s3. Web viewUnit 7—Agriculture & Civilization. This Word document contains ALL of the...

UNIT 7—AGRICULTURE & CIVILIZATION

This Word document contains ALL of the readings from the unit. All readings include multiple copies at different Lexile levels. You are free to repurpose these materials as needed for your classroom. Please do remember to properly cite Big History as the source. If you modify the text, it will change the lexile level. As always, only print what you need.

COLLECTIVE LEARNING (PART 2).........................................................2INTRODUCTION TO AGRARIAN CIVILIZATIONS:....................................14

URUK.................................................................................................................................28

MESOAMERICA................................................................................................................42

JERICHO............................................................................................................................65

EAST ASIA.........................................................................................................................92

GRECO ROMAN..............................................................................................................113

RECORDKEEPING AND HISTORY.......................................................137TIMEKEEPING.................................................................................155

When viewing this document in Microsoft Word format, you can Ctrl+Click on the name of each article to go directly to the corresponding page in the reader.

UNIT 7— AGRICULTURE & CIVILIZATION TEXT READER 1

Collective Learning (Part 2)In the second essay of a four-part series, David Christian explains how the spread of agriculture and the rise of civilizations generated powerful networks of collective learning.

Collective Learning II: Agriculture and the Power of Networks (1100L)By David Christian

In the second essay of a four-part series, David Christian explains how the spread of agriculture and the rise of civilizations generated powerful networks of collective learning.

Farming speeds up the pace of collective learningWhen agriculture appeared, history seemed to speed up. Five thousand years after the appearance of agriculture, the number of humans had increased almost tenfold, from just a few million to almost 50 million. This rapid growth was made possible by an increase in the number of innovations. Farmers spread into wooded and semi-arid zones, designed new types of buildings, discovered ways to domesticate animals, pioneered new uses for clay and metals, and began to develop simple forms of irrigation.

With the appearance of agrarian civilizations, the rate of innovation increased again. Architects designed monumental architecture like pyramids and temples; metalworkers made refined tools and weapons; writing appeared, providing more reliable ways of storing and preserving information. With the domestication of horses and camels, goods and people were moved over large distances; meanwhile, sailors and merchants figured out how to travel across the Indian Ocean and into the Pacific Ocean. There was also innovation in government and lawmaking, in the types of religion, and in art and literature. New goods, including glassware, jewelry, and the coins that enabled trade and taxation to evolve, were made.

Defining networksCollective learning was accelerating, but to understand how and why, we need to think about how humans exchange ideas. When several individuals are linked, they form a “network.” Networks appear in many different varieties. The Internet is a network of computers; economies are networks of individuals who are buying and selling; proteins within a cell form networks linked by different chemical reactions; the electricity grid is a network. All networks contain two main kinds of things: points, and links between the points.

The first rule about networks: Size matters!


It may seem obvious that more ideas can be exchanged if there are more people. But as ideas are shared they often change in subtle ways as different people contribute their own ideas. So the act of sharing can add new information.

In addition, the sheer number of possible exchanges increases very quickly as the number of people rises. How many possible links are there between three friends? The answer is three. Between four friends? The answer is not four; it is six. You can see this by drawing lines between four points. How many links are there between five friends? The answer is 10. We can calculate the relationship between nodes and edges precisely using a mathematical formula but the main trend is that, as groups get larger, the number of possible links within the network increases much faster than does the number of people. So in large groups, the possibilities for sharing information are much greater than in small groups.

This tells us something powerful about the impact of agriculture. Remember that in the Paleolithic era, most communities were tiny, usually with fewer than 40 or 50 people. Much larger communities — villages with, say, 2,000 inhabitants — developed with the appearance of agriculture. A village this size would produce a network of 2 million possible links.

Of course, not everybody would link up with everyone else, but the possibilities were there. Once you had towns with, say, 10,000 people, almost 50 million links between individuals were possible. With the rise of agriculture, collective learning seems to have accelerated, generating more ideas much faster than ever before.

Diversity is as important as sizeThe diversity of people and information in a network is as important as a network’s size. If everyone lives and thinks exactly like everyone else, there won’t be much new information to exchange. But in reality every individual has something new to contribute. In our network model (opposite), we can imagine that the blue area represents people living near the coast, while the other shades represent people living in fertile woodlands and in arid desert lands. Each community would have slightly different ways of providing food and shelter, slightly different forms of clothing, different rituals, and different stories. An anthropologist might say that each group has a slightly different “culture,” just as today your family may have different rules about eating or studying or cleaning up than your friends’ families have.

Now imagine an individual moving from a coastal group to a desert group. Perhaps a man from the desert visits his cousins on the coast, marries one of the women living there, and the new couple travels back to the desert. He, from his brief visit to the coast, may have learned a bit about fishing, and she will certainly have to learn how to live in the desert. Both will know more about the world as a whole.

Most collective learning probably happens in small, almost invisible stages. In fact, it’s a bit like natural selection, with the appearance of tiny variations in knowledge, some of which will prove interesting or valuable or inspiring enough to catch people’s attention and spread more widely within a network. In other words, we expect to find more innovation and more new ideas in networks in which people live and work and pray and think in different ways.


Agrarian civilizations were much larger and more diverse than the societies that preceded them. This was particularly true at their borders, where merchants, soldiers, and officials met foragers, independent villagers, and horse herders. There was also great internal variety. With more productive farming methods, farmers could produce enough food and raw materials to support small groups of non-farmers: kings and queens, scribes and soldiers, poets and priests, potters and weavers.

Historians describe this process as the emergence of a division of labor, but it was also a division of knowledge. Different types of specialists acquired different skills and different types of information. Merchants, for example, had to learn about costs and prices in foreign countries; soldiers had to learn about weaponry and tactics; priests had to learn about religious traditions and rituals. The total amount of available information increased rapidly with the development of a division of labor.

So networks of collective learning were both larger and more varied in agrarian civilizations. No wonder these societies seemed to generate more technological, artistic, religious, social, and political innovation, as well as more power and more wealth!

The study of networks can also help us understand two important features of agrarian civilizations: how they encourage flows of information and how information flows support an uneven distribution of wealth and power.

As networks get larger, the amount of connectedness of any single node compared with another node gets more and more uneven. You can see this in our diagrams and in real-life situations. Google, for example, is very well connected because it links to more or less anyone who does a search; meanwhile, your school network is connected mainly to those who work or study at your school. We can see the same quality in agrarian civilizations: isolated villages had limited connections; townships with markets or temples were much better connected; and capital cities were connected to the entire kingdom.

The uneven distribution of information and connectedness can help us understand why wealth and power are distributed so unevenly in agrarian civilizations. An individual connected to 10 other individuals can form alliances or teams with those individuals. But an individual connected to 1,000 other individuals has access to more information and can form greater and more powerful alliances. (This is perhaps why we say of powerful people that they are “well connected.”) More connectedness seems to mean not only more information but also more wealth and power.

Specifically, in all agrarian civilizations we find elite groups that are wealthier and more powerful than most of the population. If you were to map information exchanges in society, you would find that the wealthy and powerful are also information hubs; to a great extent, they maintain control of the storage and dissemination of information. If you are a king, you have scribes and priests and spies who can store large amounts of information for you and carry out your orders. You also have long-distance links with a whole class of nobles and officials and merchants, who in turn are connected to the farmers who provide most of society’s wealth. If you are a peasant living in a remote village, your connections will be fewer and less diverse.


Collective Learning II: Agriculture and the Power of Networks (990L)By David Christian, adapted by Newsela

In the second essay of a four-part series, David Christian explains how the spread of agriculture and the rise of civilizations generated powerful networks of collective learning.

Farming speeds up the pace of collective learningWhen agriculture appeared, history seemed to speed up. Five thousand years after the appearance of agriculture, the number of humans had increased by 10 times, from just a few million to almost 50 million. This rapid growth was made possible by an increase in innovations. Farmers spread into wooded and drier zones, designed new types of buildings, discovered ways to domesticate animals, pioneered new uses for clay and metals, and began to develop simple forms of irrigation.

With the appearance of agrarian civilizations organized around farming, the rate of innovation increased again. Architects designed monumental architecture like pyramids and temples; metalworkers made refined tools and weapons; and writing appeared. With the domestication of horses and camels, goods and people were moved over large distances; meanwhile, sailors and merchants figured out how to travel across the Indian Ocean and into the Pacific Ocean. There was also innovation in government and lawmaking, in the types of religion, and in art and literature. New goods, including glassware, jewelry, and the coins that enabled trade and taxation to evolve, were made.

Defining networksCollective learning was accelerating, but to understand how and why, we need to think about how humans exchange ideas. When several individuals are linked, they form a “network.” Networks appear in many different varieties. The Internet is a network of computers; economies are networks of individuals who are buying and selling; proteins within a cell form networks linked by different chemical reactions; the electricity grid is a network. All networks contain two main kinds of things: points, and links between the points.


It may seem obvious that more ideas can be exchanged if there are more people. But as ideas are shared they often change in subtle ways as different people contribute their own ideas. So the act of sharing can add new information.

In addition, the sheer number of possible exchanges increases very quickly as the number of people rises. How many possible links are there between three friends? The answer is three. Between four friends? The answer is not four; it is six. You can see this by drawing lines between four points. How many links are there between five friends? The answer is 10. We can calculate the relationship between nodes (connection points) and edges precisely using a mathematical formula. But the main trend is that, as groups get larger, the number of possible links within the network increases much faster than does the number of people. So


in large groups, the possibilities for sharing information are much greater than in small groups.

This tells us something powerful about the difference agriculture makes. Remember that in the Paleolithic era, most communities were tiny, usually with fewer than 40 or 50 people. Much larger communities — villages with, say, 2,000 inhabitants — developed as agriculture was born. A village this size would produce a network of 2 million possible links.

Of course, not everybody would link up with everyone else. But the possibilities were there. Once you had towns with, say, 10,000 people, almost 50 million links between individuals were possible. With the rise of agriculture, collective learning seems to have accelerated, generating more ideas much faster than ever before.

Diversity is as important as sizeThe diversity of people and information in a network is as important as a network’s size. If everyone lives and thinks exactly like everyone else, there won’t be much new information to exchange. But in reality every individual has something new to contribute. In our network model (opposite), we can imagine that the blue area represents people living near the coast, while the other shades represent people living in fertile woodlands and in dry desert lands. Each community would provide food and shelter in slightly different ways. They'd have different forms of clothing, different rituals, and different stories. An anthropologist who studies humans might say that each group has a slightly different “culture.” It's just like how your family may have different rules about eating or studying or cleaning up than your friends’ families have.

Now imagine an individual moving from a coastal group to a desert group. Picture a man from the desert visiting his cousins on the coast. He chooses to marry one of the women living there, and the new couple travels back to the desert. He, from his brief visit to the coast, may have learned a bit about fishing, and she will certainly have to learn how to live in the desert. Both will know more about the world as a whole.

Most collective learning probably happens in small, unseen stages. In fact, it’s a bit like natural selection. Tiny variations in knowledge appear first. Some of these will be interesting or valuable or inspiring enough to catch people’s attention and spread more widely within a network. In other words, we expect to find more innovation and more new ideas in networks in which people live and work and pray and think in different ways.

Civilizations based on agriculture were much larger and more diverse than the societies that came before them. This was particularly true at their borders. They became a meeting ground where merchants, soldiers, and officials met foragers, villagers, and horse herders. There was also great variety within agriculture-based civilizations. More productive farming methods led farmers to produce enough food to support groups of non-farmers: kings and queens, scribes and soldiers, poets and priests, potters and weavers.

Historians describe this process as the birth of a division of labor, but it was also a division of knowledge. Different types of specialists acquired different skills and different types of information. Merchants, for example, had to learn about costs and prices in foreign countries; soldiers had to learn about weaponry and tactics; priests had to learn about


religious traditions and rituals. The amount of available information increased rapidly with the development of a division of labor.

So networks of collective learning were both larger and more varied in agriculture-based civilizations. No wonder these societies seemed to produce more new forms of technology, art, religion, and politics, as well as more power and more wealth.

The study of networks can also help us understand two important features of agrarian civilizations: how they encourage flows of information and how information flows support an uneven distribution of wealth and power.

As networks get larger, the amount of connectedness of any single node compared with another node gets more and more uneven. You can see this in our diagrams and in real-life situations. Google, for example, is very well connected because it links to more or less anyone who does a search. Meanwhile, your school network is connected mainly to those who work or study at your school. We can see the same quality in agrarian civilizations: isolated villages had limited connections; townships with markets or temples were much better connected; and capital cities were connected to the entire kingdom.

The uneven distribution of information and connectedness can help us understand why wealth and power are distributed so unevenly in agrarian civilizations. An individual connected to 10 other individuals can team up with those individuals. But an individual connected to 1,000 other individuals has access to more information and can form greater and more powerful alliances. This is perhaps why we say powerful people are “well connected.” More connectedness seems to mean not only more information but also more wealth and power.

Specifically, in all agrarian civilizations we find "elites." These ultra-connected people are wealthier and more powerful than most of the population. If you were to map information exchanges in society, you would find that the wealthy and powerful are also information hubs. To a great extent, they control how information is stored and spread. If you are a king, you have scribes and priests and spies at your command. They store large amounts of information for you and carry out your orders. You also have long-distance links with nobles and officials and merchants, who in turn are connected to the farmers who provide most of society’s wealth. If you are a peasant living in a remote village, your connections will be fewer.


David Christian explains how the spread of agriculture and the rise of civilizations created powerful networks of collective learning. This is the second essay in a four-part series.


