m) thians and the Sasanians arose in high, making it one of the world’s largest brick arches. Its open doorways Rome in modern-day Italy, as the and ﬁne brickwork inspired Islamic architects who incorporated these next chapter will explain. same features into early mosques. (Gerard Degeorge/AKG Images)

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Chapter Review KEY TERMS Darius (144) Herodotus (144) Achaemenids (146) satrap (148) The Avesta (148) Zoroastrianism (148) Ahura Mazda (148) Cyrus (149) Lydian coins (152) Phoenicians (158) Artemisia (163) Aristotle (165) Alexander of Macedon (166) Parthians (169) Sasanians (169)

Download the MP3 audio ﬁle of the Chapter Review and listen to it on the go.

orn in the decade of the most intense ﬁghting between Athens and the Achaemenid Empire, Herodotus devoted his life to understanding the conﬂict between the two. Indeed, he deﬁned the goal of The Histories as “to show why the two peoples fought with each other.” Although, as a Greek, Herodotus sympathized with the Athenians, he attributed much of the Persians’ success to their monarchical form of government.

What administrative and military innovations enabled the Achaemenid dynasty to conquer and rule such a vast empire? The Achaemenids succeeded in conquering the 30 to 35 million people who populated the entire world known to them; they did not conquer Greece or the area south of the Black Sea. The decentralized structure of the Persian Empire, divided into satrapies, allowed for diversity; as long as each region fulﬁlled its tax obligations to the center, its residents could practice their own religion and speak their own languages. Conquered peoples were recruited into the powerful infantry, cavalry, archers, and engineers of the Achaemenids. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers marched by foot over Eurasia on a ﬁne system of roads whose major artery was the Royal Road.

What were the important accomplishments of the Greek citystates? Consider innovations in politics, intellectual life, ﬁne arts, and science. For all their military success, the Persians proved unable to defeat the Athenians and their allied city-states, who were able to outwit and outﬁght the Persian army and its navy twice in the late ﬁfth century b.c.e. The city’s democracy survived for more than two centuries until 322 b.c.e. The city-state’s wealth supported an extraordinary group of dramatists who wrote plays, artists and craftsmen who built the Acropolis, and philosophers who debated the importance of reason. The Athenians knew that the world was round, and a later Greek scholar in Alexandria even calculated the world’s circumference to within 2 percent of its actual length.

Who was Alexander, and what was his legacy? Alexander conquered the entire extent of the Persian Empire and completely adopted its administrative structure. He died young after ruling only thirteen years, but thousands of his men stayed behind, building Greek-style cities like Ai Khanum throughout Central Asia. On his death, his empire broke into three smaller Achaemenid-style empires: the Antigonids in Greece, the Ptolemies in Egypt, and the Seleucids in western Asia.

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WEB RESOURCES

Parthia, originally a satrap in northern Iran, overthrew the Seleucids and largely adopted the Achaemenid model of empire. The Parthians and their successors, the Sasanians, broke from the Achaemenid model by creating royal lands on which the king resettled captured skilled craftsmen who built impressive cities. Zoroastrians like the Achaemenids, the Sasanians departed from earlier policies of religious tolerance by occasionally persecuting the Manichaean, Christian, and Jewish communities in their realm.

Pronunciation Guide Interactive Maps MAP 6.1 Greek and Phoenician Settlement in the Mediterranean MAP 6.2 The Empires of Persia and Alexander the Great

Primary Sources Chapter Objectives ACE Multiple-Choice Quiz Flashcards

For Further Reference Casson, Lionel. Travel in the Ancient World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974.

man and Stephen W. Durrant. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002.

Harley, J. B., and David Woodward. The History of Cartography. Vol. 1, Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Pollitt, J. J. Art and Experience in Classical Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972.

Herodotus. The Histories. Translated by Aubrey De Sélincourt. Further rev. ed. New York: Penguin Books, 1954, 2003. Hornblower, Simon, and Antony Spawforth. The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Wiesehöfer, Josef. Ancient Persia from 550 BC to 650 AD. Translated by Azizeh Azodi. New York: I. B. Tauris, 2001.

Websites Evolution of Alphabets (http://www.wam.umd.edu/~rfradkin/alphapage .html). Introduction to the history of many alphabets.

Insler, Stanley. The Ga¯tha¯s of Zarathustra. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975. Markoe, Glenn E. Peoples of the Past: Phoenicians. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Martin, Thomas R. Ancient Greece from Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. Nylan, Michael. “Golden Spindles and Axes: Elite Women in the Achaemenid and Han Empires.” In Early China/Ancient Greece: Thinking Through Comparisons, ed. Steven Shank-

The Parthian Empire (www.parthia.com). Introduction to Parthia Empire with excellent maps. The Perseus Digital Library (www.perseus.tufts.edu). A wealth of searchable texts from the classical world in both the original language and English translation.

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The Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity, 509 B.C.E.–476 C.E. The Roman Republic, 509–27 The Roman Principate, 27

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B.C.E.–284 C.E.

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The Decline of the Empire and the Loss of the Western Provinces, 284–476 (p. 199) he events of 168 b.c.e. cut short the promising career of a young Greek statesman named Polybius (ca. 200–ca. 118 b.c.e.). In that year, after defeating the ruler of Macedon, the Romans demanded that the Greeks send over one thousand hostages to Italy for indeﬁnite detention. Polybius (poh-LIH-bee-us) was deported to Rome, which remained his home even after his sixteen years of detention ended. His one surviving book, The Rise of the Roman Empire, explains why he felt that Rome, and not his native Greece, had become the major power of the Mediterranean:

here can surely be nobody so petty or so apathetic in his outlook that he has no desire to discover by what means and under what system of government the Romans succeeded . . . in bringing under their rule almost the whole of the inhabited world, an achievement which is without parallel in human history. . . . The arresting character of my subject and the grand spectacle which it presents can best be illustrated if we consider the most celebrated empires of the past which have provided historians with their POLYBIUS principal themes, and set them beside the domination of Rome. Those which qualify for such a comparison are the following. The Persians for a certain period exercised their rule and supremacy over a vast territory, but every time that they ventured to pass beyond the limits of Asia they endangered the security not only of their empire but of their existence. . . . The rule of the Macedonians in Europe extended only from the lands bordering the Adriatic to the Danube, which

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284 305 410 Constantine moves capital to Constantinople 330

Roman conquest of Judaea 63

Tetrarchy government 284

Lifetime Missionary of Jesus journeys of Paul 4

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Edict of Milan 313 Council of Nicaea 325

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would appear to be no more than a small fraction of the continent. Later, by overthrowing the Persian Empire, they also became the rulers of Asia; but although they were then regarded as having become the masters of a larger number of states and territories than any other people before them, they still left the greater part of the inhabited world in the hands of others. . . . The Romans, on the other hand, have brought not just mere portions but almost the whole of the world under their rule, and have left an empire which far surpasses any that exists today or is likely to succeed it.1

• Polybius (ca. 200– ca. 118 b.c.e.) A Greek historian who was deported to Rome. Author of The Rise of the Roman Empire, a book that explained how Rome acquired its empire. Believed the task of the historian was to distinguish underlying causes of events.

Most historians today would challenge Polybius’s decision to rank Alexander of Macedon above the Achaemenids, whose empire he inherited (see Chapter 6). Polybius was also unaware of the Han dynasty in China (see Chapter 4), which probably had as many subjects as the Romans (some ﬁfty-ﬁve million). Yet Rome did bring under its rule “almost the whole of the world” if we grant that Polybius meant the entire Mediterranean region, including western Asia, North Africa, and much of Europe. Even after the empire broke apart, the Mediterranean remained a coherent geographical region with shared cultural and linguistic ties forged during the nearly one thousand years of Roman rule. During his detention, Polybius stayed in the city of Rome, where he lived with the descendants of a prominent general. After 152 b.c.e., when he was freed, Polybius accompanied his host’s grandson to modern-day Spain and Carthage in North Africa and sailed down the Atlantic coast of West Africa. (The chapter opening map shows Polybius’s travels and the extent of the Roman Empire after the conquests of Greece, Macedonia, and Carthage.) Travel around and across the Mediterranean was much more common in Polybius’s lifetime than before, and it became even easier in the centuries after his death. Ofﬁcials, soldiers, and couriers of the Roman Empire proceeded along a network of straight paved roads that ringed the Mediterranean Sea, the heart of the Roman Empire. Large boats crisscrossed the sea, while smaller vessels hugged its shore. Roman armies protected travelers from attacks, and the Roman navy lessened the threat of piracy. During Polybius’s lifetime Rome was a republic, but after his death, a century of political chaos culminated in the adoption of monarchy as the empire’s new political system. In the beginning of the Common Era, the new religion of Christianity spread on roads and waterways throughout the Mediterranean region and eventually became the empire’s ofﬁcial religion. The empire, increasingly unable to defend itself from powerful tribes in western Europe, moved to a new capital in the east and ultimately lost control of Rome and its western half.

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Focus Questions

How did Rome, a small settlement in central Italy, expand to conquer and control the entire Mediterranean world of Europe, western Asia, and North Africa? How did the political structure of the Roman Empire change as it grew? What were the basic teachings of Jesus, and how did Christianity become the major religion of the empire? What allowed Rome to retain such a large empire for so long, and what caused the loss of the western half of the empire?

The Roman Republic, 509–27 B.C.E.

n its early years Rome was but one of many city-states on the Italian peninsula, but one with an unusual policy toward defeated enemies: once a neighboring city-state surrendered to Rome, Rome’s leaders offered its citizens a chance to join forces with them. As a result, more and more men joined Rome’s army. This policy increased the size of the Roman army and made it almost unstoppable, and by 272 b.c.e. Rome had conquered the Italian peninsula. In 202 b.c.e., after defeating Carthage, it gained dominance in the western Mediterranean, and in 146 b.c.e., after defeating a Greek coalition, it controlled the eastern Mediterranean as well. Those conquests were the crucial ﬁrst step in the formation of the Mediterranean as a geographical region. After 146 b.c.e., Rome’s armies continued to win territory, but the violence and civil wars of the ﬁrst century b.c.e. brought an end to the republic in 27 b.c.e.

Early Rome to 509 B.C.E.

The city of Rome lies in the middle of the boot-shaped peninsula of Italy, which extends into the Mediterranean. One chain of mountains, the Apennines (AP-puh-nines), runs down the spine of Italy, while the Alps form a natural barrier to the north. Italy’s volcanic soil is more fertile than Greece’s (see Chapter 6), and many different crops ﬂourished in the temperate climate of the Mediterranean. Several large islands, including Sardinia and Corsica, lay to the west of Italy; immediately to the south, the island of Sicily formed a natural steppingstone across the Mediterranean to modern-day Tunisia, Africa, only 100 miles (160 km) away. Written sources reveal little about Rome’s origins. The earliest surviving history of Rome, by Livy, dates to the ﬁrst century b.c.e., nearly one thousand years

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after the site of Rome was ﬁrst settled in 1000 b.c.e. (Polybius’s history starts in 264–260 b.c.e., long after the city’s founding.) The city’s original site lay 16 miles (26 km) from the Tyrrhenian Sea at a point where the shallow Tiber River could be crossed easily. The seven hills surrounding the settlement formed a natural defense, and from the beginning people gathered there to trade. Romans grew up hearing a myth, also recorded by Livy, about the founding of their city by two twin brothers, Romulus and Remus, grandsons of the rightful king. An evil king who had seized power ordered a servant to kill them, but the servant abandoned them instead. Raised by a wolf, the twins survived, and Romulus went on to found Rome in 753 b.c.e. This legend is not unique to Rome; it is a Romanized version of a western Asian myth. Archaeologists have found that small communities surrounded by walls existed in Rome by the eighth century b.c.e. During the sixth and ﬁfth centuries b.c.e., when the Persian and the Greek Empires were vying for power, Rome was an obscure backwater (see Chapter 6). Greek colonists had settled in the south of Italy, and their cities were larger and far better planned than Rome. To the north lived the Etruscans (ee-TRUS-kunz), who built impressive fortresses dug into the sides of the hills. The Romans learned city planning, sewage management, and wall construction from their Etruscan neighbors. The Etruscans modiﬁed the Greek alphabet to write their own language, which the Romans in turn adopted around 600 b.c.e. to record their ﬁrst inscriptions in their native Latin, a language in the Indo-European family.

• Roman Republic Type of Roman government between 509 b.c.e. and 27 b.c.e. Ruled by two elected executives, called consuls, who served one-year terms. The consuls consulted regularly with the senate, composed entirely of patricians, and less often with the plebian assembly, where all free men could vote.

• Roman senate Roman governing body, composed largely of appointed patricians. During the years of the republic (509–27 b.c.e.), membership was around three hundred men and grew slightly in later periods, when the senate became an advisory body.

The Early Republic and the Conquest of Italy, 509–272 B.C.E.

The earliest form of government in the Roman citystate was a monarchy. The ﬁrst kings governed in consultation with an assembly composed of men from Rome’s most prominent and wealthiest families, the patricians (puh-TRISH-uhns) who owned large landholdings. The origins of the patricians are unclear, but they formed a propertied, privileged social group distinct from the plebians (pluh-BEE-uhns), or commoners. Each time the king died, the patrician assembly chose his successor, not necessarily his son; the early kings included both Etruscans and Latins. After overthrowing an Etruscan king, the Romans founded the Roman Republic in 509 b.c.e. In a republic, unlike direct democracy, the people choose the ofﬁcials who govern. The power to rule was entrusted to two elected executives, called consuls, who served a one-year term. The consuls consulted regularly with an advisory body, the Roman senate, which was composed entirely of patricians, and less often with the plebian assembly, in which all free men, or citizens, could vote. The Romans never allowed a simple majority to prevail; instead they divided each assembly into smaller groups and reached a decision by counting the votes of the rich more heavily than the poor. After 400 b.c.e., the republic continuously fought off different mountain peoples from the north who hoped to conquer Rome’s fertile agricultural plain. The Celts or Gauls were residents of the Alps region who spoke Celtic, also an Indo-European language. In 387 b.c.e., Rome suffered a crushing military defeat at the hands of the Gauls, who took the city but left after plundering it for seven months. Rome recovered and began to conquer other city-states. To speakers of Latin among their defeated enemies, the Romans offered all the privileges of citizenship

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and the accompanying obligations; those who did not speak Latin had to pay taxes and serve as soldiers but could not participate in the political system. The Romans learned much from the different peoples they conquered; they worshiped Greek gods to whom they gave Roman names (see below), and they adopted elements of Greek law. They also constructed roads linking Rome with their new possessions. This combination of policies provided a winning formula for Roman military success, and by 321 b.c.e. Roman troops had gained control of the entire Italian peninsula except for the south (the toe and heel of the Italian boot), a region where the Greek settlers’ presence was so pronounced that the Romans referred to it as Magna Graecia (“Greater Greece”). It took almost ﬁfty years before Rome conquered the ﬁnal Greek city-state in Italy.

The Conquest of the Mediterranean World, 272–146 B.C.E.

In 272 b.c.e., the year that Rome gained control of the Italian peninsula, six different powers held territory around the coastline of the Mediterranean, and the residents of these different regions had no shared cultural identity. To the east, the three successors to Alexander (see Chapter 6) still occupied territory: the Antigonids in Macedon, the Seleucids in Syria, and the Ptolemies in Egypt. In addition, two separate leagues of city-states controlled the Greek peninsula. Carthage, a city originally founded by the Phoenicians (see Chapter 6), prospered by taxing trade. With an oligarchic government, Carthage controlled the north coast of Africa between today’s Tunis and Morocco, the

• Carthage A city in modern-day Tunisia originally founded by the Phoenicians. Rome’s main rival for control of the Mediterranean. Between 264 and 146 b.c.e., Rome and Carthage fought three Punic Wars, and Rome won all three.

A Modern Reconstruction of the Port of Carthage The city’s most prominent feature was its protected port. During peace, ships used the port behind the sea-wall, but during war, all the ships could retreat behind the city walls into the interior circular harbor, where they were well-protected. (Museum of Carthage/Gianni Dagli Orti/The Art Archive)

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• Punic Wars

The three wars between Rome and Carthage. The First Punic War, fought from 264 to 241 b.c.e., was for control of Sicily. In the second, between 218 and 202 b.c.e., Hannibal was defeated. In the third, in 146 b.c.e., Rome defeated Carthage and ordered all the city’s buildings leveled and its residents enslaved.

• Hannibal (ca. 247– ca. 182 b.c.e.) The leader of Carthage’s armies during the Second Punic War. A brilliant military strategist who led his troops over the Alps into Rome but who was defeated by Rome’s superior army in 202 b.c.e.

The Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity, 509 B.C.E.–476 C.E.

southern half of modern-day Spain, Corsica, Sardinia, and half of Sicily. The only two actively expansionist states among these different powers, Rome and Carthage, collided in 264 b.c.e. In that year Rome sent troops to support one city-state in Sicily against a different city-state allied with Carthage, triggering the ﬁrst of the Punic Wars. (The Latin word for Phoenicians was Poeni, the origin of the English word Punic [PYOOnik].) Whereas Rome had an army of citizens who fought when they were not farming, Carthage’s army consisted almost entirely of mercenary troops paid to ﬁght. Previously a land power, Rome built its ﬁrst navy of sailing ships powered by multiple levels of oarsmen. After more than twenty years of ﬁghting—some on land, some on sea—Rome won control of Sicily in 241 b.c.e., but Carthage continued to dominate the Mediterranean west of Sicily. Rome and Carthage faced each other again in the Second Punic War (sometimes called the Hannibalic War) from 218 to 202 b.c.e. This war matched two brilliant generals: Carthage’s Hannibal (ca. 247–ca. 182 b.c.e.) with Rome’s Scipio Africanus (236–183 b.c.e.), the grandfather of Polybius’s host Scipio Aemilianus (ca. 185–ca. 129 b.c.e.). Writing about events that occurred before he was born, Polybius believed that while an army might use a pretext to attack an enemy and a battle could begin a war, the historian should distinguish the underlying causes of war from both their pretexts and their beginnings. The underlying cause of the Second Punic War, Polybius argued, dated back to Hannibal’s childhood and his father’s anger at losing the First Punic War. Hannibal probably hoped, too, to cut Rome off from its territories so that Carthage could regain control over Roman territory in Spain. Launching his attack from New Carthage (modern-day Cartagena) in Spain, Hannibal led a force of 50,000 infantry, 9,000 cavalry, and 37 elephants on a ﬁve-month march across southern France and then through the Alps. Polybius believed that the historian had to do on-site research; as he said, “I . . . have personally explored the country, and have crossed the Alps myself to obtain ﬁrst-hand information and evidence.” Hannibal’s decision to cross the Alps was audacious: “These conditions were so unusual as to be almost freakish,” Polybius learned from interviews with the locals. “The new snow lying on top of the old, which had remained there from the previous winter, gave way easily, both because it was soft, having just fallen, and because it was not yet deep.” Many of Hannibal’s men froze or starved to death, and Polybius estimated that less than half the original army, and a single elephant, survived the ﬁfteen-day march through the Alps. Carthage’s army included Africans, Spaniards, Celts, Phoenicians, Italians, and Greeks. Although all of Hannibal’s soldiers came from the Mediterranean region, Polybius noted that they “had nothing naturally in common, neither in their laws, their customs, their language, nor in any other respect,” because the region had not yet become a coherent unit. The varied composition of Hannibal’s army intimidated the Romans: “The troops were drawn up in alternate companies, the Celts naked, the Spaniards with their short linen tunics bordered with purple—their national dress—so that the line presented a strange and terrifying appearance.” Polybius attributed much of the Romans’ success to the rules governing their army. Like the Qin army in China (see Chapter 4), the Roman commanders enforced a complex policy of rewards and punishments. Men who fought bravely in battle could win a spear, cup, or lance. The punishments for failure to ﬁght were severe. If a group of men deserted, their commander randomly selected one-tenth

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of the deserters to be beaten to death. “This is carried out as follows,” explains Polybius. “The tribune takes a cudgel and lightly touches the condemned man with it, whereupon all the soldiers fall upon him with clubs and stones, and usually kill him in the camp itself.” Fear of this punishment kept Roman soldiers at their posts even when defeat was certain. Diminished as their numbers were by the trip across the Alps, Hannibal’s army entered Italy and won several major battles in succession, yet Hannibal never attacked Rome directly. When the two armies ﬁnally met in 202 b.c.e. at Zama, on the North African coast, Rome defeated Carthage. In 201 b.c.e., Rome and Carthage signed a peace treaty that imposed heavy ﬁnes on Carthage, granted Carthage’s holdings in Spain to Rome, and limited the size of its navy to only ten vessels. With the elimination of Carthage as a rival power, the Roman Empire gained control of the entire western Mediterranean. After the Second Punic War, Roman forces fought a series of battles with the three successor states to Alexander. Fighting in Greece and Anatolia, the Romans defeated the Seleucids in 188 b.c.e. yet allowed them to continue to rule in Syria. After several wars, Rome defeated the Antigonids in 168 b.c.e., the year Polybius came to Rome as a hostage, and brought the Antigonid dynasty to an end. In the same year, Ptolemaic Egypt became a client state of Rome, nominally ruled by a Ptolemy king. Rome secured control of the eastern Mediterranean only in 133 b.c.e. Before that time, Rome’s power in the eastern Mediterranean was due to a series of treaties that created dependent and allied states through the region. In 146 b.c.e. Rome defeated Carthage a third time. After he had taken the city, Scipio Aemilianus (SIP-ee-o ay-mill-YAN-us), the commander in charge of Roman forces, ordered all the buildings in the city leveled and the survivors sent to Rome to be sold as slaves. The Roman senate passed a bill forbidding anyone to rebuild Carthage and in place of Carthage’s empire established the province of Africa (the origin of the continent’s name), an area of about 5,000 square miles (13,000 sq km) along the North African coast. As we have seen in previous chapters, conquering rulers frequently exacted a high price from the people of a newly subjugated territory, but the order to destroy a city and enslave all its inhabitants marked a new level of brutality. Each conquest brought new territory to be administered by the Roman Empire. Before the First Punic War, the newly conquered lands usually acquired the same governing structure as the city-state of Rome; in later periods the conquered territories, including Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain, were ruled as military districts by a governor, usually a former consul, appointed by the senate. The residents of these military districts did not receive citizenship. Like the Achaemenid satraps (see Chapter 6), each Roman governor was in charge of an extremely large area; the district of North Africa stretched across the Mediterranean coastline of the three modern nations of Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria. The governor had a tiny staff: one ofﬁcial to watch over the province’s ﬁnances, an advisory panel of his friends and high-ranking clients, and a small entourage composed of lower-ranking freedmen or slaves. The low number of ofﬁcials meant that the governor almost always left the previous governmental structures in place. The greatest challenge for the provincial governors was the collection of taxes, which their small staffs were supposed to forward to Rome. Unlike the Achaemenid satraps, who retained control over tax collection, the Roman governors delegated tax collection to others. The governors divided their provinces into regions

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• tax farmers

Under the Roman empire, businessmen who paid in advance for the right to collect taxes in a given territory and who agreed to provide the governor with a ﬁxed amount of revenue. Anything else they collected was theirs to keep.

• paterfamilias

The legal head of the extended family in Rome and the only person who could own property. Made all decisions affecting his wife, children, and son’s wives.

The Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity, 509 B.C.E.–476 C.E.

and auctioned off the right to collect taxes in each region to the highest bidder. The tax farmers, the businessmen who paid in advance for the right to collect taxes in their territory, agreed to provide the governor with a certain amount of revenue; anything above that was theirs to keep. The residents of provinces suffered because the tax farmers took much more than they were entitled to. Most of the men who applied for the position of tax farmer belonged to a new commercial class of entrepreneurs and businessmen, called equites (EH-kwee-tays) because they were descended from soldiers who rode on horseback.

Roman Society Under the Republic

In 168 b.c.e., the family of the general Scipio Africanus (SIP-ee-o ah-frih-KAHN-us) persuaded the authorities to allow Polybius to stay with them. In The Rise of the Roman Empire, Polybius explains how he became acquainted with the grandson of Scipio Africanus, named Scipio Aemilianus. One day Scipio Aemilianus asked Polybius, “Why is it, Polybius, that although my brother and I eat at the same table, you always speak to him, address all your questions and remarks in his direction and leave me out of them?” Polybius responded that it was only natural for him to address the older brother, but he offered to help the 18-year-old Scipio Aemilianus launch his public career: “I do not think you could ﬁnd anybody more suitable than myself to help you and encourage your efforts.” This conversation illustrates how inﬂuential Romans gained clients, or dependents not in their families. The people most likely to become clients were newcomers to a city, traders, or people who wanted to break from their own families. Patrons had the same obligation to help their clients as the head of the family had to help his own family members. They gave their clients food and money or assistance with legal matters, and clients in turn demonstrated loyalty by accompanying their patrons to the Forum, the marketplace where the residents of every Roman town gathered daily to transact business. Scipio, like most important patrons in Rome, belonged to an eminent patrician family. Both his father and mother were the children of consuls. When he met Polybius, he was living with his adopted father, who was the head of his family, or the paterfamilias (pah-tehr-fah-MIL-lee-us). In Roman society only the paterfamilias could own property. He made all decisions affecting his wife, children, and son’s wives, including, for example, the decision of whether the family could afford to raise a newborn baby or should deny it food and expose it to the elements. When the head of the family died, the sons might decide to split up the immediate family or to stay together under a new paterfamilias. The Romans had a marriage ceremony, but most people did not bother with it; a man and a woman simply moved in together. Women were allowed to inherit, own, and pass on property in their own right, but under the stewardship of a male guardian, usually the paterfamilias. Marriage among more prominent families, like the Scipios, required a formal contract stipulating that the father would recognize as heirs any children resulting from the match. Roman men took only one wife, but the shorter life spans of the ancient world meant that remarriage among the widowed was common. Either the husband or wife could initiate divorce, which was accomplished by simple notiﬁcation; the main legal issue was the settlement of property. Scipio Aemilianus’s parents divorced two or three years after his birth, but he remained close to both.

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Roman women devoted considerable energy to educating their children, whose marriages they often helped to arrange. The biographer of Cornelia, the widowed aunt of Scipio Aemilianus, praised her for being “proper in her behavior” and “a good and principled mother.” She refused to marry the ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt so that she could devote herself to her twelve children, of whom only three survived to adulthood. Late in her life, “she had a wide circle of friends and her hospitality meant that she was never short of dinner guests. She surrounded herself with Greek and Roman scholars, and used to exchange gifts with kings from all over the world. Her guests and visitors used particularly to enjoy the stories she told of the life and habits of her father, Africanus.”2 Cornelia’s example shows how Roman women were able to exert considerable inﬂuence even though they were formally barred from holding public ofﬁce. Well-off Roman households like the Scipios also owned slaves, who were usually captured in military campaigns abroad, brought to Rome, and sold to the highest bidder. Those who worked the ﬁelds or inside the homes of their masters were more fortunate than those who toiled in gold and silver mines, where mortality rates were high because the underground tunnels often collapsed. Some estimate that a ratio of three free citizens to one slave prevailed in the republic, one of the highest rates in world history.3 On the rare occasions when Roman slaves obtained their freedom, they gained the full rights of citizens. However, many more slaves remained slaves for their entire lives, as did their children, because a child born to a slave mother, regardless of the father’s status, remained a slave unless freed by the owner.

The Late Republic, 146–27 B.C.E.

Polybius and his contemporaries were well aware of the strains on Roman society that came with the rapid acquisition of so much new territory. During the years of Rome’s conquests, the political system of the republic had functioned well. But soon after the victories of 146 b.c.e., the republic proved unable to resolve the tensions that came with the expanded empire. In the early years of the republic, most Roman soldiers lived on farms, which they left periodically to ﬁght in battles. As the Roman army fought in more distant places, like Carthage, soldiers went abroad for long stretches at a time and often sold off their ﬁelds to rich landowners, who invested in large-scale agricultural enterprises that grew fruit or vegetables, pressed olive oil, or produced wine. With few freedmen for hire, the rich landowners turned increasingly to slaves, and privately held estates, called latifundia (lat-uh-FUN-dee-uh), grew larger and larger. The gulf widened between the well-off owners of latifundia estates and the ordinary people who had lost their land. Many of the landless moved to Rome, where they joined the ranks of the city’s poor because they had no steady employment. Cornelia’s son Tiberius Gracchus (ty-BEER-ee-us GRAK-us) (ca. 169–133 b.c.e.) was one of the ﬁrst to propose economic reforms to help the poor. Each time Rome conquered a new region, the government set aside large amounts of public land, much of it controlled by the wealthy landed families of the city. Tiberius wanted to enforce an existing limit on the amount of land any individual family could own and give the remainder to the poor. Such land grants, he hoped, would ease unemployment among the city’s poor while increasing the number of landed peasants eligible for military service.

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• dictator

A position given by the Roman senate before the ﬁrst century b.c.e. to a temporary commander that granted him full authority for a limited amount of time, usually six months.

• Julius Caesar (100– 44 b.c.e.) Rome’s most successful military commander in the ﬁrst century b.c.e. Conquered and governed much of Gaul, the region of modern-day France. Named dictator by the senate in 49 b.c.e.

Primary Source: A Man of Unlimited Ambition: Julius Caesar Find out how Roman attitudes toward kingship led to the assassination of Julius Caesar.

The Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity, 509 B.C.E.–476 C.E.

Elected tribune in 133 b.c.e., Tiberius Gracchus brought his proposals before the plebian assembly, not the senate. The bill passed because Tiberius removed the other tribune, who was opposed to the measure. Furious that he did not follow the usual procedures, a gang of senators and their supporters killed him. This was the ﬁrst time since the founding of the republic that participants in a political dispute used murder as a weapon. Even after his death, calls for agrarian reform persisted. In 123 b.c.e. Tiberius’s younger brother Gaius Gracchus (GUY-us GRAK-us) launched an even broader program of reform that urged purchase of grain by the state and guaranteed sale to the poor living in Rome at low cost. He, too, was killed during the violence that broke out between his supporters and their political opponents. Polybius and his contemporaries were shocked by the sudden violent turn in Roman politics, but the trend grew only more pronounced in the ﬁrst century b.c.e., when many institutions of the republic ceased to function. In order to raise an army, one general, Marius (157–86 b.c.e.), did the previously unthinkable: he enlisted volunteers from among the working poor in Rome, waiving the traditional requirement that soldiers had to own land. Unlike the traditional farmer-soldiers, these troops had to be paid, and the leader who recruited them was obliged to support them for their entire lives. The troops eagerly looked forward to military campaigns because they received a share of the plunder each time they won a battle. Their loyalties were to the commander who paid them, not the republic. After Marius died, Sulla, another general with his own private army, came to power. In 81 b.c.e. Sulla was not content to serve only a single year as consul and so arranged for the senate to declare him dictator, or temporary commander with full authority for a ﬁxed amount of time. In earlier periods, the senate had the power to name a dictator for a six-month term during a crisis, but Sulla used the position to secure his hold on the government. In the different years after Sulla’s death in 78 b.c.e., different generals vied to lead Rome. The senate continued to meet and to elect two consuls, but the generals with their private armies controlled the government, often with the senate’s tacit consent. Large privatized armies staffed by the clients and slaves of generals conquered much new territory for Rome in the ﬁrst century b.c.e. They defeated the muchweakened Seleucids in 64 b.c.e. in Syria, bringing the dynasty to an end, but they never defeated the powerful Parthian cavalry (see Chapter 6). The most successful Roman commander was Julius Caesar (100–44 b.c.e.), who conquered Gaul, a region that included northern Italy and present-day France. Although the Romans looked down on the peoples of Gaul as barbarians, or less civilized people who could not read and write, the Gauls participated actively in trade and had a strong economy. After his term as governor ended in Gaul, Caesar led his armies to Rome, and in 49 b.c.e. the senate appointed Caesar dictator. Between 48 and 44 b.c.e. Caesar continued as dictator and served as consul every other year. Caesar named himself dictator for life in 44 b.c.e. This move antagonized even his allies, and a group of senators killed him in March that year. Caesar’s death, however, did not end Rome’s long civil war. In his will, Caesar had adopted as his heir his great-nephew Octavian (63 b.c.e.–14 c.e.), the future Augustus. In 30 b.c.e. Octavian conquered Egypt, bringing the rule of the Ptolemies, the last successor state to Alexander, to an end. Egypt joined the Roman Empire as a province. With this move Octavian eliminated all his rivals and brought nearly a century of political chaos and civil war to a close. The battles fought in Greece, Macedonia, Egypt, North Africa, and Spain demonstrate that commanders could move their armies easily around and across the Mediterranean in pursuit of their rivals.

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When the republic came to an end, Octavian had to devise a new political system capable of governing the entire Mediterranean region.

The Roman Principate, 27 B.C.E.–284 C.E.

n 27 b.c.e. Octavian became the sole ruler of Rome and made all of the important decisions governing the empire. He never named himself emperor. Instead he called himself “princeps” (PRIN-keps), or ﬁrst citizen, even though he made all the important decisions governing the empire. The new political structure he devised, in which he held almost all power, is called the Roman principate (PRIN-sih-pate) (government of the princeps). The principate remained in place until 284 c.e. Historians call the period between 27 b.c.e., when Octavian took power, and 180 c.e. the “Pax Romana” (PAHKS ro-MAHN-uh), or Roman Peace, because the entire Mediterranean region beneﬁted from these centuries of stability. People moved easily across the empire, which became even more integrated as a result.

• Roman principate The system of government in Rome from 27 b.c.e. to 284 c.e., in which the princeps, a term meaning “ﬁrst citizen,” ruled the empire as a monarch in all but name.

The Political Structure of the Principate

Octavian wanted to establish a regime that would last beyond his own life. He hoped, too, to prevent a future general from seizing the government, yet he did not want to name himself perpetual dictator or king for fear that he would antagonize the Roman political elite. In 27 b.c.e. the senate awarded him a new title, Augustus, meaning “revered,” the name by which he is usually known. Augustus transferred the power to tax and control the army from the senate to the princeps. Fully aware that the armies were dangerously big, Augustus ordered many soldiers demobilized and used his own private funds to buy land for them— some in Italy, some in the provinces. Augustus made sure that the senate approved the measures he enacted. The most important of his changes concerned the provinces; he asserted the right to appoint all military leaders and the governors of the important provinces, thus ensuring that no one could form an army in the provinces and challenge him in Rome. The one issue that Augustus did not resolve was who would succeed him: with no son of his own, he named his wife’s son from a previous marriage as his heir, establishing a precedent that a princeps without a son of his own could name his successor. The best solution was the product of chance; since the three princeps who ruled from 98 to 161 c.e. did not have sons, they were able to choose their successors while still in ofﬁce. The last century of the principate was not as smooth; between 211 and 284 c.e., the empire had thirty-six emperors, of whom nineteen were murdered, were executed, or died in battle with their successors.

• Augustus The name, meaning “revered,” that Octavian (63 b.c.e.–14 c.e.) received from the senate when he became princeps, or ﬁrst citizen, of Rome in 27 b.c.e. and established the monarchy that ruled the empire.

The Social Changes of the Principate

Ever since the second century b.c.e., when the government classiﬁed Sicily and other new conquests as provinces, the men who had staffed the provincial governments had not received the privileges of citizens. They did not have access to Roman courts, and they could not participate in the political system of Rome. In the ﬁrst century c.e. Augustus had deliberately increased the number of citizens by awarding Roman citizenship to discharged soldiers. On Augustus’s death in

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14 c.e. about four million people had become citizens,4 and the number continued to increase. In 212 c.e. the emperor granted citizenship status to all free men anywhere in the empire, possibly in the hope of increasing tax revenues. Roman law also changed during the course of the principate. Originally the magistrates and provincial governors who decided judicial cases applied Roman law to citizens and local law to noncitizens. They considered both unwritten laws, or customary practices, and written laws, which included laws passed by the senate or the plebian assembly, edicts from the emperor, and sometimes the writings of learned jurists. Many of the principles they developed still inform the modern practice of law. A person charged with a crime had the right to appear before a judge, who was to consider all the evidence fairly before deciding on the person’s guilt. Everyone was innocent until proven guilty. The Roman justice system did not, however, treat everyone equally. The sharp differences of the republic among patricians, equites, and plebians gradually faded, and, over the course of the principate, as more people gained the rights of citizens, two new social groups subsumed the earlier divisions: the elite honestiores (hohNEST-ee-or-eez) and the humiliores (HUGH-meal-ee-or-eez), or the humble. Membership in these groups did not overlap with citizenship: noncitizen honestiores existed, as did citizen humiliores. Courts tended to treat the two groups very differently, allowing the wealthy to appeal their cases to Rome while sentencing the humble to heavier punishments for the same crime. The years of the principate also saw some gradual changes in the legal position of women. Most people lived in small families consisting of a couple, their children, and whichever slaves or servants they had. On marriage, women moved in with their husbands but technically remained in their father’s families and so retained the right to reclaim their dowries when their husbands died. Dowries were small, often about a year of the father’s income, because daughters were entitled to a share of their father’s property on his death, which granted them ﬁnancial independence during the marriage. Although they had greater control over their property than women in most other societies, Roman women continued to assume a subordinate role in marriage, possibly because many were much younger than their husbands. Men tended to marry in their late twenties and early thirties, women in their teens or early twenties. Most families arranged their children’s marriages to form alliances with families of equal or better social standing. Some marriages turned out to be quite affectionate. One well-known writer in the ﬁrst century who was also a lawyer, Pliny (PLIH-nee) the Younger (ca. 61– 113 c.e.), wrote to his wife’s aunt about his wife: She is highly intelligent and a careful housewife, and her devotion to me is a sure indication of her virtue. In addition, this love has given her interest in literature: she keeps copies of my works to read again and again and even learn by heart. She is so anxious when she knows that I am going to plead in court, and so happy when all is over! . . . Please accept our thanks for having given her to me and me to her as if chosen for each other.

Pliny married in his 40s, at the peak of his legal career, while his third wife Calpurnia was still a teenager. Despite their closeness, she must have often deferred to Pliny, who was much older.

The Roman Principate, 27 B.C.E.–284 C.E.

Pliny also wrote about the famous eruption from Mount Vesuvius, which he witnessed from his home in the Bay of Naples in the early afternoon on August 24, 79 c.e. He described the cloud of smoke as “white, sometimes blotched and dirty, according to the amount of soil and ashes carried with it.”5 Many of the residents of nearby Pompeii (POMP-ay) did not realize how dangerous the situation was and stayed in town, and Pliny’s uncle, Pliny the Elder, actually traveled to the site of the erupting volcano to see if he could rescue anyone. When Pliny the Elder arrived, “ashes were already falling, hotter and thicker as the ships drew near, followed by bits of pumice [PUH-miss] and blackened stones, charred and cracked by the ﬂames.” That evening Pliny the Elder went to bed inside his house; he awoke to ﬁnd his door blocked. His servants dug him out, and the entire household went outside; even though the sun had come up, the ash-ﬁlled sky was “blacker and denser than any ordinary night.” The uncle tried to escape by boat, but the waves were too high, and he collapsed. Two days later, when the cloud lifted, Pliny the Elder had died, killed by the poisonous fumes from the volcano. The sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum have afforded historians new understanding of Roman society in a provincial town during the ﬁrst century c.e. (See the feature “Visual Evidence: Pompeii.”)

