Presence of Rivers
Formative Period (8000-7000 BP) Farms
Ubaid Period (7300-5600 BP) Templesirrigation
Eridu - oldest temple
Uruk Period (5600 - 5100 BP) - city states, walls, trade
Early Dynastic/Sumerian Civilization (5100 - 4300 BP) - 13 City States - wheeled carts
The civilization of ancient Egypt was indebted to the Nile River and its dependable seasonal flooding. The river’s predictability and fertile soil allowed the Egyptians to build an empire on the basis of great agricultural wealth
evidence of the unification of Egypt N/S
• 12,000 BP -stone age hunter/gatherers
• 8,000 BP -settled farming villages,
domesticated plants and animals
Mehrgarh -best known early farming site
• Domesticates: wheat, barley, peas, lentils,
buffalo, cattle, pig, sheep, goats
• 5,000 BP -Harappan civilizations begin to
flourish
In Chapter 10 I think
Lung-shan Culture
• 5000 BP
• Rice dominant cultigen
• Sites larger and more permanent
• Started on the lower Yangtze river - became
widespread through trade and interaction
Ch’eng-tzu-yai Cemeteries: show status differentiation
• Elaborate graves and small, narrow pits
Qin Dynasty of Imperial China (2200 BP)
Strong economy to have warriors and weapons
Beief in the afterlife
• Emerged from Preclassic
to Classic Period (AD 250
- AD 950)
Codices / Codex
Stelae
Tikal
Copan
environmental catastrophe or regional abandonment and reorganization
Basin of Mexico, ca. 200 – 500 CE
Population estimated as high as 200,000
Urban planning
Avenue of the Dead
Pyramid of the Sun
Pyramid of the Moon
Andean Civilization
• Intensive farming systems
• Massive pyramids and temples
• Large cities
• Powerful armies
• Hierarchies of wealth, power, and prestige
• Pottery, gold-smithing, textiles
• No written language
Inca
• AD 1476-1525
• Largest and most highly integrated
political system in New World
Highly integrated system of fishing, herding, and farming • Irrigation systems brought under central command
• By 12,000 years ago, huge continental ice
sheets retreat
Cahokia
• Over 100 mounds within 5-6 square miles
• Great ceremonial center
•
“downtown” area covered 200 acres
• Monks Mound - central pyramid (102 ft tall,
covers area of 16 acres)
• 30,000-40,000 people
• Class-based society
• Ancestral Pueblo (Anasazi)
• ancestral to cultures of the modern Pueblo Indians
(Hopi, Zuni)
• lived on the Colorado plateau in northern Arizona,
into southern Utah, southern Colorado, and
northern New Mexico (four corners region)
• By 1000 years ago, people lived in year round
villages; maize agriculture important
• Early: pithouses
• later: construction of apartment like pueblos -
stone masonry complex
Stonehenge
Megalithic monuments
The construction of Stonehenge
Trilithons
Sarsen
Lintels
sarsens
sandstone boulder Stonehenge
Catalhoyuk
Catal Höyük
• 9000 BP
• Large settlement
• (26 acres)
• 2000+ interconnected houses
• No streets
• Enter houses through rooftops
• Population over 8000 people
Gobekli Tepe
• Southeastern Turkey
• 11,600 BP
• Monumental carved stone
• Circles of limestone pillars
• Largest: 18 foot tall / 16 tons
• Images of animals: lions/scorpions/fox
Jericho
This wall is among the earliest archaeological evidence in the world for construction on a monumental scale. The builders of the wall likely were members of an ancient chiefdom society beginning some 9,000 years ago.
La Venta
olmec city, at its peak covered about 2km squared, a little more than 0.75 miles squared
San Lorenzo
earliest olmec city. positioned on a dry terrace, well above the areas prone to flooding, but still postioned close to fertile soil.
Chavin de Huantar
Chavin seems to have functioned as a unifying element in the establishment of complex society in South America. (Courtesy of Gordon Willey)