Farming speeds up the pace of collective learningWhen agriculture appeared, history seemed to speed up. Five thousand years after the appearance of agriculture, the number of humans had grown by 10 times. It jumped from just a few million to almost 50 million. This rapid growth was made possible by an increase in new inventions and ideas. Farmers spread into wooded and semi-dry zones. They designed new types of buildings, discovered ways to tame animals, found new uses for clay and metals, and began to develop simple ways of watering crops.

As civilizations based around agriculture sprung up, the rate of new inventions and ideas grew again. Architects designed huge structures like pyramids and temples; metalworkers refined tools and weapons; and writing appeared. Horses and camels were domesticated. At last, goods and people could be carried over large distances. Meanwhile, sailors and merchants figured out how to travel across the Indian Ocean and into the Pacific Ocean. New forms of government, religion, art, and literature appeared. New goods including glassware and jewelry were created. Coins that enabled trade and taxation to evolve were minted.

Defining networksCollective learning was picking up. To understand how and why it happened, we need to think about how humans exchange ideas. When several people are linked, they form a “network.” Networks appear in many different varieties. The Internet is a network of computers; economies are networks of individuals who are buying and selling; proteins inside a cell form networks linked by different chemical reactions; our electricity grids are networks. All networks contain two main kinds of things: points, and links between the points.


It may seem obvious that more ideas can be exchanged if there are more people. But as ideas are shared they often change in subtle ways. Different people contribute their own ideas. The act of sharing itself adds new information.

In addition, the sheer number of possible exchanges increases very quickly as the number of people rises. How many possible links are there between three friends? The answer is three. Between four friends? The answer is not four; it is six. You can see this by drawing lines between four points. How many links are there between five friends? The answer is 10. We can calculate the relationship between nodes (connection points) and edges precisely using a mathematical formula. But simply stated, as groups get larger, the number of possible links within the network increases much faster than does the number of people. So in large groups, the possibilities for sharing information are much greater than in small groups.

This tells us something powerful about agriculture and why it matters. Remember that in the Paleolithic era, most communities were tiny. Most had fewer than 40 or 50 people. Much larger communities — villages with, say, 2,000 inhabitants — developed when agriculture appeared. A village this size would produce a network of 2 million possible links.


Of course, not everybody would link up with everyone else. But the possibilities were there. Once you had towns of 10,000 people, almost 50 million links between people were possible. As agriculture arose, collective learning sped up. At that point, new ideas were being dreamed up much faster than ever before.

Diversity is as important as sizeThe range of people and types of information in a network is as important as a network’s size. If everyone lives and thinks exactly like everyone else, there won’t be much new information to exchange. But in reality every individual has something new to contribute. In our network model (opposite), we can imagine that the blue area represents people living near the coast. The other shades represent people living in woodlands and in desert lands. Each community would provide food and shelter in slightly different ways. They'd have different forms of clothing, different ceremonies, and different stories. An anthropologist might say that each group has a slightly different “culture.” It's just like how your family may have different rules about eating or studying or cleaning up than your friends’ families have.

Now imagine an individual moving from a coastal group to a desert group. Picture a man from the desert visiting his cousins on the coast. He chooses to marry one of the women living there, and the new couple travels back to the desert. From his brief visit to the coast, he may have learned a bit about fishing. She will certainly have to learn how to live in the desert. Both will know more about the world as a whole.

Most collective learning probably happens in small, unseen stages. In fact, it’s a bit like natural selection. Tiny variations in knowledge appear first. Some of these will be interesting or valuable or inspiring enough to catch people’s attention and spread. In other words, we expect to find more new inventions and ideas in networks in which people live and work and pray and think in different ways.

Agriculture-based civilizations had a wider range of people than societies before them. This was particularly true at their borders. They became a meeting ground where merchants, soldiers, and officials met foragers, villagers, and horse herders. More productive farming methods led farmers to produce more food. The additional food supported groups of non-farmers: kings and queens, scribes and soldiers, poets and priests, potters and weavers.

Historians say this point marked the beginning of the division of labor, but it was also a division of knowledge. Different workers gained different skills and different types of information. Merchants, for example, had to learn about prices in foreign countries; soldiers had to learn about weaponry and tactics; priests had to learn about religious traditions and ceremonies. The total amount of available information increased rapidly with the development of a division of labor.

So networks of collective learning were both larger and more varied in agriculture-based civilizations. No wonder these societies seemed to generate more technological, artistic, religious, social, and political innovation. Not surprisingly, they also created more power and more wealth.


The study of networks can also help us understand two important features of agriculture-based civilizations. For one, they encourage flows of information. Yet, the flows mean some people end up with more wealth and power.

As networks get larger, certain nodes will have more connectedness than others. You can see this in our diagrams and in real-life situations. Google, for example, is very well connected because it links to almost anyone who does a search. Meanwhile, your school network is connected mainly to those who work or study at your school. We can see the same quality in agrarian civilizations: isolated villages had limited connections; townships with markets or temples were much better connected; and capital cities were connected to the entire kingdom.

The uneven distribution of information and connectedness can help us understand why wealth and power are distributed so unevenly in agrarian civilizations. An individual connected to 10 other individuals can team up with those individuals. But an individual connected to 1,000 other individuals has access to more information. He can then form greater and more powerful alliances. This is perhaps why we say powerful people are “well connected.” More connectedness seems to mean not only more information but also more wealth and power.

In all agrarian civilizations we find "elites." These ultra-connected people are richer and more powerful than most others. If you were to map information exchanges in society, you would find that the wealthy and powerful are also information hubs. To a great degree, they control how information is stored and spread. If you are a king, you have scribes and priests and spies at your command. They store large amounts of information for you and carry out your orders. You also have links with nobles and officials and merchants. They in turn are connected to the farmers who provide most of your kingdom's wealth. If you are a peasant living in a remote village, your connections will be fewer.


David Christian explains how the spread of agriculture and the rise of civilizations created powerful networks of collective learning. This is the second essay in a four-part series.

Farming speeds up the pace of collective learningWhen agriculture appeared, history seemed to speed up. Humans began to farm. Within 5,000 years, the number of humans increased by 10 times. It jumped from just a few million people to almost 50 million. That rapid growth was made possible by an increase in inventions and new ideas. Farmers spread into wooded and semi-dry zones. They designed new types of buildings and discovered ways to tame animals. They found new uses for clay and metals. Simple methods of watering crops were developed.

Agrarian civilizations are based around farming. Once they appeared, the rate of new inventions and ideas increased again. Architects designed huge structures like pyramids and


temples; metalworkers refined tools and weapons; writing appeared. Horses and camels were tamed. At last, people could now move great distances on the backs of animals. Meanwhile, sailors figured out how to travel across the Indian Ocean and into the Pacific Ocean. New forms of government, lawmaking, religion, art, and literature were born. New goods including glassware and jewelry appeared. Coins were minted, making trading and tax collecting easier.

Defining networksCollective learning was speeding up. To understand how and why it happened, we need to think about how humans exchange ideas. When individuals are linked, they form a “network.” Networks appear in many different varieties. The Internet is a network of computers; economies are networks of individuals who are buying and selling; proteins inside a cell form networks linked by different chemical reactions; our electricity grids are networks. All networks contain two main kinds of things: points, and links between the points.


More ideas can be exchanged if there are more people. Obvious, right? But as ideas are shared they often change in hard-to-notice ways. Different people contribute their own ideas. The act of sharing itself adds new information.

In addition, the sheer number of possible exchanges increases very quickly as the number of people rises. How many possible links are there between three friends? The answer is three. Between four friends? The answer is not four; it is six. You can see this by drawing lines between four points. How many links are there between five friends? The answer is 10.

We can calculate the relationship between connection points and edges using math. But let's make it simple. As groups get larger, the number of possible links within the network grows faster than does the number of people. So in large groups, the possibilities for sharing information are much greater than in small groups.

This tells us something powerful about what agriculture can do. In the Paleolithic era, most communities were tiny. Most had fewer than 40 or 50 people. Much larger communities formed when agriculture appeared. Villages could have as many as 2,000 people. A village this size would produce a network of 2 million possible links.

Of course, not everybody would link up with everyone else. But the possibilities were there. Once you had towns with, say, 10,000 people, almost 50 million links between individuals were possible. As agriculture arose, collective learning sped up. Ideas began to form much faster than ever before.

Diversity is as important as sizeThe range of people and types of information in a network is as important as a network’s size. What if everyone lived and thought exactly like everyone else? Well, there wouldn’t be much new information to exchange. But in reality, we're all different. Every individual has


something new to contribute. In our network model (opposite), we can imagine that the blue area represents people living near the coast. The other shades represent people living in woodlands and in desert lands. Each community would feed and shelter its people in different ways. They'd have different forms of clothing, different ceremonies, and different stories. An anthropologist might say that each group has a slightly different “culture.” It's just like how your family may have different rules about eating or cleaning up than your friends’ families have.

Now imagine an individual moving from a coastal group to a desert group. Picture a man from the desert visiting his cousins on the coast. While on the coast he chooses to marry a women there. The new couple travels back to the desert. From his brief visit to the coast, he may have learned a bit about fishing. She will certainly have to learn how to live in the desert. Both will know more about the world as a whole.

Most collective learning probably happens in small stages. In fact, it’s a bit like natural selection. Tiny variations in knowledge appear first. Some of these will be interesting or valuable or inspiring enough to catch people’s attention. People will spread that knowledge through their network. In other words, we expect to find more inventions and new ideas in networks in which people live and work and pray and think in different ways.

Farming civilizations were much larger and had more types of people than societies before them. This was particularly true at their borders. They became a meeting ground where merchants, soldiers, and officials met foragers, villagers, and horse herders. More productive farming methods led farmers to produce more food. The additional food supported groups of non-farmers: kings and queens, scribes and soldiers, poets and priests, potters and weavers.

Historians say this is when a division of labor was born. People learned to perform specific tasks. But the division of knowledge was just as important. Different workers gained different skills. Those different skills required different types of information. Merchants, for example, had to learn about prices in foreign countries; soldiers had to learn about weaponry; priests had to learn about religious traditions. The amount of available information increased rapidly with the development of a division of labor.

So networks of collective learning were both larger and more varied in farming civilizations. No wonder these societies seemed come up with more new forms of technology, art, religion, and government. Not surprisingly, they also created more power and more wealth.

Farming civilization encouraged the flow of information. And it flowed in a way that some people ended up holding most of the wealth and power.

As networks get larger, certain nodes have more connectedness than others. You can see this in our diagrams and in real life. Google, for example, is very well connected because it links to almost anyone who does a search. Meanwhile, your school network is connected mainly to those who work or study at your school. We see the same thing in farming civilizations: isolated villages had limited connections; townships with markets or temples were much better connected; and capital cities were connected to the entire kingdom.


The uneven levels of information and connectedness can help us understand why some people in farming civilizations are much wealthier and more powerful than others. Imagine a person who is connected to 10 other people. He can team up with those individuals. But someone connected to 1,000 other people can get much more information. He can form more powerful alliances. This is perhaps why we say powerful people are “well connected.” More connectedness equals more information — also more wealth and power.

In all farming civilizations we find "elites." These ultra-connected people are wealthier and more powerful than most of the population. If you were to map information exchanges in society, you would find that the wealthy and powerful are also information hubs. To a great degree, they control how information is stored and spread.

Imagine you are a king. You have scribes and priests and spies at your command. They store large amounts of information for you. They will carry out whatever you order. You also have links with nobles and officials and merchants. They in turn are connected to the farmers who provide most of your kingdom's wealth. If you are a peasant living in a faraway village, your connections will be fewer.


Introduction to Agrarian Civilizations:During the same narrow sliver of cosmic time, cities, states, and civilizations emerged independently in several places around the world.

Introduction to Agrarian Civilizations (1220L)By Cynthia Stokes Brown

During the same narrow sliver of cosmic time, cities, states, and civilizations emerged independently in several places around the world.

DefinitionsThe first agrarian civilizations developed at about 3200 BCE in Mesopotamia, in Egypt and Nubia (now northern Sudan), and in the Indus Valley. More appeared in China a bit later and in Central America and along the Andes Mountains of South America at about 2000–1000 BCE. Why and how did this occur?

For a meaningful discussion, definitions of the key words city, state, and civilization must be clear. A “city,” with tens of thousands of people, is larger than a town (thousands) or a village (hundreds). But it is also different in nature, with people specializing in some particular aspect of work instead of being farmers and being supported by surplus food grown by farmers nearby.

A “state” is a city, or several cities, plus the surrounding villages and farms. A state would include tens to hundreds of thousands of people, even millions. It would have political, social, and economic hierarchies, meaning that a few elite people at the top, maybe about 10 percent, had more wealth and power than the remaining 90 percent. A state was ruled by elites who exercised the right to use force to ensure order and who maintained the right to collect taxes/tribute, by force if necessary.

Out of states arose imperial states, or empires, in which a single ruler controlled large territories of cities and farmland. These large states are often called “civilizations.” This word has previously been used to imply superiority or advancement; historians now try to use it simply to mean that civilizations have certain characteristics, primarily density of population and control by elites. This does not mean they are better than other kinds of societies, but they are, by definition, more complex. Since these early civilizations always depended on the farming around them, we call them “agrarian civilizations.”

Places of early civilizationsFour of the earliest agrarian civilizations occurred in fertile river valleys, utilizing plants and animals that had been domesticated earlier as their foundations.


The first of these formed in Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq. The valleys of these rivers had no large trees, no big stones, and no metals, but with irrigation people could grow large crops of wheat and barley, grasses that had been domesticated earlier in the mountains nearby. They also grew lentils and chickpeas and herded sheep and goats.