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House of the Faun, Pompeii, Italy One of the loveliest surviving villas at Pompeii is the House of the Faun, named for the ﬁgure in the fountain. The well-off residents of Pompeii, a provincial Roman town, lived in lovely villas like this one with hot and cold running water, lush gardens, and exquisite tiled fountains. (Casa del Faune, Pompeii, Italy/Scala/Art Resource, NY)

Travel and Knowledge of the Outside World

While Romans had been traveling for business and pleasure ever since the conquests of the second century b.c.e., travel continued to increase throughout the principate and contributed to the further integration of the Mediterranean

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POMPEII

he eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E. preserved the entire provincial city of Pompeii—not just an individual building or a tomb—under a layer of ash, where it remained undiscovered until 1748. Pompeii possessed all the important features of a typical Roman city: a theater, temples to Roman and non-Roman gods, baths, a gymnasium, an amphitheater, shops, paved streets, and a forum where the residents met each day and carried out their business transactions. The city’s twenty thousand residents participated in a highly commercialized economy. No one baked bread because it was available fresh from bakeries every day. The bakeries at Pompeii are easily identiﬁed by their millstones of volcanic tufa stone, which slaves or draft animals rotated to grind the grain. Other shops also sold pastries and cakes. Farmers sold local products, like onions and herbs, at the markets, where people also purchased wine or garum, a sauce made from fermented ﬁsh. One of the most developed industries in the city processed raw wool from sheep into luxurious woolen textiles. After the sheep were sheared, women slaves in many households washed the dirt and oils from the wool and carded it to make thread for spinning. After they wove the spun thread into cloth on looms, householders brought the homespun cloth to workshops to be ﬁnished. Workshop employees moistened, heated, and pressed the wool so that it would shrink and thicken. Only then could the cloth be dyed, often bright yellow or deep purple, or bleached

with sulphur. The painting on the facing page shows male and female workers processing wool. This particular wall painting was probably commissioned by the owner of a textile workshop. The residents of Pompeii lived in lavish houses whose walls were ﬁlled with frescoes showing scenes of daily life and legendary exploits of the gods. Painted on wet plaster, these frescoes retain their original brilliant pigments, particularly the dark red so characteristic of Pompeii’s art. The large houses of the rich had extensive gardens and stables outside and lavish interior rooms. One tile ﬂoor portrayed Alexander the Great defeating Darius III, the last emperor of the Achaemenids (see Chapter 6). Large houses often had a dining room, called the triclinium, with three couches on which diners reclined as they ate. A sophisticated system of pipes supplied these houses with hot and cold running water. The remains at Pompeii provide a valuable reminder of the high living standards of the Romans, even those living in a provincial town. Few people elsewhere in the world in the ﬁrst century C.E. had hot running water, large gardens, or exquisite art. True, not everyone in Pompeii occupied such houses; poor people lived crowded together in small apartments without gardens or plumbing. The extraordinary archaeological remains at Pompeii afford a glimpse of exactly how rich and poor lived in 79 C.E., a view unmatched by any other site in the ancient world.

Question for Analysis What does this fresco reveal about the attire and working conditions of men and women of different social levels in Pompeii?

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Craftsmen made this pigment by mixing red-colored minerals with powdered lime, soap, and wax and applying them to the wet plaster, which they polished after it dried.

An owl, the symbol of the Roman goddess Minerva (the Latin name of the Greek Athena), an expert weaver, rides on top of the wicker frame.

(Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, Italy/Scala/Art Resource, NY)

A seated woman—a customer? a supervisor?— examines a piece of cloth shown to her by a young girl worker.

A male textile worker brushes a piece of wool hanging on a wooden frame with a thorned implement to smooth out the tangled threads.

This lightly clad man carries a metal bowl ﬁlled with burning sulphur, a bleaching agent, and carries a frame for hanging bleached textiles on his back.

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10°W

0°

20°E

10°E

North Sea

40°E

30°E

50°E

60°E

Roman Empire by death of Augustus, 14 C.E.

C ALEDON IA

Territory added by death of Hadrian, 138 C.E.

(85–105 C.E.)

Hadrian’s Wall 122 C.E.

Territory gained and lost, with dates held

Eburacum

Baltic Sea

(York)

B R ITA I N

Elb

Camulodunum

(Colchester)

Aquincum

(107–272 C.E.)

DALMATIA

Rome

THRACE

Se a Mt. Vesuvius

Byzantium

Leptis Magna LA

RIS

(114 –117 C.E.)

CI CI LI

(116 –117 C.E.) T

M E SOPOTAM IA

Tarsus Antioch

SYRIA

Rhodes

(115 –117 C.E.)

Eu phr a

Palmyra

Cyprus

Ecbatana

P A R T H I A

t es R .

Ctesiphon

Seleucia Babylon

S e a

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EGYPT Bahriya Oasis

400 Km.

d Se

S A H A R A

400 Mi.

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Nil e

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Persepolis

Jerusalem

AR AB I A

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Susa

Damascus

Cyrene CYR ENAI C A

ASSYRIA

CAPPADOCIA

PAMPHYLIA LYCIA

Nisa

ARMENIA

D PONTU S

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Ephesus

Athens

S MT S

ris

Corinth ACHAEA

Crete M e d i t e r r a n e a n

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A S IA

Malta

AN IA

Thessalonica Brundisium B ITH MACEDONIA GALATIA Pergamum EPIRUS

Syracuse

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S e a

a c k B l

MOESIA

tic

Sicily

°N

Pompeii

Carthage

CAUCASU

(Belgrade)

Actium 31 B.C.E.

TAN IA U R E MA

Sardinia Balearic Is.

Corduba

Singidunum

Arretium

Ostia

(Córdoba)

PANNONIA

I T A LY

Corsica

DACIA

(Milan) CISALPINE GAUL Po R.

(Marseilles)

(Budapest)

NORICUM

Mediolanum

A OR

D NG

R on

Narbo

Tarraco

BAETICA

be R. Vindobona (Vienna)

S PA I N

RAETIA

(Mérida)

Massilia

TARRACONENSIS

Emerita Augusta

Rhône R.

eper

(Nîmes)

Dni

Aral Sea

Nemausus

a R.

(Lyons)

NARBONENSIS

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U P P ER GER MANY

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Volg

Moguntiacum

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(Cologne) (Mainz)

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tu l

ine

(Paris) LUGDUNENSIS

Vi s

Colonia Claudia Agrippinensis

BELGICA Lutetia Parisiorum

Burdigala

Major battle

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(London)

(Bordeaux)

Parthian Empire, ca. 200 C.E.

G ER MA N I A

Londinium

AT L A N T I C OC EA N

°N 70°E

MAP 7.1 The Roman Empire at Its Greatest Extent Some ﬁfty-ﬁve million people lived in the 2 million square miles (5 million sq km) of the Roman Empire in the second century C.E. A network of roads and shipping lanes bound the different regions together, as did a uniﬁed currency. Two common languages—Latin in the western Mediterranean and Greek in the eastern Mediterranean—helped to integrate the Mediterranean world even more closely.

Interactive Map

The Roman Principate, 27 B.C.E.–284 C.E.

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world. The empire reached its largest extent in the second century c.e. (see Map 7.1), with an estimated population of ﬁfty-ﬁve million people living in an area of 2 million square miles (5 million sq km).6 Rome controlled not only the entire Mediterranean coast of North Africa, western Asia, and Europe but also large amounts of territory inland from the Mediterranean: modern-day Spain, France, England, Germany west of the Rhine River, the Balkans, and Turkey. Roman roads connected the different parts of the empire, and sea transport, even with its dangers, remained even cheaper. Travelers needed to carry only one type of currency, Roman coins. Just two languages could take them anywhere within the empire: Latin was used throughout the western Mediterranean and in Rome itself, while Greek prevailed in the eastern Mediterranean. The appearance of new maps and guides testiﬁes to the frequency of travel. Some simply listed each place on a given road and the distance to the next city; others portrayed the information visually. When papyrus was not available, the Romans used parchment, or treated animal skin, for writing material. One of the longest surviving texts on parchment, the Peutinger Map, occupies a piece of

The Peutinger Map: The Roman Equivalent of the Mobil Guide? This detail from the Peutinger Map shows Jerusalem, where many Christians traveled in the late 300s and 400s. (This is a twelfth- or thirteenth-century copy of a map dating to the 300s). The cartographer devised symbols for the different type of lodging at each stopping place: a square building with a courtyard, for example, indicated the best kind of hotel. Modern guidebooks use exactly the same type of system. (akg-images)

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parchment 13 inches (34 cm) wide and over 22 feet (6.75 m) long. It depicts the full 64,600 English miles (104,000 km) of the empire’s road system. The study of geography ﬂourished throughout the empire and particularly in the city of Alexandria, Egypt, which continued to be a center of learning even after the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 b.c.e. The geographer Ptolemy (ca. 100–170 c.e.) (not related to the Ptolemy royal family), devoted his life to making a map of all the world’s known countries. Ptolemy’s data survive in a list of longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates for eight thousand places. We do not know whether he made an actual map, but his work marks the high point of geographic knowledge in the Roman Empire. China and Southeast Asia marked the eastern edge of the world known to the Romans; the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean marked the western end. To the north lay the British Isles and the Scythian region (north of the Black Sea in Russia); to the south, below Ethiopia, lay Africa. Although he made some errors, Ptolemy knew where more places were located on the globe than did any geographer elsewhere in the world. His comprehensive knowledge of geography remained inﬂuential in the Islamic world (see Chapter 9) and Europe until 1500 (see Chapters 10 and 13).

The Rise of Christianity, ca. 30–284 C.E.

uring these years, as Rome was consolidating its empire, people and religious teachings moved easily and widely throughout the Mediterranean world as never before. The Romans had their own gods, to whom ofﬁcials offered regular sacriﬁces, and they worshiped many deities originating in other parts of the empire. Christianity began as a faith professed by a small group of Jews in the province of Judaea (joo-DAY-uh) and began to spread throughout the Mediterranean in the ﬁrst and second centuries c.e. The emperor Constantine’s decision to support Christianity in 313 proved to be the crucial step in its extension throughout the Mediterranean world.

Roman Religion and Judaism

Throughout the republic and the principate, the state encouraged the worship of many different gods in the Roman polytheistic religion. Most Romans worshiped major deities, like Jupiter, the most powerful of all the gods, or Mars, the god of war, both of which have given their names to the planets. Many of these gods were originally Greek; for example, the Roman Jupiter was the same as the Greek Zeus. Ofﬁcials frequently spent tax monies in support of public cults, sometimes to a deity and sometimes to the current or former deiﬁed princeps. In addition to their public obligations to state-supported gods, many people privately worshiped mystery cults that drew on the symbolism of fertility deities. A female deity, sometimes with a male partner, disappeared in the fall and had to be coaxed to return in the spring. Mystery cults promised adherents immortality and a closer personal relationship with the divine. Throughout the Mediterranean, believers worshiped deities not originally from Rome, including Isis (EYEsis), the Egyptian goddess of the dead, thought to have power to cure the sick, and Mithra (MIH-thruh), the Iranian sun-god sent by Ahura Mazda (see Chapter 6) to

The Rise of Christianity, ca. 30–284 C.E.

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struggle against evil. Gathering in small groups to sacriﬁce bulls, the worshipers of Mithra believed that the souls of the dead descended into earth before ascending into heaven. Unlike almost everyone else in the Roman Empire, Jews were monotheistic (see Chapter 2). Worshiping a single god, whom they never depicted in images or paintings, Jews refused to worship any of the Roman gods or former princeps, a stance that was tolerated by the Roman government. Their center of worship was the Jerusalem Temple, a building that housed their scriptures. After the Babylonians destroyed the First Temple (see Chapter 2), the Jews built the Second Temple under King Cyrus of the Achaemenids (see Chapter 6). The Second Temple survived the Roman conquest of Judaea in 63 b.c.e., when Judaea came under indirect Roman rule. The Romans initially delegated the task of governing the region to the leadership of the Temple, yet many Jews challenged the authority of the Temple’s leaders. One group of reformers, the Pharisees (FAIR-uh-seez), believed that Jews should also obey a body of oral law in addition to the written laws of the Hebrew Bible. Unlike the traditional leaders, the Pharisees did not believe that Jews should exclusively worship in the Temple and encouraged them to worship in separate buildings called synagogues. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a group of texts on leather, papyrus, and copper, has revealed the diversity of beliefs among Jewish groups. The scrolls mention a Teacher of Righteousness, a ﬁgure who the authors believed would bring salvation, called a Messiah (muh-SIGH-uh) in Hebrew. Many Jewish groups at the time believed that a Messiah would come, yet they disagreed about how to identify him.

The Life and Teachings of Jesus, ca. 4 B.C.E.–30 C.E.

Almost every surviving record about early Christianity written before 100 c.e., whether about the life of Jesus or the early ministry, is written by a Christian believer.7 The earliest sources, and so the most reliable, are the four gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, written between 70 and 110 c.e. Accordingly, historians use the gospels to piece together the chronology of Jesus’ life, all the while remembering that, like sources about Zarathustra or the Buddha, they were written by devotees, not outsiders. The gospels relate that Jesus was born around 4 b.c.e. to a well-off Jewish family near the Sea of Galilee, where residents made a good living ﬁshing. They say little about his life before about 26 c.e., when his cousin John the Baptist baptized him. Jewish tradition held that baptism, or ritual washing with water, could cleanse someone from impurities; converts to Judaism sometimes were baptized, and women bathed to mark the end of their menstrual periods. Invoking this tradition, John claimed to be a prophet and urged Jews to undergo baptism in preparation for the kingdom of God. However, John’s message was new because he urged everyone to be baptized. In 28 and 29 c.e. Jesus began preaching publicly in Galilee and, like John, urged Jews to repent and undergo baptism. Illness was a sign of Satan’s presence, Jesus taught, and many of the miracles recorded in the gospels are anecdotes about his curing the sick. Historians, particularly those who do not subscribe to the teachings of a given belief system, are often skeptical about whether the events described in miracle tales actually occurred. But they realize that many religious ﬁgures were able to win converts because of them.

• Jesus (ca. 4 b.c.e.– 30 c.e.) Jewish preacher believed by Christians to be the Messiah, the ﬁgure who would bring salvation. The Christian doctrine of atonement holds that God sent Jesus to the world to bring eternal life to all those who believed in him.

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As he explained in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus welcomed the poor and downtrodden: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3). According to the gospels, Jesus’ preaching in Galilee culminated in the feeding of ﬁve thousand supporters, possibly in the summer of 29 c.e. Jesus summed up his teachings succinctly in response to a Pharisee who asked him what the most important commandment was: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and ﬁrst commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Matthew 22:36–39)

Jesus also taught his followers that a time of great difﬁculty was coming and that God would send a Messiah to usher in a new age. Christos was the Greek word for Messiah, and Jesus came to be known as Jesus Christ because his followers believed that he was the Messiah. Jesus’ teachings attracted converts because the egalitarian religion promised salvation to all, including the poor, and welcomed all to join the new church, regardless of their background. Jesus also wanted to reform and challenge the abuses he saw. His criticisms provoked the Jewish community leaders, who may also have feared that he would lead the residents of Palestine, where there was already a great deal of unrest, in an uprising against Roman rule. They asked the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, to convict Jesus on the grounds that he claimed to be king of the Jews and thus posed a political threat to Rome. The gospels portray Pontius Pilate as being hesitant to punish Jesus, who refused to directly answer Pilate’s question “Are you the King of the Jews?” Fearful of possible disorder, in 30 c.e. Pilate agreed to crucify Jesus. At the time of his death Jesus had been actively preaching for only three years. On the third day after he died, Christians believe, several of Jesus’ female disciples visited his tomb and found it empty, and some of the disciples then had visions of Jesus. The gospels concur that Jesus was resurrected, or raised from the dead. The gospel of John explains: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16). This teaching, that Jesus died so that all believers will be able to overcome death, is called atonement, and it became one of the most important teachings of the Christian church.

Paul and the Early Church, 30–284 C.E.

• Paul (ca. 5–ca. 64 c.e.) An inﬂuential early Christian leader. Born in Tarsus (in modern-day Turkey) and grew up in a Greek-speaking Jewish household. Traveled widely in modern-day Turkey, Cyprus, and Greece to teach about early Christianity.

Jesus preached that a new age of salvation would come soon after his death, yet his disciples realized that they had to devise a governing structure for the church no matter how temporary they expected the wait to be. The early church followed the model of Jewish synagogues and established churches in each community where a sufﬁcient number of Christians lived. Bishops headed these districts; below them were deacons and deaconesses, a position of genuine authority for the many women who joined the church. The teachings of another early Christian leader, Paul, were highly inﬂuential. Paul (ca. 5–ca. 64 c.e.) was born to a wealthy family of Roman citizens living in Tarsus in modern-day Turkey. Like many Jews living outside Judaea, Paul had grown up in a bilingual household in which both Greek and Hebrew were spoken,

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Picturing the Apostles Peter and Paul After the government in 313 permitted Christians to worship openly (see page 200), many Romans began to decorate their stone cofﬁns with Christian images. This is a very early depiction of Peter and Paul, who are identiﬁed by name. The symbol between them combines two Greek letters, chi and ro, the ﬁrst two letters in the word Greek word for Christ, Christos, a symbol used throughout the Christian world. (Vatican Museums, Vatican State/ Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY)

but he received a traditional education in Jerusalem, where he studied with the Pharisees. As described in the book of Acts, the turning point in Paul’s life came when Jesus appeared to him in a vision, probably in the year 38 c.e., as he traveled to Damascus. After deciding to become a Christian, Paul was baptized in Damascus. The Christian leadership in Jerusalem, however, never granted that Paul’s vision was equal to their own experience of knowing Jesus personally and hearing him teach. Understandably suspicious of him, they sent Paul to preach in his native Tarsus in 48 b.c.e. Paul initially focused on converting the Jewish communities scattered throughout the eastern half of the Mediterranean, preaching and writing letters in Greek. Written with the sophistication of an educated Roman, his letters carried the teachings of Christianity to many ﬂedgling Christian communities. When he arrived in a new place, he went ﬁrst to the local synagogue and preached. (See the feature “Movement of Ideas: Early Christianity in the Eastern Provinces.”) Whereas Jesus had preached to the poor and to slaves, Paul’s potential audience consisted of more prosperous people. He did not call for the abolition of slavery or propose any genuine social reform. Accepting the right of the Roman Empire to exist, he, like Jesus before him, urged his audiences to pay their taxes.

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MOVEMENT OF IDEAS

Early Christianity in the Eastern Provinces

hat did early Christians believe? The book of Acts in the New Testament contains this very interesting summary of a sermon given by Paul in Pisidian Antioch (in modern-day Turkey), one of the ﬁrst cities he visited in 46. Local Jews constituted the bulk of his audience, and Paul expected them to be familiar with the predictions about the coming of prophets in the Old Testament, which they read in a Greek translation of the original Hebrew Bible. His sermon concludes with a statement of the important doctrine of atonement: Jesus died so that the sins of everyone who believed in his teachings could be forgiven. He closes with a pointed contrast between the law of Moses, or traditional Jewish teachings, and the teachings of Jesus, which he says offer more beneﬁts.

The second selection is from Pliny the Younger, who was not a Christian. He served as a provincial governor in a region of present-day Turkey, south of the Black Sea, between 111 and 113. In one letter, he wrote to ask the emperor Trajan exactly how he should determine who was a Christian and who deserved punishment. The details in his letter offer a vivid description of the impact of Christianity on local religious practice during a period when it was ofﬁcially banned. Unlike Pliny, many Roman ofﬁcials did not persecute the Christians in their districts. Sources: Acts 13:16–39 (New Revised Standard Version); Betty Radice, The Letters of the Younger Pliny (New York: Penguin Books, 1963), pp. 293–295.

Paul’s Sermon at Antioch You Israelites, and others who fear God, listen. The God of this people Israel chose our ancestors and made the people great during their stay in the land of Egypt, and with uplifted arm he led them out of it. . . . Then they asked for a king . . . ; he [God] made David their king. In his testimony about him he said, “I have found David, son of Jesse, to be a man after my heart, who will carry out all my wishes.” Of this man’s posterity God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, as he promised; before his coming John had already proclaimed a baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel. And as John was ﬁnishing his work, he said, “What do you suppose that I am? I am not he. No, but one is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of the sandals on his feet.” My brothers, you descendants of Abraham’s family, and others who fear God, to us the message of this salvation has been sent. Because the residents of Jerusalem and their leaders did not recognize him nor understand the words of the

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prophets that are read every sabbath, they fulﬁlled those words by condemning him. Even though they found no cause for a sentence of death, they asked Pilate to have him killed. When they had carried out everything that was written about him, they took him down from the tree, and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead; and for many days he appeared to those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, and they are now his witnesses to the people. And we bring you the good news that what God promised to our ancestors, he has fulﬁlled for us, their children, by raising Jesus; as also it is written in the second psalm, “You are my son; today I have begotten you.” . . . Let it be known to you therefore, my brothers, that through this man [Jesus] forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you; by this Jesus everyone who believes is set free from all those sins from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.

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Pliny to Emperor Trajan I have never been present at an examination of Christians. . . . For the moment this is the line I have taken with all persons brought before me on the charge of being Christians. I have asked them in person if they are Christians, and if they admit it, I repeat the question a second and third time, with a warning of the punishment awaiting them. If they persist, I order them to be led away for punishment;• for, whatever the nature of their admission, I am convinced that their stubbornness and unshakeable obstinacy ought not to go unpunished. There have been others similarly fanatical who are Roman citizens. I have entered them on the list of persons to be sent to Rome for trial. . . . Others, whose names were given to me by an informer, ﬁrst admitted the charge and then denied it; they said that they had ceased to be Christians two or more years previously, and some of them even twenty years ago. They all did reverence to your statue and the images of the gods in the same way as the others, and reviled the name of Christ. They also declared that the sum total of their guilt or error amounted to no more than this: they had met regularly before dawn on a ﬁxed day to chant verses alternately among themselves in honor of Christ as if to a god, and also to bind themselves by oath, not for any criminal purpose, but to abstain from theft, robbery, and adultery, to commit no breach of trust and not to

deny a deposit when called upon to restore it. After this ceremony it had been their custom to disperse and reassemble later to take food of an ordinary, harmless kind; but they had in fact given up this practice since my edict, issued on your instructions, which banned all political societies. This made me decide it was all the more necessary to extract the truth by torture from two slavewomen, whom they call deaconesses. I found nothing but a degenerate sort of cult carried to extravagant lengths. I have therefore postponed any further examination and hastened to consult you. The question seems to me to be worthy of your consideration, especially in view of the number of persons endangered; for a great many individuals of every age and class, both men and women, are being brought to trial, and this is likely to continue. It is not only the towns, but villages and rural districts too which are infected with contact with this wretched cult. I think though that it is still possible for it to be checked and directed to better ends, for there is no doubt that people have begun to throng the temples which had been almost entirely deserted for a long time; the sacred rites which had been allowed to lapse are being performed again, and ﬂesh of sacriﬁcial victims is on sale everywhere, though up till recently scarcely anyone could be found to buy it. It is easy to infer from this that a great many people could be reformed if they were given an opportunity to repent.

• The Latin text has puniri, which Radice translates as “execute,” but “punishment” is more accurate.

QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS 쑺 How do these descriptions of Christianity by a believer and a nonbeliever differ? Which Jewish teachings and which Christian teachings does Paul present? 쑺 Which of Pliny’s points support his contention that Christianity can be controlled? Which do not?

0°

10°E

20°E

Rhin e

Rhône

Lugdunum (Lyons)

P S Mediolanum

ro Eb

Rome Puteoli

BIT

Philippi Thessalonica

A N A T O L I A

Eleusis Corinth

35˚E 40 Mi.

Interactive Map

Ephesus Hierapolis Myra

Lystra Derbe Tarsus

Antioch

SYRIA

Syracuse Malta

Crete

Cyprus

Rhodes

Paphos Sidon

dit

erra

Damascus

Fair Havens

nean

Caesarea

Sea

Jerusalem

Cyrene C

Dead Sea

PARTHIA

Edessa KINGDOM OF OSRHOENE

Iconium

ASIA

Athens

s R.

JUDAEA

30°N

See inset map

Alexandria

N SAHARA

SINAI

EGYPT .

NORTH AFRICA Roman Empire, ca. 200 C.E. Selected center of early Christianity Other city

Paul’s journeys, ca. 47–55 C.E. Paul’s possible journey to Rome, ca. 59–62 C.E.

Nile R

JUDA DESEEAN RT

20 40 Km.

OLIS

ACHAEA

40°N

AND PONTUS

A NI

Nicaea

Jordan R.

Caesarea

dit

Pompeii

Sicily

Sea of Galilee

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Sea an

ane err

Nazareth

JUDAEA

THRACE

MACEDONIA

Carthage

Jericho Jerusalem Qumran Bethlehem

Sardinia

TETRARCHY OF PHILIP Capernaum GALILEE

Gaza

Black Sea

Smyrna Sardis Antioch

PALESTINE IN THE TIME OF CHRIST, CA. 30 C.E.

32˚N

400 Mi.

Danube R.

DALMATIA

ITALY

33˚N

200

Po R.

Corsica

Balearic Is.

400 Km.

DACIA

(Milan)

Ravenna

SPAIN

40°E

200

h Eup rat

GAUL

34˚E 0

30°E

Red Spread of Christianity S e a to Ethiopia

Egeria’s journey, 381–384 C.E.

MAP 7.2 The Spread of Christianity During his lifetime, Jesus preached in the Roman province of Judaea. After his death, Paul and other missionaries introduced Christian teachings to the eastern Mediterranean. By the late 300s, Christianity had spread throughout the Mediterranean, making it possible for pilgrims like Egeria to travel all the way from Rome to Jerusalem and Egypt, where she visited the earliest Christian monasteries. Paul took advantage of the ease of travel within the Roman Empire to propagate his views. A list of the cities he visited vividly conveys how much he traveled: Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, and Ephesus in modern-day Turkey; Paphos on the island of Cyprus; and Thessalonica, Philippi, and Corinth in Greece. By the time Paul died, circa 64, a Christian community had arisen in each of these cities. In Rome, according to Christian tradition, Jesus’ apostle Peter, who died about the same time as Paul, headed the Christian community (see Map 7.2). A Jewish uprising in 66 prompted the Roman authorities to intervene with great brutality: they destroyed the Second Temple in 70, and many Jews ﬂed Jerusalem. After 70, Rome replaced Jerusalem as the center of the Christian church. In subsequent centuries the Christian church must have expanded, more than the spotty historical record indicates. We see early Christian centers proliferate around the Mediterranean like the tips of icebergs, but surviving sources do not indicate how deep or wide the icebergs were at the base. The church grew steadily during the ﬁrst, second, and third centuries.

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The Decline of the Empire and the Loss of the Western Provinces, 284–476

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The Decline of the Empire and the Loss of the Western Provinces, 284–476

lthough the principate was still nominally the structure of the government, the Pax Romana ended in the third century. In 226 c.e. Rome faced new enemies on its northern borders, as a Germanic tribal people called the Goths launched a series of successful attacks in the region of the Danube River. (In later centuries, the word Goth came to mean any social movement, whether Gothic architecture or today’s Goth styles, that challenged existing practices.) The attacks by Germanic peoples continued in the following centuries. As a result, different Roman rulers repeatedly restructured the Roman Empire and shifted the capital east. During these same centuries, they lifted the ban on Christianity and increasingly offered government support to the religion, which led to its further spread. Although the Romans lost chunks of their empire and even the city of Rome to barbarian invaders, the region of the Mediterranean remained a cultural unit bound by a common religion—Christianity—and the same two languages—Latin and Greek—that had been in use since the time of the republic.

Political Changes of the Late Empire

The principate came to a formal end early in the reign of Diocletian (r. 284–305). Diocletian (dy-oh-KLEE-shun) increased the size of Rome’s armies by a third so that they could ﬁght off their various enemies, including the Goths and the Sasanians, the dynasty established in Iran in 224 (see Chapter 6). In 260, the Sasanians had captured the Roman emperor Valerian and forced him to crouch down so that the Sasanian emperor could step on his back as he mounted his horse. Realizing that the new threats made the empire too large to govern effectively, Diocletian divided the empire into an eastern and western half and named a senior emperor and a junior emperor to govern each half. Diocletian ruled with the assistance of appointed advisers, no longer pretending to consult the senate. He reorganized the empire into twelve units called dioceses. This new structure of government, which replaced the principate, is generally referred to as the tetrarchy (teh-TRARkee) because two senior and two junior emperors ruled the empire. The structure of the tetrarchy did not make it easier to defend the empire. Constantine (272–337, r. 312–337), the son of one of the junior emperors named by Diocletian, defeated each of the other emperors in battle until he was the sole ruler of the reunited empire. In 330, to place himself near threatened frontiers, Constantine established a new capital 800 miles (1,300 km) to the east at Byzantium (bizz-AN-tee-um) on the Bosphorus, which he named for himself, Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul, Turkey). At the time the population of Byzantium was around ﬁfty thousand, while that of Rome was over one million. The move was strategic: it was difﬁcult to maintain control of the empire from a base in Rome, and the emperors of the tetrarchy had already established individual capitals outside of Rome. Constantinople, located near the Danube and the Euphrates frontiers, could be defended more easily than Rome.

• Constantine (272– 337, r. 312–337) May have converted to Christianity late in life. In 313 c.e. issued the Edict of Milan, the ﬁrst imperial ruling to allow the practice of Christianity. Shifted the capital from Rome to the new city of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul, Turkey) in 330 c.e.

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When Constantine died in 337, he left the empire to his three sons, who immediately began ﬁghting for control. After the last of Constantine’s sons died in 364, no ruler succeeded in reuniting the empire for more than a few years at a time. In 395 the emperor formally divided the empire into western and eastern halves. The fourth century was a time, particularly in the west, of economic decline. Repeated epidemics struck Rome and killed many of those living in the overcrowded city. In addition, armies had difﬁculty recruiting soldiers to staff their units. The central government, chronically short of revenues, minted devalued coins that contained far less metal than indicated by their face value. People living in regions where the use of coins had been common were forced to barter simply because fewer coins were in use. As the economy contracted, many urban dwellers moved to the countryside to grow their own crops. During the fourth century, the armies of Germanic-speaking peoples repeatedly defeated the overstretched Roman army. These peoples, including the Vandals (see below), the Visigoths and Ostrogoths (both branches of the Goths), and other tribes (see Map 7.3), lived north and west of the empire and spoke a variety of languages in the Germanic language family (see Chapter 10). Although the residents of the Roman Empire looked down on these preliterate peoples, who lived in simple villages, the Goths and Vandals proved to be highly mobile and ferocious ﬁghters. They had little to defend and so could devote their energies to attacking the long Roman frontier. In 410 the Visigoths sacked Rome for three days and then retreated; this was the ﬁrst time since the fourth-century b.c.e. attack of the Gauls (see page 178) that foreign armies had entered the city.

Religious Changes of the Late Empire

Diocletian launched the last persecution of Christianity in 303. In addition to ordering that Christian scriptures be destroyed and churches torn down, he called for the punishment of all practicing Christians. Since ofﬁcials implemented these measures unevenly, the eastern section of the empire, which Diocletian ruled, was more severely affected than the west. The suppression was brief because his successor issued an edict of toleration in 311. In that year Constantine defeated one of the other claimants to the throne. Initially he claimed to have had a vision of the Roman sun-god Apollo and the Roman numeral for 30, which is written XXX; he interpreted the vision to mean that Apollo chose him to rule for the next thirty years. However, Constantine later began to worship the Christian God alongside other Roman deities, and according to his biographer, a Christian bishop, Constantine had actually seen a Christian cross. Whatever the precise nature of Constantine’s own beliefs, we know for certain that he ended Diocletian’s persecution of Christianity in 313. With his coemperor, Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, which compensated Christians for any property conﬁscated during Diocletian’s persecution and ofﬁcially allowed the practice of Christianity. This decision proved crucial to Christianity, in the same way as had Ashoka’s support for Buddhism and the Achaemenid emperors’ support for Zoroastrianism. (See the feature “World History in Today’s World: Snapshot of Christianity.”) In 380 Christianity was declared the only permissible religion in the empire, the ﬁnal step to its becoming the ofﬁcial religion of the Roman Empire.

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The Decline of the Empire and the Loss of the Western Provinces, 284–476

a 489

e R.

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395

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MAP 7.3 The Germanic Migrations Although the Romans looked down on the pre-literate Germanic peoples living on their borders, the Germanic armies proved surprisingly powerful and launched wave after wave of attack on the empire and Rome itself. In 410, the Visigoths came from the east and sacked Rome. In 430 Augustine (354–430) witnessed 80,000 Vandals attack his home city of Hippo on the north African coast. After his death, the Vandals crossed the Mediterranean and looted Rome for two weeks in 455.

Interactive Map

In 325 Constantine summoned different church leaders to Nicaea (ny-SEEuh) (modern-day Iznik, Turkey) and encouraged them to reach an agreement about the nature of the Trinity, which consisted of God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, often mentioned in the book of Acts in conjunction with healing and exorcism. By the fourth century, many Christians had come to believe that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit were equal. Arius (AIR-ee-us), a teacher from Alexandria, Egypt, disagreed. He maintained that God the Father was superior to Jesus and the Holy Ghost because he had created them. The council drew up a basic statement of faith, the Nicene (ny-SEEN) Creed, which was worded speciﬁcally to counter the teachings of Arius and to assert that God and Jesus were

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WORLD HISTORY in TODAY’S WORLD

Snapshot of Christianity

f the 6.1 billion people in the world today, 2.1 billion people identify themselves as Christian, making Christianity the world’s largest religion. The largest groupings belong to Catholic, Protestant, or Eastern Orthodox churches, while the smaller Christian churches include Jehovah’s Witnesses, Quakers, and the Copts of Egypt, among many others. The degree of observance varies enormously: some attend services at least once a week and possibly more often, while others have not been inside a church since being baptized. The heartland of Christianity has shifted since the early centuries of the religion, when most early Christians lived in the Mediterranean region governed by the Roman Empire. After the seventh century, many people in North Africa and western Asia converted to Islam (see Chapter 9), while the number of Christians in Europe continued to grow. In 1900, 95 percent of Europeans identiﬁed

themselves as Christian, yet in 2000, only 77 percent did. The area of greatest growth is unquestionably in Africa, where 45 percent of the population identiﬁes itself as Christian (versus 9 percent in 1900). One of the fastest-growing branches of African Christianity is Pentecostalism, whose ministers perform healings in the name of Jesus. Many Africans are drawn to Christianity because of Christian churches’ promise to provide good health, money, and a better standard of living. In 2000, the world area with the greatest concentration of Christians (93 percent) was Latin America. Yet the percentage of Latin Americans who identify themselves as Christian is shrinking slightly, while the number of Christians in Africa and Asia is growing. In short, fully 60 percent of the world’s Christians in 2000 lived in Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

Judaism 0.22%

Sikhism 0.36% Buddhism

Other

Chinese traditional 6% 6%

Primal-indigenous Including African Traditional/ Diasporic

Hinduism

14%

33%

16% Nonreligious Including agnostic, atheist, secular humanist, plus people answering “none” or no religious preference. Half of this group is “theistic” but nonreligious. Chart from www.adherents.com. Used by permission.

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Christianity Including Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, Pentecostal, Anglican, Monophysite, AICs, Latter-day Saints, Evangelical, SDAs, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Quakers, AOG, nominal, etc.

21% Islam Shiite, Sunni, etc.

203 made of the same substance.8 When Arius refused to sign the Nicene Creed, which became the basic statement of Christian belief, the Council of Nicaea excommunicated, or expelled, him from the church. In subsequent centuries the church convened many similar meetings to ensure doctrinal agreement among the different Christian branches. During the third and fourth centuries, church leaders met to decide which books of the Bible, both in the Hebrew Bible (which Christians call the Old Testament) and the New Testament, should be included in the canon and which should be viewed as less reliable, or apocryphal. One of Arius’s main opponents, Saint Athanasius (293–373), lived in Alexandria, Egypt, an important Christian center. He was the ﬁrst person to list the twenty-seven books of the New Testament as canonical, the ﬁnal step in the formation of the Bible. As part of his support for the Christian church, Constantine also ordered churches built at sites in Jerusalem that Jesus had visited. Although more difﬁcult than in earlier, more peaceful centuries, travel was still possible in the fourth and ﬁfth centuries, and Christian pilgrimages, often to Jerusalem, became increasingly popular. Travel was safe enough that ordinary women could also make the trip, as we learn from a travel account written by a woman named Egeria, who, sometime between 380 and 400 c.e., traveled all the way from her homeland in Spain to the Holy Land, the Christian name for Judaea. She went to Egypt, the Sinai, Jordan, and modern-day Turkey to visit the important sites of Judaism and early Christianity. After a three-year stay in Jerusalem, Egeria decided to continue her journey before returning home: “by the will of God, I wished to go to Mesopotamia of Syria [modern-day Edessa, Turkey], to visit the holy monks who were said to be numerous there and to be of such exemplary life that it can scarcely be described.”9 The devout Egeria wanted to see monasteries because they were a new institution.

Christianity in North Africa

As we can see from Egeria’s itinerary, North Africa had already become an important center of Christianity by the fourth century. An Egyptian Christian, Pachomius (ca. 290–346), had founded the ﬁrst monastic communities early in the fourth century. Before Pachomius, Christians who wanted to devote themselves full-time to a religious life had lived alone as hermits. Pachomius designed a monastic community whose members worked in the ﬁelds and prayed each day. In the centuries after his death, monasteries became so popular that they spread from Egypt to all over the Mediterranean. One important Christian center lay to the east of Egypt in Aksum, in modernday Ethiopia, whose rulers converted soon after Constantine issued the Edict of Milan. Their kingdom proﬁted by taxing the trade from Egypt that went via the Red Sea to India. Merchants, who exported ivory from Africa and imported frankincense and myrrh from Arabia, encountered Christians while on trading voyages to the Mediterranean and introduced the religion to their countrymen. The pre-Christian inscriptions commissioned by the rulers of Aksum mention local deities, including the southern Arabian goddess of the evening star, while the later ones mention the Lord of Heaven. One inscription, in Greek, names the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, a deﬁnite indication of the ruler’s support for Christianity. The Aksum Christians looked to the Egyptian church for leadership; the ﬁrst bishop of Aksum and all his successors received their appointments from Egyptian bishops.

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Stone Stele at Axum, Ethiopia Supported by a counterweight placed underground, this stone tower stands 67 feet (21 m) tall. It represents a building ten stories high, with closed windows and a door bolted shut. Notice the lock on the ground ﬂoor level. Some two hundred stone towers like this were built in the 300s and 400s, when the rulers of Aksum converted to Christianity, but, unlike coins from the same period that show the cross, these towering monuments give no hint that the rulers who built them had converted to Christianity. (Werner Forman/Art Resource, NY)

To the west of Egypt was another Christian center at Hippo, now Annaba, Algeria, home to one of the most important thinkers in early Christianity, Augustine (354–430). Educated in North Africa, Augustine wrote over ﬁve million words in his lifetime. His book The Confessions detailed his varied experiences, which included fathering a child and belonging to the Manichaean order (see page 171), before he joined the Christian church and became the bishop of Hippo. According to Augustine, God’s grace was so great that all, no matter how much they had violated the church’s teachings, would be forgiven if they joined the church. Augustine encouraged the practice of confessing one’s sins to a member of the clergy, and confession became an important rite in early Christianity.

• Vandals

A Germanic tribe that attacked North Africa in 430 c.e. and sacked Rome for two weeks in 455 c.e. Their ﬁghting techniques and looting were so brutal that the word vandal came to mean any deliberate act of destruction.

Primary Source: Augustine Denounces Paganism and Urges Romans to Enter the City of God In The City of God, Augustine uses sarcasm to condemn the rituals of Rome’s preChristian religion.

The Barbarian Invasions: The Fall of Rome

In 430, the last year of Augustine’s life, the Vandals led a force of eighty thousand men from different Germanic tribes across the Mediterranean and laid siege to Hippo. Augustine witnessed

whole cities sacked, country villas razed, their owners killed or scattered as refugees, the churches deprived of their bishops and clergy, and the holy virgins and ascetics dispersed; some tortured to death, some killed outright, others, as prisoners, reduced to losing their integrity, in soul and body, to serve an evil and brutal enemy.10

For him, the invasions indicated the breakdown of the Roman Empire and the end of the civilized world. After taking Hippo, the Vandals went on to conquer all of North Africa and the Mediterranean islands of Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily. Their ﬁghting techniques and looting were so brutal that the word vandal came to mean any deliberate act of destruction. In 455, the Vandals moved north to Italy and sacked Rome for two weeks, exposing again the city’s vulnerability. For the next twenty years different Germanic tribes gained control of the city and placed puppet emperors on the throne. In 476, the ﬁnal emperor of the west-

Chapter Review

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ern empire was deposed and not replaced. This date marks the end of the western empire, and many earlier historians declared that the Roman Empire fell in 476. Most recent historians, however, prefer not to speak in these terms. They note that the Eastern Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, continued to be governed from Constantinople for another thousand years (see Chapter 10). The cultural center of the Mediterranean world, thoroughly Christianized by this time, had shifted once again—away from the Latin-speaking world centered on Rome to the Greek-speaking world, where it had been before Polybius was deported to Rome in 168 b.c.e. Three different governments—a republic, a principate, and a tetrarchy—had ruled Rome for nearly one thousand years. During that time the Mediterranean world had taken shape, and, with the support of Rome’s rulers, a single religion, Christianity, had spread throughout the Roman Empire. The next chapter will analyze how decisions made by many different rulers led to the spread of two different religions, Buddhism and Hinduism, throughout Asia.

