World Turned Inside Out, 1000350 BCE

1
World Turned Inside Out, 1000-350 BCE

• Focus in on regions on the periphery or the
  fringes of the Great Empires of Southwest Asia
  (Neo-Assyrian), regions very loosely connected to
  them, or worlds apart
• Focus on ideas, philosophers, and new concepts of
  being human and a part of a larger community.
• Second Generation Societies
• Focus on East and South Asian, Mediterranean,
  American, and Sub-Saharan African cultures
• - all developed a different kind of society, and
  alternative to patterns that had emerged in
  Southwest Asia in the last millennium

2
New patterns of regional integration, new
patterns of regional self consciousness

• Study Map 5.1, p. 186
• How did teachers and prophets shape this world?

3
Alternative pathways and ideas emerge in Zhou
China, 770-221 BCE

• Political Decentralization as Zhou authority
  declined
• (Steppe invaders from the Northwest)
• Spring and Autumn Period (722-481 BCE)
• Constant Warfare and Political Anarchy
• Local rulers consolidated their own power
• Regional states became more dominant than the
  Zhou
• Increased use of Iron improved warfare and
  allowed for larger public works projects (canals,
  irrigation)

4
The Warring States Period, 403-221 BCE

• China dominated by seven large States (Map 5.2,
  p. 189)
• Each mobilized huge armies (largest in world
• history to this point)
• Innovation in statecraft
• Professional bureaucracy (not just kin)
• Free peasantry (but must pay taxes and provide
  military service)
• Innovations in Warfare
• Mass infantry, iron armor and weapons, crossbow
• Fighting on multiple fronts

Keep an eye on the Qin
5
Scholar as Bureaucrat
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New South Asian Worlds

• Vedic Society underwent profound transformation
  between 1000-300 BCE
• - more commercial, more urban, more stratified
• Vedic people forged new economic and political
  institutions, and new world views
• 16 states emerge across northern part of South
  Asia (map 5.3, p. 193)
• - hereditary monarchs, oligarchies
• - rajas (usually from lower castes or clans)
• Expansion of caste system
• - Shudras broken into jatis (subcastes of
  laborers, merchants, artisans)
• New cities appear, more complex economies (use of
  coins, transregional connections)
• - more professions, more social mobility

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Challenges to Vedic beliefs, hierarchies

• Writing emerges after 600 BCE
• Jainism (focus on non violence, purifying the
  soul through individual actions)
• Buddha and early Buddhism
• - Siddhartha Gautama
• - Rejection of Brahman authority
• - Focus on individual salvation

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Early Buddhist Beliefs
How does this challenge the social order? What
authority does it challenge?
Reincarnation until reach nirvana
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New American Worlds

• Emergence of Chavin Culture in Central Andes,
  900-400 BCE
• - common cosmology, artistic style
• - not an empire

10
The Olmec world in Mesoamerica after 1500 BCE

• (Map 5.4, p. 207)
• Loose confederation of villages connected through
  trade
• - common religion, language
• - wide network of exchange for sacred ritual
  objects
• Largest cities were religious centers
• - ball courts
• - human sacrifice
• - math and calendars
• Strong regional influence

11
Sub Saharan Africa

• Distinctive Communities emerged in the first
  millennium BCE (Map 5.5, p. 219)
• Egyptian, Southwest Asian, and sub-Saharan
  African influences on southern Nile, or Nubia
• Meroe Kingdom 400 BCE-300 CE
• - Egyptian gods, pyramids, and
  hieroglyphics
• - iron smelting, textile production
• - items circulating among various peoples of
  Sub-Saharan Africa

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Other common cultures in Sub Saharan Africa

• Large commercial centers in West Africa
• Jenne, Gao
• Nok culture in present day Nigeria around 600 BCE
• Spread southward
• All of them smelted iron
• iron tools used to open up land for cultivation
  and form denser settlements
• In the rainforest, hunting and gathering continued

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The Mediterranean World

• First millennium BCE was a time of economic,
  political, and social change
• - developed new and challenging methods for
  organizing their societies
• Seaborne societies spread the use of the alphabet
  and use of money
• More than just Greeks and Phoenicians (Lydians,
  Etruscans, for example)
• Independent, self sufficient, self governing city
  states
• intense competition between them and within them

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City States and the Revolution in Politics

• Residents as citizens
• (but only for free males)
• Experiments in oligarchy, tyranny, democracy
• Families as the most important social unit
• Competition and warfare
• - Competition between individuals and cities
  for power and influence
• - Competition between cities for resources
• - not unlike the Warring States in China on a
  smaller scale
• - Competition often organized
• - (Athletic competition the Olympics)

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Warfare in the Mediterranean, first millennium BCE

• Hoplites and the Phalanx
• Peloponnesian War, 431-404 BCE)
• Athens and Sparta
• (This warfare will later culminate in the triumph
  of the city of Rome Chapter 7)

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Economic Innovations in the Mediterranean

• Free markets and money based economies
• - open market places (physical locations in the
  city)
• (Interestingly enough, money also emerged in
• East and South Asia around 500 BCE)
• Trade and colonization
• - expanding the network of city states
  (Mediterranean and Black Seas)
• - an elite culture emerges founded on alphabetic
  scripts, market-based economies, and private
  property.

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Mediterranean Worlds and Slavery

• Chattel Slavery - turning humans into objects of
  commerce
• Often 1/5 of the cities residents
• Came from areas peripheral to the cities
• Celts, Germans, Gauls, Scythians
• A divide emerges among the civilized and the
  barbarians

18
Mediterranean Worlds
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New ideas in the Mediterranean World

• Decentralization led to more experimentation
• Realistic Art
• - a naturalistic view of humans and their place
  in the universe
• - sharp break from moral codes of older SW Asian
  societies

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New ideas in the Mediterranean World

• Naturalistic Science
• Greek Philosophy (Love of Wisdom)
• - looking to nature itself, not the role of gods
  to explain the world
• Democritus and the atoma
• Pythagoras and the Pythagorean Theorem

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New ideas in the Mediterranean World

• Searching for Order (cycles of war, economic
  crises)
• - Socrates (469-399 BCE) stressed honor and
  integrity over wealth and power (like Confucius
  and Buddha)
• - Plato (427-347 BCE) argued that cities should
  be ruled by philosopher kings (The Republic)
• - Aristotle (384-322 BCE) believed in collecting
  evidence to achieve a better understanding of
  general patterns (The Politics)
• - his most famous student was Alexander

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Conclusion

• Around the world, more and more distinct cultures
  emerging defined by their own shared faiths,
  texts, teachers, and prophets.
• These cultural regions and the ideas that emerge
  there will be very enduring