The next three places where agrarian civilizations emerged were in the Nile River Valley in Egypt and Nubia, the Indus River Valley in India, and the Huang He (Yellow) River Valley in China. Each river valley had its own distinctive plants and animals, which had been domesticated from the neighboring ecosystem. The Egyptians and Nubians had wheat, barley, cattle, fish, and birds. The Indus Valley people raised humped cattle and cotton, as well as wheat, barley, lentils, sheep, goats, and chickens. In China, millet and wheat were grown in the north, with rice cultivated later in the south. Pigs, chickens, and soybeans also formed the staple foods in China.

Large states emerged a couple of thousand years later in the Americas, where the food base proved quite different. Wild grasses were not present to be domesticated, and there were only a few large animals. People in Central America domesticated maize (corn), peppers, tomatoes, squash, beans, peanuts, and cotton. They had only dogs and turkeys as domestic animals. Along the Andes Mountains in South America, people used llamas and alpacas for wool and transport; for food they depended mostly on potatoes and quinoa, a grain rich in protein. They had guinea pigs, and fish brought up from the coast, where seafood had supported earlier dense coastal populations.

Why and how did states emerge?After people learned to domesticate plants and animals, they gradually learned to utilize animals for a variety of things. They used milk, wool, manure, and muscle power from animals instead of eating them right away. The increased cultivation and development of available resources caused the world’s population to grow dramatically, from perhaps 6 million in 8000 BCE to maybe 50 million in 3000 BCE.

At the same time, the climate was changing dramatically. Stable warmth had been reached by about 8000 BCE after the height of the last ice age, about 20,000 BCE. After 8000 BCE, the climate in the northern hemisphere generally became drier, as the monsoon belt shifted southward (possibly due to slight changes in the Earth’s orbit). This dryness drove people from upland areas down into river valleys, where access to water was more certain. The fertility of these valleys, from rich soil deposited during floods, produced abundant food.

As density and food surpluses increased, the social structure changed. A small part of the population became much wealthier and more powerful than the rest. Why did the majority of people allow this to happen? We can only guess that people needed leadership to manage projects like large-scale irrigation or distribution of surplus food. They also needed armed protection against neighboring groups. At the same time, ambitious priests and rulers could take opportunities to control the food surpluses to increase their own power. Gradually they were able to institutionalize their power, forming political or religious groups that held significant control over the land and people in their jurisdiction.


Areas without early civilizationsEven though some areas of the world did not produce full-blown cities and states, the trend toward agriculture seems to have been present everywhere.

In sub-Saharan Africa (below the Sahara Desert) people were separated from the northern coast by a harsh desert. Malarial rain forests covered much of the land, with lots of tropical diseases. The Bantu people, in the eastern part of modern Nigeria, cultivated yams, oil palm trees, millet, and sorghum and herded cattle. Eventually camels replaced horses and donkeys for travel across the Sahara, and Muslim merchants could make their way to the west coast. Small regional states and kingdoms emerged, but never a major agrarian civilization.

Small islands in the Pacific did not have the resources to create full-scale agrarian civilizations, but their smaller states and chiefdoms had features similar to those around the world. On the larger island of Australia it seems that agriculture never materialized. Soils were poor, and the island was isolated. New evidence suggests that trends toward the development of agriculture might have continued if not broken by the arrival of European colonists.

Archaeologists have long thought that resources could not support dense human societies in the basin of the Amazon River. But recent evidence suggests that people there found ways to fertilize the soil by adding charcoal and that the present rain forests may have been earlier orchards supporting large populations.

Comparing early agrarian civilizationsAll of the earliest agrarian civilizations developed many similar characteristics beyond the defining ones of hierarchical force and coerced taxation/tribute. It seems that only centralized state control can effectively integrate and support large populations of people.

Other common characteristics of civilizations include the following:

Storage of surplus food

Development of a priestly caste; a state religion based on supernatural gods/goddesses

Central authority — a ruler (such as a king, pharaoh, or emperor)

Occupational specialization and division of labor

Social stratification (social divisions based on wealth, ancestry, and occupation)

Increased trade

Systems of writing or recording information; increased collective learning

Standing armies; increased warfare

Monumental public architecture

Increased gender inequality; patriarchy


Despite all these similarities, some important differences occurred among early civilizations. Perhaps most significant, the civilizations in northern Africa and Eurasia were connected with each other soon after they began, forming an Afro-Eurasian zone that included the trading of goods and the exchange of ideas and technology. Connecting roads went east-west through similar latitudes and there were sea routes between numerous ports. In contrast, early civilizations in the Americas were hardly connected at all. They had fewer kinds of transport animals and fewer routes over difficult terrain that separated the north-south changes in latitude. This difference would prove important when sailors from Europe arrived on the shores of the Americas with horses, guns, steel swords, and germs they had picked up from their domestic animals but had themselves become immune to or tolerant of. The Europeans’ animals and technologies were the result of collective exchanges among several early Afro-Eurasian civilizations.

If we change our lens to get close-ups of early civilizations, we can see many fascinating details that differ. All the early civilizations developed some form of writing, except the Inca in the Andes, who instead used a system of tying knots in different colored string, called quipu, to record their transactions and possibly even their stories. All early civilizations engaged in warfare except, perhaps, in the Indus Valley, where some arrowheads and spears have been found but no swords, helmets, shields, or chariots. Every civilization with writing started by using pictographs but switched to some form of alphabet, except the Chinese, who still use pictographs in their writing. Every civilization practiced human sacrifice, but the Aztecs used it on a much larger scale than others; they believed that the world would end if the chief god did not receive his daily offering of human blood to keep the Sun shining. While early civilizations shared many common features, the differing details form a mosaic of human culture.

Introduction to Agrarian Civilizations (1040L)By Cynthia Stokes Brown, adapted by Newsela

During the same narrow sliver of cosmic time, cities, states, and civilizations emerged independently in several places around the world.

DefinitionsThe first agrarian civilizations developed in about 3200 BCE. These early farming societies started in three areas: Mesopotamia; in Egypt and Nubia (now northern Sudan); and in the Indus Valley. More appeared in China a bit later and in Central America and along the Andes Mountains of South America at about 2000–1000 BCE. Why and how did this occur?

To have a meaningful discussion, let's define the words city, state, and civilization. A “city,” with tens of thousands of people, is larger than a town which contains only thousands of people. A village is made of just hundreds. In cities, people work in specialized jobs, instead of being farmers. Their food is grown by farmers nearby.

A “state” is a city, or several cities, plus surrounding villages and farms. A state could include hundreds of thousands of people, even millions. It would have political, social, and economic


hierarchies, with a few elite people at the top. Elites typically make up no more than 10 percent of the population, and have more wealth and power than the remaining 90 percent. States were ruled by elites who exercised the right to use force, if necessary, to keep order and collect taxes or tribute.

Out of states arose empires, in which a single ruler controlled large territories of cities and farmland. These large states are often called “civilizations.” This word has previously been used to imply superiority or advancement; historians now try to use it simply to mean that civilizations share certain characteristics.

All civilizations have dense populations and are controlled by elites. This does not mean they are better than other kinds of societies, but they are, by definition, more complex. Since these early civilizations always depended on the farming around them, we call them “agrarian civilizations.”

Places of early civilizationsFour of the earliest agrarian civilizations occurred in fertile river valleys. They used as their foundations plants and animals that had been domesticated earlier.

The first of these formed in Mesopotamia, in what is now Iraq. What made this area so fertile was the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The valleys of these rivers had no large trees, no big stones, and no metals. But with irrigation people could grow large crops of wheat and barley, grasses that had been domesticated earlier in the mountains nearby. They also grew lentils and chickpeas and herded sheep and goats.

The next three places where agrarian civilizations emerged were in the Nile River Valley in Egypt and Nubia, the Indus River Valley in India, and the Huang He (Yellow) River Valley in China. Each river valley had its own distinctive plants and animals, which had been domesticated nearby. The Egyptians and Nubians had wheat, barley, cattle, fish, and birds. The Indus Valley people raised cattle and cotton, as well as wheat, barley, lentils, sheep, goats, and chickens. In China, wheat was grown in the north, with rice cultivated later in the south. Pigs, chickens, and soybeans also formed the staple foods in China.

Large states emerged a couple of thousand years later in the Americas, where the food options were quite different. People in Central America domesticated maize (corn), peppers, tomatoes, squash, beans, peanuts, and cotton. Their only domestic animals were dogs and turkeys. Along the Andes Mountains in South America, people used llamas and alpacas for wool and transport; for food they depended mostly on potatoes and quinoa, a grain rich in protein. They had guinea pigs, and fish brought up from the coast, where seafood had supported earlier dense coastal populations.

Why and how did states emerge?After people learned to domesticate plants and animals, they gradually learned to utilize animals for a variety of things. Instead of eating animals right away, they used them for their milk, wool, manure, and muscle power. The increased cultivation and development of available resources caused the world’s population to grow dramatically. In 8000 BCE, it stood at perhaps 6 million. By 3000 BCE, it was maybe 50 million.


At the same time, the climate was changing dramatically. The Earth had reached a stable level of warmth by about 8000 BCE. It had been gradually warming since the height of the last ice age, which was about 20,000 BCE. After 8000 BCE, the climate in the northern hemisphere generally became drier, as the monsoon belt shifted southward (possibly due to slight changes in the Earth’s orbit). This dryness drove people from upland areas down into river valleys, where access to water was more certain. Floods deposited rich soil in these valleys, helping them to produce abundant food.

As density and food surpluses increased, the social structure changed. A small part of the population became much wealthier and more powerful than the rest. Why did the majority of people allow this to happen? We can only guess that people needed leadership to manage projects like large-scale irrigation or distributing surplus food. They also needed armed protection against neighboring groups. At the same time, ambitious priests and rulers could take opportunities to control the food surpluses to increase their own power. Gradually they were able to formalize their power, forming political or religious groups that held significant control over the land and its people.

Areas without early civilizationsSome areas of the world did not produce full-blown cities and states early on. Even so, the trend toward agriculture seems to have been present everywhere.

In sub-Saharan Africa, people were separated from the northern coast by the harsh desert. Rain forests covered much of the land, with lots of tropical diseases. The Bantu people, in the eastern part of modern Nigeria, cultivated yams, oil palm trees, millet, and sorghum and herded cattle. Eventually camels replaced horses and donkeys for travel across the Sahara. Muslim merchants could now make their way across the desert to the west coast. Small regional states and kingdoms emerged, but never a major agrarian civilization.

Small islands in the Pacific did not have the resources to create full-scale agrarian civilizations, but their smaller states and chiefdoms had features similar to those around the world. In Australia, agriculture never really materialized. Soils were poor, and the island was isolated. New evidence suggests that trends toward the development of agriculture might have continued had European colonists not arrived.

Archaeologists have long thought that the basin of the Amazon River didn't contain the resources to support dense human societies. But recent evidence suggests that people there found ways to fertilize the soil by adding charcoal. The rain forests there today may even have once been orchards that supported large populations.

Comparing early agrarian civilizationsAll of the earliest agrarian civilizations developed many similar characteristics beyond the defining ones of hierarchical force and coerced taxation or tribute. It seems that only centralized state control can effectively integrate and support large populations of people.

Other common characteristics of civilizations include the following:



Development of a priestly class; a state religion based on supernatural gods/goddesses

Central authority – (such as a king, pharaoh, or emperor)

Specialized occupations and division of labor

Social divisions based on wealth, ancestry, and occupation

Increased trade


Standing armies; increased warfare

Monumental public architecture (such as temples or pyramids)

Increased inequality between men and women; patriarchy

Despite all these similarities, early civilizations differed significantly. Perhaps most importantly, the civilizations in northern Africa and Eurasia were connected with each other soon after they began. Together they formed an Afro-Eurasian zone where people traded goods and exchanged ideas and technology. Connecting roads went east-west through similar latitudes and there were sea routes between numerous ports.

In contrast, early civilizations in the Americas were hardly connected at all. They had fewer kinds of transport animals. Fewer routes existed over difficult terrain that separated the north-south changes in latitude. This difference would prove important when sailors from Europe arrived on the shores of the Americas with horses, guns and steel swords. They also carried with them germs they had picked up from their domestic animals to which they became immune. The Europeans’ animals and technologies were the result of collective exchanges among several early Afro-Eurasian civilizations.

Early civilizations shared many characteristics that made them successful. If we take a closer look we can see fascinating details that made them different. All the early civilizations developed some form of writing — except the Inca in the Andes. They instead used a system of tying knots in different colored string, called quipu, to record their transactions and possibly even their stories. All early civilizations engaged in warfare — except, perhaps, in the Indus Valley. Some arrowheads and spears have been found there, but no swords, helmets, shields, or chariots.

Every civilization with writing started by using pictographs but switched to some form of alphabet — except the Chinese. To this day they still use pictographs in their writing. Every civilization practiced human sacrifice, but the Aztecs used it on a much larger scale than others. They believed that the world would end if the chief god did not receive his daily offering of human blood to keep the Sun shining. While early civilizations shared many common features, the differing details form a mosaic of human culture.

Introduction to Agrarian Civilizations (900L)By Cynthia Stokes Brown, adapted by Newsela


During the same narrow sliver of cosmic time, cities, states, and civilizations formed on their own in several places around the world.

DefinitionsThe first agrarian civilizations developed in about 3200 BCE. These early farming societies started in three areas: Mesopotamia; in Egypt and Nubia (now northern Sudan); and in the Indus Valley. More appeared in China a bit later and in Central America and along the Andes Mountains of South America at about 2000–1000 BCE. Why in these places?