Chapter Review

Download the MP3 audio ﬁle of the Chapter Review and listen to it on the go.

n the second century b.c.e., travel around the Mediterranean was so convenient that Polybius, the client of a Roman general, was able to visit many places in Italy, Spain, Carthage, and North Africa and even to sail down the Atlantic coast of Africa. With each passing century, transportation, both overland and by sea, improved, and even in the last years of the western empire Egeria was able to travel throughout the Holy Land and western Asia. The roads around the Mediterranean and the waterways across it provided wonderfully effective channels for the spread of Christian teachings. With the emperor’s support, Christianity became the sole religion of the empire at the end of the fourth century, and the Mediterranean region governed by the Roman Empire became the core area of Christianity.

How did Rome, a small settlement in central Italy, expand to conquer and control the entire Mediterranean world of Europe, western Asia, and North Africa? The Roman Republic was gradually able to gain control of the Italian peninsula through a series of conquests; it then granted the victorious citizen-soldiers land, allowed the Latin speakers among the defeated to join the republic on an equal footing with its citizens, and welcomed the defeated soldiers to serve in its army. By 272 b.c.e. Rome had conquered the Italian peninsula. The treaty ending the Second Punic War with Carthage granted Rome control of the western Mediterranean in 201 b.c.e., and Rome’s defeat of both the Macedonians and the Greeks brought control of the eastern Mediterranean in 133 b.c.e.

KEY TERMS Polybius (174) Roman Republic (178) Roman senate (178) Carthage (179) Punic Wars (180) Hannibal (180) tax farmers (182) paterfamilias (182) dictator (184) Julius Caesar (184) Roman principate (185) Augustus (185) Jesus (193) Paul (194) Constantine (199) Vandals (204)

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How did the political structure of the Roman Empire change as it grew? The structure of the republic proved incapable of handling the huge empire. During the ﬁrst century b.c.e., privatized armies of slaves and clients led by generals plunged the empire into civil war, and peace came only with Augustus’s creation of the principate, a monarchy in all but name, in 27 b.c.e. Rome expanded to its widest borders under the principate, and until 180 c.e. it enjoyed nearly two centuries of peace, called the Pax Romana. In 284 c.e. the Romans adopted yet another governmental system, the tetrarchy, which had two senior emperors and two junior emperors.

What were the basic teachings of Jesus, and how did Christianity become the major religion of the empire? According to the gospels, Jesus distilled his teachings to two major points: everyone should love God, and everyone should love his or her neighbor. His disciple Paul taught that God had sent his son Jesus as the Messiah to atone for the sins of all Christians. Although banned during the principate, Christianity spread throughout the empire, and Emperor Constantine’s support for the new religion proved crucial. By the end of the fourth century, when the emperor forbade worship of the different Roman gods, Christianity had become the only permitted religion of the empire.

What allowed Rome to retain such a large empire for so long, and what caused the loss of the western half of the empire? The empire was able to retain so much territory for so long because of its rulers’ willingness to adopt new structures. At the end of the third century, the emperor Diocletian created the tetrarchy, a government headed by two senior and two junior emperors, in the hope of bringing greater order. He also reorganized the provincial structure. Diocletian’s successor Constantine established a new capital at Constantinople, a measure that strengthened the empire but left the city of Rome vulnerable. Sustained attacks by different barbarian tribes, including the Visigoths and the Vandals, weakened the western half of the empire so much that in 476 its governing tribes did not even bother to name a puppet emperor. But even after the empire shifted east to the new capital, the Mediterranean remained a coherent region bound by the Christian religion and the common languages of Greek and Latin.

Chapter Review

For Further Reference

WEB RESOURCES

Boardman, John, Jasper Grifﬁn, and Oswyn Murray. The Oxford History of the Roman World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Pronunciation Guide Interactive Maps

Casson, Lionel. Travel in the Ancient World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974.

MAP 7.1 The Roman Empire at Its Greatest Extent MAP 7.2 The Spread of Christianity MAP 7.3 The Germanic Migrations

Etienne, Robert. Pompeii: The Day a City Died. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992.

Primary Sources Chapter Objectives ACE Multiple-Choice Quiz Flashcards

Frend, W. H. C. The Rise of Christianity. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984. Garnsey, Peter, and Richard Saller. The Roman Empire: Economy, Society and Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. Hornblower, Simon, and Antony Spawforth, eds. The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Kebric, Robert B. Roman People. 4th ed. New York: McGrawHill, 2005. Polybius. The Rise of the Roman Empire. Translated by Ian Scott-Kilvert. New York: Penguin Books, 1979. Scarre, Chris. The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Rome. New York: Penguin Books, 1995. Tingay, G. I. F., and J. Badcock. These Were the Romans. Chester Springs, Pa.: Dufour Editions, 1989. Wilken, Robert L. The Christians as the Romans Saw Them. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

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Internet Medieval Sourcebook: End of Rome (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html). Extremely valuable collection of primary sources about the ﬁfth century c.e. and the “fall” of the Roman Empire. The Perseus Digital Library (www.perseus.tufts.edu). A wealth of searchable texts from the classical world in both the original language and English translation. World Religions (www.adherents.com). Takes an informed Religious Studies approach to the world’s many religions.

Films

Websites

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

In Old Pompeii (http://edsitement.neh.gov/view-lesson-plan. asp?ID=271). A ﬁeld trip to ancient Pompeii.

Gladiator Spartacus

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Hindu and Buddhist States and Societies in Asia, 100–1000 Religion and the State in India, 100–1000 (p. 211) State, Society, and Religion in Southeast Asia, 300–1000 (p. 216) Buddhism and the Revival of Empire in China, 100–1000 (p. 222) State, Society, and Religion in Korea and Japan, to 1000 (p. 230) he year was 629, only eleven years after the founding of the Tang dynasty (618–907). Emperor Taizong (TIE-zohng) (r. 626–649) had banned all foreign travel because he had not yet secured control of the Chinese empire. Undeterred, the Chinese monk Xuanzang (ca. 596–664) departed on foot from the capital of Chang’an (CHAHNG-ahn) and headed overland for India so that he could obtain the original Sanskrit versions of Buddhist texts. One of his ﬁrst stops after leaving China was the Central Asian oasis kingdom of Gaochang (GOW-chahng) on the western edge of the Taklamakan Desert, whose rulers— like many others throughout Asia at the time—adopted from Indian and Chinese models to strengthen their governments. At Gaochang, we learn from a biography written decades later by a disciple, the Buddhist king politely requested that Xuanzang (SHUEN-zahng) give up his trip and preach to his subjects. Xuanzang courteously explained that he preferred to go to India. The conversation suddenly turned ugly:

he king’s face ﬂushed. He pushed up his sleeves, bared his arms, and shouted, “Your disciple has other ways to deal with you. How can you go on your own? Either you stay or I CHINESE BUDDHIST send you back to your country. Please consider my offer carefully. MONK, TANG DYNASTY I think it is better for you to do what I say.” The Master replied, “I have come on my way to seek the Great Dharma and now have encountered an obstacle. Your majesty may detain my body but never my spirit.”

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This icon will direct you to interactive activities and study materials on the Voyages website: www.cengage.com/history/hansen/voyages1e

(Musée des Arts Asiatiques-Guimet, Paris, France/ Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY)

Lake Baikal

Xuanzang’s journey Possible journeys Tang dynasty, 619 – 907 Tang conquests, 629–751 Harsha Empire, 606 – 647 Silk Road

Goes on hunger strike in Gaochang Kingdom, 630.

es ar t ax

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His sobs made it impossible for him to say more. Even so, the king did not give in but increased the gifts he gave. Every day at mealtimes, the king presented a tray of food to Xuanzang. Since Xuanzang was detained against his will and his plans thwarted, he vowed not to eat so that the king would change his mind. Accordingly, for three days he sat erect and refused all water. On the fourth day, the king discovered that the Master’s breathing had become very faint. Feeling deeply ashamed of himself and afraid, the king bowed with his head touching the ground and apologized: “I will allow you to go to the West. Please eat immediately.”1

• Xuanzang (ca. 596– 664) A monk who traveled to Central Asia and India between 629 and 644 to obtain original Buddhist texts.

• chakravartin Literally “turner of the wheel,” a Buddhist term for the ideal ruler who patronized Buddhism but never became a monk.

• Silk Routes Overland routes through Central Asia connecting China and India, as well as the sea routes around Southeast Asia, along which were transmitted teachings, technologies, and languages.

Xuanzang’s three-day hunger strike succeeded. The contrite king offered to provide his travel expenses, and Xuanzang in turn agreed to teach the king’s subjects before continuing his journey. We might wonder why the Gaochang king so desperately wanted a lone monk to remain in his kingdom. As this chapter explains, Xuanzang represented an important element of the revised Chinese blueprint for empire. After reuniting China, the Sui (SWAY) (589–617) and Tang (TAHNG) emperors introduced important additions to the Qin/Han synthesis of Legalist and Confucian policies (see Chapter 4), including civil service examinations, a new system of taxation, and a complex law code. They also aspired to fulﬁll Ashoka’s model of the ideal chakravartin king who patronized Buddhism. The Gaochang king applied the new Chinese model to his kingdom in the hope of strengthening his rule. After the hunger strike, he realized that if he could not persuade Xuanzang to stay, at least he could provide him with travel expenses and become known as a generous donor, a key component of being a chakravartin. (Conversely, if Xuanzang had died while staying with him, it would have permanently damaged his reputation as a pious ruler.) When Xuanzang returned to China in 644, he had covered over 10,000 miles (16,000 km). The Gaochang kingdom had fallen to the armies of the Tang dynasty, and Emperor Taizong welcomed Xuanzang enthusiastically. He sought both Xuanzang’s skills as a translator and the valuable information he brought about distant lands. Historians of India and Central Asia are particularly grateful for Xuanzang’s detailed accounts of his trip, which supplement sparse indigenous sources. After he returned, Xuanzang translated over seventy Buddhist texts, many still read today because of their accuracy. The overland routes through Central Asia that Xuanzang took to India—and the sea routes around Southeast Asia taken by others—are known today as the Silk Routes. These routes were conduits not just for pilgrims like Xuanzang but also for merchants plying their goods, soldiers dispatched to ﬁght in distant lands, and refugees ﬂeeing dangerous areas for safety. These travelers told of powerful

Religion and the State in India, 100–1000

rulers in India and China, whose accomplishments inspired chieftains in border areas to imitate them. These Asian leaders introduced new writing systems, law codes, ways of recruiting government ofﬁcials, and taxation systems, often modifying them to suit their own societies. Some, like the Gaochang king and the rulers of Korea, Japan, and Tibet, patronized Buddhism and adopted Tang policies. Others, particularly in South and Southeast Asia, emulated South Asian monarchs and built temples to deities such as Shiva (SHIH-vah) and Vishnu (VISH-new), the most important deities in the emerging belief system of Hinduism. The individual decisions of these rulers resulted in the religious reorientation of the region. In 100 c.e., a disunited India was predominantly Buddhist, while the uniﬁed China of the Han dynasty embraced Legalist, Confucian, and Daoist beliefs. By 1000 c.e., the various kingdoms of India and Southeast Asia had become largely Hindu, while China, Japan, Korea, and Tibet had become Buddhist. This religious shift did not occur because a ruler of an intact empire, such as Constantine in the West (see Chapter 7), recognized a single religion. It was the result of many decisions taken by multiple rulers in different places over the course of centuries.

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• Hinduism

Templebased religious system that arose between 300 and 700 in India. Hinduism has two dimensions: public worship in temples and daily private worship in the home.

Focus Questions

How did Buddhism change after the year 100? How did Hinduism displace it within India? How did geography, trade, and religion shape the development of states and societies in Southeast Asia? How did the Sui and Tang dynasties modify the Qin/Han blueprint for empire? Which elements of the revised Chinese blueprint for empire did Korea and Japan borrow intact? Which did they modify?

Religion and the State in India, 100–1000

y the year 100, India had broken up into different regional kingdoms, all much smaller than the Mauryan Empire ruled by Ashoka (see Chapter 3) but bound by common cultural ties of Buddhism, social hierarchy, and respect for classical Sanskrit learning. Although the Ashokan inscriptions claim that Buddhist missionaries went to other countries to spread the dharma, the ﬁrst evidence of the spread of Buddhism beyond South Asia dates to the Kushan empire (ca. 50–260 c.e.). The most important Kushan ruler, Kanishka (r. ca. 120–140 c.e.), launched a missionary movement that propelled the new Greater Vehicle teachings of Buddhism (see next page) into Central Asia and China.

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Between 100 and 1000 c.e., Buddhism gained many adherents outside India but increasingly lost ground to new deities inside India. When Xuanzang traveled to north India in the early 600s, he noticed Buddhism in decline everywhere, and he recorded, often regretfully, the rise of a new religion taught by Brahmins. We know this religion as Hinduism, a name not used until the nineteenth century, when British scholars of Indian religion coined the term to denote Indians who were not Zoroastrian, Christian, or Muslim.2 By the year 1000, in many regions in India, particularly south India, the largest religious institutions were temples to Hindu deities such as Vishnu and Shiva, and kings recorded magniﬁcent gifts to Hindu temples in long inscriptions.

The Rise of Greater Vehicle Teachings in Buddhism

• bodhisattva Buddhist term denoting a being headed for Buddhahood.

Buddhism changed a great deal between Ashoka’s time in the third century b.c.e. and Kanishka’s reign in the second century c.e. Most importantly, Buddhist teachings no longer required an individual to join the Buddhist order to gain enlightenment. New interpreters of Buddhism referred to their own teachings as the Greater Vehicle (Mahayana) and denigrated those of earlier schools as the Lesser Vehicle (Hinayana). For this reason, scholars sometimes call the earlier schools Theravada, meaning “the Tradition of the Elders.” The Buddha had also taught that he was not a deity and that his followers should not make statues of him. Yet Indians began to worship statues of the Buddha in the ﬁrst and second centuries c.e. (see Chapter 3). They also began to pray to bodhisattvas (BODE-ee-saht-vahz) for easier childbirth or the curing of illness. A bodhisattva—literally, a being headed for Buddhahood—refers to someone on the verge of enlightenment who chooses, because of his or her compassion for others, to stay in this world for this and future lives and help other sentient beings (the Buddhist term for all living creatures, including humans) to attain nirvana. The proponents of the Greater Vehicle schools emphasized that Buddhists could transfer merit from one person to another: if someone paid for a Buddhist text to be recited, he or she acquired a certain amount of merit that could be transferred to someone else, perhaps an ill relative. Buddhist inscriptions frequently state that someone gave a gift to the Buddhist order, such as paying for part of a monastery, in someone else’s name. During the early centuries of the Common Era, Buddhist monasteries appeared throughout India. This, too, was a departure from earlier times. The Buddha had wandered from place to place with his followers and had stayed in one place only during the rainy season. Over the centuries, though, most Buddhist monks ceased the daily walk in which they asked for offerings from townspeople and instead moved into permanent monasteries. Since monastic rules forbade the monks from working in the ﬁelds, most monasteries hired laborers to do their farming for them. One monastery erected a giant stone begging bowl by its front gate. Rather than feed monks as they had in the past, the monastery’s supporters placed large gifts in the stone bowl for the monks and nuns. King Kanishka certainly supported the Buddhist order, and rich merchants probably did as well. Many Buddhist texts encouraged donors to make gifts of gold, silver, lapis lazuli, crystal, coral, pearls, and agate. These valuable items, often referred to as the Seven Treasures, were traded overland between India and China. The blue mineral lapis lazuli could be mined only in present-day Afghanistan, and one of the world’s best sources of pearls was the island of Sri Lanka, just south of India.

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The Buddhists, like the Christians at the Council of Nicaea (see Chapter 7), met periodically to discuss their teachings, and Buddhist sources credit Kanishka with organizing the Fourth Buddhist Council, whose primary task was to determine which versions of orally transmitted texts were authoritative. Because the few writing materials available in ancient India, such as leaves and wooden tablets, decayed in India’s tropical climate, Buddhist texts were not recorded. Monks specialized in a speciﬁc text, or a group of texts, and they transmitted them to their disciples by teaching them to memorize them. The Kushan dynasty was only one of many regional dynasties in India during the ﬁrst to third centuries c.e. After 140 c.e., Kanishka’s successors fought in various military campaigns, and Chinese sources report the arrival of refugees ﬂeeing the political upheavals of their homeland in north India. The earliest Buddhists to arrive in China in the ﬁrst and second centuries c.e. were missionaries from the Kushan empire, and their propagation of Buddhist teachings was particularly inﬂuential (see below). In 260 c.e. the Sasanians (see Chapter 6) defeated the ﬁnal Kushan ruler, bringing the dynasty to an end.

The Rise of Hinduism, 300–900

In the centuries after the fall of the Kushan dynasty, various dynasties arose in the different regions of South Asia, which continued to be culturally united even as it was politically divided. One of the most important was the Gupta dynasty, which controlled much of north India between 320 and 600. An admirer of the Mauryan dynasty (ca. 320–185 b.c.e.), Chandragupta (r. 319/320–ca. 330), the founder of the Gupta (GOO-ptah) dynasty took the same name as the Mauryan founder and governed from the former capital at Pataliputra (modern-day Patna). In an important innovation, the Gupta rulers issued land grants to powerful families, Brahmins, monasteries, and even villages. These grants gave the holder the right to collect a share of the harvest from the cultivators who worked his land. Inscriptions on stone and copper record the details of these gifts: the dimensions of the land, the share of the harvest given to the grantee and to village ofﬁcials, and the names of the accountants responsible for implementing these arrangements. Scribes developed a decimal system that allowed them to record the dimensions of each plot of land. Certainly by 876, and quite possibly during the Gupta reign, they also started to use a small circle to hold empty places; that symbol is the ancestor of the modern zero.3 On the other side of the globe, the Maya started to use zero at roughly the same time (see page 125). The Gupta rulers, inscriptions reveal, made many grants of land to Brahmins, members of the highest-ranking varna (see Chapter 3) who conducted rituals honoring Hindu deities like Vishnu and Shiva. The two deities, who appear only brieﬂy in the Rig Veda of ancient India, became increasingly important in later times. Both deities took many forms with various names. Worshipers of Vishnu claimed that the Buddha was actually Vishnu in an earlier incarnation. In 631, when Xuanzang reached Gandhara, which had been a center of Buddhism under Kanishka, he noticed many abandoned monasteries: “On both banks of the Shubhavastu River there were formerly fourteen hundred monasteries with eighteen thousand monks, but now the monasteries were in desolation and the number of monks had decreased.”4 Buddhist monasteries were not as large as they had been in earlier centuries, and the number of Buddhist monks had also declined. (See the feature “World History in Today’s World: Snapshot of Hinduism and Buddhism.”)

• Gupta dynasty (ca. 320–600) Indian dynasty based in north India; emulated the earlier Mauryan dynasty. The Gupta kings pioneered a new type of religious gift: land grants to Brahmin priests and Hindu temples.

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WORLD HISTORY in TODAY’S WORLD

Snapshot of Hinduism and Buddhism

induism, with 900 million adherents worldwide, is the world’s third-largest religion (after Christianity and Islam); Buddhism, with 350 million believers, is the fourth. Almost all Hindus live in South Asia or are of South Asian descent. The largest group of Hindus, 780 million, resides in India. Modern India is home to a Buddhist community as well. Indian Buddhists are not the descendants of long-established Buddhist families but members of untouchable groups, as they were called in the British colonial period, who converted to Buddhism at the urging of Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956). A member of a jati who traditionally had been sweepers and messengers, Ambedkar became a leader of untouchables after receiving his Ph.D. from Columbia University. In 1935, he announced his decision to stop being a Hindu because he felt that Hinduism reinforced discrimination against members of lower castes. On October 14, 1956, nine years after India gained independence, Ambedkar took the traditional vows to become a lay Buddhist and composed twenty-two new vows that he administered to nearly 400,000 followers. The nineteenth vow explained: “I renounce Hinduism, which is harmful for humanity and impedes the advancement and development of humanity because it is based on inequality, and adopt Buddhism as my religion.”

• bhakti Literally “personal devotion or love,” a term for Hindu poetry or cults that emphasizes a strong personal tie between the deity and a devotee, who did not use priests as intermediaries.

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Ambedker objected to Hindu teachings because they ranked Brahmins as the most pure of all jati. Only two months later, Ambedkar died. Since then others have organized similar mass conversions. One occurred on October 14, 2006, ﬁfty years after Ambedkar took his vows. The Buddhism movement has been most successful in Ambedkar’s home state of Maharashtra and in neighboring Uttar Pradesh. Of the 7.95 million Indians who said that they were Buddhist in the 2001 census, 5.83 million, or 73 percent, lived in Maharashtra. Many of the world’s Buddhists are not as explicit about their religious adherence as are Ambedkar’s followers. Several Southeast Asian nations subscribe to Theravada Buddhist teachings, including Thailand, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka. Almost all young Thai men undergo temporary ordination and spend a year or so studying Buddhism at Buddhist monasteries. The largest numbers of Buddhist adherents, however, live in China, with an estimated 100 million Buddhists, or in Japan, with 90 million. While many modern Chinese or Japanese may identify themselves as Buddhists if asked, they visit Buddhist temples only rarely and are much less actively Buddhist than Thais. Sources: www.adherents.com and www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ambedkar/ ambedkar_buddha/.

Xuanzang’s time in India from 630 to 643 coincided with the long reign of King Harsha (606–647) in Kanauj (KAHN-awj) (modern-day Kanpur), one of the successor dynasties to the Guptas. Remarking on the caste system, which was so different from that in China, he ranked the four varna in the traditional order according to purity: Brahmins, royal caste, merchant class, and agricultural class.5 Brahmin priests played an important role in Hindu worship, but unlike the Brahmins of Vedic times, who had conducted large public ceremonies with animal sacriﬁces, the Brahmins of the Gupta era performed offerings to Vishnu and Shiva at temples. Hindu worship of Shiva and Vishnu had two dimensions: public ceremonies conducted by Brahmins in temples, which allowed local rulers to proclaim their power for all visiting the temple to see, and private worship in the home. In private worship, devotees daily sang songs of love or praise to their deities. This strong personal tie between the devotee and the deity is known as bhakti. The main evidence for the rise of bhakti devotionalism is a large corpus of poems

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written in regional languages such as Tamil, a language of great antiquity spoken in the southernmost tip of India.

The Beginnings of the Chola Kingdom, ca. 900

The Tamil-speaking Chola (CHOH-la) kings, who established their dynasty in south India in 907, were among the most powerful leaders who patronized Hindu temples. In their capital at Tanjore, they bestowed huge land grants on the Shiva temple in the hope that their subjects would associate the generosity of the royal donors with the power of the deity. The Tanjore temple to Shiva, like many other Hindu temples, had an innermost chamber, called the womb room, that housed a stone lingam, to which

Brihadeshwara Temple at Tanjore, with Womb Room Rajaraja I (r. 985–1014) built this imposing temple (below) to Shiva at Tanjore. The temple’s ornate exterior contrasts sharply with the austere interior. The innermost sanctuary of the Hindu temple, the womb room (right), held the lingam, on which devotees placed offerings, like the ﬂowers shown here. A Hindu goddess sits on the peacock on the wall. Many temples allowed only Hindus, sometimes only Hindu priests, to enter the womb room. (below: Dinodia Photo Library; right: Robert Harding/Jupiter Images)

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Hindu priests made ritual offerings. Lingam means “sign” or “phallus” in Sanskrit. The lingam was always placed in a womb room because male and female generative power had to be combined. On a concrete level, the lingam symbolized the creative force of human reproduction; on a more abstract level, it stood for all the creative forces in the cosmos. The Shiva temple lands lay in the agricultural heartland of south India and, when irrigated properly, produced a rich rice harvest whose income supported the thousands of Brahmins who lived in the temple. These Brahmins performed rituals, memorized and transmitted different texts, and taught local boys in temple schools. The Chola kings controlled the immediate vicinity of the capital and possibly the other large cities in their district, but not the many villages surrounding the cities. Many of these villages were self-governing. But since their temples were subordinate to the larger temple in the Chola capital, they also acknowledged the Chola kings as their spiritual overlords. One of the most successful Chola rulers was Rajaraja (RAH-jah-rah-jah) I (r. 985– 1014), who conquered much of south India and sent armies as far as Srivijaya (sreeVEE-jeye-ah) (modern Indonesia, on the southern Malay Peninsula and Sumatra). Although he did not conquer any territory there, the people of Southeast Asia learned of the Chola king’s accomplishments from these contacts. As a direct result, local rulers encouraged priests literate in Sanskrit to move to Southeast Asia to build Hindu temples and teach them about Chola governance (see page 218).

State, Society, and Religion in Southeast Asia, 300–1000

he term Southeast Asia encompasses a broad swath of land in subtropical Asia and over twenty thousand islands in the Paciﬁc. In most periods, travel among islands and along the shore was easier than overland travel, which was possible only on some of the region’s major rivers like the Irrawaddy and the Salween in modern Myanmar (Burma), the Red River in Vietnam, and the Mekong in Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Most of the region’s sparse population (an estimated ﬁfteen people per square mile [six people per sq km] in the seventeenth century,6 and even lower in earlier centuries) lived in isolated groups separated by forests and mountains, but the coastal peoples went on sea voyages as early as 1000 b.c.e. Like India, Southeast Asia received heavy monsoon rains in the summer; successful agriculture often depended on storing rainwater in tanks for use throughout the year. While people in the lowlands raised rice in paddies, the different highland societies largely practiced slash-and-burn agriculture. Once farmers had exhausted the soil of a given place, they moved on, with the result that few states with ﬁxed borders existed in Southeast Asia. With no equivalent of caste, the shifting social structure of the region was basically egalitarian. People lived in different groups in the forested mountains without settling permanently in any given spot. From time to time, a leader uniﬁed some of the groups, dedicated a temple to either the Buddha or a Hindu deity, and adopted other policies in hopes of strengthening his new state.

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Merchants and religious travelers going from India to China (and back) by boat traveled along wellestablished routes (see Map 8.1). Before 350 c.e., ships usually landed at a port on the Isthmus of Kra, and travelers crossed the 35-mile (56-km) stretch of land dividing the Andaman Sea from the Gulf of Thailand by foot before resuming their sea voyages. This overland route could reduce an often treacherous sea route by 1,600 miles (2,500 km). The Buddhist kingdom of Funan, centered on the Mekong River Delta, arose in this area and thrived between the ﬁrst and sixth centuries c.e. Surprisingly little is known about Funan; scholars debate its exact location and refer to it by its Chinese name, Funan, because they do not know its indigenous name. Prevailing winds and the types of boat available determined which routes merchants and pilgrims took. During the spring and summer, while the Eurasian landmass heated up, travelers could follow the monsoon winds that blew toward India; during the fall and winter, as the landmass cooled, they could leave India and follow the winds that blew away from the landmass. Most boats had to wait in Southeast Asian ports for the winds to change. The long periods of waiting meant that entire ships—sometimes with several hundred crew and passengers— needed food and shelter for three to ﬁve months, and port towns grew up to accommodate their needs. Local rulers discovered that they could tax the travelers, and merchants realized that there was a market for Southeast Asian aromatic woods and spices in both China and India. Funan declined as a Buddhist center sometime after 350 c.e., when the mariners of Southeast Asia discovered a new route between China and India. Merchants and monks boarded ships at Sri Lanka and traveled all the way to either the Strait of Malacca or the Sunda Strait. They disembarked in the kingdom of Srivijaya in modern-day Indonesia, waited for the winds to shift, and then continued through the South China Sea to China. The main port for the kingdom was located at the modern-day city of Palembang, which has a deep natural harbor. The kingdom traded with many regional kingdoms in central Java, where the world’s largest Buddhist monument, at Borobudur (boh-roh-BUH-duhr), provides a powerful example of religious architecture connected with early state formation. (See the feature “Visual Evidence: Borobudur: A Buddhist Monument in Java, Indonesia.”) Srivijaya’s ruler welcomed Buddhist travelers and made extensive contributions to local Buddhist monasteries as well as non-Buddhist deities. The Srivijayan kings called themselves “Lord of the Mountains” and “Spirit of the Waters of the Sea,” titles from the local religious traditions. The kingdom of Srivijaya ﬂourished between 700 and 1000 c.e.

Buddhist Kingdoms Along the Trade Routes

Buddhist and Hindu Kingdoms of Inland Southeast Asia, 300–1000

Buddhist images made in stone appeared throughout interior Southeast Asia between 300 and 600. In the preBuddhist period, all the different societies of the region recognized certain individuals as “men of prowess” who used military skill and intelligence to rise to the leadership of their tribes. They succeeded against other claimants to power because they had more active networks of loyal supporters whom they could lead in times of war. Sometimes a leader was so successful that various tribal leaders acknowledged him as a regional overlord.

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Pagan

D EC C A N P L ATEAU

Taiwan Re

Gulf of Thailand

Oc Eo

Mindanao

Borneo

Malacca

Sunda Strait

Celebes

Trade routes

Equator 0°

Sumatra SRIVIJAYA EMPIRE Srivijay (Palembang)

Interactive Map

South China Sea

OC EAN

Philippine Sea

CHAMPA (VIETNAM)

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I N D IAN

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Sri Lanka

250

OCEAN

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Angkor

FUNAN

Isthmus of Kra

ZHENLA

Andaman Sea

500 Km.

PACIFIC

Daluo

(VIETNAM)

Bay of Bengal Thanjavur

250

Guangzhou

ANNAM

CHOLAS

THAIS

BURMANS

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CHINA

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120°E

100°E

Sarnath Ga n ge s Pataliputra .

GUPTA EMPIRE

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MAP 8.1 The Spread of Buddhism and Hinduism to Southeast Asia Sea routes connected Southeast Asia with both India and China, facilitating travel by missionaries to the region and by devotees from the region. The regions closest to China, particularly Vietnam, became predominantly Buddhist, like China, while the rulers of other regions, including Cambodia, patronized both Buddhism and Hinduism, as did most rulers in India. Most societies in Southeast Asia recognized descent through both the mother and the father. In practice this meant that the son of a man of prowess was not necessarily the leading candidate to succeed him as leader; a nephew, particularly the child of his sister, had the same claim as the son. As a result, no group hung together for very long. People were loyal to a given individual, not to a dynasty, and when he died, they tended to seek a new man of prowess to support. After these men of prowess died, they became honored ancestors. Burial practices varied widely throughout Southeast Asia. In modern Cambodia alone, archaeologists have found evidence of cremation, burial in the ground, burial by disposal in the ocean, and exposure of the dead above ground. Many people conceived of a natural world populated by different spirits usually thought to inhabit trees, rocks, and other physical features. Specialists conducted rituals that allowed them to communicate with these spirits. This was the world into which literate outsiders came in the fourth, ﬁfth, and sixth centuries c.e. Most of the visitors, some identiﬁed as Brahmins, came from India and knew how to read and write Sanskrit. Southeast Asians also traveled to India, where they studied Sanskrit and returned after they memorized both sacred texts and laws. Inscriptions often refer to men literate in Sanskrit as purohita, a Sanskrit word meaning a chief priest, who conducted rituals for leaders and served in their governments as an adviser or administrator. The teachings of devotional Hinduism, or bhakti (see above), encouraged devotees to study with a teacher, or purohita, so that they could get closer to the divinity they worshiped.

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State, Society, and Religion in Southeast Asia, 300–1000

Literate teachers, whether native or not, brought different teachings—some we now identify as Buddhist, some as Hindu—to the rulers of Southeast Asia. We can see how they came together in one ruler’s mind in the case of Jayavarman II ( JAI-ah-var-mahn) (ca. 770–850), who ruled the lower Mekong basin in Cambodia between 802 and 850. ( Jayavarman II was named for a seventh-century ruler of the same name.) Before the Mekong River empties into the South China Sea, much of its waters ﬂow into Tonle Sap (the Great Lake). The lake served as a holding tank for the monsoon rains, which were channeled into nearby rice ﬁelds. Historians view Jayavarman II’s reign as the beginning of the Angkor period (802–1431), named for the Angkor dynasty, whose rulers spoke the Khmer (KMEHR) language. Because Jayavarman II is closely identiﬁed with the Hindu deity Shiva, this dynasty is often called a Hindu dynasty. Jayavarman II was a devotee of Shiva, who was believed to preside over the entire universe, with other less powerful deities having smaller realms. Similarly, Jayavarman II presided over the human universe, while the surrounding chieftains had their own smaller, inferior,

Bayon Gate, Angkor Thom, Cambodia In the 1180s and 1190s, the ruler Jayavarman VII built a series of monuments and temples, including this one at Angkor Thom, a fortiﬁed city just north of Angkor Wat. The ﬁgures on the road leading up to the Bayon Gate are Buddhist guardians: on the left stands a line of warrior deities; on the right, a row of gods. The faces on the four sides of the tower are those of a bodhisattva, but the multiple faces also seem Hindu, in an artful blending of Hindu and Buddhist imagery. (Gavin Hellier/Robert Harding Picture Library

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• Angkor dynasty Khmer-speaking dynasty in modern-day Cambodia founded by Jayavarman II. His combination of Hindu and Buddhist imagery proved so potent that it was used by all later Angkor kings.

Ltd./Alamy)

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BOROBUDUR: A BUDDHIST MONUMENT IN JAVA, INDONESIA

he largest Buddhist monument in the world lies not in the homeland of the Buddha in India but over 1,000 miles (1,600 km) to the southeast at Borobudur on the island of Java in Indonesia. The Shailendra (SHAI-len-drah) kings (ca. 775–860) built the monument out of volcanic rock sometime in the eighth or ninth century, just as they were consolidating their rule. When they moved their capital to a different location in east Java, they abandoned the magniﬁcent complex, and it lay unknown until the early nineteenth century, when Sir Thomas Rafﬂes, founder of Singapore, saw it covered with mold and lichen plants in the middle of a dense forest. Since no surviving documents explain the meaning of the elements of the monument, analysts must study the different sections of the enormous monument to reconstruct its possible meaning. Rising over 100 feet (31.5 m) above the ground, the monument rests on a large squarish base measuring 400 feet (122 m) on each side. The overall effect resembles the ziggurat temples of Mesopotamia. Staircases at the center of each level lead up to the next, and visitors walk around each level for a total of 3 miles (5 km) until they reach the top. The lowest level of the monument, originally below ground, depicts an underground hell for those who do not obey Buddhist teachings. The four square terraces above contain over 2,500 panels, most showing scenes from the earlier lives of the Buddha. Monks and guides probably explained the meaning of these scenes to pilgrims. Near the top, the visitor reaches the three terraces holding seventytwo bodhisattvas, each sitting under a bell-shaped stone with holes to look through. At the top of the

monument stands an empty stupa, which may have originally held a relic. Borobudur was a pilgrimage site for people all over Southeast Asia. Pilgrims brought simple clay objects in the shape of stupas and buried them underground at the site. Archaeologists have unearthed 2,397 clay stupas and 252 clay tablets with writing on them. Pilgrims also buried clay pots and sheets of silver covered with written Buddhist charms, either to keep away evil spirits or to bring good health. The many languages on the tablets indicate that people came from great distances to see Borobudur and to make offerings to the Buddha who came to be worshiped so far from his original home. Most analysts concur that the monument was designed to lead pilgrims from the underworld, shown in the base, up through the ﬁve platforms showing human existence, through the world of the seventytwo bodhisattvas to the single Buddha on top who had attained enlightenment. While the content of the different panels is clearly inspired by Buddhism, the design of the monument, with its multiple ascending levels, is distinctly local. No other Buddhist monument is like it. Borobudur is made of two million separate blocks of yellow-brown andesite, volcanic rock found throughout Java. Each year over 70 inches (2 m) of rain falls on the rocks, creating the perfect environment for moss and lichen to thrive. Between 1973 and 1983, with UNESCO support, workers dismantled the monument, removed and cleaned each of the blocks, and restored the monument for the third time since its rediscovery in the early 1800s.

QUESTION FOR ANALYSIS How had Buddhist worship at stupas changed from the ﬁrst century B.C.E. at Sanchi (see Visual Evidence, Chapter 3) to the eighth and ninth centuries at Borobudur?

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This large stupa, 36 feet (11 m) in diameter and 460 feet (43 m) above the ground, is empty. It probably originally held an image of the Buddha.

(Robert Harding Picture Library Ltd.)

These three circular terraces hold seventytwo smaller stupas, each housing an image of a bodhisattva.

All of the stones today are grayish-black, but they were originally covered with a layer of white plaster and then painted different eye-catching colors.

The galleries on the four square levels hold 1,460 six-footwide stone panels, each showing a different scene from Buddhist songs, poems, sacred texts, and the earlier lives of the Buddha.

The heavy stone monument rests on an unstable core of earth. After construction ﬁrst started, the monument sagged, prompting a reconﬁguration of the subterranean level, which now is surrounded by a terrace to prevent it from slipping even further. Some observers have compared the resulting uneven proﬁle to a cake that did not rise properly.

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realms. Jayavarman II did not have to conquer them militarily because they acknowledged him as a bhakti teacher who could provide them with closer access to Shiva. Devotees of Shiva built temples that incorporated pre-existing local shrines, usually on sites where local spirits were thought to live. If the spirit inhabited a rock, that rock could be worshiped as the lingam of the new Shiva temple. When devotees conducted a Hindu ceremony to request children, they poured a sacred liquid over the lingam, a practice that echoed earlier fertility cults. The largest temple in the kingdom came to be known as Angkor Wat (en-CORE waht). Built in the early twelfth century, it used motifs borrowed from Hinduism to teach its viewers that they were living during a golden age, when peace reigned and the Angkor dynasty controlled much of modern-day Cambodia. Jayavarman II also invoked Buddhist terminology by calling himself a chakravartin ruler. This combination of Hindu and Buddhist imagery proved so potent that all subsequent Angkor kings, and many other Southeast Asian rulers, used it. With the exception of Vietnam, which remained within the Chinese cultural sphere even when not under direct Chinese rule, Southeast Asia faced toward India, where Buddhism and Hinduism often coexisted. Buddhism and Hinduism came to Southeast Asia not because of conquest but because local rulers aspired to create new states as powerful as those they heard existed in India.

Buddhism and the Revival of Empire in China, 100–1000

ith the fall of the Han dynasty in 220 c.e., China broke up into different regions, each governed by local military leaders. When the ﬁrst Buddhist missionaries from the Kushan empire arrived in China during the ﬁrst and second centuries c.e., they faced great difﬁculties in spreading their religion. Buddhist teachings urged potential converts to abandon family obligations and adopt a celibate lifestyle, yet Confucian China was one of the most family-oriented societies in the world. The chakravartin ideal of the universal Buddhist ruler, though, appealed to leaders of regions no longer united under the Han dynasty. During the Sui dynasty, which reunited China, and its long-lived successor, the Tang dynasty, Chinese emperors introduced important additions to the Qin/Han blueprint for empire, additions that remained integral to Chinese governance until the end of dynastic rule in the early 1900s.