First, we must be clear about the definitions of the words city, state, and civilization. A “city” contains tens of thousands of people. It's larger than a town which contains only thousands of people. A village is made up of just hundreds. In cities, people had specific jobs. They weren't all farmers. The food they ate was grown by farmers nearby.

A “state” is a city, or several cities, and the surrounding villages and farms. A state could include hundreds of thousands of people, even millions. Those people fell into different levels depending on their social rank or how much wealth and power they had. A few people called "elites" were on top. Elites typically made up no more than 10 percent of the population, yet had more wealth and power than the bottom 90 percent. States were ruled by these elites. They kept order and collected taxes or tribute through the use of force, if necessary.

Out of states arose empires. An empire was led by a single ruler who controlled large territories of cities and farmland. These large states are often called “civilizations.”

All civilizations share certain characteristics. They have dense populations and are controlled by elites. This does not mean they are better than other kinds of societies. However, they are more complex. Since these early civilizations always depended on the farming around them, we call them “agrarian civilizations.”

Places of early civilizationsFour of the earliest agrarian civilizations occurred in fertile river valleys. Plants and animals in those areas had been tamed earlier and helped civilizations get their start.

The first of these formed in Mesopotamia, now called Iraq. What made this area so fertile was the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Access to water helped people grow more in these valleys. Wheat and barley were the major crops. Mesopotamians also grew lentils and chickpeas and herded sheep and goats.

The next three places where agrarian civilizations emerged were in the Nile River Valley in Egypt and Nubia, the Indus River Valley in India, and the Huang He (Yellow) River Valley in China. Each river valley had its own type of plants and animals, which had been taken from the wild nearby. The Egyptians and Nubians had wheat, barley, cattle, fish, and birds. The Indus Valley people raised cattle and cotton, as well as wheat, barley, lentils, sheep, goats, and chickens. In China, wheat was grown in the north. Rice was cultivated later in the south. Pigs, chickens, and soybeans also formed the main crops in China.


Large states appeared a couple of thousand years later in the Americas. The food options there were quite different. People in Central America learned to grow maize (corn), peppers, tomatoes, squash, beans, peanuts, and cotton. Their only domestic animals were dogs and turkeys. Along the Andes Mountains in South America, people used llamas and alpacas for wool and transport; for food they depended mostly on potatoes and quinoa, a grain rich in protein. They had guinea pigs, and fish brought up from the coast.

Why and how did states emerge?After people learned to grow plants and tame animals, they gradually learned to utilize animals for a variety of things. Instead of eating animals right away, they used them for their milk, wool, manure, and muscle power. The world’s population was able to grow dramatically as humans were able to farm more. In 8000 BCE, it stood at perhaps 6 million. By 3000 BCE, it was maybe 50 million.

At the same time, the climate was changing dramatically. The Earth had reached a stable level of warmth by about 8000 BCE. It had been gradually warming since the height of the last ice age, which was about 20,000 BCE. After 8000 BCE, the climate in the northern hemisphere generally became drier, possibly due to slight changes in the Earth’s orbit. This dryness drove people from mountain areas down into river valleys to find water. During floods, rich soil was deposited into the valleys. It made the land fertile and good for farming.

As more food became available and people lived closer together, the social structure changed. A handful of people became much wealthier and more powerful than the rest. Why did the majority of people allow this to happen?

We can only guess that leaders were needed to manage projects like building big watering systems or dividing up extra food. They also needed armed protection against groups nearby. At the same time, priests and rulers could take opportunities to control the extra food supply. Controlling food meant power. Gradually their power grew. They formed political or religious groups that controlled the land and its people.

Areas without early civilizationsSome areas of the world did not produce full-blown cities and states early on. Even so, the trend toward agriculture seems to have been present everywhere.

In sub-Saharan Africa, people were separated from the northern coast by the harsh desert. Rain forests covered much of the land. The Bantu people, in the eastern part of modern Nigeria, cultivated yams, oil palm trees, millet, and sorghum and herded cattle. Eventually camels replaced horses and donkeys for travel across the Sahara. Muslim merchants could now make their way across the desert to the west coast. Small regional states and kingdoms emerged. But a major agrarian civilization never sprung up.

Small islands in the Pacific did not have the resources to create full-scale agrarian civilizations. But their smaller states and chiefdoms had features similar to those around the world. In Australia, agriculture never really materialized. The soil was poor, and the island was isolated.


Archaeologists have long thought that the basin of the Amazon River didn't contain the resources to support dense human societies. But recent evidence suggests that people there found ways to fertilize the soil by adding charcoal.

Comparing early agrarian civilizationsIn the earliest agrarian civilizations there were at least two things: a high-ranking group in control, and the forceful collection of taxes. It seems centralized state control was needed to bring together and support large populations of people. Yet, these civilizations developed many similar traits beyond those.

Civilizations commonly included the following:


Development of a priestly class; a state religion based on gods/goddesses

Central rule (such as a king, pharaoh, or emperor)

Specialized jobs

Social rank based on wealth, ancestry, and job

Increased trade


Armies and increased warfare

Monumental public architecture (temples, pyramids)

More inequality between men and women; male-dominated traditions

Despite all these similarities, early civilizations differed in important ways. Perhaps most importantly, the civilizations in northern Africa and Eurasia were connected with each other soon after they began. Together they formed an Afro-Eurasian zone where people traded goods and exchanged ideas and technology. Roads running east-west connected them and sea routes ran from port to port.

In contrast, early civilizations in the Americas were hardly connected at all. They had fewer kinds of transport animals. The terrain separating the north from south was difficult to get through.

Early civilizations shared many traits that made them successful. But with a closer look we can see fascinating details that made them different. All the early civilizations developed writing — except the Inca in the Andes. They instead used a system of tying knots in different colored string, called quipu, to record their trade and possibly even their stories.

All early civilizations engaged in warfare — except, perhaps, in the Indus Valley. Some arrowheads and spears have been found there, but no swords, helmets, or shields. Every civilization with writing started by using pictographs but switched to some form of alphabet — except the Chinese. To this day they still use pictographs in their writing.


Every civilization sacrificed humans to the gods, but the Aztecs used it on a much larger scale than others. They believed that the world would end if the chief god did not receive his daily offering of human blood to keep the Sun shining. While early civilizations shared many common features, the differences form a collage of human culture.

Introduction to Agrarian Civilizations (770L) By Cynthia Stokes Brown, adapted by Newsela

During the same narrow sliver of cosmic time, cities, states, and civilizations formed on their own in several places around the world.

DefinitionsThe first agrarian civilizations developed in about 3200 BCE. These early farming societies started in three areas: Mesopotamia; in Egypt and Nubia (now northern Sudan); and in the Indus Valley. More appeared in China a bit later and in Central America and along the Andes Mountains of South America at about 2000–1000 BCE. Why in these places?

We'll answer that question in a minute. First, we must clearly define the words city, state, and civilization. A “city” contains tens of thousands of people. It's larger than a town which contains only thousands of people. A village is made of just hundreds. In cities, people had specific jobs. They weren't all farmers. The food they ate was grown by farmers nearby.

A “state” is a city, or several cities, and the surrounding villages and farms. A state could include hundreds of thousands of people, even millions. There were levels of power and wealth. A few people called "elites" were on top. Elites typically made up no more than one-tenth of the population. Yet, they had more wealth and power than the bottom nine-tenths combined. States were ruled by these elites. They controlled the military. And they might use force to keep order and collect taxes.

Empires arose out of states. Empires were led by a single ruler who controlled large territories of cities and farmland. These large states are often called “civilizations.”

All civilizations share certain traits. They have populations crowded together who are controlled by elites. This does not mean they are better than other kinds of societies. However, they are more complex. These early civilizations always depended on the farming around them. For that reason, we call them “agrarian civilizations.”

Places of early civilizationsFour of the earliest agrarian civilizations rose in river valleys where food grew easily. People had earlier learned to grow plants and raise animals in those areas. They paved the way for civilizations to form.

The first civilization formed in Mesopotamia. Now that land is in Iraq. What made Mesopotamia so rich was the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. With ample water people could now grow a great deal of food in this river valley. Wheat and barley


became the major crops. Mesopotamians also grew lentils and chickpeas and herded sheep and goats.

The next three agrarian civilizations emerged in the Nile River Valley in Egypt and Nubia, the Indus River Valley in India, and the Yellow River Valley in China. Each river valley had its own type of plants and animals. Like in Mesopotamia, they had been domesticated nearby. The Egyptians and Nubians had wheat, barley, cattle, fish, and birds. The Indus Valley people raised cattle and cotton, as well as wheat, barley, lentils, sheep, goats, and chickens. In China, wheat was grown in the north. Rice was cultivated later in the south. Pigs, chickens, and soybeans were also standard foods in China.

Large states developed a couple of thousand years later in the Americas. The food options there were quite different. There were only a few large animals. People in Central America learned to grow maize (corn), peppers, tomatoes, squash, beans, peanuts, and cotton. Their only domestic animals were dogs and turkeys. Along the Andes Mountains in South America, people used llamas and alpacas for wool and transport. For food they depended mostly on potatoes and quinoa, a grain rich in protein. They had guinea pigs, and fish were brought up from the coast.

Why and how did states emerge?Domesticating plants and animals marked a turning point. Now early people learned to use animals for a variety of things. Instead of eating animals right away, they used them for milk, wool, manure, and muscle power. This caused the world’s population to grow dramatically. In 8000 BCE, it stood at perhaps 6 million. By 3000 BCE, it was maybe 50 million.

At the same time, the climate was changing. The earth had reached a stable level of warmth by about 8000 BCE. It had been warming since the height of the last ice age, which was about 20,000 BCE. After 8000 BCE, the climate in the northern hemisphere became drier. Scientists believe slight changes in the Earth’s orbit may have caused this. The drying climate drove people from mountain areas down into river valleys to find water. During floods, soil was deposited into the valleys. It made the land excellent for farming.

As extra food became more plentiful and people lived closer together, the social structure changed. A handful of people became much wealthier and more powerful than the rest. Why did the majority of people allow this to happen?

We can only guess. But maybe leaders were needed to manage projects like building large watering systems or handing out extra food. They also provided armed protection against groups nearby. At the same time, priests and rulers could take opportunities to control the food supplies. Controlling food meant power. Gradually their power grew. They formed political or religious groups that controlled land and people.

Areas without early civilizationsSome areas of the world did not produce full-blown cities and states early on. Even so, agriculture was beginning almost everywhere.


In sub-Saharan Africa, people were separated from the northern coast by the harsh desert. Rain forests covered much of the land. The Bantu people lived in modern Nigeria. They grew yams, oil palm trees, and herded cattle. Eventually camels replaced horses and donkeys for travel across the Sahara. Merchants could now make their way across the desert. Small states and kingdoms emerged. But a major agrarian civilization never sprung up.

Small islands in the Pacific didn't create full-scale agrarian civilizations. But their smaller states and chiefdoms had features similar to those around the world. In Australia, agriculture never really materialized. The soil was poor, and the island was isolated.

Archaeologists have long believed the Amazon River basin couldn't grow enough for large populations. But recent evidence suggests that people there fertilized soil by adding charcoal.

Comparing early agrarian civilizationsAll of the earliest agrarian civilizations had power structures. In each, elites used the threat of force to collect taxes. It seems that only central control of states could effectively bring together large populations of people and keep them fed. Yet, these early civilizations developed many other similar characteristics including:

Storage of extra food

Development of a class of priests. States had one religion, based on gods/goddesses

Central rule (such as a king, pharaoh, or emperor)

Specialized jobs and division of labor

Social divisions (levels based on wealth, birth, and job)

Increased trade


Armies; increased warfare

Monumental architecture (temples, pyramids)

Increased inequality between men and women; male-dominated traditions

Despite all these similarities, early civilizations differed in important ways. Perhaps most importantly, the civilizations in northern Africa and Eurasia connected with each other soon after they began. Together they formed an Afro-Eurasian zone. People traded goods back and forth and exchanged ideas and technology. Roads running east-west connected them. Sea routes ran from port to port.

In contrast, early civilizations in the Americas were hardly connected at all. They had fewer kinds of transport animals. The terrain separating them was difficult to get through.

With a closer look we can see fascinating details that made early civilizations different. All the early civilizations developed writing — except the Inca in the Andes. They instead used a


system of tying knots in different colored string, called quipu. They used it to record their trade and possibly even their stories.

All early civilizations engaged in warfare — except, perhaps, in the Indus Valley. Some arrowheads and spears have been found there. Yet, no swords, helmets, or shields have been discovered. Every civilization with writing started by using pictographs but switched to some form of alphabet — except the Chinese. To this day they still use pictographs in their writing.

Every civilization sacrificed humans to the gods, but the Aztecs took it the furthest. They believed that the world would end if the chief god did not receive his daily offering. They believed human blood kept the Sun shining. While early civilizations shared many common features, the differences form a collage of human culture.


UrukNestled between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the world’s first major city sprang up in a fertile region of land called Mesopotamia.

Uruk: The World's First Big City (1260L)By Cynthia Stokes Brown, adapted by Newsela

Nestled between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the world’s first major city sprang up in a fertile region of land called Mesopotamia.

The first cityBetween approximately 3600 and 2600 BCE, the people of Uruk created the innovations characteristic of cities ever since: social hierarchies, specialized occupations, coercive political structures, writing, religion, literature, and monumental architecture. By “city” we mean simply a large group of people, tens of thousands, collected into a whole and living in a defined place with structures designated for a range of specific social functions. To support a city, people living on the land around it had to be able to generate stable surpluses of food from the fertility of the soil and the creatures that inhabited it. In addition, people in the city had to devise ingenious ways to distribute those surpluses, ways that would reinforce constructive patterns of conduct and practice.

Cities began to emerge about the same time in various places around the world. But most archaeologists agree that it is fair to claim Uruk (pronounced OO-rook) as one of the world’s first cities (its current name, Warka, is Arabic.) Uruk arose about 5,500 years ago, no time at all when measured against the more than 200,000 years of Homo sapiens or the 6 million years of hominine evolution.

Location, location, locationUruk arose in the place now called Iraq. Greek historians called this area Mesopotamia, or “the land between the rivers.” Those rivers were the Euphrates to the west and the Tigris to the east.

By roughly 4000 BCE, people living in higher places in what is now Iraq had settled down to care for domestic sheep and goats and to grow wheat, barley, and peas. Yet their climate was changing; less rain was falling, and they needed to move to more stable sources of water.

As people migrated into the two river valleys, they found that the soil produced abundant crops due to the fertility of topsoil from repeated flooding of the rivers. They could grow enough to store surplus grain, enough to support other individuals with occupations other than farming. The surplus grain needed to be collected and distributed; probably priests first managed this task. In addition to grains and domestic animals, people had plenty of fish and


fowl from the river and marshes. Beer had already been invented, and a goddess of beer, named Ninkasi, was worshipped.

Writing, beliefs, and everyday lifeA great deal is known about Uruk because of excavations of the site beginning in 1850 and because the earliest writing in the world comes from there, dated to about 3500 BCE. People in Uruk wrote on clay tablets with reeds. The writing is called “cuneiform,” named after the wedge-shaped reeds that writers pressed into wet clay. Since clay tablets are more durable than the silk, bark, bamboo, or papyrus used by other people for writing, many of Uruk’s tablets have survived and are now held in museums throughout the world.

From inscriptions found in Uruk we know that its people built a temple to a sky god called An and another one to his daughter, Inanna, goddess of love and war (later known as Ishtar). Inanna served as the patron goddess of Uruk; its inhabitants believed that they attracted her there by building a special house for her, staffed with priests and servants. The priests managed the people’s contributions and gradually built up their power, using temples as centers for the redistribution of surplus food.

As people learned to farm, they changed their clothing from wild-animal skins to what they could make from their domesticated animals and plants. In Mesopotamia, this meant that most people wore woolen garments made from the fleece of their sheep, even in hot weather. Only the elite could wear linen, a textile made from the fibers of flax plants, because the process of making it took much longer than weaving or knitting wool.

Uruk at its heightBy 5,000 years ago, Uruk held 40,000 to 50,000 people, and after another few hundred years it reached its peak of 50,000 to 80,000 inhabitants. By that time, there were 11 other cities between the rivers, and they engaged in frequent warfare with each other over land, water, and other resources. Priests gradually had to share their power with warrior leaders, a system that eventually evolved into a single king ruling each city.

Early clay tablets in Uruk contain a “standard professions list,” which listed a hundred professions from the king down through ambassadors, priests, and supervisors and on through stonecutters, gardeners, weavers, smiths, cooks, jewelers, and potters. The social structure was topped by a small ruling and priestly elite, with a much larger group of commoners who either owned property or did not, and at the bottom a small group of slaves, those who were captured in war, convicted criminals, or people heavily in debt.

As a single authoritarian ruler emerged to lead Uruk and its surrounding farms and villages, historians say that the first state emerged almost simultaneously with the first city. The state consisted of powerful elites who could coerce labor and tribute. Why did the majority of people allow a few people so much power? This is difficult to answer, but on the one hand it seems that the elites took power as more resources became available. On the other hand, it seems that citizens gave power in exchange for organization, which permitted large-scale projects like irrigation, and for security and protection. What may have begun as consensual power may have evolved into coercive power as elites accumulated more resources.


Writing began in Uruk as a way to keep track of how many sheep, goats, and measures of grain passed through the central warehouses. It began with pictures made in wet clay representing the various goods. After about 400 years, people had figured out how to use symbols and abstract numbers instead of drawing a picture for each item. They used a small wedge to represent one, a small circle to represent 10, a large wedge for 600, and a large circle for 3,600. Their system of numbers was based partly on 10 and partly on 60 for measuring grain. This latter base-60, or “sexagesimal,” system led to viewing a circle as 360 degrees.

After about a thousand years, people in Uruk had developed their system of writing sufficiently to compose hymns, funeral songs, and superhero epics. Here are some lines from “The Lady of the Evening,” a hymn to the evening star, which represented Inanna. Sumer refers to the area where people spoke Sumerian, from the vicinity of modern-day Baghdad down to the Persian Gulf:

At the end of the day, the Radiant Star, the Great Light that fills the sky,

The Lady of the Evening appears in the heavens.

The people in all the lands lift their eyes to her...

There is great joy in Sumer.

The young man makes love with his beloved.

My Lady looks in sweet wonder from heaven.

The people of Sumer parade before the holy Inanna.

Inanna, the Lady of the Evening, is radiant.

I sing your praises, holy Inanna.

The Lady of the Evening is radiant on the horizon.

(Wolkstein and Kramer, 1983)

Poets in Uruk also gave us our first superhero story — in fact, our first recorded story of any kind — The Epic of Gilgamesh. The tale imagines Gilgamesh, a king who may have actually ruled Uruk at about 2750 BCE, as two-thirds divine and one-third human. He has a friend, Enkidu, who becomes citified and stops living as a wild hunter. They go on many adventures together, one of which results in Enkidu being condemned to death, and Gilgamesh has to accept the loss of his friend. This beautiful story has several modern versions. Here are a few lines describing the city of Uruk:

When at last they arrived, Gilgamesh said to Urshanabi [the boatman], “This is the wall of Uruk, which no city on earth can equal. See how its ramparts gleam like copper in the sun. Climb the stone staircase, more ancient than the mind can imagine, approach the Eanna Temple, sacred to Ishtar, a temple that no king has equaled in size or beauty, walk on the wall of Uruk, follow its course around the city, inspect its mighty foundations, examine its brickwork, how masterfully it is built, observe the land it encloses: the palm trees, the


gardens, the orchards, the glorious palaces and temples, the shops and marketplaces, the houses, the public squares. (Mitchell, 2004)

The legacy of Uruk and MesopotamiaDespite all the amazing innovations by its people, Uruk faced eventual decline. After Mesopotamia experienced several hundred years of constant warfare, Sargon of Akkad (ruled 2334–2279 BCE) conquered most of it. A serious drought occurred in about 2250 BCE. By 1700 BCE, all of southern Mesopotamia had declined into a backwater of other empires. The underlying reasons seem to be environmental. The irrigation that Mesopotamians used to increase their crop yields increased the salinity, or salt content, of the soil. As the sun evaporated the water standing in the fields, it left the mineral salts that had been dissolved in the water. As the salinity of the soil increased, the yields of grain, especially of wheat, decreased gradually. By 1700 BCE, crops were depleted by as much as 65 percent.

Mesopotamia had a new time of glory as Babylonia, under Hammurabi (ruled 1792–1770 BCE) who had his capital at Babylon, a city about 250 miles northwest of Uruk on the Euphrates River. Other empires warred with Babylonia until it had a final moment under King Nebuchadnezzar, who in 586 BCE conquered Judah and Jerusalem and sent at least 10,000 Jewish people into exile in Babylon.

This is thought to be close to their original home. According to the Old Testament, Abraham came from the city of Ur, one of the 12 city-states in southern Mesopotamia, located about 50 miles southeast of Uruk. Apparently Abraham left Ur in about the twentieth century BCE in the midst of drought, warfare, and collapse, to travel southwest with his band of followers, eventually to settle in what is now Israel, carrying with them traditions from Mesopotamia.

Traditions from southern Mesopotamia also were adopted by Greek scholars. Especially in mathematics, ideas from Mesopotamia persist. Our day is still divided into 24 hours, each hour into 60 minutes, and each minute into 60 seconds. A circle still consists of 360 degrees. Cuneiform writing was used regionally until the beginning of the Common Era, when it disappeared.

By 300 CE people had mostly abandoned Uruk, and it was completely empty by the time of the Arab conquests in 634.

People in Uruk put together all the pieces of what we call civilization 5,000 years ago. They combined kings, writing, monumental temples and palaces, specialized occupations, and literature into a culture remarkably similar to what we still know, despite the many changes that have occurred since.

Uruk: The World's First Big City (1080 L)By Cynthia Stokes Brown, adapted by Newsela

Nestled between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the world’s first major city sprang up in a fertile region of land called Mesopotamia.


The first cityBetween approximately 3600 and 2600 BCE, the people of Uruk created new concepts that have come to define cities ever since: social rank, specialized occupations, political control, writing, religion, literature, and public architecture. By “city” we mean simply tens of thousands of people living in a defined place with structures that play different social roles. To support a city, people living on the land around it had to be able to cultivate an excess of food. In addition, people in the city had to come up with clever ways of distributing the food in ways that would encourage constructive behavior.

Cities began to spring up about the same time in several places around the world. But most archaeologists agree that it is fair to claim Uruk (pronounced OO-rook) as one of the world’s first cities. The site's current name, Warka, is Arabic. Uruk arose about 5,500 years ago. It was not that long ago, when you consider Homo sapiens have existed for more than 200,000 years.


By roughly 4000 BCE, people living on higher ground in Mesopotamia had settled down to care for domestic sheep and goats and to grow wheat, barley, and peas. Yet their climate was changing; less rain was falling, and they needed to move to more stable sources of water.

As people migrated down into the two river valleys, they found that the soil produced abundant crops due to the repeated flooding of the rivers. They could grow enough to store surplus grain. That grain was enough to support other individuals who worked at something else besides farming. The surplus grain needed to be collected and handed out; probably priests first managed this task. In addition to grains and domestic animals, people had plenty of fish and fowl from the river and marshes. Beer had already been invented, and a goddess of beer, named Ninkasi, was worshipped.

Writing, beliefs, and everyday lifeA great deal is known about Uruk because of archaeological digs of the site beginning in 1850. In addition, the earliest writing in the world comes from there, dated to about 3500 BCE. People in Uruk wrote on clay tablets with reeds. The writing is called “cuneiform,” named after the wedge-shaped reeds that writers pressed into wet clay. Since clay tablets are more durable than the silk, bark, bamboo, or papyrus used by other people for writing, many of Uruk’s tablets have survived and are now held in museums.

The tablets tell us that the people of Uruk built a temple to a sky god called An and another one to his daughter, Inanna, goddess of love and war. Inanna served as the patron goddess of Uruk; its inhabitants believed that they attracted her there by building a special house for her, staffed with priests and servants. The priests managed the people’s contributions and gradually built up their power, using temples as centers for the redistribution of surplus food.


As people learned to farm, they stopped wearing clothing made from wild-animal skins. Instead, they fashioned garments out of what they could make from their domesticated animals and plants. In Mesopotamia, this meant that most people wore woolen garments made from their sheep, even in hot weather. Only high-ranking people could wear linen, a textile made from the fibers of flax plants, because it took much longer to make than weaving or knitting wool.

Uruk at its heightBy 5,000 years ago, Uruk held 40,000 to 50,000 people. A few hundred years later, it reached its peak population of 50,000 to 80,000. By that time, there were 11 other cities between the rivers, and they frequently went to war with each other over land, water, and other resources. Priests gradually had to share their power with warrior leaders. Eventually, this led to a system that turned into a single king ruling each city.

Early clay tablets in Uruk contain a “standard professions list.” The list included professions from the king down through ambassadors, priests, and supervisors and on through stonecutters, gardeners, weavers, smiths, cooks, jewelers, and potters. A small group of priests were at the top of the social rank. Most people belonged to a much larger group of commoners who either owned property or did not. At the bottom was a small group of slaves, those who were captured in war, criminals, or people who owed others a great deal of money.

Historians say that the first state came about almost at the exact same time as the first city appeared. The state was made up of high-ranking people who could make others do work and hand over valuable goods. Why did the majority of people allow a few people so much power? This is difficult to answer, but on the one hand it seems that the rulers took power as more resources became available. On the other hand, it seems that citizens gave power in exchange for organization. Such organization allowed the development of big, important projects like irrigation, and for security and protection. What may have begun as a willing exchange of power may have become less so as the high-ranking people gathered more resources.

Writing began in Uruk as a way to keep track of how many sheep, goats, and grain passed through the central warehouses. It began with pictures made in wet clay representing the various goods. After about 400 years, people had figured out how to use symbols and abstract numbers instead of drawing a picture for each item. They used a small wedge to represent one, a small circle to represent 10, a large wedge for 600, and a large circle for 3,600. Their system of numbers was based partly on 10 and partly on 60 for measuring grain. This latter base-60 system led to viewing a circle as 360 degrees.

After about a thousand years, people in Uruk had developed their system of writing. It was advanced enough to allow them to write hymns, funeral songs, and superhero stories. One hymn was “The Lady of the Evening,” written about the evening star, which represented Inanna. Sumer is mentioned. It refers to the area from modern-day Baghdad down to the Persian Gulf. Here are some lines:









Inanna, the Lady of the Evening, is radiant



Poets in Uruk also gave us our first superhero story — in fact, our first recorded story of any kind — The Epic of Gilgamesh. The tale imagines Gilgamesh, a king who may have actually ruled Uruk at about 2750 BCE, as two-thirds divine and one-third human. He has a friend, Enkidu, who becomes a city person and stops living as a wild hunter. They go on many adventures together, one of which results in Enkidu being sentenced to death. This beautiful story has several modern versions. Here are a few lines describing the city of Uruk:

When at last they arrived, Gilgamesh said to the boatman, “This is the wall of Uruk, which no city on earth can equal. See how its ramparts gleam like copper in the sun. Climb the stone staircase, more ancient than the mind can imagine, approach the Eanna Temple, sacred to Ishtar, a temple that no king has equaled in size or beauty, walk on the wall of Uruk, follow its course around the city, inspect its mighty foundations, examine its brickwork, how masterfully it is built, observe the land it encloses: the palm trees, the gardens, the orchards, the glorious palaces and temples, the shops and marketplaces, the houses, the public squares.