Buddhism in China, 100–589

The ﬁrst Buddhists in China came to the Han dynasty capitals at Chang’an and Luoyang early in the Common Era, most likely by sea and overland through Central Asia. The ﬁrst Chinese who worshiped the Buddha did so because they thought him capable of miracles; some sources report that his image shone brightly and could ﬂy through the air. The earliest Chinese document to mention Buddhism, from 65 c.e., tells of a prince worshiping the Buddha alongside the Daoist deity

Buddhism and the Revival of Empire in China, 100–1000

Laozi, the purported author of The Way and Integrity Classic (see Chapter 4), indicating that the Chinese initially thought the Buddha was a Daoist deity. The Han dynasty ended in 220 c.e. when a general decided to end the ﬁction of ruling through a puppet emperor and founded a new dynasty. He was never able to unite the entire empire, and no other regional dynasty succeeded in doing so until 589. Historians call this long period of disunity the Six Dynasties (220– 589 c.e.). During the Six Dynasties, Buddhist miracle workers began to win the ﬁrst converts. Historians of Buddhism treat these miracle accounts in the same way as historians of Christianity do biblical accounts (see Chapter 7). Nonbelievers may be skeptical that the events occurred as described, but people at the time found (and modern devotees continue to ﬁnd) these tales compelling, and they are crucial to our understanding of how these religions gained their ﬁrst adherents. One of the most effective early missionaries was a Central Asian man named Fotudeng (d. 349), who claimed that the Buddha had given him the ability to bring rain, cure the sick, and foresee the future. In 310, Fotudeng managed to convert a local ruler named Shi Le (274–333) just as he was about to lead an army into Luoyang, the former Han dynasty capital. Shi Le asked Fotudeng to perform a miracle to demonstrate the power of Buddhism. A later biography explains what happened: “Thereupon he took his begging bowl, ﬁlled it with water, burned incense, and said a spell over it. In a moment there sprang up blue lotus ﬂowers whose brightness and color dazzled the eyes.”7 A Buddhist symbol, the lotus is a beautiful ﬂower that grows from a root coming out of a dirty lake bottom; similarly, Fotudeng explained, human beings could free their minds from the impediments of worldly living and attain enlightenment. As usual with miracle tales, we have no way of knowing what actually happened, but Fotudeng’s miracle so impressed Shi Le that he granted the Buddhists tax-free land so they could build monasteries in north China. The son of a Xiongnu (SHEE-awng-new) chieftain (see Chapter 4), Shi Le could never become a good Confucian-style ruler because he spoke but could not read or write Chinese. Buddhism appealed to him precisely because it offered an alternative to Confucianism. He could aspire to be a chakravartin ruler. Fotudeng tried to persuade ordinary Chinese to join the new monasteries and nunneries, but most people were extremely reluctant to take vows of celibacy. If they did not have children, future generations would not be able to perform ancestor worship for their parents and grandparents. A Buddhist book written in the early sixth century, The Lives of the Nuns, portrays the dilemma of would-be converts. When one young woman told her father that she did not want to marry, he replied, “You ought to marry. How can you be like this?” She explained, “I want to free all living beings from suffering. How much more, then, do I want to free my two parents!”8 But her father was not persuaded by her promise that she could free him from the endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. When Fotudeng met the woman’s father, he promised: “If you consent to her plan [to become a nun], she indeed shall raise her family to glory and bring you blessings and honor.” Deeply impressed, the father agreed to let her enter a nunnery. Similar encounters between parents and children took place all over China during the Six Dynasties. Many families made a compromise between the demands of Buddhism and Confucianism; they allowed one child to join the Buddhist order and transfer merit to the other children, who married and had children.

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• Fotudeng (d. 349) Central Asian Buddhist missionary who persuaded the ruler Shi Le to convert to Buddhism; Shi Le’s decision to grant tax-free land to Buddhist monasteries was a crucial ﬁrst step in the establishment of Buddhism in China.

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• Tang dynasty Dynasty (618–907) that represented a political and cultural high point in Chinese history. The Tang emperors combined elements of the Qin/Han blueprint for empire with new measures to create a model of governance that spread to Tibet, Korea, and Japan.

Hindu and Buddhist States and Societies in Asia, 100–1000

Buddhist missionaries found that they could use miracles to convert uneducated people like Shi Le, but they needed accurate Chinese translations of Buddhist texts to impress China’s scholars. Still, the structure and vocabulary of Sanskrit, an Indo-European language, differed greatly from Chinese, and no dictionaries or other translation aids existed. The ﬁrst understandable translations in Chinese appeared only in the year 400, long after Buddhists had been active in China, when a monk who knew both Chinese and Sanskrit founded a translation bureau with teams of bilingual translators. Buddhists continued to win converts during the ﬁfth and sixth centuries. They gained support because Buddhist teachings offered more hope about the afterlife than did Confucian and Daoist teachings. Confucius had refused to discuss the afterlife, except to urge his students to mourn their parents, yet many Chinese envisioned an underground prison where the dead languished forever while remaining recognizably themselves. The original Indian belief in the transmigration of souls as expressed in the Upanishads (oo-PAHN-ih-shahdz; see Chapter 3) presumed that someone’s soul in this life stayed intact and could be reborn in a different body. But the Buddhists propounded the no-self doctrine, which taught that there is no such thing as a ﬁxed self. Each person is a constantly shifting group of ﬁve aggregates—form, feelings, perceptions, karmic constituents, and consciousness—that change from one second to the next. Accordingly, there is no self that can be reborn in the next life. This idea proved extremely difﬁcult for people to grasp and was much debated as a result. Gradually, Chinese Buddhists abandoned the strict no-self doctrine and began to describe a series of hells, much like the indigenous Chinese concept of the underground prison, where people went when they died. A few people could attain nirvana and ascend to a Buddhist paradise, they taught, but most people went to these hells and awaited their rebirth as one of six different types of being, depending on whether they had accrued good or bad karma in their previous existences. The willingness of Buddhist teachers to modify their original no-self teachings won them many converts. (See the feature “Movement of Ideas: Teaching Buddhism in a Confucian Society.”) By the year 600, Buddhism was ﬁrmly implanted in the Chinese countryside. A history of Buddhism written in that year explained that three types of monasteries existed. The largest 47 monasteries were completely ﬁnanced by the central government; educated monks who lived in them conducted regular Buddhist rituals on behalf of the emperor and his immediate family. In the second tier were 839 monasteries that depended on royal princes and other powerful families for support. The ﬁnal category included over 30,000 smaller shrines that dotted the Chinese countryside. Dependent on local people for contributions, the monks who worked in these shrines were often uneducated and could recite only a handful of Buddhist texts from memory. Some could not even read and write. The number of monks, educated and not, varied over the centuries, but it never exceeded more than 1 percent of China’s total population, which was about ﬁfty million in 600.9

China Reuniﬁed, 589–907

After more than three hundred years of disunity, the founder of the Sui dynasty reuniﬁed China in 589. Then, in less than thirty years, the Tang dynasty succeeded it. The Sui and Tang emperors embraced the chakravartin ideal, for they hoped Buddhism would help to bind their many subjects together. Tang dynasty China represented a high point in Chinese history; the Tang emperors ruled more territory than any

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dynasty until the mid-eighteenth century, and Chinese openness to the inﬂuences of Central Asia made Tang art and music particularly beautiful. The Sui founder consciously modeled himself on the great chakravartin ruler Ashoka, whose support for the Buddhist order was well known in China. He gave money for the construction of monasteries all over China and ordered prayers to be chanted in them on the Buddha’s birthday. He also built a new capital at Chang’an, the former capital of the Han dynasty, with a gridded street plan (see Figure 8.1). The city housed 120 new Buddhist monasteries. When the emperor turned 60, in 601, he explicitly followed Ashoka’s lead and ordered stupas for Buddhist relics to be built throughout the empire. In 604, when the Sui founder died, his son succeeded him and led his armies on a disastrous campaign in Korea. He was soon overthrown by one of his generals, who went on to found the Tang dynasty. After only eight years of rule, in 626, the Tang founder’s son, Emperor Taizong, overthrew his father in a bloody coup in which he killed one brother and ordered an ofﬁcer to kill another. In 645, when Xuanzang wrote asking permission to return, the emperor had defeated his domestic opponents, and his brilliant military leadership had succeeded in extending Tang China’s borders deep into Central Asia. Taizong was able to fulﬁll the chakravartin ideal by making generous donations of money and land to Buddhist monasteries and by supporting famous monks like Xuanzang. He built a special brick pagoda where Xuanzang could translate the hundreds of texts he brought from India. One of Taizong’s greatest accomplishments was a comprehensive law code, the Tang Code, that was designed to help local magistrates govern and adjudicate disputes, a major part of their job. It taught them, for example, how to distinguish between manslaughter and murder and speciﬁed the punishments for each. Tang NORTH Winter (Black) Imperial Park

Daming Palace

Imperial Park

Park 1st Ave. (Chijo)

Imperial City

WEST Autumn (White)

West Market

Chunming Gate East Market

EAST Spring (Blue)

2nd Ave. (Nijo)

Suzaku Gate

3rd Ave. (Sanjo)

iver

Jinguang Gate

Imperial Palace Great Palace Enclosure

4th Ave. (Sanjo)

Kamo R

Chentian Gate Administrative City

5th Ave. (Gojo)

Yanping Gate

Yanxing Gate

6th Ave. (Rokujo)

Mingde Gate SOUTH Summer Gate

TANG CHANG’AN

Kyogoku

E. Toin

W. Toin

8th Ave. (Hachijo)

Omiya

Hibiscus Gardens Serpentine Lake

Suzaku

7th Ave. (Shichijo)

9th Ave. (Kujo)

Great South Gate

HEIAN (KYOTO)

FIGURE 8.1

Layout of Chang’an and Heian (Kyoto) Many rulers in East Asia followed Tang models very closely. Compare the city plans of Chang’an, the Tang capital, and Kyoto, the Heian capital. Both cities had square walls enclosing a gridded street plan, and the imperial palace was located in the north. Unlike Chang’an, Kyoto did not have a city wall or two central markets.

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MOVEMENT OF IDEAS

Teaching Buddhism in a Confucian Society

onks frequently told stories to teach ordinary people the tenets of Buddhism. The story of the Indian monk Maudgalyayana (mowd-GAH-leeyah-yah-nah) survives in a Sanskrit version, composed between 300 B.C.E. and 300 C.E., and a much longer Chinese version from a manuscript dated 921. This story has enormous appeal in China (it is frequently performed as Chinese opera or on television) because it portrays the dilemma of those who wanted to be good Confucian sons as well as good Buddhists. Maudgalyayana may have been ﬁlial, but he was unable to fulﬁll his Confucian obligations as a son because he did not bear a male heir. The Buddhist narrator takes great pains to argue that he can still be a good son because Confucian offerings have no power in a Buddhist underworld. In the Sanskrit version, Maudgalyayana, one of the Buddha’s disciples, realizes that his mother has been reborn in the real world and asks the Buddha to help her to attain nirvana. Maudgalyayana and the Buddha travel to ﬁnd the mother, who attains nirvana after hearing the Buddha preach. In the Chinese version, the protagonist retains his

Indian name but acts like a typical Chinese son in every respect. The tale contrasts the behavior of the virtuous, if slightly dim, Maudgalyayana with his mother, who never gave any support to her local monastery and even kept for herself money that her son had asked her to give the monks. As a ﬁlial son, he cannot believe her capable of any crime, and he searches through all the different compartments of the Chinese hell to ﬁnd her. Unrepentant to the very end of the tale, she explains that traditional Confucian offerings to the ancestors have no power in the underworld. Only offerings to the Buddhist order, such as paying monks to copy Buddhist texts, can help to ease her suffering. At the end of the story, the Buddha himself frees her from the underworld, a grim series of hells that do not exist in the Sanskrit original. Sources: John Strong, “Filial Piety and Buddhism: The Indian Antecedents to a ‘Chinese’ Problem,” in Traditions in Contact and Change: Selected Proceedings of the XIVth Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions, ed. Peter Slater and Donald Wiebe (Winnipeg, Man: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1980), p. 180; Victor H. Mair, trans., Tun-huang Popular Narratives (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 109–110.

Sanskrit Version From afar, [Maudgalyayana’s mother] Bhadrakanya [bud-DRAH-kahn-ee-ya] saw her son, and, as soon as she saw him, she rushed up to him exclaiming, “Ah! At long last I see my little boy!” Thereupon the crowd of people who had assembled said: “He is an aged wandering monk, and she is a young girl—how can she be his mother?” But the Venerable Maha Maudgalyayana replied, “Sirs, these skandhas• of mine were fostered by her; therefore she is my mother.”

Then the Blessed One, knowing the disposition, propensity, nature and circumstances of Bhadrakanya, preached a sermon fully penetrating the meaning of the Four Noble Truths. And when Bhadrakanya had heard it, she was brought to the realization of the fruit of entering the stream.

• skandhas The ﬁve aggregates—form, feelings, perceptions, karmic constituents, and consciousness—which in Buddhism are the basis of the personality.

QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS 쑺 What are the main differences between the Indian and Chinese versions? 쑺 How do they portray the fate of the mother after her death? 쑺 What is the Chinese underworld like?

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Chinese Version This is the place where mother and son see each other: . . . Trickles of blood ﬂowed from the seven openings of her head. Fierce ﬂames issued from the inside of his mother’s mouth, At every step, metal thorns out of space entered her body; She clanked and clattered like the sound of ﬁve hundred broken-down chariots, How could her waist and backbone bear up under the strain? Jailers carrying pitchforks guarded her to the left and the right, Ox-headed guards holding chains stood on the east and the west; Stumbling at every other step, she came forward, Wailing and weeping, Maudgalyayana embraced his mother. Crying, he said: “It was because I am unﬁlial, You, dear mother, were innocently caused to drop into the triple mire of hell; Families which accumulate goodness have a surplus of blessings, High Heaven does not destroy in this manner those who are blameless. In the old days, mother, you were handsomer than Pan An•, But now you have suddenly become haggard and worn; I have heard that in hell there is much suffering, Now, today, I ﬁnally realize, ‘Ain’t it hard, ain’t it hard.’ Ever since I met with the misfortune of father’s and your deaths, I have not been remiss in sacriﬁcing daily at your graves; Mother, I wonder whether or not you have been getting any food to eat, In such a short time, your appearance has become completely haggard.” Now that Maudgalyayana’s mother had heard his words, “Alas!” She cried, her tears intertwining as she struck and grabbed at herself: • Pan An

A well-known attractive man.

“Only yesterday, my son, I was separated from you by death. Who could have known that today we would be reunited? While your mother was alive, she did not cultivate blessings, But she did commit plenty of all the ten evil crimes•; Because I didn’t take your advice at that time, my son, My reward is the vastness of this Avici Hell•. In the old days, I used to live quite extravagantly, Surrounded by ﬁne silk draperies and embroidered screens; How shall I be able to endure these hellish torments, And then to become a hungry ghost for a thousand years? A thousand times, they pluck the tongue from out of my mouth, Hundreds of passes are made over my chest with a steel plough; My bones, joints, tendons, and skin are everywhere broken, They need not trouble with knives and swords since I fall to pieces by myself. In the twinkling of an eye, I die a thousand deaths, But, each time, they shout at me and I come back to life; Those who enter this hell all suffer the same hardships. It doesn’t matter whether you are rich or poor, lord or servant. Though you diligently sacriﬁced to me while you were at home, It only got you a reputation in the village for being ﬁlial; Granted that you did sprinkle libations of wine upon my grave, But it would have been better for you to copy a single line of sutra.”

• ten evil crimes The ten worst offenses according to Buddhist teachings. • Avici Hell The lowest Buddhist hell, for those who had committed the worst offences.

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• equal-ﬁeld system The basis of the Tang dynasty tax system as prescribed in the Tang Code. Dividing households into nine ranks on the basis of wealth, ofﬁcials allocated each householder a certain amount of land.

• Emperor Wu (r. 685– 705) The sole woman to rule China as emperor in her own right; she called herself emperor and founded a new dynasty, the Zhou (690–705), that replaced the Tang dynasty.

Hindu and Buddhist States and Societies in Asia, 100–1000

dynasty governance continued many Han dynasty innovations, particularly respect for Confucian ideals coupled with Legalist punishments and regulations. The Tang Code also laid out the equal-ﬁeld system, which was the basis of the Tang dynasty tax system. The Tang state adopted the system, named for an ideal agricultural society in the Chinese classics, from a regional dynasty that had ruled in the north during the Six Dynasties period. Under the provisions of the equal-ﬁeld system, the government conducted a census of all inhabitants and drew up registers listing each household and its members every three years. Dividing households into nine ranks on the basis of wealth, it allocated to each householder a certain amount of land—some for temporary use and some for permanent use. It also ﬁxed the tax obligations of each individual. Historians disagree about whether the equal-ﬁeld system took effect throughout all of the empire, but they concur that Tang dynasty ofﬁcials had an unprecedented degree of control over their sixty million subjects. Emperor Taizong made Confucianism the basis of the educational system. As in the Han dynasty, most ofﬁcials continued to be appointed on the basis of another ofﬁcial’s recommendation, but the Tang recruited some 5 percent of ofﬁcials by testing their knowledge of the Confucian classics in a written examination. This policy set an important precedent: it reserved the highest posts in the government for those who had passed the exams. Taizong combined the chakravartin ideal with Confucian policies to create a new model of rulership for East Asia. One Tang emperor extended the chakravartin ideal to speciﬁc government measures: Emperor Wu (r. 685–705), the only woman to rule China as emperor in her own right. Many English-language books incorrectly refer to her as Empress Wu, even though she called herself emperor and founded a new dynasty, the Zhou, that supplanted the Tang from 690 to 705. Originally the wife of the emperor, she engineered the imperial succession so that she could serve ﬁrst as regent to a boy emperor and then as emperor herself. The chakravartin ideal appealed to Emperor Wu because an obscure Buddhist text, The Great Cloud Sutra, prophesied that a kingdom ruled by a woman would be transformed into a Buddhist paradise. (The word sutra means the words of the Buddha recorded in written form.) Emperor Wu ordered the construction of Buddhist monasteries in each part of China so that The Great Cloud Sutra could be read aloud. She issued edicts forbidding the slaughter of animals or the eating of ﬁsh, both violations of Greater Vehicle teachings, and in 693 she ofﬁcially proclaimed herself a chakravartin ruler. In 705 she was overthrown in a palace coup, and the Tang dynasty was restored. Although today we often focus on Emperor Wu’s gender, contemporary documents and portrayals do not indicate that she was particularly aware of being female. Like the female pharaoh Hatshepsut (see Chapter 2), Emperor Wu portrayed herself as a legitimate dynastic ruler.

The Long Decline of the Tang Dynasty, 755–907

Historians today divide the Tang dynasty into two halves: 618–755 and 755–907. In the ﬁrst half, the Tang emperors ruled with great success. They enjoyed extensive military victories in Central Asia, unprecedented control over their subjects through the equal-ﬁeld system, and great internal stability. The ﬁrst signs of decline came in the early 700s, when tax ofﬁcials reported insufﬁcient revenues from the equal-ﬁeld system. In 751, the Tang sent an army deep into Central Asia to Talas (modern-day Dzhambul, Kazakhstan) to ﬁght an

Buddhism and the Revival of Empire in China, 100–1000

229

army sent by the Abbasid caliph, ruler of much of the Woodblock Printing This single sheet of Islamic world (see Chapter 9). The Tang army lost the paper is slightly larger than a standard sheet of battle, marking the end of Tang expansion into Cencomputer paper. With a drawing of a bodhisattva tral Asia. above and the words of prayers below, it The defeat drew little notice in the capital, where demonstrates how believers used woodblock printing all ofﬁcials were transﬁxed by the conﬂict between the to spread Buddhist teachings. The new medium emperor and his leading general, who was rumored to reproduced line drawings and Chinese characters be having an affair with the emperor’s favorite conequally well, and printers could make as many copies sort, a court beauty named Precious Consort Yang. In as they liked simply by inking the woodblock and 755 General An Lushan led a mutiny of the army pressing individual sheets of paper on it. The more against the emperor. The Tang dynasty suppressed the copies they made, they believed, the more merit they rebellion in 763, but it never regained full control of earned. (© The Trustees of the British Museum) the provinces. The equal-ﬁeld system collapsed, and the dynasty was forced to institute new taxes that produced much less revenue. In 841, a new emperor, Emperor Huichang, came to the throne. Thinking that he would increase revenues if he could collect taxes from the 300,000 taxexempt monks and nuns, in 845 he ordered the closure of almost all Buddhist monasteries except for a few large monasteries in major cities. Although severe, Huichang’s decrees had few lasting effects. Since the central government controlled little territory outside the capital, the ban was not carried out in the provinces. When a new emperor took the throne two years later, in 847, he rescinded the ban and rebuilt the damaged monasteries. The eighth and ninth centuries saw the discovery by faithful Buddhists of a new technology that altered the course of world history. Ever since the founding of the religion, Buddhists had encouraged their followers to propagate Buddhist teachings, usually by memorizing a text or paying someone else to recite it. In China, devout Buddhists paid monks to copy texts to generate merit for themselves and their families. Sometime in the eighth century, believers realized that they could make multiple copies of a prayer or picture of a deity if they used woodblock printing. The carver made an image in reverse on a block of wood and then pressed the block onto sheets of paper. At ﬁrst Buddhists printed multiple copies of single sheets; later they used glue to connect the pages into • woodblock a long book. The world’s earliest surviving printed book, from 868, is a Buddhist printing Printing text, The Diamond Sutra. During the Tang dynasty, almost all printing was relitechnique developed by the Chinese in which gious, but later the Chinese realized that they could use the same technique for printers made an image nonreligious books as well. in reverse on a block of After 755, no Tang emperor managed to solve the problem of dwindling revwood and then pressed enues. In 907, when a rebel deposed the last Tang emperor, who had been held the block onto sheets of paper. An efﬁcient way prisoner since 885, China broke apart into different regional dynasties and was to print texts in Chinese not reunited until 960 (see Chapter 12). characters.

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Hindu and Buddhist States and Societies in Asia, 100–1000

The Tang dynasty governed by combining support for Buddhist clergy and monasteries with strong armies, clear laws, and civil service examinations. In so doing, it established a high standard of rulership for all subsequent Chinese dynasties and all rulers of neighboring kingdoms.

The Tibetan Empire, ca. 617–ca. 842

The rulers of the Tibetan plateau were among the ﬁrst to adopt the Tang model of governance. Most of the Tibetan plateau lies within today’s People’s Republic of China, but historically it was a borderland not always under Chinese control. Located between the Kunlun Mountains to the north and the Himalayan Mountains to the south, the Tibetan plateau is high, ranging between 13,000 and 15,000 feet (4,000 and 5,000 m), and contains extensive grasslands suitable for raising horses and some river valleys where barley can be grown. The inhabitants used knotted cords and tallies to keep records, Chinese sources report, because they had no writing system. Sometime between 620 and 650, during the early years of the Tang, a ruler named Songtsen Gampo (ca. 617–649/650) uniﬁed Tibet for the ﬁrst time and founded the Yarlung dynasty (ca. 617–ca. 842), named for the valley to the southeast of Lhasa. Hoping to build a strong state, he looked to both India and China for models of governance. In 632, an ofﬁcial he had sent to India to study Buddhism returned and introduced a new alphabet, based on Sanskrit, for writing Tibetan. Songtsen Gampo learned that the Tang emperor had provided Chinese brides for the leaders of several peoples living in western China and demanded that he be given a Chinese bride as well. At ﬁrst Emperor Taizong refused, but when a Tibetan army nearly defeated the Tang forces in Sichuan, he sent a bride in 641. Later sources credit this woman, the princess of Wencheng (ONE-chuhng) (d. 684), with introducing Buddhism and call her a bodhisattva because of her compassion for Tibetans. Songtsen Gampo saw China as more than a source of Buddhist teachings. He requested that the Tang court send men to his court who could read and write, and he dispatched members of his family to Chang’an to study Chinese. He also asked the Chinese to send craftsmen to teach Tibetans how to make silk and paper and how to brew wine. He was the ﬁrst to record traditional laws on Chinese paper with ink. The Tibetans took advantage of Tang weakness during the An Lushan rebellion and brieﬂy invaded the capital of Chang’an in 763 before retreating. They conquered territory in western China, in modern-day Xinjiang (SHIN-jyahng) and Gansu provinces, which they ruled for nearly a century until 842, when the confederation of peoples who had supported the Yarlung dynasty suddenly broke apart. The Tibetan experience demonstrates the utility of the Sui/Tang model of governance for a people in the early stages of state formation, and subsequent Tibetan dynasties periodically returned to it.

State, Society, and Religion in Korea and Japan, to 1000

ecause of the Han dynasty military garrisons stationed in Korea, Koreans had some contact with China as early as the Qin and Han dynasties (see Chapter 4),

State, Society, and Religion in Korea and Japan, to 1000

231

while their neighbors to the east in Japan, who were surrounded by water, did not (see Map 8.2). In Korea and Japan, as in Tibet, rulers introduced Buddhism to their subjects because they hoped to match the accomplishments, particularly the military success, of the Tang dynasty. By the year 1000, both Korea and Japan had joined a larger East Asian cultural sphere in which people read and wrote Chinese characters, studied Confucian teachings in school, emulated the political institutions of the Tang, and even ate with chopsticks.

Buddhism and Regional Kingdoms in Korea, to 1000

The northern part of the Korean peninsula, around modern-day Pyongyang, North Korea, was easily accessible to Chinese armies and had come under Han dynasty rule in 108 b.c.e. It remained under Chinese dominance until 313 c.e., when the king of the northern KoTrade routes guryo (KOH-guh-ree-oh) region overthrew the last Chinese ruler. Because the Chinese presence had been limited to military garrisons, there was little lasting inﬂuence. Hokkaido During this time, Korea was divided into different small chiefdoms on the verge of becoming . states. The three most important ones were Koguryo uR Yal KOGURYO Sea of 40°N (traditionally 37 b.c.e.–668 c.e.), Paekche (tradiP‘yongyang Japan tionally 18 b.c.e.–660 c.e.), and Silla (traditionally Kaesong JAPAN 57 b.c.e.–935 c.e.). Historians call these dates “tradiSeoul KOREA CHINA KANTO PLAIN SILLA PAEKCHE tional” because they are based on much later legHonshu Heian Kwangju Pusan Ye l l o w (Kyoto) ends, not contemporary evidence. Constantly vying Kamakura Nara Sea Fujiwara with each other for territory and inﬂuence, the three KAYA Shikoku YAMATO 140°E kingdoms adopted Buddhism at different times but PLAIN Straits of Tsushima Kyushu for the same reason: their rulers hoped to strengthen their dynasties. 30°N N Before the adoption of Buddhism, the residents PACIFIC East of the Korean peninsula prayed to local deities or OCEAN China I nature spirits for good health and good harvests. Okinawa Sea u) 0 200 400 Km. qi iu The vast majority lived in small agricultural vilL u( y k 0 200 400 Mi. Ryu lages and grew rice. Most Koreans, particularly the Tropic of Cancer people in the north, had contact with Chinese, from 120°E 130°E whom they learned about Buddhism. In the 370s and 380s, the ruling families of the Koguryo and Paekche (PECK-jeh) kingdoms adopted Buddhism MAP 8.2 to strengthen their kingdoms. Believing that Bud- Korea and Japan, ca. 550 The Japanese island of dhist rituals could bring this-worldly beneﬁts, par- Kyushu lies some 150 miles (240 km) from the Korean ticularly if performed by trained religious specialists, peninsula, and the island of Tsushima provided a conthey welcomed Buddhist missionaries from China, venient stepping stone to the Japanese archipelago for who brought statues of the Buddha and Chinese- those ﬂeeing the warfare on the Korean peninsula. The language sutras to their kingdoms. Korean migrants introduced their social structure, with Like Chinese rulers, the Koguryo and Paekche its bone-rank system, and Buddhism to Japan. kings combined patronage for Buddhism with support for Confucian education. Koreans used Chinese Interactive Map

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• Silla Korean kingdom that adopted Buddhism and united with the Tang dynasty in 660 to defeat the Koguryo and Paekche kingdoms, unifying Korea for the ﬁrst time in 668.

Miniature Buddhist Pagodas, Korea During the ninth century, Buddhist believers in the Silla kingdom placed this set of ninety-nine tiny clay pagodas inside a stone pagoda. Each pagoda stands 3 inches (7.5 cm) tall and contains a small hole at the base for a small woodblockprinted prayer. Rulers throughout East Asia sponsored similar projects in the hope of generating merit. ( Japan Society Catalog, May 2003, Transmitting the Forms of Divinity, Gyeongu National Museum)

Hindu and Buddhist States and Societies in Asia, 100–1000

characters as their writing system but not always easily, since Chinese word order differed from that of Korean. Accordingly, the Koguryo and Paekche kings established Confucian academies where students could study Chinese characters, Confucian classics, the histories, and different philosophical works in Chinese. The circumstances accompanying the adoption of Buddhism by the Silla (SHE-luh) royal house illustrate how divided many Koreans were about the new religion. King Pophung (r. 514–540), whose name means “King who promoted the Dharma,” wanted to patronize Buddhism but feared the opposition of powerful families who had passed laws against it. Sometime between 527 and 529, he persuaded one of his courtiers to build a shrine to the Buddha. However, since such activity was banned, the king had no choice but to order the courtier’s beheading. The king and his subject prayed for a miracle. An early history of Korea describes the moment of execution: “Down came the sword on the monk’s neck, and up ﬂew his head spouting blood as white as milk.” The miracle, we are told, silenced the opposition, and Silla became Buddhist. By the middle of the sixth century, all three Korean kingdoms had adopted pro-Buddhist policies, and all sent government ofﬁcials and monks to different regional kingdoms within China. When the delegations returned, they taught their countrymen what they had learned. With the support of the royal family, Buddhist monasteries were built in major cities and in the countryside, but ordinary people continued to worship the same local deities they had in pre-Buddhist times. The Sui dynasty reuniﬁcation of China in 589 had repercussions on the Korean peninsula. In 598, the Koguryo king attacked the Sui, and the Sui retaliated by trying to invade but failed because of bad weather and the strength of the Koguryo armies. In 612, in a second attempted invasion, 300,000 Sui dynasty soldiers attacked the Koguryo capital, but only 2,700 Chinese are reported to have survived the defeat. The Sui attacked three more times, each time unsuccessfully, until the Sui dynasty was fatally weakened and fell to the Tang dynasty in 618. Chinese armies did not return to the Korean peninsula again until the 640s, when Emperor Taizong led several attacks against Koguryo. All were defeated. As a result,

State, Society, and Religion in Korea and Japan, to 1000

in the middle of the seventh century, the same three kingdoms—Paekche, Koguryo, and Silla—still ruled a divided Korea. The Silla kingdom cultivated ties with the Tang dynasty in hopes of defeating the Paekche and Koguryo kingdoms. One of the most inﬂuential monks in Silla was Chajang (active 635–650), who studied Buddhism for seven years at the Chinese pilgrimage center of Mount Wutai in Shanxi province from 636 to 643. When he returned to Silla, the king named him to the highest religious post in the government, in charge of overseeing all the monks in the kingdom. In 660, the Silla kingdom allied with the Tang. The combined Silla-Tang forces defeated ﬁrst the Paekche and then, in 668, the Koguryo dynasty. The Silla ruler paid lip service to Tang sovereignty by accepting the inferior status of a tributary that sent annual gifts to the Tang emperor, but by 675 the Silla forces had pushed Tang armies back to the northern edges of the Korean peninsula, and the Silla king ruled a united Korea largely on his own. Silla’s rule ushered in a period of stability that lasted for two and a half centuries. Silla kings offered different types of support to Buddhism. Several Silla rulers followed the example of Ashoka and the Sui founder in building pagodas throughout their kingdom. One Chinese Buddhist text that entered Korea offered Buddhist devotees merit if they commissioned sets of identical pagodas that contained small woodblock-printed texts, usually Buddhist charms. A gift of ninety-nine miniature pagodas with texts inside, the text promised, was the spiritual equivalent of building ninety-nine thousand life-size pagodas (see the photo on the facing page). The Koreans adopted the brand-new Chinese innovation of woodblock printing as part of their efforts to learn from China. The Silla rulers adopted some measures of Tang rule, such as Confucian academies and extensive support for Buddhism, but not the equal-ﬁeld system or the Confucian examination system, which were not suited to the stratiﬁed Korean society of the seventh and eighth centuries. Aristocratic families were quite separate from ordinary peasant families. The bone-rank system classed all Korean families into seven different categories. The true-bone classiﬁcation was reserved for the highest-born aristocratic families, those eligible to be king. Below them were six other ranks in descending order. No one in the true-bone classiﬁcation could marry anyone outside that group, and the only way to lose true-bone status was to be found guilty of a crime. The Silla rulers found that they could govern better if they granted entire villages to members of the true-bone families. In turn, these families appointed government ofﬁcials and paid their salaries. The rigid stratiﬁcation of the bonerank system prevented the Silla rulers from attempting to implement civil service examinations. The Silla kingdom entered a period of decline after 780 with the death of the ﬁrst Silla king to be assassinated while in ofﬁce. From that time on, different branches of the royal family fought each other for control of the throne, yet no one managed to rule for long.

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• bone-rank system Korean social ranking system used by the Silla dynasty that divided Korean families into seven different categories, with the “truebone” rank reserved for the highest-born families.

The Emergence of Japan

Japan is an island chain of four large islands and many smaller ones. Originally connected by a land bridge to the Asian mainland, it was cut off about 15,000 years ago. Like Korea, Japan had no indigenous writing system, so archaeologists must piece together the island’s early history from archaeological materials and later sources like the

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• Soga family Powerful Japanese family that ruled in conjunction with the Yamato clan from 587 to 645; introduced Buddhism to Japan.

Primary Source: Chronicles of Japan These guidelines for imperial ofﬁcials show how the Soga clan welcomed Chinese inﬂuence in an attempt to increase the authority of the Japanese imperial family.

Hindu and Buddhist States and Societies in Asia, 100–1000

Chronicle of Japan (Nihon shoki) (knee-HOHN SHOW-kee), a year-by-year account written in 720. The royal Yamato (YAH-mah-toe) house, this book claims, was directly descended from the sun-goddess Amaterasu (AH-mah-TAY-rah-soo). The indigenous religion of Japan, called Shinto (SHIN-toe), included the worship of different spirits of trees, streams, and mountains, as well as rulers. Because people believed that the spirit of a deceased chieftain might threaten the living, they buried their chieftains with goods used in daily life and distinctive clay ﬁgurines, called haniwa (HAH-knee-wah), a modern term meaning “clay rings.” In the ﬁfth and sixth centuries, many Koreans ﬂed the political instability of the disunited peninsula to settle in the relative peace of Japan only 150 miles (240 km) away. These Korean refugees signiﬁcantly inﬂuenced the inhabitants of the islands. The Yamato kings gave titles modeled on the Korean bone-rank system to powerful Japanese clans. They had the most sustained contact with the Paekche kingdom because the two states had been allied against the Silla kingdom, which was geographically closest and the most threatening to Japan. Once the Paekche royal house adopted Buddhism, it began to pressure its clients, the Yamato clan, to follow suit. In 538, the Paekche ambassador brought a gift of Buddhist texts and images for the ruler of Japan, but the most powerful Japanese families hesitated to support the new religion. The conﬂict among supporters and opponents of Buddhism lasted for nearly ﬁfty years, during which the Paekche rulers continued to send the Japanese gifts of Buddhist writings, monks, and nuns. Two miracles played a key role in persuading the Japanese to adopt Buddhism. The ﬁrst occurred in 584, when Soga no Umako, the leader of the powerful Soga family, which had provided the Yamato clan with many wives, saw a small fragment of bone believed to be from the original Buddha’s body. Skeptical of the relic’s authenticity, he tried to pulverize it, but his hammer broke, and when he threw the relic into water, it ﬂoated up or down on command. As a result, Soga no Umako became an enthusiastic supporter of Buddhism. This miracle tale illustrates the early stages of state formation as the Soga family tried to unify the region through Buddhism. Three years later, in 587, the 13-year-old Soga prince Shotoku (574–622) went into battle against the powerful families opposed to Buddhism. Prince Shotoku vowed that, if the Soga clan won the battle, their government would support Buddhism, an indication of how the new religion helped the Soga family to consolidate its hold on power. The pro-Buddhist forces won. Because Prince Shotoku was too young to be king, his mother, Queen Suiko (r. 592–628), was named regent, and Soga no Umako became the chief minister. Throughout Queen Suiko’s regency, the Japanese court depended on Korean monks to learn about Buddhism. Only in the 630s were there enough knowledgeable Japanese monks at court to conduct Buddhist rituals correctly without Korean guidance. Queen Suiko’s reign coincided with the Sui dynasty and the founding of the Tang, but Chinese forces never threatened Japan as they had Korea. Japan embarked on an ambitious program to learn from China. Between 600 and 614, it sent four missions to China, and then a further ﬁfteen during the Tang dynasty. A large mission could have as many as ﬁve hundred participants, including ofﬁcials, Buddhist monks, students, and translators. Some Japanese stayed in China for as many as thirty years. In 645, the Fujiwara clan overthrew the Soga family, and the Yamato clan remained the titular rulers of Japan. The Fujiwara continued to introduce Chinese institutions, particularly those laid out in the Tang Code like the equal-ﬁeld

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system. However, they modiﬁed the original Chinese rules so that members of powerful families received more land than they would have in China. It is not clear whether the Japanese state was actually able to implement the redistribution of land every three years. The Fujiwara rulers sponsored Buddhist ceremonies on behalf of the state and the royal family at state-ﬁnanced monasteries. Like the Chinese, they established a head monastery at their capital with branch temples elsewhere. The Fujiwara clan built their ﬁrst Chinese-style capital at Fujiwara and the second at Nara in 710, which marked the beginning of the Nara period (710–794). Both were modeled on the gridded street plan of Chang’an. In 794, the start of the Heian (HEY-on) period (794–1185), the Fujiwara shifted their capital to Kyoto, where it remained for nearly one thousand years (see Figure 8.1 on page 225). Gradually the Fujiwara lessened their efforts to learn from the Chinese. The ﬁnal ofﬁcial delegation went to China in 838. Some Chinese-style reforms lasted longer than others: for example, educated Japanese continued to study Buddhist and Confucian texts written in Chinese characters. Because Japanese, like Korean, was in a different language family from Chinese, characters did not capture the full Horyuji Pagoda, Nara, Japan Built before 794, meaning of Japanese. In the ninth century, the this ﬁve-story pagoda is possibly one of the oldest Japanese developed an alphabet, called kana wooden buildings in the world. Like the stupa at the (KAH-nah), that allowed them to write Japa- Indian site of Sanchi, it was built to hold relics of the nese words as they were pronounced. Buddha. Not certain how the building survived multiple A Japanese woman named Murasaki Shi- earthquakes without sustaining any damage, architects kibu (MOO-rah-sock-ee SHE-key-boo) used only speculate that the central pillar is not directly connected kana to write one of the world’s most important to the ground below, allowing it to ﬂoat slightly above works of literature, The Tale of Genji, in 1000. the ground. (Christopher Rennie/Robert Harding Picture Library Some have called it the world’s ﬁrst novel. The Ltd./Alamy) book relates the experiences of a young prince as he grows up in the court. Lady Murasaki spent her entire life at court, and her novel reﬂects the complex system of etiquette that had developed among the Japanese aristocracy. For example, lovers choose sheets of paper from multiple shades, each with its own signiﬁcance, before writing notes to each other. While the highest members of Japan’s aristocracy could read and write—men using both Chinese characters and kana and women more often only kana—the vast majority of their countrymen remained illiterate. By 1000, Japan had become part of the East Asian cultural realm. Although its rulers were predominantly Buddhist, they supported Confucian education and used the Tang Code as a model of governance. The Fujiwara family modiﬁed some Chinese institutions, like the equal-ﬁeld system, to better suit Japanese society.

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Chapter Review KEY TERMS Xuanzang (208) chakravartin (210) Silk Routes (210) Hinduism (211) bodhisattva (212) Gupta dynasty (213) bhakti (214) Angkor dynasty (219) Fotudeng (223) Tang dynasty (224) equal-ﬁeld system (228) Emperor Wu (228) woodblock printing (229) Silla (232) bone-rank system (233) Soga family (234)

Download the MP3 audio ﬁle of the Chapter Review and listen to it on the go.

ndia gave two models of royal governance to the world. Ashoka pioneered the Buddhist chakravartin ideal in the third century B.C.E., and the Kushan and Gupta dynasties developed it further. When Xuanzang visited India, he witnessed the decline of this model and the appearance of a new model in which kings patronized Brahmin priests and Hindu temples. Although it died out in India, the chakravartin model traveled to China, where the Sui and Tang rulers added new elements: the equal-ﬁeld system, civil service examinations, and a legal code. Tibetan, Korean, and Japanese rulers all adopted variations of the Tang model, with the result that, by 1000, East Asia had become a culturally uniﬁed region in which rulers patronized Buddhism, which coexisted with local religious beliefs, and subjects studied both Confucian and Buddhist teachings. In South Asia and Southeast Asia, on the other hand, rulers worshiped Hindu deities and supported Sanskrit learning.