The legacy of Uruk and MesopotamiaDespite all the amazing new inventions by its people, Uruk eventually declined. After Mesopotamia experienced several hundred years of constant warfare, Sargon of Akkad (ruled 2334–2279 BCE) conquered most of it. A serious drought occurred in about 2250 BCE. By 1700 BCE, all of southern Mesopotamia had declined into a backwater of other empires. The underlying reasons seem to be environmental. The irrigation that Mesopotamians used to increase their crop yields increased the salt content of the soil. As the sun evaporated the water standing in the fields, it left behind the mineral salts that had been dissolved in the water. As the salt levels in the soil increased, the yields of grain decreased gradually. By 1700 BCE, crops were depleted by as much as 65 percent.

Mesopotamia had a new time of glory as Babylonia, under Hammurabi (ruled 1792–1770 BCE). Other empires warred with Babylonia until it had a final moment under King Nebuchadnezzar. In 586 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar conquered Judah and Jerusalem. He sent at least 10,000 Jewish people into exile in Babylon, 250 miles from Uruk.


This is thought to be close to their original home. According to the Old Testament, Abraham came from the city of Ur, in southern Mesopotamia. Apparently Abraham left Ur in about the twentieth century BCE, in the midst of drought, warfare, and collapse. He traveled southwest with his band of followers and eventually settled in what is now Israel.

Traditions from southern Mesopotamia also were adopted by Greek scholars. Especially in mathematics, ideas from Mesopotamia persist. Our day is still divided into 24 hours, each hour into 60 minutes, and each minute into 60 seconds. A circle still consists of 360 degrees. Cuneiform writing was used regionally until the beginning of the Common Era, when it disappeared.

By 300 CE, people had mostly abandoned Uruk. By the time of the Arab conquests in 634, it was completely empty.

People in Uruk put together all the pieces of what we call civilization 5,000 years ago. They combined kings, writing, temples and palaces, specialized occupations, and literature into a culture remarkably similar to what we still know, despite the many changes that have occurred since.

Uruk: The World's First Big City (950L)By Cynthia Stokes Brown, adapted by Newsela

Between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the soil was rich and easy to farm. It is there that the world’s first major city sprang up in a region called Mesopotamia.

The first cityAbout 5,000 years ago, the people of Uruk created new concepts that have defined cities ever since: social rank, specialized jobs, political control, literature, religion, and public architecture.

By “city” we mean tens of thousands of people living in a place with structures that play different social roles. To support a city, people living on the land around it had to be able to grow an excess of food. Also, people in the city had to develop systems to distribute the food in a fair way.

Cities began to appear about the same time in several places around the world. But most archaeologists agree that Uruk (pronounced OO-rook) was one of the world’s first cities. Uruk arose about 5,500 years ago. This is not so long ago when you consider that Homo sapiens have existed for more than 200,000 years.


By roughly 4000 BCE, people living in what is now Iraq had settled down to care for domestic sheep and goats and to grow wheat, barley, and peas. Yet their climate was


changing. Less rain was falling, and they needed to move to find more stable sources of water.

As people migrated into the two river valleys, they found that the soil was very fertile due to the repeated flooding of the rivers. Farmers could grow enough to store extra grain. The extra food could support other individuals who did not farm. It was probably priests who collected and handed out the extra grain. In addition to grains and domestic animals, people had plenty of fish and fowl from the rivers and marshes. Beer had been invented and people worshipped Ninkasi, the goddess of beer.

Writing, beliefs, and everyday lifeWe know a lot about Uruk because of archaeological digs that began in 1850. Uruk had the earliest writing in the world, dating back to about 3500 BCE. People in Uruk wrote on clay tablets with reeds. The writing is called “cuneiform,” named after the wedge-shaped reeds that writers pressed into wet clay. Clay tablets are more durable than the silk or bamboo that other peoples used for writing. Many of Uruk’s tablets have survived and are now held in museums.

The tablets tell us that the people of Uruk built a temple to a sky god called An and another one to his daughter, Inanna, goddess of love and war. Inanna was the patron goddess of Uruk. Its inhabitants believed that they attracted her there by building a special house for her, staffed with priests and servants. The priests managed the people’s contributions and gradually built up their power. The temples were used as centers for giving out excess food.

As people learned to farm, they stopped wearing clothing made from wild-animal skins. Instead, they made clothes from domesticated animals and plants. This meant that most people wore woolen garments made from their sheep, even in hot weather. Only high-ranking people could wear linen, a textile made from the fibers of flax plants. Linen took much longer to make than wool.

Uruk at its heightUruk held 40,000 to 50,000 people by 5,000 years ago. A few hundred years later, it reached its peak population of 50,000 to 80,000. By that time, there were 11 other cities between the rivers. The cities frequently went to war with each other over land, water, and other resources. Priests gradually had to share their power with warrior leaders. Eventually, this led to a system of a single king ruling each city.

Early clay tablets in Uruk contain a “standard professions list,” a list of jobs. The list included the king, ambassadors, and priests. It also listed stonecutters, gardeners, weavers, smiths, cooks, jewelers, and potters. A small group of priests were at the top of the social rank. Most people belonged to a much larger group of commoners. At the bottom was a small group of slaves, prisoners of war, criminals, or people who were deeply in debt.

Historians say that the first state came about almost at the exact same time as the first city appeared. The state was made up of high-ranking people who could make others do work and hand over valuable goods. Why did the majority of people allow a few people so much power?


This is difficult to answer. On one hand, rulers took power as more resources became available. On the other hand, citizens gave power in exchange for organization. Organization allowed the development of big, important projects like irrigation, and for security and protection. What may have begun as a willing exchange of power may have become less so as the high-ranking people gathered more resources.

Writing began in Uruk as a way to keep track of how many animals and how much grain passed through the central warehouses. It began with pictures made in wet clay representing the various goods. After about 400 years, people had figured out how to use symbols and abstract numbers instead of drawing a picture for each item. They used a small wedge to represent one, a small circle to represent 10, a large wedge for 600, and a large circle for 3,600. Their system of numbers was based partly on 10 and partly on 60 for measuring grain. This latter base-60 system led to viewing a circle as 360 degrees.

After about a thousand years, people in Uruk had developed their system of writing. It was advanced enough to allow them to write hymns, funeral songs, and superhero stories. Here are some lines from “The Lady of the Evening,” a hymn to the evening star, which represented Inanna. Sumer is mentioned. It refers to the area from modern-day Baghdad down to the Persian Gulf:











Poets in Uruk also gave us our first superhero story, The Epic of Gilgamesh. In fact, it is the first recorded story of any kind. The tale imagines Gilgamesh, a king who may have actually ruled Uruk at about 2750 BCE, as two-thirds divine and one-third human. He has a friend, Enkidu, who becomes civilized and stops living as a wild hunter. They go on many adventures together, one of which results in Enkidu being sentenced to death. This beautiful story has several modern versions. Here are a few lines describing the city of Uruk:

When at last they arrived, Gilgamesh said to the boatman, “This is the wall of Uruk, which no city on earth can equal. See how its ramparts gleam like copper in the sun. Climb the stone staircase, more ancient than the mind can imagine. Approach the Eanna Temple, sacred to Ishtar, a temple that no king has equaled in size or beauty. Walk on the wall of Uruk. Follow its course around the city, inspect its mighty foundations, examine its brickwork, how


masterfully it is built. Observe the land it encloses: the palm trees, the gardens, the orchards, the glorious palaces and temples, the shops and marketplaces, the houses, the public squares…”

The legacy of Uruk and MesopotamiaDespite all the amazing new inventions by its people, Uruk eventually declined. After Mesopotamia experienced several hundred years of constant warfare, Sargon of Akkad conquered most of it. A serious drought occurred in about 2250 BCE. By 1700 BCE, all of southern Mesopotamia had declined and been absorbed by other empires.

The main reasons seem to be environmental. The irrigation that Mesopotamians used increased the salt content of the soil. As the sun evaporated the water standing in the fields, it left the mineral salts that had been dissolved in the water. As the salt levels in the soil increased, famers couldn’t grow as much grain. By 1700 BCE, crops were depleted by as much as 65 percent.

Mesopotamia had a new time of glory as Babylonia, under Hammurabi (ruled 1792–1770 BCE). Other empires warred with Babylonia until it had a final period under King Nebuchadnezzar. In 586 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar conquered Judah and Jerusalem. He sent at least 10,000 Jewish people into exile in Babylon, 250 miles from Uruk.

This is thought to be close to their original home. According to the Old Testament, Abraham came from the city of Ur, in southern Mesopotamia. Apparently Abraham left Ur in about the twentieth century BCE, in the middle of drought, warfare, and collapse. He traveled southwest with his band of followers and eventually settled in what is now Israel.

Traditions from southern Mesopotamia also were adopted by Greek scholars. Ideas from Mesopotamia live on today, especially in mathematics. Our day is still divided into 24 hours, each hour into 60 minutes, and each minute into 60 seconds. A circle still consists of 360 degrees. Cuneiform writing was used regionally until the beginning of the Common Era, when it disappeared.


People in Uruk put together all the pieces of what we call civilization 5,000 years ago. They combined kings, writing, temples and palaces, specialized occupations, and literature into a culture remarkably similar to what we still know, despite the many changes that have occurred since.

Uruk: The World's First Big City (780 L)By Cynthia Stokes Brown, adapted by Newsela

Between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the soil was rich and easy to farm. It is there that the world’s first major city sprang up in a region called Mesopotamia.


The first cityCities began to appear in several places around the world at about the same time. But most archaeologists agree that Uruk was one of the world’s first cities.

What makes a city? Things like: social rank, specialized jobs, political control, literature, religion, and public architecture. The people of Uruk had all of these about 5,000 years ago.

To support a city, you must have people growing extra food nearby. People in the city had to find ways to distribute the food fairly.

Location, location, locationUruk (pronounced OO-rook) arose in what is now Iraq. Greek historians called this area Mesopotamia, or “the land between the rivers.” Those rivers were the Euphrates in the west and the Tigris in the east.

By 4000 BCE, the Mesopotamians had settled down. They cared for domestic sheep and goats. They grew wheat, barley, and peas. But their climate was changing. Less rain was falling, so they needed to move to find new water sources.

People migrated into the two river valleys. They found soil that was very fertile because of repeated flooding of the rivers. Thanks to the soil, farmers could grow more than enough grain. The extra food could support others who didn’t farm.

Priests probably collected and handed out the extra grain. In addition to grains and domestic animals, people had plenty of fish and fowl from the rivers and marshes. Beer had been invented and people worshipped Ninkasi, the goddess of beer.

Writing, beliefs, and everyday lifeWe know a lot about Uruk because of archaeological digs that began in 1850. Uruk had the earliest writing system in the world. It dates back about 5,500 years. People in Uruk wrote on clay tablets with reeds. The writing is called “cuneiform.” It’s named after the reeds that writers pressed into wet clay. Because clay is durable, many tablets have survived. Museums around the world take care of them.

We learned from the tablets that the people of Uruk built a temple to a sky god called An. They also built a temple to Inanna, his daughter. Inanna was goddess of love and war. Inanna was also the patron goddess of Uruk. The city’s people worshipped her by building a special house, staffed with priests and servants.

Because the temples were also used to store and hand out excess food, priests became more powerful.

As people learned to farm, they stopped wearing clothing made from wild-animal skins. Instead, they made clothes from domesticated animals and plants. This meant that most people wore woolen clothes made from their sheep, even in hot weather. Only high-ranking people could wear linen, a textile made from flax plants. Linen took much longer to make than wool.


Uruk at its heightUruk had 40,000 to 50,000 people by 5,000 years ago. A few hundred years later, it reached its peak population of 50,000 to 80,000. By that time, there were 11 other cities between the rivers. The cities frequently fought with each other over land, water, and other resources. Priests gradually had to share their power with warrior leaders. Eventually, this led to a system of a single king ruling each city.

Early clay tablets in Uruk contain a list of jobs. These lists included the king, ambassadors, and priests. They also listed stonecutters, gardeners, weavers, smiths, cooks, jewelers and potters. A small group of priests were at the top of the social rank. Most people belonged to a much larger group of commoners. At the bottom was a small group of slaves, prisoners of war, criminals, and people who were in debt.

Historians say that the first state appeared at the same time as the first city. The state was made up of high-ranking people who could give orders and collect valuable goods. Why did the majority of people allow a few people so much power?

This is difficult to answer. On one hand, rulers took power as more resources became available. On the other hand, citizens gave power in exchange for organization. Organization allowed the development of big, important projects like irrigation, and for security and protection.

The first writing in Uruk was used to track goods passing through central warehouses. It began with pictures in wet clay that represented animals or grain. After 400 years, people were using symbols instead of drawing a picture for each item. In this system, a small wedge stood for one. A small circle stood for 10. A large wedge, or triangle, meant 600. Large circles stood for 3,600. Their system of numbers was based partly on 10 and partly on 60. We still use the system based on 60 today. For example, a circle has 360 degrees.