How did Buddhism change after the year 100? How did Hinduism displace it within India? Greater Vehicle teachings, which gradually replaced earlier Theravada teachings, emphasized that everyone—not just monks and nuns—could attain nirvana. They could do so with the help of bodhisattvas who chose not to attain enlightenment themselves but to help all other beings. Indian rulers like Kanishka of the Kushan dynasty supported Buddhism with gifts to monasteries, but between 320 and 500 Gupta rulers pioneered a new type of gift: land grants to Brahmin priests and to Hindu temples. Over time, as more rulers chose to endow temples to Vishnu and Shiva, support for Hinduism increased, and Buddhism declined.

How did geography, trade, and religion shape the development of states and societies in Southeast Asia? The timing of the monsoon winds meant that all boats traveling between India and China had to stop in Southeast Asia for several months before they could resume their journeys. The rulers of coastal ports such as Funan and Srivijaya taxed the trade brought by these boats and used the revenues to construct Buddhist centers of worship. At the same time, different local rulers—some along the sea route between India and China, some in the forested interior—patronized purohita and built monuments to Buddhist and Hindu deities, all in the hope of strengthening their states as they were taking shape.

How did the Sui and Tang dynasties modify the Qin/Han blueprint for empire? The emperors of both the Sui and Tang dynasties took over the Qin/Han blueprint for empire with its Legalist and Confucian elements and governed as chakravartin

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Chapter Review

rulers who patronized Buddhism. The Sui founder designed the gridded street plan of his capital at Chang’an, which the Tang retained. Emperor Taizong of the Tang, who welcomed Xuanzang back from India, promulgated the Tang Code, which established the equal-ﬁeld system throughout the empire. In addition, the Tang emperors used the civil service examinations to recruit the highestranking 5 percent of ofﬁcials in the bureaucracy.

Which elements of the revised Chinese blueprint for empire did Korea and Japan borrow intact? Which did they modify?

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WEB RESOURCES Pronunciation Guide Interactive Maps MAP 8.1 The Spread of Buddhism and Hinduism to Southeast Asia MAP 8.2 Korea and Japan, ca. 550

Primary Sources Chapter Objectives ACE Multiple-Choice Quiz Flashcards

Korean and Japanese rulers patronized Buddhism and supported the introduction of Chinese characters and education in the Confucian classics. The Silla rulers tried to introduce civil service examinations and the equal-ﬁeld system but had no success in the hierarchical bone-rank society of Korea. Similarly, the Fujiwara clan had to modify the equalﬁeld system to suit Japan’s aristocratic society. The Fujiwara clan modeled all three of their capitals—at Fujiwara, Nara, and Kyoto—on the gridded street plan of Chang’an.

FOR FURTHER REFERENCE Ebrey, Patricia Buckley, Anne Walthall, and James B. Palais. East Asia: A Cultural, Social, and Political History. 2d ed. Boston: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning, 2009.

Washizuka, Hiromitsu, et al. Transmitting the Forms of Divinity: Early Buddhist Art from Korea and Japan. New York: Japan Society, 2003.

Hansen, Valerie. The Open Empire: A History of China to 1600. New York: Norton, 2000.

Wolters, O. W. History, Culture, and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1982.

Holcombe, Charles. The Genesis of East Asia, 221 b.c.–a.d. 907. Honolulu: Association of Asian Studies and the University of Hawai’i Press, 2001. Kapstein, Matthew. The Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism: Conversion, Contestation, and Memory. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Websites Borobudur (http://rubens.anu.edu.au/htdocs/bycountry/ indonesia/borobudur/). Information on the Borobudur monument in Java, Indonesia.

Keown, Damien. Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Mair, Victor H. Tun-huang Popular Narratives. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Ray, Himanshu Prabha. “The Axial Age in Asia: The Archaeology of Buddhism (500 bc to ad 500).” In Archaeology of Asia, ed. Miriam T. Stark. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2006, pp. 303–323. Tarling, Nicholas, ed. The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia. Vol. I, From Early Times to c. 1500. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Thapar, Romila. Early India from the Origins to ad 1300. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.

Wriggins, Sally Hovey. Xuanzang: A Buddhist Pilgrim on the Silk Road. Boulder: Westview Press, 1996.

The Buddha and His Dhamma (http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/ 00ambedkar/ambedkar_buddha/). B. R. Ambedkar’s explanation of the Buddha’s teachings. Silk Road Narratives: A Collection of Historical Texts (http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/texts .html). A valuable collection of primary sources in translation about the Silk Road, including Xuanzang’s Record of the Western Regions, which describes the different countries he visited.

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CHAPTER

Islamic Empires of Western Asia and Africa, 600–1258 The Origins of Islam and the First Caliphs, 610–750 (p. 241) The Abbasid Caliphate United, 750–945 (p. 250) The Rise of Regional Centers After the Abbasids, 945–1258 (p. 260) haizuran (ca. 739–789) grew up as a slave girl but became the favored wife of the supreme religious and political leader of the Islamic world, the caliph Mahdi (MAH-dee), who reigned from 775 to 785 as the third ruler of the Abbasid (ah-BAHS-sid) caliphate (750–1258). As the wife of Mahdi and the mother of the caliph who succeeded him, Khaizuran (HAY-zuhr-ahn) played an active role in court politics. A slave dealer brought her, while still a teenager, to Mecca, where she met Mahdi’s father. He had come to perform the hajj pilgrimage that is the religious obligation of all Muslims. In reply to his asking where she was ABBASID SINGING from, she said:

GIRL

orn at Mecca and brought up at Jurash (in the Yaman).”1

Of course we would like to know more, but she has left no writings of her own. The written record almost always says more about men than about women, and more about the prominent and the literate than about the ordinary and the illiterate. To understand the experience of everyone in a society, historians must exercise great ingenuity in using the evidence at hand. Khaizuran provides a rare opportunity to study the life of an ordinary Muslim woman who rose to become a leader in her own right. In its support for Islam, the Abbasid dynasty (see page 250) played a role in world history similar to that of the Roman Empire, which patronized Christianity (see Chapter 7), and the Tang dynasty in China, which supported Buddhism (see Chapter 8). Under the Abbasids, Islam was a world religion with millions of

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Khaizuran leaves Baghdad on hajj pilgrimage, 776 and 778.

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The Travels of Khaizuran Khaizuran’s journeys Zubaydah’s Road Islamic expansion under Muhammad, 622–632 Islamic expansion, 632–661 Expansion under Umayyad Caliphate, 661–750 Abbasid Caliphate under Harun al-Rashid, 786–809

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Pilgrimage of Ibn Jubayr 1183–1185

ca. 800 Mansur promotes translation of classical texts

Quran compiled as written book

First four caliphs

Zubaydah’s road built for hajj pilgrims; Al-Khwarizmi invents algebra

Assassination of Ali; Shi’ite/Sunni split

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Saladin retakes Jerusalem from Mongols Crusaders depose caliph

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Ayyubid dynasty in Egypt

Umayyad caliphate in Spain 750

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• Khaizuran

Slave girl (ca. 739–789) who became the wife of the caliph Mahdi (r. 775– 785), the third ruler of the Abbasid caliphate. Khaizuran played an active role in court politics.

• Muhammad (ca. 570–632) Believed by Muslims to be the last prophet who received God’s revelations directly from the angel Gabriel. The ﬁrst leader of the Muslim community.

Islamic Empires of Western Asia and Africa, 600–1258

adherents in Africa, Europe, and Asia. At the peak of their power, around the year 800, the Abbasids governed over thirty-ﬁve or forty million people living in North Africa and Southwest Asia.2 But the Abbasid Empire differed in a crucial way from either the Roman or the Tang Empire. When the Roman emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan in 313 (see Chapter 7), he recognized a religion already popular among his subjects. And when the early Tang emperors supported Buddhism, they did so because many Chinese had come to embrace Buddhism since its entry into China in the ﬁrst century c.e. Yet the Roman and Tang emperors could withdraw their support for these religions, and they sometimes did. In contrast, the Abbasid rulers were religious leaders who claimed a familial relationship with the prophet Muhammad (ca. 570–632) through his uncle Abbas (ah-BAHS). They could not withdraw their support from the Islamic religious community because they led that very religious community. At the same time, they were also political leaders; the founder of the Abassid dynasty seized power from the Umayyad (oo-MY-uhd) dynasty in 750. Even when it became no longer possible for the Abbasid caliphs to serve as political leaders, the caliphs retained their religious role. Others could be king, but the Abbasids had a unique claim to being caliph. This chapter will examine the history of Islam, from the ﬁrst revelations received by Muhammad to the ﬁnal collapse of the Abbasid Empire in 1258.

Focus Questions

Who was the prophet Muhammad, and what were his main teachings? Between Muhammad’s death in 632 and the founding of the Abbasid caliphate in 750, what were the different ways that the Islamic community chose the new caliph? Which economic, political, and social forces held the many peoples and territories of the Abbasid caliphate together? After the fragmentation of the Abbasid Empire in 945, which cultural practices, technologies, and customs held Islamic believers in different regions together?

The Origins of Islam and the First Caliphs, 610–750

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The Origins of Islam and the First Caliphs, 610–750

uhammad began to preach sometime around 613 and won a large following among the residents of the Arabian peninsula before his death in 632. The man who succeeded to the leadership of the Islamic religious community was called the caliph, literally “successor.” The caliph exercised political authority because the Muslim religious community was also a state, complete with its own government and a powerful army that conquered many neighboring regions. The ﬁrst four caliphs were chosen from different clans on the basis of their ties to Muhammad, but after 661 all the caliphs came from a single clan, or dynasty, the Umayyads, who governed until 750.

The Life and Teachings of Muhammad, ca. 570–632

Muhammad was born into a family of merchants sometime around 570 in Mecca, a trading community in the Arabian peninsula far from any major urban center. At the time of his birth, the two major powers of the Mediterranean world were the Byzantine Empire (see Chapter 10) and the Sasanian Empire of the Persians (see Chapter 6). On the southern edge of the two empires lay the Arabian peninsula, which consisted largely of desert punctuated by small oases. Traders traveling from Syria to Yemen frequently stopped at the few urban settlements, including Mecca and Medina, near the coast of the Red Sea. The local peoples spoke Arabic, a Semitic language related to Hebrew that was written with an alphabet. The population was divided between urban residents and the nomadic residents of the desert, called Bedouins (BED-dwins). The Bedouins moved from place to place, tending their ﬂocks of sheep, horses, and camels, and were divided into different clans. Even though they no longer followed a nomadic way of life, many city people maintained a strong clan identity. All Arabs, whether nomadic or urban, belonged to clans who worshiped protective deities that resided in an individual tree, a group of trees, or sometimes a rock with an unusual shape. One of the most revered objects was a large black rock in a cube-shaped shrine, called the Kaaba (KAH-buh) at Mecca. Above these tribal deities stood a creator deity named Allah (AH-luh). (The Arabic word allah means “the god” and, by extension, “God.”) When, at certain times of the year, members of different clans gathered to worship individual tribal deities, they pledged to stop all feuding. During these pilgrimages to Mecca, merchants like Muhammad bought and sold their wares. Extensive trade networks connected the Arabian peninsula with Palestine and Syria, and both Jews and Christians lived in its urban centers. While in his forties and already a wealthy merchant, Muhammad had a series of visions in which he saw a ﬁgure. Muslims believe that God spoke to Muhammad through the angel Gabriel, after which Muhammad called on everyone to submit to God. The religion founded on belief in this event is called Islam, meaning “submission” or “surrender.” Muslims do not call Muhammad the founder of Islam because God’s teachings, they believe, are timeless. Muhammad taught that his predecessors included all the Hebrew prophets from the Hebrew Bible as well as Jesus and his disciples. Muslims consider Muhammad the last messenger of

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Primary Source: The Quran: Muslim Devotion to God This excerpt articulates the Muslim faith in a heavenly reward for believers and a hellish punishment for unbelievers.

Islamic Empires of Western Asia and Africa, 600–1258

God, however, and historians place the beginning date for Islam in the 610s because no one thought of himself or herself as Muslim before Muhammad received his revelations. Muhammad’s earliest followers came from his immediate family: his wife Khadijah (kah-DEE-juh) and his cousin Ali, whom he had raised since early childhood. Unlike the existing religion of Arabia, but like Christianity and Judaism, Islam was monotheistic; Muhammad preached that his followers should worship only one God. He also stressed the role of individual choice: each person had the power to decide to worship God or to turn away from God. Those who submitted to God became the ﬁrst Muslims. Men who converted to Islam had to undergo circumcision, a practice already widespread throughout the Arabian peninsula. Islam developed within the context of Bedouin society, in which men were charged with protecting the honor of their wives and daughters. Accordingly, women often assumed a subordinate role in Islam. In Bedouin society, a man could repudiate his wife by saying “I divorce you” three times. Although women could not repudiate their husbands in the same way, they could divorce an impotent man.

Certiﬁcate of Pilgrimage to Mecca Islamic artists often ornamented manuscripts, tiles, and paintings with passages from the Quran. This document, written on paper, testiﬁes that the bearer completed the pilgrimage to Mecca in 1207 and thus fulﬁlled the Fifth Pillar of Islam. Arabic reads from right to left; the red lines and dots guide the reader’s pronunciation. (Turkish and Islamic Art Museum, Istanbul/Alfredo Dagli Orti/The Art Archive)

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Although Muhammad recognized the traditional right of men to repudiate their wives, he introduced several measures aimed at improving the status of women. For example, he limited the number of wives a man could take to four. His supporters explained that Islamic marriage offered the secondary wives far more legal protection than if they had simply been the unrecognized mistresses of a married man, as they were before Muhammad’s teachings. He also banned the Bedouin practice of female infanticide. Finally, he instructed his female relatives to veil themselves when receiving visitors. Although many in the modern world think the veiling of women an exclusively Islamic practice, women in various societies in the ancient world, including Greeks, Mesopotamians, and Arabs, wore veils as a sign of high station. Feuding among different clans was a constant problem in Bedouin society. In 620, a group of nonkinsmen from Medina, a city 215 miles (346 km) to the north, pledged to follow Muhammad’s teachings in hopes of ending the feuding. Because certain clan leaders of Mecca had become increasingly hostile to Islam, even threatening to kill Muhammad, in 622 Muhammad and his followers moved to Medina. Everyone who submitted to God and accepted Muhammad as his messenger became a member of the umma (UM-muh), the community of Islamic believers.

The Kaaba, Mecca This photograph, taken in 2006, shows hajj pilgrims circumambulating the cube-shaped shrine of the Kaaba, which means “cube” in Arabic. Muhammad instructed all Muslims who could afford the trip to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. Today some two million pilgrims perform the hajj each year. (Interfoto Pressebildagentur/Alamy)

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Primary Source: The Quran: Call for Jihad Discover what the Quran says about the duty of Muslims to defend themselves from their enemies.

• jihad

(Arabic root for “striving” or “effort”). A struggle or ﬁght against non-Muslims. In addition to its basic meaning of holy war, modern Muslims use the term in a spiritual or moral sense to indicate an individual’s striving to fulﬁll all the teachings of Islam.

• hajj

The pilgrimage to Mecca, required of all Muslims who can afford the trip. The pilgrimage commemorates that moment when, just as he was about to sacriﬁce him, Abraham freed Ishmael and sacriﬁced a sheep in his place.

• caliph Literally “successor.” Before 945, the caliph was the successor to Muhammad and the supreme political and religious leader of the Islamic world. After 945, the caliph had no political power but served as the religious leader of all Muslims.

Islamic Empires of Western Asia and Africa, 600–1258

This migration, called the hijrah (HIJ-ruh), marked a major turning point in Islam. All dates in the Islamic calendar are calculated in the year of the hijrah (Anno Hegirae, a Latin term usually abbreviated a.h.). (Because of the differences in the calendars, Islamic years often straddle two Common Era years. For example, 165 a.h. = 781–782 c.e.) The Islamic calendar calculated each year as twelve lunar months of 29.5 days each, with no adjustment for the remaining days (each solar year has 365.25 days). As a result, each day falls at a slightly different time each year. For example, the ﬁrst day of the month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast during daytime, falls ten or eleven days earlier than it did the previous year. Muhammad began life as a merchant, became a religious prophet in middle age, and assumed the duties of a general at the end of his life. In 624, Muhammad and his followers fought their ﬁrst battle against the residents of Mecca. Muhammad said that he had received revelations that holy war, whose object was the expansion of Islam––or its defense––was justiﬁed. He used the word jihad (GEEhahd), whose root in Arabic means “striving or effort,” to mean struggle or ﬁght in military campaigns against non-Muslims. (In addition to its basic meaning of holy war, modern Muslims use the term in a more spiritual or moral sense to indicate an individual’s striving to fulﬁll all the teachings of Islam.) In 630, Muhammad’s troops conquered Mecca and removed all tribal images from the pilgrimage center at the Kaaba. Muhammad became ruler of the region and exercised his authority by adjudicating among feuding clans. The clans, Muhammad explained, had forgotten that the Kaaba had originally been a shrine to God dedicated by the prophet Abraham (Ibrahim in Arabic) and his son Ishmael. Muslims do not accept the version of Abraham’s sacriﬁce given in the Old Testament, in which the elderly couple, Abraham and Sarah, have a son, Isaac, whom Abraham spares at God’s command. In contrast, Muslims believe that Abraham offered God another of his sons: Ishmael, whose mother was the slave woman Hajar (Hagar in Hebrew). The pilgrimage to Mecca, or hajj (HAHJ), commemorates that moment when Abraham freed Ishmael and sacriﬁced a sheep in his place. Later, Muslims believe, Ishmael fathered his own children, the ancestors of the clans of Arabia.

The First Caliphs and the Sunni-Shi’ite Split, 632–661

Muhammad preached his last sermon from Mount Arafat outside Mecca and then died in 632. He left no male heirs, only four daughters, and did not designate a successor, or caliph (KAY-lif). Clan leaders consulted with each other and chose Abu Bakr (ah-boo BAHK-uhr) (ca. 573–634), an early convert and the father of Muhammad’s second wife, to lead their community. Because Abu Bakr could not receive divine revelations, he had to govern on the basis of what he and his advisers remembered of Muhammad’s teachings. Although not a prophet, he held political and religious authority and also led the Islamic armies. Under Abu Bakr’s skilled leadership, Islamic troops conquered all of the Arabian peninsula and pushed into present-day Syria and Iraq. When Abu Bakr died only two years after becoming caliph, the Islamic community again had to determine a successor. This time the umma chose Umar ibn al-Khattab (oo-MAHR ibin al-HAT-tuhb) (586?–644), the father of Muhammad’s third wife. Muslims brought their disputes to Umar, as they had to Muhammad. As the number of cases increased, the caliph appointed jurists (qadi in Arabic), who listened to the aggrieved parties often after the close of Friday prayers in the Islamic house of worship, or mosque.

The Origins of Islam and the First Caliphs, 610–750

During Muhammad’s lifetime, a group of Muslims had committed all of his teachings to memory, and soon after his death they began to compile them as the Quran (also spelled Koran), which Muslims believe is the direct word of God as revealed to Muhammad. In addition, early Muslims recorded testimony from Muhammad’s friends and associates about his speech and actions. These reports, called hadith (HAH-deet) in Arabic, formed an integral part of the Islamic textual tradition, second in importance only to the Quran (kuh-RAHN). Umar reported witnessing an encounter between Muhammad and the angel Gabriel in which Muhammad listed the primary obligations of each Muslim, which have since come to be known as the Five Pillars of Islam: (1) to bear witness to Allah as the sole god and to accept Muhammad as his messenger, (2) to pray ﬁve times a day in the direction of Mecca, (3) to pay a ﬁxed share of one’s income to the state in support of the poor and needy, (4) to refrain from eating, drinking, and sexual activity during the daytime hours of the month of Ramadan, and, (5) provided one has the necessary resources, to do the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. (See the feature “Movement of Ideas: The Five Pillars of Islam.”) When Umar died in 644, the umma chose Uthman to succeed him. Unlike earlier caliphs, Uthman was not perceived as impartial. He gave all the top positions to members of his own Umayyad clan, which angered many. In 656, a group of soldiers mutinied and killed Uthman. With their support, Muhammad’s cousin Ali, who was also the husband of his daughter Fatima, became the fourth caliph. Ali was unable to reconcile the different feuding groups, and in 661 he was assassinated. Ali’s martyrdom became a powerful symbol for all who objected to the reigning caliph’s government. The political division that occurred with Ali’s death led to a permanent religious split in the Muslim community. The Sunnis, the “people of custom and the community,” held that the leader of the Islamic community could be chosen by consensus and that the only legitimate claim to descent was through the male line. In Muhammad’s case, his uncles could succeed him, since he left no sons. Although Sunnis accept Ali as one of the four rightly guided caliphs that succeeded Muhammad, they do not believe that Ali and Fatima’s children, or their descendants, can become caliph because their claim to descent was through the female line of Fatima. Opposed to the Sunnis were the “shia” or “party of Ali,” usually referred to as Shi’ites in English. Shi’ites not only support Ali’s claim to succeed Muhammad but also believe that the grandchildren born to Ali and Fatima should lead the community. They denied the legitimacy of the three caliphs before Ali, who were related to Muhammad only by marriage, not by blood. The breach between Sunnis and Shi’ites became the major fault line within Islam down to the present. (Today, Iran, Iraq, and Bahrain are predominantly Shi’ite, and the rest of the Islamic world is mainly Sunni.) The two groups have frequently come into conﬂict, not only over the issue of succession but also over other issues, like property rights. For example, Shi’ite Muslims grant direct female kin, such as daughters, preference in inheritance law over more distant male relatives, such as uncles, a direct consequence of their view that descent from Muhammad could be traced through his daughter Fatima.

Early Conquests, 632–661

The early Muslims forged a powerful army that attacked nonMuslim lands, including the now-weak Byzantine and Sasanian Empires, with great success. When the army attacked a

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• Quran

The book that Muslims believe is the direct word of God as revealed to Muhammad. Written sometime around 650.

Primary Source: The Quran These selections contain a number of the tenets of Islam and shed light on the connections among Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.

• hadith

Testimony recorded from Muhammad’s friends and associates about his speech and actions. Formed an integral part of the Islamic textual tradition, second in importance only to the Quran.

• Five Pillars of Islam (1) To bear witness to Allah as the sole god and accept Muhammad as his messenger: (2) to pray ﬁve times a day in the direction of Mecca; (3) to pay a ﬁxed share of one’s income to the state in support of the poor and needy; (4) to refrain from eating, drinking, and sexual activity during day-time hours in the month of Ramadan; and (5) if feasible, to do the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. • Sunnis

The larger of the two main Islamic groups that formed after Ali’s death. Sunnis, meaning the “people of custom and the community,” hold that the leader of Islam should be chosen by consensus and that legitimate claims to descent are only through the male line. Sunnis do not believe Ali and Fatima’s descendants can become caliph.

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The “shia” or “party of Ali,” one of the two main groups of Islam. Support Ali’s claim to succeed Muhammad and believe that the grandchildren born to Ali and Fatima should lead the community. Deny the legitimacy of the ﬁrst three caliphs.

Islamic Empires of Western Asia and Africa, 600–1258

new region, the front ranks of infantry advanced using bows and arrows and crossbows. Their task was to break into the enemy’s frontlines so that the mounted cavalry, the backbone of the army, could attack. In the ﬁrst stage of conquest, the troops seized all the movable property of the conquered people and reserved a ﬁxed share, called zakat (literally “puriﬁcation,” ofﬁcially set at one-ﬁfth), for the commander. The remaining four-ﬁfths were distributed among the troops and provided a powerful incentive to keep on ﬁghting. The caliph headed the army, which was divided into units of one hundred men and subunits of ten. Once the Islamic armies paciﬁed a new region, a process that sometimes took generations, the regional governor had to implement a more regular system of taxation. The Muslims levied the same tax rates on conquering and conquered peoples alike, provided that the conquered peoples converted to Islam. Islam stressed the equality of all believers before God, and all Muslims, whether born to Muslim parents or converts, paid two types of taxes: one on the land, usually ﬁxed at one-tenth of the annual harvest, and the zakat tax, originally set by Muhammad at one-ﬁfth of all plunder. The zakat tax evolved into a property tax with different rates for different possessions. Because the revenue was to be used to help the needy or to serve God, it is often called an “alms-tax” or “poor tax.” Exempt from the zakat tax, non-Muslims paid the jizya tax, usually set at a higher rate than the taxes paid by Muslims. Islamic forces conquered city after city and ruled the entire Arabian peninsula by 634. Then they crossed overland to Egypt from the Sinai Peninsula. Although Egypt had a majority Christian population, Egyptians chose to ally with the invading Islamic armies to throw off Byzantine rule. By 642 the Islamic armies controlled Egypt, and by 650 they controlled an enormous swath of territory from Libya to Central Asia. In 650, they vanquished the once-powerful Sasanian empire. The new Islamic state in Iran aspired to build an empire as large and longlasting as the Sasanian empire, which had governed modern-day Iran and Iraq for more than four centuries. The caliphate’s armies divided conquered peoples into three groups. Those who converted became Muslims. Those who continued to adhere to Judaism or Christianity were given the status of “protected subjects” (dhimmi in Arabic), because they too were “peoples of the book” who honored the same prophets from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament that Muhammad had. Non-Muslims and nonprotected subjects formed the lowest group. Dhimmi status was later extended to Zoroastrians as well.

The Umayyad Caliphate, 661–750

Although the Islamic community had not resolved the issue of succession, by 661 Muslims had created their own expanding empire whose religious and political leader was the caliph. After Ali was assassinated in 661, Muawiya, a member of the Umayyad clan like the caliph Uthman, uniﬁed the Muslim community. In 680, when he died, Ali’s son Husain tried to become caliph, but Muawiya’s son defeated him and became caliph instead. Since only members of this family became caliphs until 750, this period is called the Umayyad dynasty. The Umayyads built their capital at Damascus, the home of their many Syrian supporters, not in the Arabian peninsula, the original homeland of Islam. Initially they used local languages for administration, but after 685 they chose Arabic as the language of the empire.

The Origins of Islam and the First Caliphs, 610–750

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Portraying Paradise on Earth: The Umayyad Mosque of Damascus The most beautiful building in the Umayyad capital of Damascus was the mosque, where some 12,000 Byzantine craftsmen incorporated mosaics, made from thousands of glass tiles, into the building’s structure. Notice how the trees grow naturally from the columns at the bottom of the photograph and how the twin windows allow viewers to glimpse the beautiful ﬂowers on the ceiling above. These compositions portray the paradise that Muhammad promised his followers would enter after their deaths. (© Bernard O’Kane/Alamy)

In Damascus, the Umayyads erected the Great Mosque on the site of a church housing the relics of John the Baptist (see Chapter 7). Architects modiﬁed the building’s Christian layout to create a large space where devotees could pray toward Mecca. This was the ﬁrst Islamic building to have a place to wash one’s hands and feet, a large courtyard, and a tall tower, or minaret, from which Muslims issued the call for prayer. Since Muslims honored the Ten Commandments, including the Second Commandment, “You shall not make for yourself a graven image,” the Byzantine workmen depicted no human ﬁgures or living animals. Instead their mosaics showed landscapes in an imaginary paradise.

The Conquest of North Africa, 661–750

Under the leadership of the Umayyads, Islamic armies conquered the part of North Africa known as the Maghrib—modern-day Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. Strong economic and cultural ties dating back to the Roman Empire bound the Maghrib to western Asia. Its fertile ﬁelds provided the entire Mediterranean with grain, olive oil, and fruits like ﬁgs and bananas. In addition, the region

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exported handicrafts such as textiles, ceramics, and glass. Slaves and gold moved from the interior of Africa to the coastal ports, where they, too, were loaded into ships crossing the Mediterranean. While Egypt had fallen in only a few years, the conquest of the rest of the Maghrib took many years. Islamic armies took Tunis (formerly Carthage, Tunisia) in 670 and Fez (Morocco) in 711, and then crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to enter Spain. Arab culture and the religion of Islam eventually took root in North Africa, expanding from urban centers into the countryside. By the tenth century, Christians had become a minority in Egypt, outnumbered by Muslims, and by the twelfth century, Arabic had replaced both Egyptian and the Berber languages of the Maghrib as the dominant language. Annual performance of the hajj pilgrimage strengthened the ties between the people of North Africa and the Arabian peninsula. Starting from different places along the Mediterranean coast and along the Nile, pilgrim caravans converged in Cairo, from where large groups then proceeded to Mecca. Islamic rule reoriented North Africa. Before it, the Mediterranean coast of Africa formed the southern edge of the Roman Empire, where Christianity was the dominant religion and Latin the language of learning (see Chapter 7). Under Muslim rule, North Africa lay at the western edge of the Islamic realm, and Arabic was spoken everywhere.

The Abbasid Caliphate United, 750–945

I • Abbasid caliphate Dynasty of rulers (750– 1258) who ruled a united empire from their capital at Baghdad until the empire fragmented in 945. They continued as religious leaders until 1258, when the last Abbasid caliph was killed by the Mongols.

n 744, a group of Syrian soldiers assassinated the Umayyad caliph, prompting an all-out civil war among all those hoping to control the caliphate. In 750, a section of the army based in western Iran, in the Khurasan region, triumphed and then shifted the capital some 500 miles (800 km) east from Damascus to Baghdad, closer to their base of support. Because the new caliph claimed descent from Muhammad’s uncle Abbas, the new dynasty was called the Abbasid dynasty and their empire the Abbasid caliphate. Under Abbasid rule, the Islamic empire continued to expand east into Central Asia. At its greatest extent, it included present-day Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, southern Pakistan, and Uzbekistan. In Spain, however, the leaders of the vanquished Umayyad clan established a separate Islamic state.

Baghdad, City of Learning

The new Abbasid capital was built by the second Abbasid caliph Mansur (r. 754–775). Baghdad was on the Tigris River in the heart of Mesopotamia, near the point where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers come closest together (see Chapter 2). Several canals linked the two rivers. Mansur explained his choice: Indeed, this island between the Tigris in the East and the Euphrates in the West is the harbor of the world. All the ships that sail up the Tigris . . . and the adjacent areas will anchor here. . . . It will indeed be the most ﬂourishing city in the world.3

The Abbasid Caliphate United, 750–945

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Baghdad more than fulﬁlled his hopes. Located at the crossroads of Africa, Europe, and Asia, it was home to a half a million residents who included the majority Muslim community and smaller communities of Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians. The city’s residents lived side by side, celebrated each other’s festivals, and spoke Arabic, Persian, Greek, and Hebrew. Mansur, we learn from the historian Masudi, was the ﬁrst caliph to have foreign works of literature translated into Arabic . . . various of Aristotle’s treatises on logic and other subjects; Ptolemy’s Almagest; the Book of Euclid; the treatise on arithmetic and all the other ancient works. . . . Once in possession of these books, the public read and studied them avidly.4

Local scholars beneﬁted from the support of both the caliph and the city’s residents, who paid for the manuscripts to be copied and studied them in their schools. The city’s cosmopolitan environment encouraged scholars to study the scientiﬁc and mathematical discoveries of Greece, India, and Mesopotamia. Historians call their collective efforts, which lasted several centuries, the translation movement. In translating astronomy, medical, mathematical, and geography books from ancient Greek, Sanskrit, and Persian into Arabic, they created a body of scientiﬁc knowledge unsurpassed in the world. Certain works by ancient Greek scholars, such as the medical scholar Galen, survive only in their Arabic translations. When, beginning in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Europeans once again became interested in the learning of the Greeks, they gladly used the Arabic translations, which preserved the legacy of the past while adding many distinguished advances (see the “Movement of Ideas” feature in Chapter 13). Islamic scholars also made many scientiﬁc and mathematical discoveries of their own. The great mathematician al-Khwarizmi (al-HWAR-ez-mee) (d. 830) combined the Indian and Babylonian number systems to create the world’s ﬁrst workable decimal system. Al-Khwarizmi invented algebra (from the Arabic word al-jabr, meaning “transposition”) to solve math problems more easily through the use of equations. He also developed a system of computation that divided complex problems into shorter steps, or algorithms (the word algorithm is derived from alKhwarizmi’s name). One of the Five Pillars of Islam (see page 245) is to pray ﬁve times a day facing toward Mecca. Islamic scholars developed increasingly sophisticated instruments to determine this position for prayer. The astrolabe allowed observers to calculate their location on earth once they had set the appropriate dials for the date, the time of day, and the angle of the sun’s course through the sky; they could then determine the direction of Mecca for their prayers. The astrolabe also functioned as a slide rule, one of the world’s ﬁrst hand-held mathematical calculators. It became the most signiﬁcant computational tool of its time. In a signiﬁcant technological advance, a paper-making factory was opened in Baghdad in 794–795 that used Chinese techniques (see Chapter 4) to produce the ﬁrst paper in the Islamic world. Muslim scholars had previously written on either papyrus, a dried plant grown in Egypt, or dried, scraped leather, called parchment. Both were much more costly than paper, and the new writing material spread quickly throughout the empire. By 850, Baghdad housed one hundred paper-making workshops. The low cost of paper greatly increased the availability of books. Manuals on agriculture, botany, and pharmacology contributed to the spread of agricultural

• translation movement The collective effort of Islamic scholars, many living in Baghdad, between 750 and 1000 to translate astronomy, medical, mathematical, and geography books from ancient Greek, Sanskrit, and Persian into Arabic.

• astrolabe

Computational instrument that allowed observers to calculate their location on earth to determine the direction of Mecca for their prayers. Also functioned as a slide rule, one of the world’s ﬁrst hand-held mathematical calculators.

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Determining the Direction of Mecca: The Astrolabe This astrolabe, made in 1216, is a sophisticated mathematical device. After holding the astrolabe up to the sun to determine the angle of the sun’s rays and thus ﬁx the viewer’s latitude on earth, one inserted the appropriate metal plate (this example has three) into the mechanism, which allowed one to chart the movement of the stars. (Musée Paul Dupuy, Toulous, France/Eric Lessing, Art Resource, NY)

techniques and crops from one end of the empire to the other. Cookbooks show the extent to which the empire’s residents embraced Asian foodstuffs like rice, eggplant, and processed sugar. Cotton for clothing, grown by Persians at the time of the founding of the Abbasid dynasty, gradually spread to Egypt, and, by the twelfth century, West Africans began to cultivate the crop as well.

Abbasid Governance

Baghdad, the city of learning, was the capital of an enormous empire headed by the caliph, who presided over the military, the bureaucracy, and the judiciary. His chief minister, or vizier, stood at the head of a bureaucracy based in the capital. In the provinces, the caliph delegated power to regional governors, who were charged with maintaining local armies and transmitting revenues to the center; however, they often tried to keep revenues for themselves. In the early centuries of Islamic rule, local populations often continued their pre-Islamic religious practices. For example, in 750 fewer than 8 percent of the people living in the Abbasid heartland of Iran were Muslims. By the ninth century, the Muslim proportion of the population had increased to 40 percent, but

The Abbasid Caliphate United, 750–945

only in the tenth century did converts become a majority—70 or 80 percent—of the population.5 The caliphate offered all of its subjects access to a developed judicial system that implemented Islamic law. He appointed a chief judge, or qadi, for the city of Baghdad and a qadi for each of the empire’s provinces. These judges were drawn from the learned men of Islam, or ulama (also spelled ulema), who gained their positions after years of study. The ulama took no special vows and could marry and have families. Some specialized in the Quran, others scrutinized records of Muhammad’s sayings in the hadith to establish their veracity, and still others concentrated on legal texts. Scholars taught at schools, sometimes in mosques and sometimes in separate buildings. On Fridays, at the weekly services, the ulama preached to the congregation (women and men sat separately, with the men in front), and afterward they heard legal disputes in the mosques. The judiciary enjoyed an unusually high position, for even members of the caliph’s immediate family were subject to their decisions. In one example, an employee who brought goods for Zubaydah, the wife of the caliph Harun al-Rashid, refused to pay a merchant. When the merchant consulted a judge, the judge advised the merchant to ﬁle suit and then ordered the queen’s agent to pay the debt. The angry queen ordered the judge transferred and Harun complied with his wife’s request, but only after he himself paid the money owed to the merchant. At ﬁrst glance, it might seem that the queen had prevailed; after all, she managed to have the judge transferred. But she had not ordered him killed, and the judge continued to hear cases in his new post. A comparison with other contemporary empires demonstrates the power of the judiciary in the Abbasid empire: no Chinese subject of the Tang dynasty would have dared to sue the emperor, and no one in Europe had access to a comparable judicial system.

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• ulama

Learned Islamic scholars who studied the Quran, the hadith, and legal texts. They taught classes, preached, and heard legal disputes; they took no special vows and could marry and have families.

Abbasid Society

When compared with its Asian and European contemporaries, Islamic society appears surprisingly egalitarian. It had divisions, of course: rural/urban, Muslim/non-Muslim, free person/slave. Apart from gender differences, however, none of these divisions were insurmountable. Rural people could move to the city, non-Muslims could convert to Islam, and slaves could be, and often were, freed. In the royal ranks, however, much had changed since the time of Muhammad, whose supporters treated him as an equal. The Abbasid rulers rejected the egalitarianism of early Islam to embrace the lavish court ceremonies of the Sasanians. To the horror of the ulama, the caliph received visitors from behind a curtained throne, and visitors had to kiss the ground in front of his throne even though only God, the learned felt, should receive such a form of submission. Equally reprehensible in the eyes of the ulama, his subjects addressed the caliph as “the shadow of God on earth,” a title modeled on the Sasanian “king of kings.” At the right of the caliph stood an executioner, ready to kill any visitor who might offend the caliph. The one group in Islamic society to inherit privileges on the basis of birth were those who could claim descent from Muhammad’s family. All the Abbasid caliphs belonged to this group, and their many relatives occupied a privileged position at the top of Baghdad society. Descent from Muhammad did not bring any ﬁnancial advantage; it simply commanded more respect. Under the royal family, two large groups enjoyed considerable prestige and respect: the ulama, on the one hand, and the cultured elite, who included courtiers

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surrounding the caliph, bureaucrats stafﬁng his government, and educated landowners throughout the empire. These groups often patronized poets, painters, and musicians, themselves also members of the cultured elite. Generally speaking the cultured elite were not as observant as the ulama. Like the caliph’s more educated subjects, ordinary people varied in the extent of their compliance with the religious teachings of Islam. In the cities they worked carrying goods, and in the countryside they farmed. Most farmers prayed ﬁve times a day and attended Friday prayers at their local mosques, but they could not always afford to go on the hajj. Farmers aspired to send their sons, but not their daughters, to study at the local mosque for a few years. Here they acquired the rudiments of Arabic so that they could recite the Quran before starting work full-time as cultivators. Families that educated their daughters did so at home. Boys who demonstrated scholarly ability hoped to become members of the ulama, while those gifted in mathematics might become merchants. Muhammad and two of his immediate successors had been merchants, and trade continued to enjoy a privileged position in the Abbasid caliphate. Merchants were supposed to adhere to a high standard of conduct: to be true to their word and to sell merchandise free from defects. Many merchants contributed money for the upkeep of mosques or to help the less fortunate. Because Islamic law forbade usury (charging interest on loans), Muslim merchants used credit mechanisms like checks, letters of credit, and bills of exchange. While the most successful merchants became bankers and traders who specialized in large-scale transactions that spanned the empire, other merchants ran single shops or peddled their goods, some of which they made themselves, from town to town. The state regulated the quality of goods such as textiles, which had to be stamped by the government before being placed on sale. The shift of the capital to Baghdad in the eighth century brought a dramatic increase in trade within the empire and beyond. Long-distance merchants sent ships to India and China that were loaded with locally produced goods—such as Arabian horses, textiles, and carpets—and nonlocal goods, such as African ivory and Southeast Asian pearls. The ships returned with spices, medicines, and textiles. Islamic merchants were at home in a world stretching from China to Africa; Aladdin, the famous ﬁctional hero of a tale from The Thousand and One Nights, was born in China and adopted by an African merchant. As early as the ninth century, ships traveled routinely between the Arabian Sea and south Chinese ports, and the ChinaMecca route was the longest regularly traveled sea route in the world before 1500.

Slavery

Much long-distance trade involved the import of slaves from three major areas: Central Africa, Central Asia, and central and eastern Europe, by far the largest source (see Map 9.1). The Arabs referred to the region of modern Poland and Bohemia as the “slave country.” (The English word slave is derived from the Latin word for slav, because so many slaves were originally Slavic.) An extraordinary sailor’s tale from the mid-tenth century tells of the abduction of an East African slave.6 Although the tale is clearly a literary creation, the narrator, a Muslim slave trader, describes real-world trading routes. In 922, an Arab ship set out from the port of Oman in the Persian Gulf, was caught in a storm, and landed on the coast of East Africa, in modern Somalia or Kenya, regions that had become Islamicized under the Abbasids. “The canoes of the negroes

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Slave trade routes

Spanish Umayyad Caliphate, 929

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Socotra

Aden

Turkish slaves

MAP 9.1 The Abbasid Caliphate Between 750 and 950, the Abbasid caliphate lost huge chunks of territory in North Africa, the Arabian peninsula, Iran, and Central Asia, yet a shared Islamic identity held the former empire together, as Ibn Jubayr learned in his 1183–1185 journey (see page 262). The people living in the empire’s core around Baghdad imported slaves, many of whom converted to Islam, from Africa, northern Europe, and Central Asia.

Interactive Map

surrounded us and brought us into the harbour,” the narrator explains, and the local king gave him permission to trade. At the conclusion of their trip, the African king and seven companions boarded the ship to bid the Arab merchants good-bye. The narrator explains the ship’s captain’s thoughts: When I saw them there, I said to myself: In the Oman market this young king would certainly fetch thirty dinars [a dinar coin contained 4.25 grams of gold], and his seven companions sixty dinars. Their clothes are not worth less than twenty dinars. One way and another this would give us a proﬁt of at least 3,000 dirhams [a silver coin] and without any trouble. Reﬂecting thus, I gave the crew their orders. They raised the sails and weighed anchor.

The captain’s split-second calculation of the king’s value chills the blood. Unable to escape, the captive king joined two hundred other slaves in the ship’s hold and was sold when the ship reached Oman. Several years later, the same captain and the same ship were caught in a storm, and, to their horror, they landed in the same harbor. They were brought to the king, and to their amazement, it was the same king they had sold at the Oman

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slave market. The king explained that he had been purchased by a Muslim in the Persian Gulf port of Basra, who had ﬁrst taught him the Quran and then had sold him to a man living in Baghdad. After converting to Islam, the king joined a group of hajj pilgrims on their way to Mecca, and in Mecca he joined a group going to Cairo. On the way home from Cairo, slave traders captured him twice, he escaped both times, and ﬁnally he reached his former kingdom where his countrymen welcomed him back. The king then explained why he had forgiven the narrator and his fellow slave traders: “And here I am, happy and satisﬁed with the grace God has given me and mine, of knowing the precepts of Islam, the true faith, prayers, fasting, the pilgrimage, and what is permitted and what is forbidden.” In short, the chain of events that began with his capture led to his conversion and ﬁnally his freedom. Although ﬁctional, this tale sheds light on a poorly documented process: under the Abbasids, the coastal cities of East Africa, particularly those north of Madagascar, became Muslim, not because they were conquered by invading armies but because traveling merchants introduced Islam to them. The merchants came to the coast to buy slaves and other products, including gold and ivory. In many cases, the rulers converted ﬁrst, and the population later followed. Like this ﬁctional enslaved king, most Islamic slaves worked as servants or concubines, not as ﬁeld hands like the slaves of the American South before the Civil War. The caliph’s household purchased thousands of slaves each year. The women entered the secluded women’s quarters in the palace, or harem, where they were guarded by eunuchs, or castrated men. Many slave buyers particularly valued eunuchs because they could trust them with their female kin. Since Islamic law held that no Muslim could be sold as a slave, any slave who converted to Islam had to be freed. Former slaves often continued to work for their original owners for wages. All levels of society, from the caliph with his hundreds of female slaves down to the petty trader who could afford only one, respected the teaching that children born to a slave woman and a Muslim father should be raised as free Muslims. As a result, these children were granted identical rights as their siblings born to Muslim mothers. Harun al-Rashid was himself the child of a slave mother, Khaizuran. Like many young slave children, she learned to read and write because educated slaves could command a higher price on the slave market. When the caliph Mansur gave her to his son Mahdi sometime in the late 750s, Mahdi took an immediate liking to the young girl, who was “slender and graceful as a reed,” the root meaning of her name khaizuran.

Politics of the Harem

Like most ordinary people living within the Abbasid Empire, Khaizuran had grown up in a nuclear family headed by her father and his one wife, her mother. Islamic law permitted Muslim men to marry as many as four wives, but most men could afford to support only one. The caliphs took the four wives Islamic law entitled them to, and their enormous revenues also permitted them to support unlimited numbers of concubines. When Khaizuran joined the royal household, she left behind her life in the streets of Mecca, where women had some freedom of movement, and entered a world whose customs were completely unfamiliar. The higher a woman’s class, the greater the degree of seclusion, and the caliph’s wives were the most secluded of all. An army of eunuchs guarded the secluded women’s quarters and prevented

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illicit contact with any men. Khaizuran was free to leave the palace only on rare occasions, and then only under escort. When Khaizuran entered the harem, she told everyone she had no living kin. Only after giving birth to two sons, and only after she was certain of her status as one of the future caliph’s favorites, did she reveal that her mother, two sisters, and a brother were still alive in Yemen. The caliph Mansur immediately summoned them to live in the palace and arranged for Khaizuran’s sister to marry another of his sons. The sister subsequently gave birth to a daughter, whose nickname was “little butter ball,” or Zubaydah. Khaizuran’s relations with her son Hadi soured soon after he, and not Harun, became caliph in 785. Hadi was particularly upset to discover that his mother was meeting with his generals and courtiers on her own. He chastised her, saying: “Do not overstep the essential limits of womanly modesty. . . . It is not digniﬁed for women to enter upon affairs of state. Take to your prayer and worship and devote yourself to the service of Allah. Hereafter, submit to the womanly role that is required of your sex.”7 But Khaizuran did not back down. Hadi then asked his generals how they would feel if their mothers interfered in politics, and they all agreed, “Not any one of us would like that.”8 This description by the historian al-Tabari (at-TAH-bah-ree) (d. 923) seems to suggest that all the commanders felt the same: that no woman, and certainly not Khaizuran, should intervene in matters of state. Contrary to the expectation of these men, Khaizuran did, however, intervene in court politics. Hadi died suddenly, in mysterious circumstances, and Khaizuran made sure that Harun succeeded him as caliph. (No one knows exactly how.) Unlike her mother and her famous aunt Khaizuran, who had come to the harem as adults, Zubaydah grew up entirely within the women’s quarter of the palace. After her marriage she devoted herself to public works. While in Mecca, she contributed an additional 1,700,000 dinars, or nearly eight tons of gold, from her own funds to construct a giant reservoir. She also ordered wells dug to provide hajj pilgrims with fresh water. The resulting stone water tunnels, running above and below ground for 12 miles (20 km), constituted a genuine feat of engineering. Finally, she made extensive repairs to the road linking Kufa, a city outside Baghdad, with Mecca and Medina. (See the feature “Visual Evidence: Zubaydah’s Road.”)

The Breakup of the Abbasid Empire, 809–936

Like her mother-in-law Khaizuran, Zubaydah tried to manipulate the succession after Harun’s death in 809, but she sided with the losing son, who was defeated by his brother Mamun in 813. The empire Mamun won, however, was not as prosperous as it appeared. The costs of governing the Abbasid Empire often exceeded its revenues. Even during Harun’s reign the caliphs were often forced to seek emergency loans. The central government frequently ran short of money because regional governors did not forward the taxes they collected to the caliph. The frequent civil wars between rivals for the caliphate destroyed the irrigation works that underpinned the agrarian economy, and, because no one rebuilt them, tax revenues continuously declined. As a temporary expedient, the caliph occasionally appointed someone, usually called a tax farmer, to collect a ﬁxed amount in a region where the caliph’s bureaucrats had trouble raising revenue. In these cases the caliph still retained direct political control. If tax farmers failed to raise the necessary revenues, the caliph

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ZUBAYDAH’S ROAD

ubaydah devoted considerable resources to the project that brought her lasting fame: the road linking Kufa, a city outside Baghdad, with Mecca and Medina. Although the road existed before her reign, she made so many improvements to it that it came to be called Darb Zubaydah, or Zubaydah’s Road. When Saudi archaeologists surveyed the desert in the 1970s, they found identiﬁable traces of a roadway 18 yards (17 m) yards wide. The road’s builders had faced the challenge of designing a road for pedestrians even though it ran through long stretches

The stones of the lava ﬁeld were so sharp that they hurt the feet of the pilgrims and their camels.

of sand, some muddy ground, and rough lava ﬁelds. They cleared the road of stones, paved the sections of the road that went through the mud, and smoothed rough lava ﬁelds before covering them with soft sand on which pilgrims could easily walk. One archaeologist has called the project “the ﬁnest and most remarkable and extensive road system in the earlier period of Islamic history.”*

*Saad A. al-Rashid, Darb Zubaydah: The Pilgrim Road from Kufa to Mecca (Riyad: Riyad University, 1980), p. 330.

After clearing the road, engineers covered it with a smooth layer of sand for the convenience of the pilgrims and their camels, who traveled over 700 miles (1,100 km).

( John Herbert)

Question for Analysis What preparations did hajj travelers going overland have to make, and how would these differ for those traveling by boat?

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Because Zubaydah was particularly concerned about poorer pilgrims who traveled the difﬁcult route on foot, she added nine new rest stations at convenient intervals between existing stations, for a total of ﬁfty-four rest stops. All the new stations had

a pool, and they often included some kind of shelter and sometimes even a small mosque. This painting, from an illustrated thirteenth-century manuscript of collected anecdotes, shows what a resting place on the Darb Zubaydah might have looked like.

The nimbus, or cloud, behind the head was originally an Iranian artistic convention used to show royalty. In this picture, however, the nimbus seems purely decorative, since all the human ﬁgures have one.

321461_fp_09 This ﬁgure uses bellows to light a ﬁre below a cooking pot. This is a shrine, most likely to a prominent Islamic teacher whose grave lies inside it, where Muslims came to pray. Two camels bray with their mouths open. Although often ill-tempered, camels were the one draft animal that could withstand the hot, dry climate of the desert.

(Institute of Oriental Studies, St. Petersburg, Russia/The Bridgeman Library)

Three camels feed from saddlebags placed on the ground. Able to survive for up to nine days without water, camels can carry loads over 300 pounds (140 kg).

Inside a tent made from beautiful textiles, these two men lean on portable wooden furniture as they converse with each other.

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• iqta grant A grant given by the caliph to someone who promised to collect taxes from a certain region and pay the caliph a certain amount of money. Grant holders became military governors and rulers of their regions, over which the caliph had only nominal control.

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might go a step further and make an iqta grant, ceding all political control to the man who promised to pay a certain amount. The iqta (ICK-tah) grant-holder became the military governor and ruler of the area, and the caliph retained only nominal control. In 789 and 800, Harun granted independence to two Islamic states in North Africa in exchange for annual tax payments; his successors made similar arrangements with other regions. Until the middle of the tenth century, none of the iqta holders directly challenged the authority of the caliph. Then, in 936, the caliph took the ﬁnal step and ceded all his power to an Iraqi grant holder, giving him the title commander of commanders. The grant holder disbanded the entire Abbasid army and replaced it with an army loyal to himself. He eliminated the Abbasid bureaucracy as well, sentencing the last vizier to life imprisonment in a dungeon. This new arrangement did not last long. In 945, the Buyids, a group of Shi’ite Iranian mercenaries based in the mountains south of the Caspian Sea, conquered Baghdad and took over the government. Rather than depose the caliphs and risk alienating their Muslim subjects, the Buyids retained them as ﬁgureheads who led the Islamic caliphate but had no political power. The caliph received a small allowance so that he could reside in his crumbling palace in Baghdad, and Islamic preachers continued to cite his name in their Friday prayers. The extensive territory of the Abbasid Empire proved ungovernable as a single political unit, and it broke up into different regions, all still part of the Islamic cultural and religious world.

The Rise of Regional Centers After the Abbasids, 945–1258

lthough no one knew how the caliph’s loss of political authority would affect the caliphate, Muslims found it surprisingly easy to accept the new division of political and religious authority. The caliphs continued as the titular heads of the Islamic religious community, but they were entirely dependent on temporal rulers for ﬁnancial support. No longer politically united, the Islamic world was still bound by religious ties and the obligation to perform the hajj. Under the leadership of committed Muslim rulers, Islam continued to spread throughout South Asia and the interior of Africa. Rulers all over the Islamic world continued to patronize Islamic scholars, and Islamic learning, particularly in the ﬁeld of geography, continued to thrive.

Regional Islamic States, 945–1258

Many different states formed in the centuries after the caliph’s loss of political authority. In 1055, Baghdad fell to yet a different group of soldiers, the Turkishspeaking Seljuqs (also spelled Seljuk) from Central Asia. With the accession of the Seljuqs (sell-JOOKs), other sections of the empire broke off and, like Baghdad, experienced rule by different dynasties. In most periods, the former Abbasid Empire was divided into four regions: the former heartland of the Euphrates and Tigris River basins, Egypt and Syria, North Africa and Spain, and the Amu Darya and Syr Daria River Valleys in Central Asia.

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Two centuries of Abbasid rule had transformed these four regions into Islamic realms whose residents, whether Sunni or Shi’ite, observed the tenets of Islam. Their societies retained the basic patterns of Abbasid society. When Muslims traveled anywhere in the former Abbasid territories, they could be conﬁdent of ﬁnding mosques, being received as honored guests, and having access to the same basic legal system (even if some legal schools differed in their interpretations). As in the Roman Empire, where Greek and Latin prevailed, just two languages could take a traveler through the entire realm: Arabic, the language of the Quran and high Islamic learning, and Persian, the Iranian language of much poetry, literature, and history.

Map of Eurasia, 1182 This map, like all Islamic maps, is oriented with the south on top and the north below. It is a copy of a silver map made by the geographer al-Idrisi, which no longer survives. With greater precision than any other contemporary map, it shows the blue Mediterranean Sea in the middle with Africa above (notice the three sources of the Nile on the right) and Eurasia below. (National Library [Dar-al-Katub], Cairo, Egypt/Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY)

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Sometime around 1000, the city of Córdoba in Islamic Spain replaced Baghdad as the leading center of Islamic learning. The Umayyad capital from around 750 to 1031, Córdoba served as the capital for the Almoravid (1031–1147) and Almohad (1130–1269) dynasties who succeeded the Umayyads and ruled North Africa and Spain in the eleventh through thirteenth centuries. All visitors to Córdoba admired its gardens, fountains, paved streets, and most of all, its running water (the ﬁrst in Europe since the fall of Rome). Córdoba played a crucial role in the transmission of learning from the Islamic world to Christian Europe. Craftsmen learned how to make paper in the eleventh century and transmitted the technique to the rest of Europe. Córdoba’s residents, both male and female, specialized in copying manuscripts and translated treatises from Arabic into Latin for European audiences. The study of geography also ﬂourished in the eleventh and twelfth centuries as Muslims learned about the most distant places within the Islamic community. Al-Bakri, a geographer based in Córdoba, provided a rare, detailed description of Central Africa. He reported that the two kingdoms of Ghana and Gao had capital cities with separate districts for Muslims and for local religious practitioners who prayed to images. He explained that although rulers often converted to Islam after contact with Muslim traders, their subjects, as in the case of Mali, did not always follow suit. This religious division between rulers who converted to Islam and subjects who did not held true in the other major area that was brought into the Islamic world in the eleventh and twelfth centuries: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and north India. Muslim conquerors moved into north India from their base in Afghanistan. During the actual conquest they tore down Hindu temples, but once they gained power they allowed Hindu temples to remain, even as they endowed mosques. Ordinary Indians continued to worship Hindu deities (see Chapter 8), while the ruling family, who were based in Delhi and who are thus known as the Delhi sultanate, observed the tenets of Islam. During this long period of division, Muslim cartographers made some of the most advanced maps of their day. Working in Sicily, the geographer al-Idrisi (1100–1166) drew a map of the world engraved on a silver tablet 3 yards by 1.5 yards (3 m by 1.5 m). Although the map was destroyed during his lifetime, the book al-Idrisi wrote to accompany his map is so detailed that scholars have been able to reconstruct the seven climatic zones, each with ten sections, that appeared on his original map. Like all Islamic maps, his looks upside down to modern viewers because he oriented the map to the south. His map showed the outlines of the Mediterranean, Africa, and Central Asia with far greater accuracy than contemporary maps made elsewhere in the world.

Ibn Jubayr’s Hajj in 1183

By the twelfth century, different Islamic governments ruled the different sections of the former Abbasid Empire. Since the realm of Islam was no longer uniﬁed, devout Muslims had to cross from one Islamic polity to the next as they performed the hajj. Local Islamic rulers might take advantage of the pilgrims by charging them extra taxes or exacting customs duties, but sometimes they also facilitated the pilgrims’ journey. Pilgrims were often unsure of the correct rituals to perform in Mecca, and as the number of pilgrims increased over the centuries, a new genre of book, called “travels” (rihla in Arabic), appeared that described the trip to Mecca and the most

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The Hajj Today

he world’s fastest-growing religion, Islam is second only to Christianity in the number of adherents, with a total of 1.2 billion Muslims in the world today. The four countries with the greatest number of Muslims lie far from the heartland of Islam in Saudi Arabia: Indonesia (170 million), Pakistan (136 million), Bangladesh (106 million), and India (103 million). The world region with the greatest number of recent converts is Africa. Each Muslim hopes to go on the hajj at least once in his or her lifetime, and more than two million people travel to Saudi Arabia each year on this pilgrimage. The number would be even greater except that the government of Saudi Arabia limits the number of visas issued annually to one thousand pilgrims for each one million citizens in each country.

Because the visitors all want to visit the different sites in the prescribed order on the same days, crowding poses a major problem. As in Ibn Jubayr’s day, the stoning of the Devil at Mina is one of the most dangerous rites. After staying up most of the night, pilgrims throw rocks, yell insults, or hurl their shoes at one of three stone pillars. The highest number of casualties occurred in 1990, when 1,426 pilgrims died in a stampede in a tunnel. Stampedes have also occurred in 1998, 2001, 2004, and 2006. Still, because it is such an important part of the hajj experience, authorities are reluctant to limit the number of people visiting Mina.

Sources: adherents.com; various newspaper reports accessed via Lexis Nexus.

important rituals performed there. Although Muslims came from different regional states and spoke different languages, their participation in the same rituals of the hajj bound them together. (See “World History in Today’s World: The Hajj Today.”) The most famous travel book is The Travels of Ibn Jubayr (1145–1217), a courtier from Granada, Spain, who went on the hajj in 1183–1185. Ibn Jubayr (IH-buhn joo-BAH-eer) decided to go to Mecca to repent for drinking seven cups of wine, a drink forbidden to Muslims. He ﬁnanced his trip with a gift of seven cups of gold coins received from the governor of Granada, his superior, who felt contrite about having forced Ibn Jubayr to drink so much. Ibn Jubayr’s book serves as a guide to the sequence of hajj observances that had been ﬁxed by Muhammad; Muslims today continue to perform the same rituals (see Table 9.1, “The Nine Steps of the Hajj”). After thirty days’ sail across the Mediterranean, Ibn Jubayr arrived in the port of Alexandria, Egypt, then under the rule of Saladin (1137/38–1193), the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty (1171–1250) in Egypt. When Saladin, whose father had served in the Seljuq army, defeated the Fatimid dynasty, the caliph in Baghdad granted him an iqta for all of Egypt and Syria. Because their boat was from another country, all the travelers with Ibn Jubayr had to go through customs. Ibn Jubayr praised Saladin’s generosity as a host but criticized the port ofﬁcials for requiring the pilgrims to pay the zakat tax on the goods they carried. From Egypt, Ibn Jubayr traveled south and crossed the Red Sea; on his arrival, he once again had to pay a tax. Before 945, all territory was under Abbasid rule, and there were no border crossings; after 945, Muslim travelers, even those going in the hajj, had to pay the costs of leaving one country and entering another.

• Ibn Jubayr (1145– 1217) Spanish courtier from Granada, Spain, who went on the hajj pilgrimage in 1183–1185. Wrote The Travels, the most famous example of a travel book, called a rihla in Arabic, that described the author’s trip to Mecca.

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When Ibn Jubayr arrived at the outskirts of Mecca, he put on the two pieces of unsewn cloth permitted to the male pilgrim. (Because women pilgrims were obliged to cover all but their face, hands, and feet, they required more cloth.) While Sunni and Shi’ite rules differed slightly, all concurred that pilgrims should refrain from having sex, eating meat, and cutting their hair or nails during the hajj. Muslims could fulﬁll their obligation to go on the hajj only once a year: on the eighth, ninth, and tenth days of the twelfth month in the Islamic lunar calendar. After Ibn Jubayr had been in Mecca for some eight months, the month of the hajj arrived. The number of Muslims going on the hajj had increased dramatically over time. By 1184, Ibn Jubayr writes that the total number of pilgrims from Iraq alone “formed a multitude whose number only God Most High could count.”9 The more unruly pilgrims (especially from Yemen, in Ibn Jubayr’s opinion) forced the Meccan authorities to replace the Kaaba’s wooden covering with a strong iron dome. Once pilgrims arrived in Mecca, they walked around the Kaaba seven times in a counterclockwise direction. On the eighth day of the month Ibn Jubayr and all the other pilgrims departed for Mina, which lay halfway to Mount Arafat. The hajj celebrated Abraham’s release of his son Ishmael. The most important rite, the Standing, commemorated the last sermon given by the prophet Muhammad. Fear of bandits prevented the pilgrims from spending the night at Arafat as was customary. When they arrived at Mount Arafat early in the morning of the ninth day, they ﬁrst climbed the mountain and then descended to the plain, where they remained on their feet throughout the Standing: When, on Friday, the midday and afternoon prayers were said together, the people stood contrite and in tears, humbly beseeching the mercy of Great and Glorious God. The cries of “God is Great” rose high, and loud were the voices of men in prayer. Never has there been seen a day of such weeping, such penitence of heart, and such bending of the neck in reverential submission and humility before God.

As soon as the sun had set, the pilgrims proceeded quickly in the dark toward a mosque some three hours away for ﬁnal prayers. They spent the rest of the night there.

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When the pilgrims arrived at Mina the next day, their religious observance shifted suddenly from solemn piety to raucous celebration. They ﬁrst threw stones at the wall where Muslims believe Satan tempted Ishmael, and they then slaughtered sheep to celebrate Abraham’s substitution of a sacriﬁcial ram for his son Ishmael. The change of pace was abrupt, and disturbances often broke out at Mina. Ibn Jubayr saw “dissension and riot between the negro inhabitants of Mecca and the Turks of Iraq in which there were some hurts. Swords were drawn, arrow notches were put to the bow-string, and spears were thrown, while some of the goods of the merchants were plundered.” After the religious observances were completed, giant bazaars sprang up in which Ibn Jubayr saw “wares ranging from precious jewels to the cheapest strings of beads, together with other articles and various merchandises of the world.” The hajj may have been a religious duty, but it also had a distinctly commercial side: merchants from all over the Islamic world found a ready market among the pilgrims. Finally, Ibn Jubayr, like almost all pilgrims, went to see Muhammad’s tomb and mosque at Medina, even though this was not an obligatory part of the hajj. From Medina to Baghdad, Ibn Jubayr traveled along Zubaydah’s Road, which he covered at a rapid 30 miles (50 km) per day: These tanks, pools, wells, and stations on the road from Baghdad to Mecca are monuments to Zubaydah. . . . But for her generous acts in this direction this road could not have been traversed.

In Baghdad, he visited the palace where the family members of the ﬁgurehead caliph “live in sumptuous conﬁnement in those palaces, neither going forth nor being seen.” For the return trip, Ibn Jubayr chose a different route: after going to Damascus, he traveled to the kingdom of Jerusalem, which was under the rule of the Crusader states (see Chapter 13). In 1185, Saladin had already begun his campaign to win Jerusalem back (he did so in 1187), and on his way to Jerusalem, Ibn Jubayr saw hundreds of Christian prisoners taken captive by Saladin. The incongruity of the situation struck him: “One of the strangest things in the world is that Muslim caravans go forth to Frankish [meaning the Christians from modern-day France and Germany] lands, while Frankish captives enter Muslim lands.” Ibn Jubayr’s caravan entered the Crusader-ruled territory without paying any taxes, and he caught a ship to Europe from Acre [Akka], in modern Israel. Because of several months’ delay caused by a shipwreck, he arrived back in Spain more than two years after his departure in 1185. Ibn Jubayr’s rihla offers a precious eyewitness account of the Islamic world in the late twelfth century, when the Abbasid caliphs continued as ﬁgureheads in Baghdad but all real power lay with different regional rulers. This arrangement came to an abrupt end in 1258, when the Mongols (see Chapter 14) invaded Baghdad and ended even that minimal symbolic role for the caliph.

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Chapter Review

KEY TERMS Khaizuran (238) Muhammad (240) jihad (244) hajj (244) caliph (244) Quran (245) hadith (245) Five Pillars of Islam (245) Sunnis (245) Shi’ites (245) Abbasid caliphate (250) translation movement (251) astrolabe (251) ulama (253) iqta grant (260) Ibn Jubayr (263)

Download the MP3 audio ﬁle of the Chapter Review and listen to it on the go.

hen Muhammad instructed his followers to perform the annual hajj pilgrimage, the Islamic world was limited to the west coast of the Arabian peninsula. In the eighth century, Khaizuran was able to fulﬁll her obligation with a journey only a few weeks long, and Ibn Jubayr traveled all the way from Spain to Mecca in a few months. However, Muslims who lived at the edges of the Islamic world in Central Africa, Central Asia, or Afghanistan measured their journeys in years. Although living in widely dispersed areas, they were bound together by many ties, including loyalty to the caliph.

Who was the prophet Muhammad, and what were his main teachings? Muhammad was a merchant who, in the early 600s, had a series of visions in which, according to Muslim belief, he received revelations from God as transmitted by the angel Gabriel. The Five Pillars of Islam speciﬁed the obligations of each Muslim: (1) to bear witness to Allah as the sole god and to accept Muhammad as his messenger, (2) to pray ﬁve times daily in the direction of Mecca, (3) to pay a ﬁxed share of one’s income to the state in support of the poor and needy, (4) to refrain from eating, drinking, and sexual activity during the daytime hours of the month of Ramadan, and (5) provided one has the necessary resources, to do the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.

Between Muhammad’s death in 632 and the founding of the Abbasid caliphate in 750, what were the different ways that the Islamic community chose the new caliph? At ﬁrst, the Islamic community chose the caliph by consensus, but the murder of the third caliph threw the umma into turmoil. Sunnis believed that only those chosen by consensus, even if not related to Muhammad, could serve as caliphs. Shi’ites believed that only those like Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law Ali were qualiﬁed. During the ﬁrst century after Muhammad’s death, Muslims struggled with the question of choosing his successor, until they eventually accepted the idea of dynastic succession in 680, when the son of the ﬁrst Umayyad caliph succeeded him.

Which economic, political, and social forces held the many peoples and territories of the Abbasid caliphate together? Between its founding in 750 and its disintegration in 945, the Abbasid rulers used a common political structure—of provinces paying taxes to the center at Baghdad— to tie the empire together. Muslims throughout the empire honored the caliph as their political and religious leader and revered the learned religious teachers of the

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ulama; they also went on the hajj. Those who knew Arabic (the language of the Quran) and Persian (the language of learning) could make themselves understood anywhere in the Abbasid Empire.

After the fragmentation of the Abbasid Empire in 945, which cultural practices, technologies, and customs held Islamic believers in different regions together?

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WEB RESOURCES Pronunciation Guide Interactive Maps MAP 9.1 Abbasid Caliphate

Primary Sources Chapter Objectives ACE Multiple-Choice Quiz

Flashcards After the breakup of the Abbasid Empire in 945, Muslims in different regions accepted the deposed caliph as their religious leader even as they served the different regional rulers based in Spain and North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, Egypt and Syria, Iraq, and Central and South Asia. Although originally a religious obligation, by 1200 the hajj had a profound effect on trade, navigation, and technology. The hajj, and the resulting trade, pushed Muslims to adopt or to discover the fastest and most efﬁcient means of transport from different places to Mecca and to equip those vessels with the best astronomical instruments, maps, and navigational devices. Despite the hardships, all Muslims viewed a trip to Mecca, no matter how distant, as an obligation to be fulﬁlled if at all possible. The result was clear: ordinary Muslims were far better traveled and more knowledgeable than their contemporaries in other parts of the world. In the years after 945, multiple political and cultural centers arose that challenged Baghdad’s position in the previously united Islamic world. As the next chapter will show, something similar happened in Europe as political and cultural centers ﬁrst appeared and then overtook the Byzantine capital at Constantinople.

For Further Reference Abbott, Nadia. Two Queens of Baghdad: Mother and Wife of Harun al-Rashid. London: Al Saqi Books, 1986, reprint of 1946 original.

Levtzion, N., and J. F. P. Hopkins, eds. Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Allen, Roger. An Introduction to Arabic Literature. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Lunde, Paul, and Caroline Stone, trans. The Meadows of Gold: The Abbasids by Mas’udi. New York: Kegan Paul International, 1989.

Broadhurst, R. J. C., trans. The Travels of Ibn Jubayr. London: Jonathan Cape, 1952. Esposito, John L., ed. The Oxford History of Islam. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Freeman-Grenville, G. S. P. The East African Coast: Select Documents from the First to the Earlier Nineteenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962. Gutas, Dmitri. Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The GraecoArabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ‘Abba¯sid Society (2nd–4th/8th–10th centuries). New York: Routledge, 1998. Hodgson, Marshall. Venture of Islam. Vols. 1–3. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974. Hourani, George F. Arab Seafaring. Exp. ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. Kennedy, Hugh. The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates. 2d ed. London: Pearson Education Limited, 2004.

Turner, Howard R. Science in Medieval Islam: An Illustrated Introduction. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995.

Websites Adherents.com (www.adherents.com). Takes an informed Religious Studies approach to the world’s many religions, including Islam. Discover Islam (http://www.Islamicity.com). An introduction to Islam on an educational website that also sells products related to Islam. Internet Medieval Sourcebook (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html). Many primary sources listed under the link “Islam.”

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The Multiple Centers of Europe, 500–1000 Byzantium, the Eastern Roman Empire, 476–1071 (p. 271) The Germanic Peoples of Western Europe, 481–1000 (p. 276) The Age of the Vikings, 793–1050 (p. 282) Russia, Land of the Rus, to 1054 (p. 291)

arlsefni sailed south along the coast. . . . Karlsefni and his men sailed into the estuary and named the place Hope (Tidal Lake). Here they found wild wheat growing in ﬁelds on all the low ground and grape vines on all the higher ground. Every stream was teaming with ﬁsh. They dug trenches at the GUDRID AND high-tide mark, and when the tide went out there were halibut THORFINN KARLSEFNI trapped in all the trenches. In the woods there was a great number of animals of all kinds. They stayed there for a fortnight [two weeks], enjoying themselves and noticing nothing untoward. They had their livestock with them. But early one morning as they looked

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(Arni Magnusson Institute, Reykjavik, Iceland/ The Bridgeman Art Library)

ometime around the year 1000, Leif Eriksson (LEAF ERIC-son) sailed with some forty companions from Greenland across the North Atlantic to Newfoundland in today’s Canada. His former sister-in-law Gudrid and her second husband Thorﬁnn Karlsefni followed in a subsequent voyage. The travelers were originally from Norway in the Scandinavian region of Europe, which also includes Sweden, Finland, and Denmark. The Europe of 1000 differed dramatically from the Europe of 500. In 500, it contained only one major empire, Byzantium, with its capital at Constantinople (modern Istanbul, Turkey). Over the next ﬁve hundred years, migrating peoples completely reshaped Europe. By 1000, it was home to multiple centers—modern-day France and Germany, Scandinavia, and Russia—that today are still the most important European powers. Competition among these multiple centers provided a powerful stimulus to develop, as the Scandinavian voyages to the Americas amply demonstrate. An account recorded several hundred years later, but based on oral history, reports that, after the Scandinavians arrived in the Americas, Karlsefni set off to explore with a man named Snorri:

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around they caught sight of nine skin-boats; the men in them were waving sticks which made a noise like ﬂails [tools used to thresh grain], and the motion was sunwise [clockwise]. Karlsefni said, “What can this signify?” “It could well be a token of peace,” said Snorri. “Let us take a white shield and go to meet them with it.”1

• Gudrid and Thorﬁnn Karlsefni A couple originally from Iceland who settled in about 1000 in Greenland and then Canada, which the Scandinavians called Vinland. Eventually left the Americas and returned to Iceland.

Karlsefni and Snorri went out to meet the men in boats, who stared at them and then left without incident. Although this incident is recorded in a later source, archaeological evidence shows that these Scandinavians built at least one settlement; evidence of their presence has been found in the Canadian town of L’Anse aux Meadows in today’s Newfoundland. Possessing faster and more maneuverable wooden boats than any of their contemporaries, the Scandinavians went as far as Russia, Greenland, Iceland, and Canada (see the map on page 269). Although we are accustomed to think of the distance between Europe and the Americas as enormous, the voyage from Greenland to the northeastern coast of Canada was only 1,350 miles (2,200 km). If the Scandinavians had hugged the coast of Greenland and Canada, they could have traveled farther but still within constant sight of land. The Scandinavians were one of several different groups speaking Germanic languages that lived in western and northern Europe after the loss of the western half of the Roman Empire (see Chapter 7). Around 500, the residents of the late Roman Empire looked down on these Germanic peoples because they could not read and write, worshiped a variety of different deities rather than the Christian God, and lived in simple villages much smaller than Rome or the eastern capital of Constantinople. But by 1000, the situation had changed dramatically. The rise of Germanic states paralleled the rise of the Buddhist states of East Asia that borrowed the Tang dynasty blueprint for empire (see Chapter 8). These new European states, like Byzantium, were Christian, but their political structures differed from those of Rome because they were based on the war-band. This chapter begins in Constantinople, the successor to the Roman Empire. As the Byzantine Empire contracted, new centers arose: ﬁrst in Germany and France, then in Scandinavia, and ﬁnally in modern-day Russia. The residents of Constantinople viewed these regions as uncivilized backwaters, good only as sources of raw materials and slaves. They did not recognize the vitality of these new centers.

Focus Questions

What events caused the urban society of the Byzantines to decline and resulted in the loss of so much territory to the Sasanian and Abbasid Empires?

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What was the war-band of traditional Germanic society? How did the political structures of the Merovingians and the Carolingians reﬂect their origins in the war-band? When, where, how, and why did the Scandinavians go on their voyages, and what was the signiﬁcance of those voyages? What were the earliest states to form in the area that is now Russia, and what role did religion play in their establishment and development? What did all the new states have in common?

Byzantium, the Eastern Roman Empire, 476–1071

o distinguish it from the western empire based in Rome, historians call the Eastern Roman Empire, with its capital at Constantinople, the Byzantine Empire, or simply Byzantium (see Map 10.1). The Byzantine Empire lasted for over a thousand years after the western empire ended, in spite of continuous attacks by surrounding peoples. Far worse than any attack by a foreign power, the bubonic plague struck the empire in 541 and then at regular intervals for two more centuries. The massive decline in population, coupled with the cutting off of shipping lines across the Mediterranean, resulted in a sharp economic downturn. Through all these events the empire’s scholars continued to preserve Greek learning, systematize Roman law, and write new Christian texts. Over the centuries, however, the amount of territory under Byzantine rule shrank, providing an opportunity for other European centers to develop.

Justinian and the Legacy of Rome, 476–565

Constantinople, the city named for the emperor Constantine, had been a capital of the Eastern Roman Empire since 330. Between 395 and 476 different rulers governed the eastern and western sections of the empire, but after 476 the eastern emperor often had no counterpart in Rome. The Christian church at this time had ﬁve major centers: in Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Rome. The top church bishops in the ﬁrst four cities were called patriarchs, but by 1000 the highest-ranking bishop in Rome had the title of pope. Culturally the residents of the eastern and western halves of the empire had much in common: educated people often spoke both Greek and Latin, almost everyone was Christian, and citizens accepted Roman law. Sometimes people in the west referred to those living in the eastern half as “Greeks” since nearly everyone there, including Armenians, Syrians, and Egyptians, spoke Greek, not Latin, although not always as their mother tongue. In the year 500, few observers realized that the urbanized life of the Roman Empire was soon to decline, but decline did begin with the ﬁrst outbreak of plague in 541, which occurred during the long reign of the emperor Justinian I and had lasting repercussions.

• Byzantine Empire (476–1453) Eastern half of the Roman Empire after the loss of the western half in 476. Sometimes simply called Byzantium. Headed by an emperor in its capital of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul). • patriarch

In the 400s and 500s, the highest-ranking bishop of the four major Christian church centers at Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch. By 1000, the patriarch of Constantinople had become head of the Orthodox church of Byzantium.

• pope

In the 400s and 500s the pope was the highest-ranking bishop in Rome, equal in rank to the patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch. By 1000, the pope was recognized as leader of the Catholic Church in Rome.

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MAP 10.1 The Byzantine Empire The Byzantine empire grew dramatically during the reign of Justinian (r. 527–565), expanding its territory in North Africa, the Balkans, and Italy. Yet the plague struck for the ﬁrst of at least ﬁfteen times in 541–544, killing seven million of his twenty-six million subjects.

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Justinian I was a native of Thrace, the region north of Greece, and grew up speaking the local language and Latin. Like many Byzantine emperors, he was chosen by his predecessor, an illiterate soldier also from Thrace, who adopted him and raised him in Byzantium. In 520, Justinian met his future wife: an actress and circus performer named Theodora (497–548), who had given birth to at least one child before she met Justinian. She did not fulﬁll Byzantine ideals of modesty, yet Justinian succeeded in changing the law so that he could marry her, and the two ruled together for more than twenty years. In 532, early in their reign, a commission of legal scholars completed one of the most important legal works ever written: the Justinian Corpus of Civil Law. The corpus consists of three works: the Code (completed in 529), the Digest (533), and the Institutes (also 533). Working for three years, the commission gathered together all the valid laws of the Roman Empire and reduced some three million laws, many no longer in effect, to a manageable body 1,500 pages long in its modern edition. The texts of the laws and the extensive legal commentary were written in Latin, still the ofﬁcial language of the central government, but the laws issued by Justinian himself were in Greek, which was rapidly becoming the administrative language of the empire. The Justinian Corpus preserved the core of Roman law not just for sixth-century jurists but also for all time. Justinian and Theodora managed the empire’s relations with its neighbors with considerable success. Unlike his predecessors, Justinian challenged the Vandals, one of the Germanic peoples who had conquered North Africa in the ﬁfth century (see Chapter 7). His successful military campaigns in Northwest Africa, coastal Spain, and Italy added territory to the empire. Yet, on the eastern front, the armies of the Sasanian empire in Iran (see Chapter 6) captured Antioch, the thirdlargest city in the Byzantine Empire. This Persian display of military might revealed how vulnerable the eastern empire was.