After about a thousand years, people in Uruk had developed their system of writing. It was advanced enough to allow them to write hymns, funeral songs, and superhero stories. Here are some lines from “The Lady of the Evening,” a hymn to the evening star, which represented Inanna. Sumer is mentioned. It refers to the area from modern-day Baghdad down to the Persian Gulf:






Poets in Uruk also gave us our first superhero story, The Epic of Gilgamesh. In fact, it is the first recorded story of any kind. The tale imagines Gilgamesh as two-thirds divine and one-third human. His friend Enkidu becomes a city person and stops living as a wild hunter. They go on many adventures together. One of these results in Enkidu being sentenced to death.


This beautiful story has several modern versions. Here are a few lines describing the city of Uruk:

Gilgamesh said to the boatman, “This is the wall of Uruk, which no city on earth can equal. See how its ramparts gleam like copper in the sun. Climb the stone staircase, more ancient than the mind can imagine. Approach the Eanna Temple, sacred to Ishtar, a temple that no king has equaled in size or beauty. Walk on the wall of Uruk. Follow its course around the city, inspect its mighty foundations, examine its brickwork, how masterfully it is built. Observe the land it encloses: the palm trees, the gardens, the orchards, the glorious palaces and temples, the shops and marketplaces, the houses, the public squares…”

The legacy of Uruk and MesopotamiaDespite the innovations by its people, Uruk eventually declined. After Mesopotamia experienced several hundred years of warfare, Sargon of Akkad conquered most of it. A serious drought occurred in about 2250 BCE. By 1700 BCE, all of southern Mesopotamia had declined and been absorbed by other empires.

The main reasons seem to be environmental. The irrigation that the Mesopotamians used increased the salt content of the soil. As the sun evaporated the water standing in the fields, it left behind the mineral salts that had been dissolved in the water. This caused the salt levels in the soil to increase. The high salt content meant farmers couldn’t grow as much grain. By 1700 BCE, crop production had fallen by about 65 percent.

Mesopotamia had a new time of glory as Babylonia, under Hammurabi (ruled 1792–1770 BCE). Other empires warred with Babylonia until it had a final moment under King Nebuchadnezzar. In 586 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar conquered Judah and Jerusalem. He sent at least 10,000 Jewish people into exile in Babylon, 250 miles from Uruk.

Traditions from southern Mesopotamia also were adopted by Greek scholars. Ideas from Mesopotamia live on today, especially in mathematics. Our day is still divided into 24 hours. Each hour is divided into 60 minutes. And each minute into 60 seconds. A circle still consists of 360 degrees. Cuneiform writing was used regionally until the beginning of the Common Era, when it disappeared.


Five thousand years ago, people in Uruk put together all the pieces of what we call civilization. They had kings and writing, temples and palaces, jobs and literature. The culture they built is similar to what we know today.


MesoamericaCivilization in Mesoamerica flourished and crashed repeatedly, giving rise to a distinctive worldview and some remaining mysteries.

Mesoamerica: Repeated Reinventions (1190L)By Cynthia Stokes Brown

Civilization in Mesoamerica flourished and crashed repeatedly, giving rise to a distinctive worldview and some remaining mysteries.

The geography of the AmericasThe Americas constitute one of the world’s four geographical zones. Each of these belts is a large area of the world that developed almost entirely separately from the others during the eras of hunting and gathering and of early agriculture. The four world zones are the Afro-Eurasian zone, the Americas, the Australasian zone, and the Pacific islands.

About 245 million years ago, when all the continents on Earth were fused into one continent called Pangaea, North and South America were more closely packed together. The current shape of Mesoamerica (Middle America) began to emerge as Pangaea broke up, and North and South America separated, not to be rejoined again until about 3 million years ago. This reconnection happened as two tectonic plates moved against each other, causing volcanoes to erupt, which created islands. Sediment gradually filled in among the islands. This had an enormous impact on Earth’s climate, because it reconfigured the ocean currents. Since the Atlantic current could no longer flow into the Pacific Ocean, it turned north up the coast of North America and over to Europe, carrying warm water from the Caribbean that raised temperatures in Europe.

Today the land joining the two continents, called the Isthmus of Panama, is only 40 miles wide and 400 miles long. (Isthmus comes from the Greek word isthmos and means a narrow strip of land connecting two larger land areas, with water on either side.) The areas in which civilization developed in Mesoamerica include Mexico and neighboring parts of Central America, all just north of the Isthmus of Panama.

Early developments in MesoamericaPeople in the Americas developed an entirely different menu of foods than those in Mesopotamia for the simple reason that the indigenous plants and animals were different than those in the Fertile Crescent. Instead of wild grains, goats, and sheep, people in the highlands of Mexico had corn (sometimes called maize), beans, peppers, tomatoes, and squash as their staple foods. The ancestor of modern corn, called “teosinte,” has cobs about the size of a human thumb. It took people about 5,000 years, until 2000 BCE, to domesticate teosinte and breed corncobs large enough to support city life. They also cultivated peanuts and cotton. The only animals that could be domesticated were dogs and turkeys.


The OlmecsThe founding culture of Mesoamerica appeared along the southwestern curve of the Gulf of Mexico, near the present-day city of Veracruz. This culture emerged in a series of river valleys, as Uruk did in Mesopotamia. Called the Olmecs (the “rubber people”), this culture lasted from about 1400 BCE to 100 BCE. It produced nearly imperishable art, notably large carved heads of volcanic rock, the largest weighing some 20 tons and standing about 10 feet tall. Monumental sculptures or tombs are typically indicative of a civilization with powerful leaders, but this culture probably ranks more as a chiefdom than as a state with extensive coercive power. The last Olmec site, Tres Zapotes, declined by about 100 BCE for unknown reasons. Was it volcanic eruptions? A shift in the flow of rivers? Scholars believe that the Olmecs may have deliberately destroyed their capital. Was there civil unrest? Class strife? No one knows.

The MayaAs the Olmecs declined, their neighbors to the east — the Maya — prospered in an area the size of Colorado or Great Britain. This area, around the curve of the Gulf of Mexico on the Yucatan Peninsula and south into present-day Guatemala, had poor, infertile soil and no large rivers, not what one would expect for a flourishing civilization. Yet its people built terraces to trap silt from the small rivers and grew corn, beans, squash, peppers, cassava, and cacao (chocolate). With no beasts of burden, their luxury goods were portable by humans — feathers, jade, gold, and shells.

The Maya organized themselves into small city-states instead of one big empire. The largest was Tikal, which by 750 CE, had about 40,000 inhabitants, in specialized occupations and ruled by elites. The city-states fought each other frequently with the main purpose being to capture their enemies to sacrifice them to the Mayan gods.

We know about the Maya because they developed the most elaborate and sophisticated writing system of the several different ones used in Mesoamerica. Mayan writing included both pictographs and symbols for syllables. Since the 1980s, scholars have made great strides in deciphering this script. Many carved inscriptions have survived, but only a few accordion books on bark or deerskin remain.

Maya shamans or priests worked out remarkable systems of cosmology and mathematics. They devised three kinds of calendars. A calendar of the solar year of 365 days governed the agricultural cycle, and a calendar of the ritual year of 260 days dictated daily affairs; these two calendars coincided every 52 years. A third calendar, called the Long Count calendar, extended back to the date August 13, 3114 BCE (on the Gregorian calendar), to record the large-scale passage of time. The Maya calculated a solar year as 365.242 days, about 17 seconds shorter than the figures of modern astronomers. They also introduced the concept of zero; the first evidence of zero as a number dates from 357 BCE, but it may go back further, to Olmec times. In Afro-Eurasia, Hindu scholars first represented zero in the 800s CE.

Mayan cosmology included the idea that the world had come to an end four times already and that the Maya were living in the Fifth Sun (the fifth world), whose persistence depended


on the life energy of sacrificial blood. Remember in the Mayan creation story, the Popol Vuh, that the gods created people out of their own genius and sacrifice, nothing else. The Maya believed that the gods set the Sun burning by sacrificing themselves to start it. Since they believed that the Sun’s energy would continue only with the life-giving energy found in human blood to replenish it, they practiced ritual blood-letting achieved by using cactus or bone spines to pierce their earlobes, hands, or penises. They also carried out some ritual sacrifice of human victims. The Maya may have inherited their calendar and sacrificial rituals from the Olmecs.

Certainly the Maya inherited from the Olmecs a ball game played with a rubber ball about 8 inches (20 centimeters) in diameter. The object was to put the ball through a high ring without using hands (no-handed basketball!). Sometimes the game was played for simple sport, but sometimes high-ranking captives were forced to play for their lives. The losers were sacrificed to the gods, and their heads were displayed on racks alongside some ball courts.

Between 800 and 925 CE, Mayan society experienced a rapid transition. The world of cities ended as populations moved back into the countryside. Historians debate the possible causes of the change — civil revolts, invasions, erosion, earthquakes, disease, drought. Likely some combination of these brought on an unusually rapid fading of a once-vibrant civilization. The Maya didn’t just disappear; several million descendants are still alive today.

TeotihuacanMeanwhile, back in the center of Mexico at about the same time, another amazing city developed: Teotihuacan (tay-oh-tee-wa-KAHN). Its site was in the highlands of Mexico, more than a mile (some 2 kilometers) above sea level, in a place where water flowing from surrounding mountains created several large lakes. Teotihuacan began as an agricultural village located about 31 miles (50 kilometers) north of present-day Mexico City. By 500 CE, it had an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 people, to rank as one of the six largest cities in the world. Not much is understood about its government; its art portrays deities rather than royalty. Its people expanded Olmec graphic symbols, but all its books were destroyed about 750 CE, when it seems that unknown invaders burned the city.

TenochtitlanThe city that carried Mesoamerican civilization to its height proved to be Tenochtitlan (the-noch-tee-TLAHN), or “place of the cactus fruit” in their language, Nahuatl. Its people, called the Mexica (me-SHI-ka), came from northern Mexico looking for a place to settle. All the desirable places were already inhabited, except an island in a large lake in the Valley of Mexico, where they settled in 1325. They were given the name Aztecs by the German explorer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt in the early nineteenth century.

The Mexica/Aztecs built up their food production by creating floating islands of soil, called chinampas, held together by willow trees. Their men hired themselves out as paid soldiers to other towns until they became strong enough to conquer others on their own. In 1428, they allied themselves with two other neighboring cities to form the so-called Triple Alliance and set out to conquer other cities to provide tribute that could support the Alliance’s expanding


population. The conquests would also provide sacrificial victims for their religious rituals, carried down from the Olmecs, Maya, and Teotihuacanians.

By the early 1500s, the Aztecs had conquered most of Mesoamerica and had imposed their rule on an estimated 11 million to 12 million people. The annual tribute they received in corn alone amounted to 7,000 tons. They also received 2 million cotton cloaks, as well as jewelry, obsidian knives, rubber balls, jaguar skins, parrot feathers, jade, emeralds, seashells, vanilla beans, and chocolate. Without money, everyone was paid in food and goods. Their population had grown to at least 200,000 to 300,000 in the capital, several times the size of the contemporary London of King Henry VIII.

The Aztecs bestowed great honor to their warriors, building their society around a military elite. A council of the most successful warriors chose the ruler. Warriors could wear fine cotton cloth and feathers instead of clothing made from the fibers of an agave-like plant; they were believed to go straight to the paradise of the Sun God if they died in battle. (This also applied to women who died in childbirth with their first child.) Priests also ranked among the elite. Most people were commoners who cultivated land and a large number of slaves worked mostly as domestic servants.

The Aztecs adopted traditions that dated back to the Olmecs. They played the same ball game and kept a sophisticated calendar. They adopted traditional religious beliefs, holding that the gods had set the world in motion by their individual acts of sacrifice. Priests practiced bloodletting on themselves and believed that ritual sacrifice of humans was essential to prevent the destruction of the Fifth Sun by earthquakes or famine. The god of war, Huitzilopochli (we-tsee-loh-POCK-tlee), came to be the prevailing god in Tenochtitlan, and his priests placed more emphasis on human sacrifice than did earlier traditions. Priests laid the victims — mostly captives of war — over a curved stone high on a pyramid and cut open the chest with an obsidian blade to fling the still-beating heart into a ceremonial basin, while the desired blood flowed down the pyramid.

Aztec society provided universal schooling for both boys and girls between 15 and 20 years of age. It’s likely they were the only people in the world to do this in the early sixteenth century. Commoner boys learned to be warriors; girls learned songs, dances, and household skills. A third kind of school provided lessons in administration, ideology, and literacy for elite boys.

At the same time that the elites supported warfare, they also devoted themselves to poetry, which they considered the highest art. One of the rulers of another city in the Triple Alliance, Nezahualcoyotl (“Hungry Coyote”), composed this poem in the early 1400s, revealing the Aztec sense of the fleeting world:

Truly do we live on earth?

Not forever on earth; only a little while here.

Be it jade, it shatters.

Be it gold, it breaks.

Be it quetzal feathers, it tears apart.



Like a painting, we will be erased.

Like a flower, we will dry up here on earth,

Like plumed vestments of the precious bird,

That precious bird with an agile neck,

We will come to an end.

The fall of the AztecsIn 1520, just as the Aztec civilization of the Fifth Sun was flourishing, it was destroyed — by a small group of Spanish conquistadors and their Mexican allies, under the command of Hernán Cortés. After many battles in which the Spanish used their horses, guns, and steel swords to their advantage, they surrounded Tenochtitlan and starved its inhabitants; many Aztecs died of smallpox, to which they had no immunity since it was a disease that originated in cows. When the Aztecs surrendered, only one-fifth of their initial population remained. Within 10 years, the Spanish controlled all of Mexico, easily overwhelming the traumatized survivors of the deadly disease.