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The Impact of the Plague and the Arab Conquests, 541–767

The ﬁghting on both the eastern and western frontiers subsided immediately after the ﬁrst recorded outbreak of the bubonic plague in Europe in 541. Many people, including Justinian himself, became terribly ill. In modern usage, the term plague refers to two distinct illnesses, bubonic plague and pneumonic plague, which form two phases of an outbreak. First, ﬂeas that have drunk the blood of infected rodents transmit the bubonic plague to people. Lymph glands on the neck, under the arm, and on the groin swell up and turn black. Once part of the human population is infected with bubonic plague, the pneumonic plague spreads as one victim sneezes or coughs onto another. Pneumonic plague is almost always fatal. One contemporary observer, the historian Procopius (pro-COE-pee-uhs), observed that the disease ﬁrst appeared in towns along the coast and then moved inland, but he did not know why. Only in the late nineteenth century did scientists realize that black rats living on ships were the main agents responsible for spreading the disease. The ﬁrst outbreak hit the Egyptian port of Pelusium (pell-OOZE-ee-uhm) on the mouth of the Nile in 541 and spread across the Mediterranean to Constantinople in the following year. Ports such as Carthage, Rome, and Marseilles were affected in 543. Further outbreaks followed; historians have counted at least ﬁfteen different outbreaks between 541 and 767, when the plague ﬁnally came to an end. In the absence of accurate population statistics, historians have to estimate the deaths resulting from the plague. The deaths in the large cities were massive: some 230,000 out of 375,000 died in Constantinople alone.2 High estimates put the death toll from the plague at one-quarter of the empire’s population during Justinian’s reign: of 26 million subjects, only 19 million survived. Before the plague the Roman Empire had been an urban society where powerful people met at the marketplace each day to discuss their affairs, enjoying theater and circus performances alongside their poorer neighbors. By 600 such an urban type of life had become a memory. Constantinople may have begun as the emperor’s glorious second capital, but the deaths resulting from the Justinian plague severely damaged the empire’s economy. Starting in 541 and continuing to sometime in the ninth century, the population declined, cities shrank, the economy contracted, and tax revenues plummeted. In these centuries of declining tax revenues, the government minted far fewer coins than earlier, and a barter economy replaced the partially monetized economy. Craftsmen and merchants gave up their occupations to become farmers. Another consequence of these catastrophes was that the government could no longer afford to pay its soldiers. Instead, militias were formed by part-time soldiers who farmed the land during peacetime. When Islamic forces began to expand around 640 (see Chapter 9), the Sasani and Byzantine Empires had just ﬁnished an exhausting war, and the Byzantine Empire ceded to the victorious Islamic forces large chunks of territory in Armenia and Africa. In contrast to the multiple ofﬁcials of Roman times, the basic administrative unit of the Byzantine Empire during the seventh and eighth centuries was the theme (Greek plural form: themata) headed by a single governor rather than the multiple ofﬁcials of Roman times. This governor heard legal disputes, collected taxes, and commanded the local militia. Society had also changed from Roman times. The high and low in rank led almost identical lives, and people no longer used a clan name and a personal name; a simple Christian name (ﬁrst name) sufﬁced. Fewer

• plague

Refers to two distinct illnesses, bubonic plague and the almost always fatal pneumonic plague, forming two phases of an outbreak. The plague struck Byzantium more than ﬁfteen times between 541 and 767.

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people knew Latin. Some people possessed more land than others, but they now worked the land alongside their poorer dependents. Slavery declined as well because no one could afford to feed slaves. Most of the people in the countryside were legally independent peasants who farmed the land intensively, often with two oxen and a plow, and grew only enough food to feed their own families. The ﬁnal outbreak of plague hit Constantinople in 747 and ended in 767. In the following years a slow revival began. The government minted more small coins, and trade and commerce increased slightly. The writing of manuThe Striking Dome of Hagia Sophia Built in a mere ﬁve scripts resumed, especially in monasteries, years, the dome of the Hagia Sophia cathedral in Constantinople where scribes devised a new, smaller mi(modern Istanbul, Turkey) is more than 100 feet (30 m) in nuscule script that allowed them to write diameter and over 180 feet (55 m) tall. Forty windows at the more words on a piece of parchment, the bottom of the dome give the impression that it ﬂoated in the most common writing material. (Parchair, and later observers believed that such a beautiful dome ment was made by scraping the hair from could only have been made with divine help. (Color lithograph from the original drawing by Chevalier Caspar Fussati/© Historical Picture the skin of sheep, goats, or calves and Archive/Corbis) then stretching and cleaning it.) Literacy was mainly concentrated among monks and nuns. Although monasteries had little land and not much wealth, like the monasteries of Egypt (see Chapter 7), they offered an appealing alternative to family life.

Religion and State, 767–1071

The Byzantine emperor ruled the empire, while the patriarch of Constantinople presided over the church, which held property throughout the empire. While the Christian emperors sometimes tried to impose their own views on the church, they also served as patrons. For example, the emperor Justinian ﬁnanced the rebuilding of the most beautiful cathedral in Constantinople, the Hagia Sophia (hah-GHEE-ah so-FEE-ah), whose literal meaning “Divine Wisdom” refers to an attribute of Jesus. Byzantine opinion during the eighth century was sharply divided over the use of images in Christian worship. The iconoclasts, literally “image-breakers,” advocated the removal of all images of Jesus, Mary, and any saints yet permitted prayers directed to crosses. Like the Umayyads, who also banned images (see Chapter 9), the iconoclasts justiﬁed their position by citing the Second Commandment of the Hebrew Bible forbidding the worship of graven

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images. The iconoclast movement appalled many Christians in western Europe, however, who frequently prayed to the statues of saints. When one emperor ordered the removal of a statue of Jesus from the main entrance to his palace, an angry crowd of women killed the man who took the image down. In 780, the widow of the emperor Leo IV came to power when in her mid20s and served as regent for her 9-yearold son. Few expected Irene to rule for long, but she surprised her opponents by tackling some of the major issues facing the empire. Whenever Byzantine rulers wanted to resolve a controversy within the church, they summoned a church council that included the patriarch (the top-ranking cleric in Constantinople) and bishops from all over the Christian world. Irene summoned such a council in the hope of working out a compromise to end the iconoclast controversy. In 787, the Second Council of Nicaea met and condemned iconoclasm. Those at the meeting cited passages from the Bible approving the veneration of images, and they permitted all previous iconoclasts to repudiate their earlier positions against icons. Images that had been removed from different churches were returned. During her reign, Irene tried, not The Sin of Iconoclasm The ninth-century Byzantine artist who always successfully, to negotiate for- painted this miniature equated the application of whitewash to a eign relations with the Abbasid cal- round icon of Jesus (lower center) with the Roman centurions giving iphate and the Franks, the powerful vinegar to the dying Jesus on the cross at Jerusalem (upper right). Germanic group that controlled most The text in the upper left hand is written in minuscule script, ﬁrst of modern France (see next page). By developed in the eighth century, that allowed scribes to squeeze agreeing to make various large pay- more words onto each page of costly parchment. (State Historical ments of both books and money, she Museum, Moscow. Photo courtesy the Weitzmann Collection, Department of Art and managed to keep the Abbasid armies Archaeology, Princeton University) under the leadership of Harun al-Rashid from taking the city of Constantinople (see Chapter 9), but she could not prevent the powerful Islamic army from making incursions into the empire’s shrunken territory. Irene and her son did not share power easily. First he tried to seize power from her, then they ruled together, and then, in 797, she tried to overthrow him. Her allies blinded her son, possibly without her knowledge, and he died soon after. Irene then became the ﬁrst woman to rule the Byzantine Empire in her own right and called herself emperor (not empress).

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A great blow to the Byzantines came from Rome in 800 when the pope crowned the ruler of the Franks, Charlemagne, emperor of Rome (see page 281). The pope used the pretext that Irene could not be emperor because she was female. The Byzantines were horriﬁed. They thought of Charlemagne as the unlettered leader of primitive peoples, not as a monarch comparable to their own. The pope’s crowning of Charlemagne was signiﬁcant because it marked the rise of a new state outside the Byzantine Empire that claimed to be the legitimate heir to the Roman Empire. In 802, the empress’s courtiers deposed the elderly Irene and installed a general as her successor. The empire that Irene relinquished was less than a third the size it had been in the mid-sixth century. Justinian had ruled over an empire that controlled the eastern half of the Mediterranean, but Islamic forces had conquered large blocks of territory throughout the seventh century. By 800, the Byzantine Empire, consisting largely of the region of Anatolia, could easily ﬁt inside the modern borders of Turkey, and its population was only seven million. In the centuries after 800 Byzantium, though small, continued to be an important intellectual center where scholars studied, copied, and preserved Greek texts from the past, analyzed Roman law, and studied Christian doctrine. Between 800 and 1000, Byzantine rulers sometimes won military victories to the east in modernday Bulgaria or farther west in Anatolia, but in 1071 they suffered a massive defeat at the battle of Manzikert (modern-day Malazgirt, Turkey) at the hands of the Seljuq Turks, who captured the emperor himself. A new emperor took power in Constantinople. After 1071, the Byzantine emperors continued to rule from their capital at Constantinople, but with a much-weakened army over much less territory.

The Germanic Peoples of Western Europe, 481–1000

fter the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Byzantines often referred to the peoples living in the north of Europe as barbarians, a Greek word meaning “uncivilized.” The largest group were the Franks in modern-day France and Germany. Although uncivilized in Byzantine eyes, they commanded powerful armies who defeated the Byzantine armies in battle. The Franks were ruled ﬁrst by the kings of the Merovingian dynasty (481–751) and then by the Carolingians (751– ca. 1000). And in 800, as we have seen above, the pope crowned the king of the Franks, Charlemagne, the emperor of Rome. Unlike the Byzantine emperors, who governed an empire divided into regular administrative districts called themata, the Merovingian and Carolingian monarchs ruled as the leaders of war-bands, the most important unit of Germanic society.

Germanic Society Before 500

Many different peoples lived in the regions of northern and central Europe and crowded the borders of the Western Roman Empire before it fell in 476. They spoke a group of related languages now classed as Germanic, about which little is known because none was written down. Even so, analysts have been able to sketch some broad similarities among Germanic peoples, usually on the basis of archaeological evidence.

The Germanic Peoples of Western Europe, 481–1000

The basic unit of Germanic society was the extended family, which was headed by the father, who might have more than one wife, as well as children and slaves. Since cattle herding was the basis of the economy, the more cattle an individual had, the higher his rank. Freemen looked down on slaves, who were usually war captives. Beyond the immediate family were larger kinship groups consisting of several households bound by family ties on both the male and female sides. These groups feuded often and developed a complex set of rules for determining the correct handling of disputes. The best source for understanding the practices of the Germanic peoples is the Salic Law, a list of punishments for different crimes recorded early in the sixth century. Although written in Latin, the Salic Law shows little Roman inﬂuence. One of the most important Germanic legal concepts was that of wergeld (literally “man-payment”), which set the monetary value of a human life. Wergeld (WEAR-geld) payments served to prevent an endless cycle of killing and counterkilling among feuding families. Different wergeld penalties were speciﬁed for men and women, both free and unfree. For example, the section of the Salic Law “On Killing Pregnant Women” says the following: 1. He who kills a pregnant woman shall be liable to pay twenty-four thousand denarii [six hundred solidi, or 6 pounds, or 2.73 kg, of gold]. And if it is proved that the fetus was a boy, he shall also be liable to pay six hundred solidi for the child.

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• wergeld

Literally “man-payment,” an important Germanic legal concept that set the monetary value of a human life. The function of wergeld payments was to prevent an endless cycle of killing and counterkilling among feuding families.

2. He who kills a girl less than twelve years old or up to the end of her twelfth year shall be liable to pay two hundred solidi [2 pounds, or .9 kg, of gold]. 3. He who kills a woman of mature age up to her sixtieth year, as long as she is able to bear children, shall be liable to pay twenty-four thousand denarii [six hundred solidi, or 6 pounds, or 2.73 kg, of gold]. 4. But if she is killed afterwards when she is no longer able to bear children he shall be liable to pay two hundred solidi [2 pounds, or .9 kg, of gold].3

Penalties were levied in either silver denarius coins or gold solidus coins and varied depending on whether a woman had reached or passed child-bearing age, and if pregnant, whether she was carrying a male or female child. These payments were the sole form of punishment: no one was imprisoned or banished. In times of war, groups of warriors called war-bands gathered behind a leader, whose main claim to their allegiance was the distribution of plunder. A successful leader took his men into battle and rewarded them liberally with the spoils of victory. He not only fed and clothed them but also provided them with horses, armor, and a place to live. His supporters, in turn, fought next to him in battles and banqueted with him when at peace. Germanic society was extremely ﬂuid, because war-bands could form rapidly and collapse equally quickly. Members of a war-band distinguished themselves from others by wearing a certain kind of clothing, having similar hairstyles, or carrying similar weapons. They often believed that they and the other members of the warband had a common ancestor, sometimes a god, from whom they all claimed descent. According to Germanic custom, freemen were obliged to ﬁght in wars while slaves were not. The freemen in these bands often gathered in assemblies, called Thing (TING), to settle internal disputes or to plan military campaigns.

• war-band

The most important social unit of Germanic society. In times of war, warriors formed bands behind a leader, who provided them with horses, armor, and a place to live. Successful leaders rewarded their men with the spoils of victory to claim their allegiance.

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The Merovingians, 481–751 • Merovingian dynasty A Germanic dynasty (481–751) in modern-day France and Germany whose founder Clovis (r. 481–511) converted to Christianity and ruled as a war-band leader.

The most important leader to emerge from the constantly evolving alliances of Frankish society was Clovis (r. 481– 511), who established the Merovingian dynasty that ruled modern-day France and Germany from 481 to 751. He combined great military successes, such as defeating the Visigoths of Spain, with skillful marriage alliances to build a dynasty that lasted two centuries, far longer than any earlier Germanic dynasty. The Merovingian army consisted of different war-bands linked by their loyalty to Clovis. One incident, recounted by the chronicler Gregory of Tours (538/39–594?), vividly illustrates the ties between Clovis and his followers. In 486, Clovis and his men removed many items from the treasuries of several churches, including a “vase of marvelous size and beauty” from Soissons. The bishop of the robbed church requested the vase’s return. After Clovis and his followers had divided the goods they had stolen, Clovis addressed his men: “I ask you, O most valiant warriors, not to refuse to me the vase in addition to my rightful part.” Most of his men agreed to do so, but one man crushed the vase with his battle-ax because he felt that Clovis, although their leader, was not entitled to more than his fair share. The humiliated Clovis returned the pieces of the broken vase to the bishop. One year later, Clovis summoned his troops for a review so that he could inspect their spears, swords, and axes, the iron weapons that helped to make his armies invincible. When he reached the man who had destroyed the vase, he threw the soldier’s ax to the ground. As the soldier bent down to pick it up, Clovis grabbed his head and smashed it down on the weapon. “Thus,” he said, “didst thou to the vase at Soissons.”4 This incident shows that, though called a king, Clovis was a war-band leader who ruled his men only as long as he commanded their respect, and he had to use brute strength coupled with rewards to do so. One sign of the Merovingian king’s power was his hair, which only he was allowed to grow long. If someone challenged the ruler’s hold on power and defeated the leader, he was forced to shave off his hair — a visible reminder that he was no longer ﬁt to rule — and the challenger took over. The Franks, a tiny minority of perhaps 200,000 people, lived among 7 million Gallo-Romans in modern-day France and Germany.5 Like many of his subjects, Clovis worshiped both Roman and Germanic deities. However, as Gregory of Tours reports, Clovis converted to Christianity a few years before his death in 511, thus eliminating the largest cultural barrier between the Germanic peoples and the Gallo-Romans they governed. Like the Roman emperor Constantine (see Chapter 7), Clovis promised to convert if Jesus Christ brought him victory in battle; when his enemy surrendered, he was baptized, along with three thousand of his men. This battle may have occurred in 496, 498, or 506. So few records about the early Merovingians survive that even the basic chronology of Clovis’s reign is unknown. When Clovis died in 511, he divided his realm among his four sons, according to Germanic custom, and they and their descendents continued to rule until the mid-eighth century. Under the Romans, large landowners had lived with their slaves in widely dispersed estates. Under the Merovingians, the basic farming unit changed to the Germanic village. The many wars with Rome during the fourth and ﬁfth centuries forced Roman villa owners to leave their homes and move near streams or forests, where they lived with others in small settlements and reclaimed small plots from Roman agricultural land that had been allowed to go wild. They engaged in slashand-burn agriculture and changed plots whenever a ﬁeld’s productivity gave out.

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Ordinary people consumed a diet composed largely of hunted animals, ﬁsh caught in rivers, or plants foraged from the forest. At the beginning of the Merovingian dynasty, many urban residents had embraced Christianity, while most of those living in the countryside continued to Primary Source: pray to shrines housing Germanic or Roman gods. In the fourth and ﬁfth centu- The Rule of Saint Benedict: ries, early Christians had experimented with extreme forms of asceticism and dif- Work and Pray ferent types of religious communities. Monasteries—small communities under the In this selection from his rules supervision of the local bishop—gradually spread to western Europe from the east- for monastic life, Benedict urged monks to avoid idleness ern Mediterranean. Many were modeled on a monastery founded in 529 near by devoting themselves to Rome by Benedict of Nursia (ca. 480–545), who composed a concise set of practical physical labor, prayer— rules for running a monastery. Benedictine monks devoted themselves full-time and reading! to manual labor and the worship of God, usually through public prayer conducted eight times each day. Unlike monks in more extreme monasteries, they ate an adequate diet and received enough sleep. The adult members of the community selected their Lindisfarne Gospel In 793, the Vikings raided the leader, or abbot, who was to obey the local bishop. island of Lindisfarne, an important center of Christian Around 590 an Irish monk named Saint Colearning famed for its illuminated manuscripts. Here, the lumbanus (543–615) arrived in the Merovingian artist monk portrays Matthew using a stylus to write the kingdom and founded many monasteries that enﬁrst page of the gospel named for books. The artist ﬁrst couraged monks to be even more devout and dismade a sketch on the reverse side of an individual sheet ciplined. Columbanus (COH-luhm-bahn-us) taught of parchment, turned it over, and shone a candle through that laypeople could contribute land and money the animal skin so that they could see the outline, which to monasteries, read religious texts (or have them they then ﬁlled in with paint. (British Library, London/HIP/Art read aloud), and recite Psalms from the Hebrew Resource, NY) Bible. Irish monks copied, and so preserved, many manuscripts that would have otherwise been lost. Bishops were among the few educated men in Merovingian society. Bishops tended to have varied backgrounds. While some had served as priests, others had worked for the king; still others had been monks or abbots in monasteries, and some had no ties to the church except that they belonged to an important lay family, often one that controlled a fair amount of land. Many learned to read and write by studying with other bishops or in monasteries. Most Merovingian bishops had married before assuming ofﬁce. After they became bishops, their wives continued to assist them with their duties, but the popes in Rome frequently urged them to treat their wives as their sisters and stop sleeping with them. In some cases bishops slept surrounded by their male assistants so that everyone could see that they maintained their vows of celibacy.6 The head cleric of the Western church, the pope, was elected by the clergy in Rome. Before the rise of Islam, Rome and the Christian church had been securely under the control of the Byzantines, who controlled Italy. As Byzantine power declined, and after 568, when the Byzantines lost control of northern and central Italy to a Germanic people

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The Carolingians Charles Martel Mayor of Austrasia and Neustria (r. 714–741) Pippin III King of the Franks (r. 751–768) Charlemagne King of the Franks (r. 768–814) Emperor (r. 800–814) Louis the Pious Emperor (r. 814–840) Lothar I Emperor (r. 840–855)

Louis II Emperor (r. 855–875)

Louis the German King of East Franks (r. 845–876)

Charles II (the Bald) King of West Franks (r. 843–877) Emperor (r. 875–877)

Carloman Charles III (the Fat) King of Bavaria (d. 880) Emperor (r. 881–887)

Louis II King of West Franks (r. 877–879)

Arnulf Emperor (r. 887–899) Louis IV (the Child) King of East Franks (r. 899–911) Kings of East Franks (Germany)

Kings of West Franks (France)

called the Lombards, the popes needed military protection because they had no armies of their own. Moreover, the Lombards were Arians, and the popes did not accept Arius’s teachings that God the Father was superior to Jesus and the Holy Ghost (see Chapter 7). The pope eventually turned to the Carolingians, an important family living in the Merovingian realm, for help.

• Carolingian dynasty (751–ca. 1000) An important aristocratic family who overthrew the Merovingian rulers in 751. Their most powerful ruler was Charlemagne. After his death, the empire split into three sections, each under a different Carolingian ruler.

Charlemagne and the Carolingians, 751–ca. 1000

In 751, the Carolingian dynasty, an important aristocratic family living in the eastern part of the Merovingian realm, overthrew the Merovingian rulers. (See the chart “The Carolingians.”) The most powerful Carolingian ruler was Charles “the Great” (“le Magne” in old French), or Charlemagne (SHAHR-lehmaine). The events of his reign (768–814) demonstrated that the Carolingian realm (the region of modern-day France and Germany) exceeded Byzantium in importance. By 800, Europe had two powerful centers: Byzantium, which had inherited the legacy of Rome, and the new kingdom of the Franks. Since the pope needed protection against the Lombards, he looked north to the Franks, and in 753 he formed an alliance with the Carolingians against the

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MAP 10.2 The Carolingian Realms After coming to power in 768, Charlemagne continuously expanded the area under Carolingian rule. The uniﬁed empire did not last long. In 843, his grandsons divided his realm into three separate regions. The West Frankish kingdom eventually became modern-day France, while the East Frankish kingdom developed into modern Germany. The two states regularly vied for control of the territory between them.

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Venice Pavia ISTRIA Lombards. The geographical Roncesvalles Aniane Genoa LOMBARDY origins of the popes changed SPANISH Marseilles Lérins PAPAL Ravenna M C ALI P HATE OF MARCH 811 AT STATES almost immediately. Of the IA CÓR DOBA Barcelona DUCHY OF Spoleto SPOLETO Corsica Toledo seventeen popes in ofﬁce beRome tween 654 and 752, ﬁve came Monte Cassino DUCHY OF Córdoba BENEVENTO Sardinia from Byzantium and ﬁve from Naples Salerno Balearic Is. Rome. After 753, there was 40˚N Medite rran never again another Greeke a BY Z ANTI N E E M P I R E n speaking pope. Most were RoSe Sicily a 0 200 400 Km. man, and a few came from Frankish lands.7 0 400 Mi. 200 0˚ 10˚W 10˚E 20˚E Charlemagne became king TREATY OF VERDUN, 843 Carolingian Realm N of the Franks in 768 and 50˚ N Areas conquered by Charlemagne then launched a series of wars Tributary peoples Aachen EAST against the neighboring GerParis Verdun FRANKISH Byzantine territory KINGDOM manic peoples. The pope in Strasbourg Viking settlement Rome supported him against WEST Early Viking raids, trade, and FRANKISH colonization routes the Lombards, who controlled KINGDOM MIDDLE much of Italy, and CharKINGDOM PAPAL lemagne rapidly conquered STATES northern and central Italy, 40˚N Rome some parts of Spain, and much of Germany (see Map 10.2). In 800, during Irene’s reign as 0 200 400 Km. Byzantine emperor (see page 275), the pope crowned Char0 400 Mi. 200 lemagne emperor. By accepting this title, Charlemagne claimed that he, and not Irene, was the rightful successor of the emperors of Rome. Interactive Map Diverging from its roots in the war-band, Carolingian society was divided into two groups: the powerful (potentes) and the powerless (paupers), literally the poor. The powerful owned their own land and could command others to obey them. Although some paupers owned land, they had no one to command. Among the powerless were slaves, a minority of the laborers in the countryside. TR

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During Charlemagne’s many conquests, his armies took vast numbers of prisoners from enemy forces; they sold these slaves to buyers, sometimes in distant lands. Writers in the eighth and ninth centuries used the word captive, not slave, for these prisoners of war. Charlemagne’s Christian advisers urged him to stop the sale of Christian slaves to non-Christians, but he continued to do so. One of Europe’s main exports to the Abbasids under Charlemagne and his successors was slaves (see Chapter 9). Despite his title of emperor, Charlemagne was still very much a Germanic warband leader. Although he had conquered more territory than any Germanic leader, he was much less educated than the Byzantine or Abbasid rulers of his day. His biographer, Einhard, reports that “he also attempted to learn how to write, and, for this reason, used to place wax-tablets and notebooks under the pillows on his bed, so that, if he had any free time, he might accustom his hand to forming letters. But his effort came too late in life and achieved little success.”8 Unable to write his name, Charlemagne liked having books read aloud to him. Nevertheless, Charlemagne founded an academy where the sons of the powerful could be educated. He and his successors also established schools, one at the imperial court, others in monasteries. As in the Byzantine Empire, a new minuscule script came into use that permitted more words to be written on a single page of parchment. (Carolingian minuscule is the basis of today’s lowercase Roman fonts.) During this revival of learning, monastic authors wrote Latin grammars, medical texts, and liturgies with detailed instruction for church ceremonies. When Charlemagne died in 814, he left his empire intact to his son Louis the Pious (r. 814–840), but when Louis died in 840, his feuding sons divided the kingdom into thirds. The West Frankish kingdom would eventually become modern France, and the East Frankish kingdom, modern Germany. The East and West kingdoms continuously fought over the territory of the former Middle kingdom, which today contains portions of France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. The Carolingians ruled until 911 in Germany and until 987 in the region of modern France, when they were succeeded by new dynasties. Historians often describe the Carolingians as more centralized than the Merovingians, but in fact the two Frankish dynasties were more alike than different. Both dynasties were led by rulers who rewarded their followers with gifts and whose main source of revenue was plunder. Throughout this period, literacy remained extremely restricted, with only a tiny number of ofﬁcials able to read and write. The rulers of both dynasties were Christian, but many of their subjects did not observe basic Christian teachings. By the tenth century, when Carolingian rule came to an end, the region of the Franks, sometimes called the Latin West, was no longer united. Its major sections— modern-day France and Germany—were beginning to become powerful centers in their own right. By 1000, Byzantium was no longer the only empire in Europe.

The Age of the Vikings, 793–1050

n 793, a group of Viking raiders came by boat and seized the valuables held in an island monastery off the English coast. The term Viking refers to those Scandinavians who left home to loot coastal towns. For the next three centuries the

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Vikings were the most successful plunderers in Europe, and no one could withstand their attacks. The peoples living in Scandinavia had many of the same Germanic customs as the Franks: their leaders commanded the loyalty of war-bands, plunder was their main source of income, and they gradually adopted Christianity and gave up their traditional Germanic gods. Some Scandinavian boatmen lived by stealing from coastal peoples, while others eventually settled in Iceland, Greenland, England, Scotland, Ireland, and Russia; ultimately, however, they decided not to stay on the Atlantic coast of Canada. Between 800 and 1000, several new states formed in Greenland, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, creating even more centers in Europe (see Map 10.3).

• Viking Term used for those Scandinavians who left home to loot coastal towns and who were most active between 793 and 1066.

MAP 10.3 The Viking Raids, 793–1066 From their homeland in Scandinavia, the Vikings launched their ﬁrst raid on Lindisfarne on the North Sea in 793 and moved on to attack Iceland, Greenland, France, Spain, and Russia for more than two hundred years. They often settled in the lands they raided. In around 1000, they even reached North America.

Interactive Map

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Viking Raids on Great Britain, 793–1066

• longboat Boat used by the Vikings to make raids, made of wood held together by iron rivets and washers. Equipped with both oars and sails, they were the fastest mode of transport before 1000.

The Viking homeland was north of Charlemagne’s realm in Scandinavia, a region consisting of modernday Norway, Sweden, and Denmark (see the map on page 269), where the languages spoken were Germanic. The region had a cold climate with a short growing season, and many of its residents hunted walrus and whale for their meat or maintained herds on farms. Since the Scandinavians conducted their raids by sea, the greatest difference between the Viking and the Frankish war-bands was the longboat, a large wooden boat held together by iron rivets and washers. The combination of oars and sails made these boats the fastest mode of transport in the world before 1000. Like the ancient Polynesians (see Chapter 5), the Scandinavian navigators recognized the shapes of different landmasses, sometimes sighting them from mountaintops. No evidence of Scandinavian navigational instruments survives. Their ﬁrst targets were the monasteries of the British Isles in England, Ireland, and Scotland, which lay closest to the southwestern coast of Norway. Before 500, Britain was home to a group of indigenous peoples whom the Romans had encountered, but after 500 these groups were absorbed by the AngloSaxons, a general term for the many Germanic groups who migrated to Britain from present-day Denmark and northern Germany. Anglo-Saxon society retained the basic characteristics of Germanic society on the continent: a sharp distinction between free and unfree, with a legal system emphasizing the concept of wergeld. (See the feature “World History in Today’s World: The Days of the Week.”) The Anglo-Saxons converted to Christianity during the sixth and seventh centuries. Bede (ca. 672–735) became their most famous Christian thinker. He also

The Longboats of the Scandinavians Sewn between 1066 and 1082, the Bayeux tapestry (held in northern France) is an embroidered piece of linen that stretches 231 feet (70 m). This detail shows the longboats in full sail. The boats are moving so quickly that the men seated in the ﬁrst and third boats do not need to row. Notice that the middle and last boats are large enough to transport horses. (© Michael Holford)

WORLD HISTORY in TODAY’S WORLD

The Days of the Week

here do Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday come from? Each of these names combines the name of a Scandinavian god with the sufﬁx -day. Thursday, or Thor’s day, is named for the vigorous god who ruled the sky and controlled thunder, wind, rain, and the harvest. Germanic peoples prayed to him to prevent famine and disease. Friday is named for Frey, the powerful god of fertility, who was honored at weddings. Odin, the powerful god of war, was thought to have created the ﬁrst man and the ﬁrst woman. His name is also spelled Wodin, the root of the modern Wednesday. Odin’s son Tiu gave his name to Tuesday.

What about Sunday, Monday, and Saturday? They date back to 321 C.E., when the Romans adopted the seven-day week; Emperor Constantine named the days for different astronomical bodies: the sun, the moon, and the planet Saturn. The English names for the days of the week, which combine both the Scandinavian and Roman names, date to the ﬁfth and sixth centuries C.E., when the Anglo-Saxons migrated to England from Germany.

Source: www.indepthinfo.com/weekdays/index.shtml.

wrote a history of the Anglo-Saxons that dated events before and after Christ’s birth, the same system used in most of the world today. Monasteries made an appealing target for Viking raiders because they contained much detailed metalwork, whether reliquaries that held fragments of saints’ bones or bejeweled gold and silver covers for illustrated manuscripts. The raiders also captured many slaves, keeping some for use in Scandinavia and selling others to the Byzantine and Abbasid Empires. In 866, a large Viking army arrived in England, just north of London, and established a long-term base camp. This was the ﬁrst Scandinavian settlement in England. Between 866 and 954, the Scandinavians retained tenuous control of much of northern and eastern England, a region called the Danelaw. The residents paid an annual indemnity to their conquerors, and the Scandinavians settled throughout the Danelaw, Ireland, and Scotland. Alfred I (r. 871–899), who called himself “king of the Anglo-Saxons,” managed to survive in the face of Viking attacks. After his death, various English, Anglo-Saxon, and Scandinavian leaders vied with each other for control of England, but no one succeeded for very long. In the tenth century, some Scandinavians settled in Normandy (“Northman’s land”) in northern France. From this base William the Conqueror launched an invasion of England in 1066, and his descendants ruled England for more than a hundred years.

• Danelaw Region including much of northern and eastern England, over which the Scandinavians maintained tenuous control between 866 and 954. The conquered residents paid an annual indemnity to the Scandinavians.

Scandinavian Society

Since the Scandinavians left only brief written texts on runestones, historians must draw on archaeological evidence and orally transmitted epics. Composed in Old Norse, a Germanic language, these epics were written down between 1200 and 1400. Two fascinating works, entitled Erik the Red’s Saga and The Greenlanders’ Saga, recount events around the year 1000. Together they are called The Vinland Sagas, since the Scandinavians called the Americas Vinland, meaning either grape land or fertile land. Like all oral sources, they must be used cautiously; both epics glorify certain ancestors while denigrating others, and both exaggerate the extent of Christian belief while minimizing the extent of non-Christian practices.

• The Vinland Sagas Term for Erik the Red’s Saga and The Greenlanders’ Saga, two sagas composed in Old Norse that recount events around the year 1000. Both were written between 1200 and 1400.

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The peoples of Scandinavia lived in communities of small farms in large, extended families of parents, children, grandchildren, unmarried siblings, and their servants. Women had considerable authority in Scandinavian society. They had property rights equal to those of their husbands and could institute divorce proceedings. Leif Eriksson’s sister-in-law Gudrid plays such a major role in Erik the Red’s Saga that some have suggested that it should have been named for her, and not for Leif’s father Erik. She married three times, once to Leif Eriksson’s brother, was widowed twice, and possibly went to Rome on a pilgrimage at the end of her life. In the saga, whereas Gudrid is virtuous, Leif’s illegitimate sister Freydis (FRY-duhs) is a murderer who will stop at nothing to get her way. Both women, however onedimensional, are intelligent, strong leaders. Like the Germanic peoples living on the European continent, the Scandinavians formed war-bands around leaders. Leaders recruited their retinues with gifts, and their followers accompanied them into battle and fought vigorously for shares of the plunder they took from the defeated. In the years before 1000, new trade routes appeared linking Scandinavia with the Abbasid Empire. Muslims bought slaves and furs from Scandinavians with silver dirham coins, over 130,000 of which have been found around the Baltic Sea. At this time Scandinavian society produced a leader who played a comparable role to King Clovis of the Merovingians: Harald Bluetooth, who ruled the region of modern Denmark between approximately 940 and 985. After unifying Denmark, he conquered southern Norway. In 965 he became the ﬁrst Scandinavian ruler to convert to Christianity, and the rulers of Norway and Sweden did so around 1030.

Scandinavian Religion

Women played an especially active role in pre-Christian religion because some served as seers who could predict the future. Once when famine hit a Greenland community, Erik the Red’s Saga relates, a wealthy landowner hosted a feast to which he invited a prophetess. The next day she asked the women of the community who among them knew “the spells needed for performing the witchcraft, known as Warlock songs.” Gudrid reluctantly volunteered and “sang the songs so well and beautifully that those present were sure they had never heard lovelier singing.” When she ﬁnished, the seer explained that the famine would end soon, since “many spirits are now present which were charmed to hear the singing.”9 The Scandinavians worshiped many gods. One traveler described a pre-Christian temple in Sweden that held three images. In the center was Thor, the most powerful deity who controlled the harvest. On either side of him stood the war-god Odin and the fertility goddess, Frey. Scandinavian burials often contain small metal items associated with Thor, such as hammers. Burial customs varied. In some areas burials contained many grave goods, including full-size boats ﬁlled with clothing and tools, while in other areas the living cremated the dead and burned all their grave goods. (See the feature “Movement of Ideas: Ibn Fadlan’s Description of a Rus Burial” on page 294.) When people converted to Christianity, they were not supposed to bury grave goods because Christians believed that the dead could not bring these goods to the afterlife, but many who still believed in the gods were reluctant to follow this prohibition for fear that the dead might starve or freeze as a result. In one gruesome anecdote from The Vinland Sagas, the ghost of a dead man comes to Gudrid and instructs her to give the dead

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a Christian burial in consecrated ground near a church but to burn the body of a bad man, presumably to stop him from haunting the living. The tale captures the dilemma of those deciding between Christian and pre-Christian burial.

The Scandinavian Migrations to Iceland and Greenland, 870–980

As in Merovingian and Carolingian society, slaves and former slaves ranked at the bottom of society. When a former slave proposes to Gudrid, her father is furious: “I never expected to hear such a suggestion from you— that I should marry my daughter to the son of a slave! My lack of money must be very obvious to you!” The proposal prompts him to give up his farm and leave for Greenland, where he hopes to ﬁnd more fertile land. This was the impetus for migration: everyone hoped to get more fertile land than was available in Scandinavia, which was becoming increasingly crowded. In the ﬁrst wave, between 870 and 930, Scandinavians went to Iceland. In 930 they established an assembly, called the Thing, that resembled the assemblies of other Germanic peoples to their south. The Thing had the power to pass laws and to hear disputes. Some have called Iceland’s Thing the world’s ﬁrst legislature, but wealthy landowners had a greater say than the poor. The Vinland Sagas describe events occurring in Iceland sometime around 980, when Erik the Red and his father had already left Norway “because of some killings.” They were forced to give up their home, where Leif was born, after Erik killed two neighbors. When they became involved in a second dispute, the Thing assembly exiled Erik for being a thief. Erik then told a group of followers that he was going to look for an island that he had heard about. He sailed west 200 miles (320 km) to Greenland, which he so named because he hoped to entice more people to settle there. After his term of exile ended, he returned to Iceland, which was becoming increasingly crowded with a population of thirty thousand, and recruited Scandinavians to go with him. In 985 or 986, Erik led a ﬂeet of twenty-ﬁve boats on a migration to Greenland; fourteen reached Greenland, and the others either turned back to Iceland or perished. These stories roughly describe how migrations occurred. Scandinavian explorations generally began with a ship being blown off course. Those navigators who successfully steered their way home described what they had seen. Then someone, such as Erik the Red, sailed in search of the new place. Finally, a small expedition of ships led a group of settlers to the new lands. The Scandinavians established two settlements on Greenland, the Eastern and Western Settlements. At that time Greenland was slightly warmer than it is now. The settlers lived much as they had on Iceland, grazing animals on the narrow coast between the ocean and the interior ice, ﬁshing for walrus, whales, and seals, and hunting polar bears and reindeer. They had to trade furs and walrus tusks to obtain the grain, wood, and iron they needed to survive. The Greenlanders established their own Thing assembly, which voted to adopt Christianity soon after the Icelandic Thing voted to do so in 1000.

The Scandinavians in Vinland, ca. 1000

Around 1000, Leif Eriksson, the son of Erik the Red, decided to lead an exploratory voyage because he had heard from a man named Bjarni Herjolfsson (bee-YARNee hair-YOLF-son) of lands lying to the west of Greenland. It is possible that others had preceded Bjarni to the Americas, but The Vinland Sagas do not give their

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THE SCANDINAVIAN SETTLEMENT AT L’ANSE AUX MEADOWS

n 1960, a Norwegian diplomat-turned-explorer, Helge Ingstad, and his archaeologist wife, Anne Stine Ingstad, explored the Canadian coastline hoping to ﬁnd a place where, as The Vinland Sagas said, “the country was ﬂat and wooded, with white sandy beaches wherever they went; and the land sloped gently down to the sea.”* This description ﬁt an inlet near the town of L’Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland, and here Helge and Anne Ingstad found a small settlement. Pollen analysis revealed that the climate in about 1000 was similar to today’s and could have easily supported a settlement. Lumber, whether live trees or driftwood, was abundant. It was so cold that in most years the ice did not melt until June or July, an impossible climate for wild grapes. Still, the growing season was long enough for cloudberries, raspberries, blueberries, and red and black currants to thrive. Caribou, wolves, and foxes lived on the land, while walruses, whales, and seals ﬂourished in the bay. Originally, the Ingstads were not certain whether local Amerindians or Scandinavians had lived at the site. The small settlement contained eight houses that dated to between 980 and 1020, precisely at the time of the Scandinavian exploration of Vinland. Many ﬁnds indicated that it was a Scandinavian settlement. *Magnus Magnusson, ed., The Vinland Sagas (New York: Penguin Books, 1965), p. 55.

Identical in structure to Icelandic buildings of the same period, the houses had walls and roofs made of sod that rested on wooden supports. Three were quite large halls for perhaps ﬁfty people measuring 65 feet (20 m) long, with ﬁve smaller structures nearby. They formed three clusters of houses, each with a main dwelling for the group’s leader and smaller, outlying houses for his dependents and slaves. Archaeologists found no large objects, an indication that the residents of the site systematically packed their possessions and left for home. The most revealing artifact was a small ringed pin, identical in design to thirteen others found on Iceland. Many small artifacts indicate the kinds of tasks done on site. Needles and spindle whorls point to textile manufacture and mending, which, according to the sagas, were traditional women’s work. The residents also collected iron ore, which forms naturally in bogs containing iron and manganese, and melted it in a furnace to obtain metal, which they hammered into nails for their boats. The place where the Scandinavians worked iron (the smith) contained an anvil and a big stone for hammering iron, iron fragments, and lumps of iron found in local bogs. The presence of a single locally produced iron nail makes this the earliest site of ironworking in the Americas (since none of the indigenous peoples living in the Americas could work iron). Butternuts, a kind of a walnut, were found at the site but do not grow that far north. Archaeologists reason that the Scandinavians probably traveled

Questions for Analysis What ﬁnds from the site of L’Anse aux Meadows indicated that it was a Scandinavian settlement and not an Amerindian site? What activities did men and women do separately in the different rooms of Hall F, and which together? How did archaeologists use information from The Vinland Sagas to analyze the site?

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south to collect them and possibly the grapes mentioned so often in the sagas. The site may have been a base camp for launching different expeditions to southern regions. Some analysts believe that l’Anse aux Meadows was the main settlement of the Scandinavians where

Archaeologists injected a chemical preservative to harden the original walls, which were 5 feet (1.5 m) thick.

Leif Eriksson landed. The site was not occupied for long because little garbage was found, and no one was buried there. Even if it was not actually Leif’s settlement, it is undeniable that the Scandinavians lived at l’Anse aux Meadows, however brieﬂy, before deciding to return home.

The bay, which opens onto the Atlantic Ocean, remains icy until June and freezes again in November or December.

This picture shows Hall F, the great hall, 65 feet (20 m) long and 16 feet (5 m) wide, that occupied the center of the structure.

(Parks Canada National Photo Collection)

Here, archaeologists found a sandstone whetstone for sharpening needles and scissors as well as the ﬂywheel of a handheld spindle, both signs of a women’s sewing area.

Archaeologists found iron rivets in this ironsmelting workshop. This hearth produced a small soapstone lamp of Icelandic design.

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• Bjarni Herjolfsson The ﬁrst European, according to The Vinland Sagas, to sail to the Americas, most likely sometime in the 990s.

• Skraelings Term in The Vinland Sagas for the Amerindians living on the coast of Canada and possibly northern Maine, where the Scandinavians established temporary settlements.

The Multiple Centers of Europe, 500–1000

names, so we should probably credit Bjarni Herjolfsson—and not Christopher Columbus—with being the ﬁrst European to sail to the Americas. First Leif and then Thorﬁnn Karlsefni made several voyages to the Americas, landing in modernday L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, Canada, and possibly farther south in Maine. The Scandinavians landed in North America after the end of the Maya classic era and before the great Mississippian cities of the Midwest were built (see Chapter 5). (See the feature “Visual Evidence: The Scandinavian Settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows.”) Leif’s brother-in-law, Thorﬁnn Karlsefni (see the beginning of the chapter), decided to lead a group of sixty men and ﬁve women to settle in Vinland, the Scandinavian name for their settlements in North America. Their ﬁrst year went well because they found much wild game. Then “they had their ﬁrst encounter with Skraelings” (literally “wretches”), the term that the Scandinavians used for indigenous peoples. At ﬁrst the Skraelings traded furs for cow’s milk or scraps of red cloth, because Karlsefni would not allow his men to trade their iron weapons. But relations soon deteriorated, and the Scandinavians and the Skraelings fought each other in several battles involving hand-to-hand combat. Erik the Red’s Saga reports that the Skraelings “were using catapults. Karlsefni and Snorri saw them hoist a large sphere on a pole; it was dark blue in color. It came ﬂying in over the heads of Karlsefni’s men and made an ugly din when it struck the ground.” The settlers in this story probably belonged to Karlsefni’s war-band. Many had kin ties to him, whether direct or through marriage, and they probably gave him a share of the lumber they shipped to Greenland, much as they would have given him a share of any loot they collected in battle. Whenever the Scandinavians went to a new place, they captured slaves, and North America was no exception. Karlsefni enslaved two Skraeling boys, who lived with the Scandinavians and later learned their language. The boys told them about their homeland: “there were no houses there and that people lived in caves or holes in the ground. They said that there was a country across from their own land where the people went about in white clothing and uttered loud cries and carried poles with pieces of cloth attached.” This intriguing report is one of the earliest we have about Amerindians. The Scandinavians had a technological advantage over the Amerindians because they could ﬁght using metal knives and daggers, which the indigenous peoples lacked because they did not know how to work iron. But while iron weapons gave the Scandinavians a slight advantage over a band of Amerindians equal in size to their own small population, they could never have prevailed against a much larger force. The sagas succinctly explain why the Scandinavians decided to leave the Americas: “Karlsefni and his men had realized by now that although the land was excellent they could never live there in safety or freedom from fear, because of the native inhabitants.” After a few years on the Canadian coast, the Scandinavians returned to Greenland, and in later centuries they sometimes returned to Canada to gather wood but never to settle. Sometime in the ﬁfteenth century they also abandoned their settlements on Greenland because a drop in global temperature made life there much more difﬁcult. The Scandinavian voyages are signiﬁcant because they were the ﬁrst Europeans to settle in the Americas. Their decision to leave resulted in no longterm consequences, a result utterly different from that of Columbus’s voyages in the 1490s (see Chapter 15).

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Russia, Land of the Rus, to 1054

ong before they set foot in Iceland, Greenland, or the Americas, around 800, early Scandinavians, mostly from Sweden, found that they could sail their longboats along the several major river courses, including the Volga and Dnieper Rivers, through the huge expanse of land lying to their east (see Map 10.4). The peoples living in this region called themselves and their polity Rus, the root of the word Russia. This region offered many riches, primarily furs and slaves, to the raiders. Local rulers sometimes allied with a neighboring empire, such as Byzantium or the Abbasids, to enhance their power. When forming such an alliance the rulers

• Rus

Name given to themselves by people who lived in the region stretching from the Arctic to the north shore of the Black Sea and from the Baltic Sea to the Caspian Sea.

MAP 10.4 Kievan Rus Before 970, the leaders of different war-bands controlled the region between the Baltic, Black, and Caspian Seas. In the 970s Prince Vladimir gained control of the trading post at Kiev and gradually expanded the territory under his rule to form the state of Kievan Rus. N

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had to choose among Judaism, Islam, or the Christianity of Rome or Constantinople, and the decisions they made had a lasting effect. The region of modern-day Russia also saw the rise of important centers before 1000, contributing to even more centers in Europe.

The Peoples Living in Modern-Day Russia

• Slavs

The people who, around 500, occupied much of the lower Danube River Valley near the Black Sea. They moved north and east for the next ﬁve hundred years and enlarged the area where their language, an ancestor of Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, and Czech, was spoken.

Stretching from the Arctic to the north shore of the Black Sea and from the Baltic Sea to the Caspian, the region of Russia (which was much larger than today’s modern nation) housed different ecosystems and different peoples deriving their living from the land. To the north, peoples exploited the treeless tundra and the taiga (subArctic coniferous forest) to ﬁsh and to hunt reindeer, bear, and walrus. On the steppe grasslands extending far to the west, nomadic peoples migrated with their herds in search of fertile pasture. In the forests, where most people lived, they raised herds and grew crops on small family farms. Too poor to dedicate much land to raising hay, they had no draft animals and could clear the land only with ﬁre and hand-tools. The lack of natural fertilizer from draft animals forced them to clear new lands every few years, with the result that their agriculture resembled slashand-burn cultivation. These cultivators and foragers never could have survived had they depended entirely on agriculture. The various peoples living in Russia spoke many different languages, none of which were written down. In 500, the Slavs occupied much of the territory in the lower Danube River Valley near the Black Sea. As they moved north and east for the next ﬁve hundred years, they enlarged the area in which their language, an ancestor of Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, and Czech, was spoken. All these peoples, whatever their ecological niche, lived on the edge of subsistence and were vulnerable to Scandinavian slave raiders. After 700, the Scandinavians established trade outposts on the southeast coast of the Baltic and on the Dnieper and Volga Rivers. By 800, they had learned how to navigate these rivers to reach the Black and Caspian Seas. The lack of written sources, whether by outsiders or Slavs, makes it difﬁcult to reconstruct the early history of the Rus. Scholars have intensely debated their identity, some arguing that they were entirely Scandinavian, and others, entirely Slav. Modern scholars tentatively agree that the Rus were a multiethnic group including Balts, Finns, and Slavs, with Scandinavians the most prominent among them. Of these groups, the Balts and the Finns stayed in the region of the Baltic and Finland, while the Slavs and the Scandinavians traveled throughout the region. Much of what we know about Russia before 900 comes from Byzantine accounts. The Byzantine Empire had the most sustained contact with the peoples who lived on the north shore of the Black Sea, particularly the Crimean peninsula. The Khazars, a formerly nomadic Turkic people, gained control of the southern part of Kievan Russia. In 900 their rulers converted to Judaism, a religion of the book that was neither the Christianity of their Byzantine enemies nor the Islam of their Abbasid rivals. The Khazar state continued to rule the Crimea for much of the tenth century. During the tenth century, the Bulgars, a Turkic nomadic people previously subject to the Khazars, formed their own state along the Volga River. The Bulgars of modern Bulgaria are descended from these people. The Bulgars paid the Khazars one sable pelt each year for every household they ruled, but they converted to Islam partially in the hope of breaking away from the Khazars and avoiding this

Russia, Land of the Rus, to 1054

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payment. After they received a visit by an envoy from the Abbasid caliph in 921– 923, the ruler of the Bulgars assumed the title emir, and this state is therefore known as the Volga Bulgar Emirate. Ibn Fadlan, an envoy from the Abbasid court, says that one merchant prayed, saying, “Lord, I have come from a distant land, bringing so and so many slave-girls priced at such and such per head and so many sables priced at such and such per pelt.”10 He then asked the deity to ﬁnd him a merchant who would accept his asking price without haggling. (See “Movement of Ideas: Ibn Fadlan’s Description of a Rus Burial.”) Rus traders used the currency of the Abbasid Empire: gold dinars and silver dirhams. The Rus gave their wives a gold or silver neckband for each ten thousand dirhams they accumulated. Archaeologists have found many such neckbands, frequently decorated with small Thor’s hammers like those found in Scandinavian graves. In addition to amber, swords, and wax, the main goods the Rus sold to the Islamic world were furs and slaves. Scandinavian merchants sold so many Slavs into slavery that, in the tenth century, the Europeans coined a new word for slaves: the Latin sclavus (SCLAV-uhs), derived from the Latin word for the Slavic peoples. This is the source of the English word slave.

Kievan Rus, 880–1054

Before 930, the Rus consisted of war-bands who paid tribute to rulers like the Khazars and the Volga Bulgar Emirate so that they could sell slaves and furs in their territories. After 930, the Rus war-bands evolved into early states called principalities, political units led by princes who exercised control over their own trading posts. The history of Kiev, a trading outpost on the Dnieper River, illustrates this development. Before 900, Kiev had a population of only one or two hundred residents who lived in villages. After 900, as trade grew, its population increased to several thousand, including specialized craftsmen who made goods for the wealthy. In 911, and again in 945, the Rus Principality of Kiev signed a treaty with Byzantium that speciﬁed the terms under which the Rus were to do business in Constantinople. Throughout the tenth century, the princes of Kiev eliminated their political rivals, including the Khazars and the Bulgars. Since the middle of the ninth century, Byzantine missionaries had been active among the Rus and had modiﬁed the Greek alphabet to make the Cyrillic alphabet, named for a Byzantine missionary, Saint Cyril (827–869), who had been active a century earlier in modern-day Moravia. Using this alphabet, they devised a written language, called Old Church Slavonic, into which they translated Christian scriptures. In the 970s Prince Vladimir emerged as leader of the Kievan Rus. Like the Khazar and Bulgar rulers, he had to decide which religion would best unify his realm, so he summoned the leaders of his kingdom and asked their advice. Our main source for this period, The Primary Chronicle, written down around 1100, gives a year-byyear chronology after 850 for the Rus (leaving many years blank). Its detailed entry for 987 explains that Vladimir decided to send ten “good and wise men” to compare the religions of the Volga Emirate, the Germans (the successors of the Carolingians), and the Byzantines. When the men returned, they criticized both the Islamic practices of the Volga Emirate and the Christianity of the Germans.

Tangible Evidence of the European Slave Trade European slave traders used this set of shackles, found in modern Bulgaria, to restrain a slave. They wrapped the long chain of iron links around his arms and legs and then connected it to the large ring, which they fastened around the captive’s neck. Iron was expensive, though, so wooden and rope restraints would have been more common. (Krivina Museum, Ruse, Bulgaria)

• Principality of Kiev A new state that began as a trading post on the Dnieper River and evolved into a principality, led by a prince, around 900.

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MOVEMENT OF IDEAS

Ibn Fadlan’s Description of a Rus Burial

lthough Ibn Fadlan, an envoy from the Abbasid court, looked down on the Rus as coarse and uncivilized, his account of a king’s funeral is the most detailed description of pre-Christian Rus religious beliefs and practices surviving today. It is particularly moving because he was able to observe a young girl who died so that she could be buried with her lord. The Angel of Death who kills the girl may have been a priestess of either Frey or Odin, whose devotees someI was told that when their chieftains die, the least they do is cremate them. I was very keen to verify this, when I learned of the death of one of their great men. They placed him in his grave and erected a canopy over it for ten days, until they had ﬁnished making and sewing his funeral garments. In the case of a poor man they build a small boat, place him inside and burn it. In the case of a rich man, they gather together his possessions and divide them into three, one third for his family, one third to use for his funeral garments, and one third with which they purchase alcohol which they drink on the day when his slave-girl kills herself and is cremated together with her master. (They are addicted to alcohol, which they drink night and day. Sometimes one of them dies with the cup still in his hand.) When their chieftain dies, his family ask his slave-girls and slave-boys, “Who among you will die with him?” and some of them reply, “I shall.” Having said this, it becomes incumbent on the person and it is impossible ever to turn back. Should that person try to, he is not permitted to do so. It is usually slave-girls who make this offer. When that man whom I mentioned earlier died, they said to his slave-girls, “Who will die with him?” and one of them said, “I shall.” So they placed two slave-girls in charge of her to take care of her and accompany her wherever she went, even to the point of occasionally washing her feet with their own hands. They set about attending to the dead man, preparing his clothes for him and setting right all that he needed. Every day the slave-girl would drink alcohol and would sing merrily and cheerfully.

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times engaged in sex as part of their fertility rites. While Ibn Fadlan clearly ﬁnds the Rus funerary practices strange, the Scandinavian he quotes at the end of this selection ﬁnds the Islamic practice of burial equally alien. Source: James E. Montgomery, “Ibn Fadlan and the Rusiyyah,” Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 3 (2000): 12–20. Online at www.uib.no/jais/content3.htm.

On the day when he and the slave-girl were to be burned I arrived at the river where his ship was. To my surprise I discovered that it had been beached and that four planks of birch and other types of wood had been placed in such a way as to resemble scaffolding. Then the ship was hauled and placed on top of this wood. They advanced, going to and fro around the boat uttering words which I did not understand, while he was still in his grave and had not been exhumed. Then they produced a couch and placed it on the ship, covering it with quilts made of Byzantine silk brocade and cushions made of Byzantine silk brocade. Then a crone arrived whom they called the “Angel of Death” and she spread on the couch the coverings we have mentioned. She is responsible for having his garments sewn up and putting him in order and it is she who kills the slave-girls. I myself saw her: a gloomy, corpulent woman, neither young nor old. When they came to his grave, they removed the soil from the wood and then removed the wood, exhuming him still dressed in the izar [clothing] in which he had died. . . . They carried him inside the pavilion on the ship and laid him to rest on the quilt, propping him with cushions. . . . Next they brought bread, meat, and onions, which they cast in front of him, a dog, which they cut in two and which they threw onto the ship, and all of his weaponry, which they placed beside him. . . . At the time of the evening prayer on Friday, they brought the slave-girl to a thing they had constructed, like a door-frame. She placed her feet on the hands of the men and was raised above the door-frame. She said something and

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they brought her down. [This happened two more times.] They next handed her a hen. She cut off its head and threw it away. They took the hen and threw it on board the ship. I quizzed the interpreter about her actions and he said, “The ﬁrst time they lifted her, she said, ‘Behold, I see my father and my mother.’ The second time she said, ‘Behold, I see all of my dead kindred, seated.’ The third time she said, ‘Behold I see my master, seated in Paradise. Paradise is beautiful and verdant. He is accompanied by his men and his male-slaves. He summons me, so bring me to him.’” . . . The men came with their shields and sticks and handed her a cup of alcohol over which she chanted and then drank. Six men entered the pavilion and all had intercourse with the slave girl. They laid her down beside her master and two of them took hold of her feet, two her hands. The crone called the “Angel of Death” placed a rope around her

neck in such a way that the ends crossed one another and handed it to two of the men to pull on it. She advanced with a broad-bladed dagger and began to thrust it in and out between her ribs, now here, now there, while the two men throttled her with the rope until she died. Then the deceased’s next of kin approached and took hold of a piece of wood and set ﬁre to it. . . . A dreadful wind arose and the ﬂames leapt higher and blazed ﬁercely. One of the Rus stood beside me and I heard him speaking to my interpreter. I quizzed him about what he had said, and he replied, “He said, ‘You Arabs are a foolish lot!’” So I said, “Why is that?” and he replied, “Because you purposely take those who are dearest to you and whom you hold in highest esteem and throw them under the earth, where they are eaten by the earth, by vermin and by worms, whereas we burn them in the ﬁre there and then, so that they enter Paradise immediately.” Then he laughed loud and long.

QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS As you read the above passage carefully, note the events that Ibn Fadlan did not witness himself.

쑺 Which of these events do you think could have occurred? 쑺 Which events seem less likely? 쑺 How did Muslim and Scandinavian burial customs differ? 쑺 What is Ibn Fadlan’s attitude toward peoples whose practices differ from those in the Islamic world?

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But when they went to the Hagia Sophia church in Byzantium (see photo on page 274), they reported the following: We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We know only that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations. For we cannot forget that beauty.11

Vladimir did not immediately accept their recommendation, but instead asked the reigning Byzantine emperor Basil II (r. 963–1025) to send his sister Anna to him as his bride. Although the Byzantine emperors rarely allowed imperial princesses to marry foreign rulers, Basil agreed because he desperately needed the assistance of Vladimir’s troops to suppress a rebellion. He agreed, the Primary Chronicle reports, to the engagement on the condition that Vladimir be baptized before the marriage. Vladimir made a counteroffer: he would receive baptism only from the priests accompanying Anna to the wedding. Basil acceded. Once baptized, Vladimir then ordered, on penalty of death, all the inhabitants of Kiev to come to the riverbank and surprised them all by performing a mass baptism. Kiev and all its inhabitants converted to Christianity.

The Growing Divide Between the Eastern and Western Churches

Prince Vladimir and his ten advisers conceived of the Christianity of the Germans and of the Byzantines as two separate religions, which we now call Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. The two churches used different languages, Latin in Rome and Greek in Constantinople, and after 500 they became increasingly separate. Since 751, the pope had been allied with the rulers of the Franks, not the Byzantine emperors. By 1000, the practices of the Eastern and Western clergy diverged in important ways. Members of the Western church accepted the pope as head, while members of the Eastern church recognized the patriarch of Constantinople as leader. Western priests were supposed to be celibate, even if not all were; their Eastern counterparts could marry. Eastern priests were required to have beards, while Western priests did not. Orthodox Christians put yeast in the communion bread, while Roman Catholics ate unleavened bread. Although the cultural differences were greater, the teachings of the two churches also diverged on certain doctrinal points. Sometime in the sixth century, probably in Spain, Western Christians had added a new phrase to the basic statement of Christian belief, the Nicene Creed, saying that the Holy Spirit proceeded from both the Father (God) and the Son (Jesus). Charlemagne adopted this phrasing. In contrast, Eastern theologians held that the Holy Spirit proceeded from God alone and did not approve of the phrasing introduced by the Western church. The dispute was not just about a doctrinal point: the Eastern church objected to the Roman church making such a fundamental change on its own. In 1054, a bishop in Bulgaria wrote to an Italian bishop criticizing certain practices of the Western church, such as the use of unleavened bread in communion and the failure to fast on Saturdays. The pope responded by sending an envoy who carried two letters (one was 17,000 words long) to the patriarch in Constantinople defending these practices and asserting his right as the pope to lead the Western church. As the level of rhetoric escalated, the pope’s envoy excommunicated the patriarch of Constantinople, and the patriarch did the same to the pope’s envoy. Historians call this the Great Schism of 1054.

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Although similar disputes had been resolved in the past, 1054 marked the ﬁnal break between the two churches. (The dispute was resolved only in 1965, but the two churches stayed separate.) After 1054, the pope in Rome, whose wealth and inﬂuence made him the equal of European monarchs, led the Roman Catholic Church. In Constantinople, the patriarch led the Eastern Orthodox Church, the church of both the Byzantine Empire and its close ally, the Kievan princes. The new Christian states of Europe that formed between 500 and 1000 provided slaves and different raw materials, like fur, to the Abbasids, their powerful neighbors to the southeast. So many of the enslaved captives came from the homeland of the Slavs that Europeans coined the Latin word sclavus (meaning “slave”) from Slav. As we have seen in Chapter 9, slaves entered the Islamic world from three major sources: Scandinavia, Russia, and Africa, but the expanding trade with Europe and the Islamic world had different results in Africa, as we will see in the next chapter.

Chapter Review Download the MP3 audio ﬁle of the Chapter Review and listen to it on the go.

etween 500 and 1000, Europe became multicentered. In 500 the Byzantine Empire was the sole power throughout Europe, but by 1000 many other centers had formed: in Germany, Scandinavia, and Russia. Gudrid, Erik the Red’s Saga reports, personally visited Greenland and the Scandinavian settlement in Canada before returning to live in Iceland; at the end of her life, she may have traveled to the center of the Christian church in Rome. Thorﬁnn, who came originally from Iceland, also visited Greenland, Canada, and Norway.

What events caused the urban society of the Byzantines to decline and resulted in the loss of so much territory to the Sasanian and Abbasid Empires? After the fall of Rome in 476, only one empire existed in Europe: the Eastern Roman Empire of Byzantium. In 500, the urban life of Constantinople varied little from ancient Rome’s: urban residents continued to gather at marketplaces, watch the circus, and attend the theater. But when plague struck in 541 and continued for more than two centuries, the cities of the empire contracted, trade fell off, and people took up subsistence farming. Their urban way of life all but disappeared. The weakened army lost extensive lands in Anatolia to the Sasanians and in Armenia and Africa to the powerful Abbasid Empire. After its disastrous defeat by the Seljuq armies at Manzikert in 1071, Byzantium retained control only of Constantinople and parts of Anatolia, a fraction of its original empire.

KEY TERMS Gudrid and Thorﬁnn Karlsefni (268) Byzantine Empire (271) patriarch (271) pope (271) plague (273) wergeld (277) war-band (277) Merovingian dynasty (278) Carolingian dynasty (280) Viking (282) longboat (284) Danelaw (285) The Vinland Sagas (285) Bjarni Herjolfsson (290) Skraelings (290) Rus (291) Slavs (292) Principality of Kiev (293)

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What was the war-band of traditional Germanic society? How did the political structures of the Merovingians and the Carolingians reﬂect their origins in the war-band? To the west in Germany and France lived various Germanic peoples whose primary social unit was the war-band. Each war-band had a leader who provided his followers with food, clothing, housing, and plunder from the places they raided; the followers in turn remained loyal to him in peace and fought with him in war. The Merovingians and the Carolingians called their leaders king, but their greatest leaders, including Clovis and Charlemagne, commanded the respect of their warbands only as long as they could provide them with the spoils of battle.

When, where, how, and why did the Scandinavians go on their voyages, and what was the signiﬁcance of those voyages? To the north, in Scandinavia, lived a different group of Germanic peoples, the Scandinavians. Unlike the Franks, who moved overland, they traveled by longboat, ﬁrst to England and Ireland in the 790s, then to Iceland in 870, to Greenland in 980, and ﬁnally to the Atlantic coast of Canada around the year 1000, some ﬁfteen years after Bjarni Herjolfsson ﬁrst spotted land there. All the Scandinavian settlers shared the same goal: they wanted more farmland than was available to them in Scandinavia. Their voyages were signiﬁcant because they were the ﬁrst Europeans to settle in the Americas. Their short-lived settlement in Canada preceded Columbus’s by nearly ﬁve hundred years; unlike his, theirs had no long-term consequences.

What were the earliest states to form in the area that is now Russia, and what role did religion play in their establishment and development? In the centuries that some Scandinavians traveled west, others went east. The Rus took their longboats down the rivers of Russia, where they captured slaves, collected furs from subject peoples, and traded with the Islamic world. Before 970, these Rus traders paid taxes to the Khazars, who had adopted Judaism, and to the Volga Bulgars, who had converted to Islam. After 970, the Rus formed their own state, the Kievan Rus principality, whose ruler Prince Vladimir converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, the state church of Byzantium.

What did all the new states have in common? The new states that formed in France and Germany, Scandinavia, and Russia had much in common. The Germanic peoples who settled these regions all grouped into war-bands, and the ﬁrst kings convened assemblies with their subjects as warband leaders. The early kings gave up their multiple deities for Christianity, although they often continued to worship their gods for a few generations. Unlike the complex legal system of the Romans, the legal systems of these societies were wergeld-based systems with clearly deﬁned offenses and ﬁnes.

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Chapter Review

For Further Reference Biraben, J. N., and Jacques Le Goff. “The Plague in the Early Middle Ages.” In Biology of Man in History: Selections from Annales Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations, ed. Robert Forster et al. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975, pp. 48–80. Fitzhugh, William W., and Elisabeth I. Ward. Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000.

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WEB RESOURCES Pronunciation Guide Interactive Maps MAP 10.1 The Byzantine Empire MAP 10.2 The Carolingian Realms

Fletcher, Richard. The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Geary, Patrick. Before France and Germany: The Creation and Transformation of the Merovingian World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Kazhdan, A. P., and Ann Wharton Epstein. Change in Byzantine Culture in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.

MAP 10.3 The Viking Raids, 793–1066 MAP 10.4 Kievan Rus

Primary Sources Chapter Objectives ACE Multiple-Choice Quiz Flashcards

Lynch, Joseph H. The Medieval Church: A Brief History. New York: Longman, 1992.

Southern, R. W. Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages. New York: Penguin Books, 1970.

Magnusson, Magnus, and Hermann Palsson, trans. The Vinland Sagas: The Norse Discovery of America. New York: Penguin Books, 1965.

Treadgold, Warren. A History of the Byzantine State and Society. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997.

Martin, Janet. Medieval Russia 980–1584. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Wallace, Birgitta L. Westward Vikings: The Saga of L’Anse aux Meadows. St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada: Historic Sites Association of Newfoundland and Labrador, 2006.

McCormick, Michael. Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce ad 300–900. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Websites L’Anse aux Meadows (http://www.pc.gc.ca/progs/spm-whs/itm2-/ site1–E.asp). Canada Parks Service website about the Viking colony at L’Anse aux Meadows.

McKitterick, Rosamond, ed. The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 2, c. 700–c. 900. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Particularly the essays by Michael McCormick. Reuter, Timothy. “Plunder and Tribute in the Carolingian Empire.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 35 (1985): 75–94. Reuter, Timothy, ed. The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 3, c. 900–1024. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Particularly the essay by Thomas S. Noonan. Rosenwein, Barbara H. A Short History of the Middle Ages. Orchard Park, N.Y.: Broadview Press, 2002.

Internet Medieval Sourcebook (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html). Excellent collection of primary sources under the following headings: Carolingians, The Early Germans, France, and England. Vikings (http://www.mnh.si.edu/vikings/). Information about the Vikings from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

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CHAPTER

Expanding Trade Networks in Africa and India, 1000–1500 Reconstructing the History of Sub-Saharan Africa Before 1000 C.E. (p. 303) The Kingdom of Mali in Sub-Saharan Africa (p. 307) Islamic North Africa and the Mamluk Empire (p. 316) East Africa, India, and the Trade Networks of the Indian Ocean (p. 319)

y departure from Tangier, my birthplace, took place . . . in the year seven hundred and twenty-ﬁve [1325] with the object of making the Pilgrimage to the Holy House at Mecca and of visiting the tomb of the Prophet . . . at Medina. I set out alone, having neither fellow-traveller in whose companionship I might ﬁnd cheer, nor caravan whose party I might join, but swayed by an over-mastering impulse within me, and a desire long-cherished in my bosom to visit these illustrious sanctuaries.2

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MUSLIM TRAVELER, CA. 1300

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(Bibliothèque nationale de France/Superstock, Inc.)

n 1325, a 20-year-old legal scholar named Ibn Battuta (1304–1368/691) set off on a hajj pilgrimage from his home in Tangier (tan-jeer), a Mediterranean port on the westernmost edge of the Islamic world (see Chapter 9). In Mecca Ibn Battuta (ibin bah-TOO-tuh) made a decision that changed his life: instead of returning home, he decided to keep going. A world traveler with no ﬁxed destination and no set time of return, he followed trade routes that knitted the entire Islamic world together. These routes connected places like Mecca, which had been at the center of the Islamic world since Muhammad’s ﬁrst revelations (see Chapter 9), to others that had more recently joined that world, such as the sub-Saharan kingdom of Mali and the Delhi sultanate of north India. After his travels were over, Ibn Battuta dictated his adventures to a ghost writer. His account began:

Genoa

Ibn Battuta leaves Tangier on hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, 1325.

Venice

LEÓN

Madeira Islands

Marrakech

dit

ZAYYANIDS MARINIDS Sijilmasa HAFSIDS

Selected journeys of Ibn Battuta

BYZANTINE EMPIRE IL-KHANATE Baghdad

Latakia

erra

Tripoli

nean S ea

Damascus Jerusalem

Alexandria

Constantinople

Basra

r Pe

Canary Islands

The Travels of Ibn Battuta

Black Sea

ARAGON Rome Corsica CASTILE Sardinia Lisbon Caligari GRANADA Granada Sicily Tangier M Tunis Fez e Salé

Medina

R. Ni le

Aydhab

Muscat Sur

OMAN

Jiddah Mecca

Suakin Meroë

R. er Nig

ALWA

Sanaa RASULIDS

Adulis

Aden

Aksum ETHIOPIA

Ibn Battuta travels to and from Mali via camel caravan, 1349–1354.

Gu lf

ARABIA

Taghaza

Timbuktu Oulata M A L I GOLD Agades Gao Koumbi-Saleh KANEM Jenne SONGHAI Lake Chad GOLD Kano BORNU Niani S

Hormuz

sia n

MAMLUK Cairo SULTANATE

fo Gul

f Ad

IFAT

OYO

I ND I AN O CE AN

BENIN

AT LAN T I C O CE A N

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1330–1333

Malindi Mombasa SWAHILI COAST

QIPCHAQ KHANATE

ATLANTIC OCEAN

CHAGHATAI KHANATE

1325– 1327 SA

MALI SULTANATE

ILKHANATE

Zanzibar

1341– 1349

1333– 1341

THE TRAVELS OF IBN BATTUTA Ibn Battuta’s journeys Islamic world, ca. 1350

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Ibn Battuta sails to the trading centers of the Swahili coast, 1330–1332.

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WEST AFRICA

1368 1304 Mali kingdom in western Sudan

Kingdom of Ghana (from 700)

1230

ca. 1000

1450

Ayyubid dynasty in Egypt 1171

NORTH AFRICA

EAST AFRICA

1250

1517

Great Zimbabwe kingdom

1000 (from ca. 850)

Ibn Khaldun’s world history 1377

Earliest settlement at Great Zimbabwe site

1275

Chola dynasty in south India and Ceylon

INDIA

Mamluk empire in Egypt and Syria

1550 Hindu Vijayanagar kingdom in south India

1279 1336 Delhi sultanate in north India 1206

(to 1614) 1526

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CHAPTER 11

• Ibn Battuta (1304– 1368/69) Legal scholar from Tangier, Morocco, who traveled throughout the Islamic world between 1325 and 1354 and wrote The Travels recounting his experiences in Africa, India, Central Asia, Spain, and China.

Expanding Trade Networks in Africa and India, 1000–1500

So begins the account of the longest known journey taken by any single individual before 1500. Proceeding on foot, riding camels and donkeys, and sailing by boat, Ibn Battuta covered an estimated 75,000 miles (120,000 km)—an extraordinary distance in the preindustrial world. Because the Five Pillars of Islam (see Chapter 9) obligated all Muslims to give alms, not just to the poor and the sick but also to travelers, Ibn Battuta was able to continue his travels even when his own funds were exhausted. After setting out alone, Ibn Battuta soon fell in with a caravan of traders on their way to Cairo. Because he always traveled with Islamic merchants on established caravan routes, his itinerary provides ample evidence of the extensive trade networks connecting northern Africa, much of East and West Africa, and northern India. Many of the people he met accepted the teachings of the Quran, and he was able to communicate in Arabic everywhere he went. In each place he visited, he named the rulers, identiﬁed the highest-ranking judges, and then listed the important holy men of the town and their most important miracles. This narrow focus means that he rarely reported on some important topics, such as the local economy or the lives of women and non-Muslims. Ibn Battuta was the ﬁrst traveler to leave an eyewitness description of Africa south of the Sahara Desert, where he stayed in the kingdom of Mali. He visited Cairo, the capital city of the Mamluks (MAM-lukes) of Egypt, a powerful dynasty founded by military slaves, as well as several East African ports south of the equator. He remained for seven years in north India, then under Muslim rule, and visited many Indian Ocean ports. He did not, however, go to the interior of southern Africa or see the majestic site of Great Zimbabwe. Many legs of Ibn Battuta’s journey would not have been possible three hundred years earlier. In 1000 many parts of Africa were not connected to the broader Islamic world, including the rainforest of the West African coastlands and Central Africa, the densely populated Great Lakes region around Lake Victoria, and the southern African savannah. By 1450, however, expanding networks of trade had brought West and East Africa into increasing contact with the Islamic world of northern Africa and western Asia.

Focus Questions

How was sub-Saharan Africa settled before 1000 C.E.? What techniques have historians used to reconstruct the past? What role did trade play in the emergence and subsequent history of the kingdoms of Ghana and Mali? How and why did the Mamluk empire based in Egypt become the leading center of the Islamic world after 1258? What was the nature of the Indian Ocean trade network that linked India, Arabia, and East Africa?

Reconstructing the History of Sub-Saharan Africa Before 1000 C.E.

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Reconstructing the History of Sub-Saharan Africa Before 1000 C.E.

he Sahara Desert divides the enormous continent of Africa into two halves: sub-Saharan Africa in contrast to North and East Africa. As we have seen in Chapter 9, Islamic armies conquered North Africa in the seventh century, and East Africans had much contact with Muslim traders throughout the Abbasid period (750–1258). We know much less about sub-Saharan Africa before 1000 because few Muslims, the source of so much of our information, traveled there. Apart from Arabic accounts, historians of Africa must draw on archaeological excavation, oral traditions, and analysis of vocabulary from different languages to piece together sub-Saharan Africa’s history before 1000.

The Geography and Languages of Sub-Saharan Africa

Africa is a large continent, with an area greater than that of the United States (including Alaska), Europe, and China combined. As we saw in Chapter 1, the ﬁrst anatomically modern humans crossed the Sinai Peninsula from Africa into western Asia at least 150,000 years ago, possibly earlier. The Nile River Valley was the site of Africa’s earliest complex societies, ﬁrst in Egypt and then in Nubia (see Chapter 2). Rome’s greatest rival, Carthage, operated from a base in North Africa, and after its defeat in 202 b.c.e., Romans bought much of their grain from Egypt. In the 300s, Christianity spread throughout the Mediterranean to Egypt, northern Africa, and Ethiopia (see Chapter 7). After 650, Islam replaced Christianity in much of northern Africa, but not Ethiopia. A glance at Map 11.1 shows why only North and East Africa had such close contacts with the larger world: 3,000 miles (4,800 km) across and around 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from north to south, the Sahara Desert posed a formidable barrier between the coast and the sub-Saharan regions. The ﬁrst traders to cross the Sahara did so riding camels. The single-humped camel they used originated in Arabia and reached North Africa sometime in the ﬁrst century b.c.e. Domesticated in the third or fourth centuries c.e., camels were much cheaper than human porters because they were hardier—capable of going for long periods without water and carrying much heavier loads. Camels did not need roads and crossed the desert on sandy tracks. Immediately to the south of the Sahara is a semidesert region called the Sahel (meaning “shore” in Arabic). South of the Sahel (SAH-hel), enough rainfall fell to support the tall grasses of the dry savanna, and then farther south, a band of wooded savanna where many trees grew. Rainfall was heaviest in Central Africa, and rainforest stretched from the Atlantic coast all the way to the Great Lakes region. The pattern repeated itself south of the rainforest: ﬁrst a band of woodland savanna, then dry savanna, and then the Kalahari Desert near the tip of southern Africa. Africans today speak nearly two thousand different languages, one-third of the total number of languages spoken in the world (see Map 11.1). Several languages spoken in North Africa, including Egyptian, Nubian, Ethiopian, and Arabic, have had written forms for a thousand years or longer (see Chapters 2, 7, and 9). But none of those spoken south of the Sahara were written down before 1800. Today about ﬁve hundred of Africa’s two thousand languages have written forms.

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0°

20°W

40°E

20°E

E U ROPE

60°E

40°N

ian

B la c k S e a

Madeira Islands

Tunis

Fez

Med

Tahert

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Marrakech

Tripoli

Sijilmasa

PERSIA

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Basra

Alexandria Ghadames

Canary Islands

EGYPT Taghaza

Mecca

TEDA

Timbuktu

Walata

HAUSA HAUSA

MANDINGO

GUINEA

MOSSI ASANTE

KANEM

S A H E L

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Tropic of Ca

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Hormuz

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ARABIA Medina

Ghat

Awdaghost 20°N

Shiraz

Cairo

ARABIC

Adulis

Aden

Aksum

Kano

ETHIOPIA

FPO

BORNU

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Cape of Guardafui

Berbera

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0° Equator

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I N D I A N O C E A N

Malindi Mombasa

SWAHILI

A T L A N T I C O C E A N KONGO

Pemba Zanzibar Mafia

Kilwa

Major climatic zones of Africa

Desert Mediterranean Highland (climate moderated by altitude)

SAN KALAHARI DESERT

KHOI

Trans-Saharan trade routes

Sofala

ESERT BD

Sahel or subdesert

ZIMBABWE

Great Zimbabwe

MI NA

Dry savannah with long dry season (6–9 months)

i R. b ez

ASC

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20°S

D AG

Wet equatorial

0 0

400

Tropic of Capricorn

800 Km. 400

800 Mi.

Traditional Arab spice routes Spread of Bantu-speakers, by ca. 1000 Cape of Good Hope

TEDA Major language

Interactive Map

MAP 11.1 African Trade Routes, 1200–1500 The Sahara Desert forms a natural boundary between Saharan Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. Overland camel routes across the Sahara Desert linked Mali with the Mediterranean coast, while Indian Ocean sea routes connected the important center of Great Zimbabwe in East Africa to the Islamic world and Asia.

The Spread of Bantu Languages

Africa’s languages cluster in several major groups. Arabic is spoken throughout the Islamic regions, while the Bantu languages of the Niger-Congo language family are widely distributed throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Since many of these languages show

304

Reconstructing the History of Sub-Saharan Africa Before 1000 C.E.

surprising uniformity over a wide area, earlier analysts posited that the migration of a single people, all speaking an earlier form of the Bantu language, accounted for this modern language distribution. Accordingly, many analysts assumed that the Bantu speakers set out from their homeland in Nigeria and Cameroon, in the western bend of Africa, and migrated all over central, eastern, and southern Africa. When they came to a new place, they conquered the indigenous peoples with their iron weapons and then used iron tools to till the land. This view, like earlier understandings of the Indo-European migrations discussed in Chapter 3, presumes that a single people were responsible for the spread of a single language family. It also credits them with technological superiority over the original residents of the regions who hunted, ﬁshed, and gathered wild plants. But this model of a single wave of Bantu migration presents many problems, the most basic of which is timing. Agriculture and ironworking did spread throughout sub-Saharan Africa someti

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