How do we know this? The Aztecs had a system of writing, although it was not as expressive as that of the Maya. The Spanish conquerors destroyed the books of the Aztecs, in an attempt to eradicate their religious beliefs; only a few books, and many inscriptions, remain. But a Franciscan priest, Bernadino de Sahagun (1499–1590), learned the Aztec language, Nahuatl, and interviewed many Aztec survivors to produce a 12-volume encyclopedia of their customs and beliefs. Nahuatl is still a living language for hundreds of thousands of Mexicans. It has given English such important words as chocolate, tomato, coyote, and tamale.

Comparing Tenochtitlan to Uruk, we can say that there are remarkable similarities. Both cities had social and occupational hierarchies with elite rulers, some slaves, lots of warfare, coerced tribute, monumental buildings, powerful religious rituals, and fantastic art and literature. The differences are also striking: Tenochtitlan’s emphasis on human sacrifice, its anxiety about the world coming to an end, and its emergence thousands of years later than that of Uruk’s.

Comparing the Americas to Afro-EurasiaTo compare the Americas with Afro-Eurasia, let’s look around the Americas a bit. We have seen agrarian civilization develop in Mesoamerica; can we find it anywhere else?

In South America, civilization developed along the lengthy coastline on the western side of the continent. Plate tectonics formed a unique landscape with high mountains near the ocean as the Nazca plate slid beneath the South American plate. Early states developed along the coastline, but they could not overcome the frequent floods, earthquakes, and torrential rains to continue their development and increase their populations. Finally, in the fifteenth century, the Incas built a state high in the mountains with its capital at Cuzco, at


13,000 feet. At its height, the Inca Empire controlled 10 million to 11 million people, covering lands from present-day Quito, Ecuador, all the way to Santiago, Chile. Strikingly, this civilization had no written language; it used knots tied into ropes as a system of writing called quipu. But smallpox spread to this area even before the Spanish soldiers arrived, and by 1527, the Spanish conquistadors under Francisco Pizzaro had used their technological advantage to conquer a vast Inca civilization compromised by disease.

Nowhere else in the Americas did civilization, as we have defined it, emerge. Many wonderful cultures and chiefdoms arose, but none achieved the surplus of food necessary for highly dense populations. The cultivation of tobacco and corn spread widely. Even the basin of the Amazon River may have been more densely populated than previously suspected. People farmed, but everywhere they needed to supplement their agriculture with hunting and gathering.

The Americas did not develop many of the technological innovations present in Afro-Eurasia. For example, Americans did not use wheels (except the Maya, who put them on toys), probably because they had no large domestic animals to pull wheeled devices. Americans did not melt iron or steel; they used obsidian (glassy volcanic rock that can be sharpened to a thinness of one molecule) for blades. They had no swords or guns. They had no horses, which had evolved in the Americas but became extinct at the end of the last ice age, about when humans were arriving in the Americas.

How much long-distance trade and travel occurred in the Americas? Not as much as in Afro-Eurasia, which stretched out east to west so that people could travel at approximately the same latitude (the distance from the equator) in similar climates. The Americas stretched north and south, with huge changes in climate. Crops could not be carried or exchanged because they would not grow at different latitudes without time to adapt. Americans built large canoes but not sailing vessels, and they stayed close to the shore and in calm waters. They made north-south connections, but these were less frequent than the east-west connections of Afro-Eurasia.

As a result of these factors, states and civilizations arose somewhat later in the Americas than they did in Afro-Eurasia. Once American civilizations emerged, they were not able to connect with each other, share their innovations, or learn collectively to the same extent as their counterparts in Afro-Eurasia. The civilizations created were similar in all their basic characteristics to those in Afro-Eurasia and seemed likely to continue their development if they had not been prematurely cut down by Europeans.

Most historians believe that the difference in disease immunity made the biggest impact when the people of the two hemispheres connected in 1492. Many common diseases in Afro-Eurasia — measles, smallpox, influenza, diphtheria, and bubonic plague — had originated in domestic animals and then passed to humans, who are closely enough related that some of the same bacteria and viruses are harmful. Since Afro-Eurasians had frequent contact with domestic animals, they developed some immunity to the diseases by being exposed to mild forms of the dangerous microorganisms as children. Disease exchanges along the Silk Roads spread these immunities. This could not happen in the Americas without domestic animals; when Africans and Europeans brought these “bugs” to the


Americas, plus malaria and yellow fever from tropical Africa, wholesale disease and death overtook the Americans.

Historical and geographical contingencies gave Europeans the edge in conquering the people of the Americas, while many Africans were swept into prevailing events as valuable slave commodities. It is a disturbing story, but it is the one that helped create the modern world.

Mesoamerica: Repeated Reinventions (940L)By Cynthia Stokes Brown, adapted by Newsela

Civilization in Mesoamerica flourished and crashed repeatedly, giving rise to a unique worldview and some remaining mysteries.

The geography of the AmericasThe Americas are one of the world’s four geographical zones. Each of these is a large area of the world that developed almost entirely separately from the others during the eras of hunting and gathering and of early agriculture. The four world zones are the Afro-Eurasian zone, the Americas, the Australasian zone, and the Pacific Islands.

About 245 million years ago, all the continents on Earth were joined into one supercontinent called Pangaea. North and South America were more closely packed together. As Pangaea broke up, North and South America were separated. They weren't rejoined again until 3 million years ago.

Their reconnection, which was caused by tectonic activity and volcanoes, had a huge impact on Earth's climate because it changed ocean currents. The Atlantic current could no longer flow into the Pacific Ocean so it turned north up the coast of North America and over to Europe, carrying warm water from the Caribbean. This raised temperatures in Europe.

Today North and South America are joined by a small strip of land called the Isthmus of Panama. It's only 40 miles wide and 400 miles long. Isthmus comes from the Greek word "isthmos" and means a narrow strip of land connecting two larger land areas, with water on either side. In Mesoamerica, civilization developed in Mexico and neighboring parts of Central America, all just north of the Isthmus of Panama.

Early developments in MesoamericaPeople in the Americas grew and ate entirely different foods than people in Mesopotamia. They had different indigenous plants than in the Fertile Crescent. Instead of wild grains, goats, and sheep, people in the highlands of Mexico had corn (maize), beans, peppers, tomatoes, and squash as their staple foods.

The ancestor of modern corn, called “teosinte,” has cobs about the size of a human thumb. It took people about 5,000 years, until 2000 BCE, to domesticate teosinte and breed corncobs large enough to support city life. They also cultivated peanuts and cotton. The only animals that could be domesticated there were dogs and turkeys.


The OlmecsThe founding culture of Mesoamerica appeared along the Gulf of Mexico, in a series of river valleys. The Olmecs ("rubber people") lasted from about 1400 BCE to 100 BCE.

This culture produced epic and long-lasting art. Most famous are huge heads carved out of volcanic rock. Some are 10 feet tall and weigh 20 tons.

Monumental sculptures often indicate a civilization with powerful leaders. But this culture was more likely a chiefdom than a state with a strong central government.

The last Olmec site, Tres Zapotes, declined by about 100 BCE for unknown reasons. Was it volcanic eruptions? A shift in the flow of rivers? Scholars believe that the Olmecs may have deliberately destroyed their capital. Was there civil unrest? Class strife? No one knows.

The MayaAs the Olmecs declined, their neighbors to the east — the Maya — prospered in an area the size of Colorado or Great Britain. This area on the Yucatan Peninsula had poor, infertile soil and no large rivers, not ideal for a flourishing civilization. Yet its people built terraces to trap silt from the small rivers. They grew corn, beans, squash, peppers, cassava, and cacao (chocolate). With no beasts of burden (horses, oxen), their luxury goods were portable — feathers, jade, gold, and shells.

The Maya organized themselves into small city-states instead of one big empire. The largest was Tikal, which by 750 CE, had about 40,000 inhabitants. Tikal's residents had specialized occupations and were ruled by elites. The city-states fought each other frequently. The main goal was to capture their enemies and sacrifice them to the Mayan gods.

We know about the Maya because they developed an elaborate and sophisticated writing system. It was the most advanced in Mesoamerica. Mayan writing included both pictographs and symbols for syllables. Since the 1980s, scholars have made great progress in deciphering this script. Many carved inscriptions have survived, but only a few accordion books on bark or deerskin remain.

Maya shamans (priests) were quite advanced in cosmology and mathematics. They invented three kinds of calendars. A 365-day solar year calendar was used for agricultural cycles. A 260-day ritual calendar was used for daily affairs. A third calendar, called the Long Count calendar, went back to 3114 BCE. It recorded the large-scale passage of time.

The Maya calculated a solar year as 365.242 days, only about 17 seconds shorter than the figures of modern astronomers. They also introduced the concept of zero. The first evidence of zero as a number dates from 357 BCE, but it may go back to Olmec times. In Afro-Eurasia, Hindu scholars first represented zero in the 800s CE.

Mayans believed the world had come to an end four times already and that the Maya were living in the fifth world — the Fifth Sun. The survival of this world depended on the life energy of sacrificial blood.

Remember in the Mayan creation story, the Popol Vuh, that the gods created people out of their own genius and sacrifice, nothing else. The Maya believed that the gods set the Sun


burning by sacrificing themselves to start it. Since they believed that the Sun’s energy would continue only with the life-giving energy found in human blood to replenish it, they practiced ritual blood-letting achieved by using cactus or bone spines to pierce their earlobes, hands, or penises. They also carried out some ritual sacrifice of human victims. The Maya may have inherited their calendar and sacrificial rituals from the Olmecs.

The Maya definitely inherited from the Olmecs a ball game played with a rubber ball about 8 inches (20 centimeters) in diameter. The object was to put the ball through a high ring without using hands, like no-handed basketball! Sometimes the game was played for simple sport, but sometimes high-ranking captives were forced to play for their lives. The losers were sacrificed to the gods, and their heads were displayed on racks alongside some ball courts.

Between 800 and 925 CE, Mayan society experienced a rapid transition. The world of cities ended as populations moved back into the countryside. Historians debate the possible causes of the change — civil revolts, invasions, erosion, earthquakes, disease, drought. Likely some combination of these brought on a rapid fading of a once-vibrant civilization. The Maya didn’t just disappear; several million descendants are still alive today.

TeotihuacanMeanwhile, back in the center of Mexico at about the same time, another amazing city developed: Teotihuacan (tay-oh-tee-wa-KAHN). It was located in the highlands of Mexico, more than a mile (some 2 kilometers) above sea level, in a place where water flowing from surrounding mountains created several large lakes.

Teotihuacan began as an agricultural village located about 31 miles (50 kilometers) north of present-day Mexico City. By 500 CE, it had an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 people. It ranked as one of the six largest cities in the world. Not much is understood about its government. Its art portrays deities rather than royalty. Its people expanded Olmec graphic symbols, but all its books were destroyed about 750 CE, when it seems that unknown invaders burned the city.

Tenochtitlan and the AztecsIt was Mexica people, also known as the Aztecs, that carried Mesoamerican civilization to its height. They built the city of Tenochtitlan (the-noch-tee-TLAHN), or “place of the cactus fruit."

The Mexica (me-SHI-ka) came from northern Mexico looking for a place to settle. All the desirable places were already inhabited, except an island in a large lake in the Valley of Mexico. They settled there in 1325. The group was given the name Aztecs by the German explorer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt in the early nineteenth century.

The Mexica/Aztecs built up their food production by creating floating islands of soil, called chinampas, held together by willow trees. Their men hired themselves out as paid soldiers to other towns until they became strong enough to conquer others on their own.


In 1428, they allied themselves with two other neighboring cities to form the so-called Triple Alliance. The Alliance set out to conquer other cities to collect tribute that could support its expanding population. The conquests also provided sacrificial victims for their religious rituals, carried down from the Olmecs, Maya, and Teotihuacanians.

By the early 1500s, the Aztecs had conquered most of Mesoamerica and had imposed their rule on an estimated 11 million to 12 million people. The annual tribute they received in corn alone amounted to 7,000 tons. They also received 2 million cotton cloaks, as well as jewelry, obsidian knives, rubber balls, jaguar skins, parrot feathers, jade, emeralds, seashells, vanilla beans, and chocolate. Without money, everyone was paid in food and goods. Their population had grown to at least 200,000 to 300,000 in the capital. This was several times the size of the contemporary London of King Henry VIII.

The Aztecs gave great honor to their warriors. They built their society around a military elite. A council of the most successful warriors chose the ruler. Warriors could wear fine cotton cloth and feathers instead of clothing made from plant fibers. Aztecs believed that warriors who died in battle went straight to the paradise of the Sun God. This also applied to women who died in childbirth with their first child. Priests were also considered among the elite. Most people were commoners who worked the land, or slaves who were domestic servants.

The Aztecs adopted traditions that dated back to the Olmecs. They played the same ball game and kept a sophisticated calendar. They adopted traditional religious beliefs, believing that the gods had set the world in motion through acts of sacrifice. Priests practiced bloodletting on themselves and believed that ritual sacrifice of humans was essential to prevent the destruction of the Fifth Sun by earthquakes or famine.

The god of war, Huitzilopochli (we-tsee-loh-POCK-tlee), came to be the most important god in Tenochtitlan. His priests placed more emphasis on human sacrifice than did earlier traditions. Priests laid the victims — mostly captives of war — over a curved stone high on a pyramid and cut open the chest with an obsidian blade to fling the still-beating heart into a ceremonial basin, while the desired blood flowed down the pyramid.

Aztec society provided universal schooling for both boys and girls between 15 and 20 years of age. It’s likely they were the only people in the world to do this in the early sixteenth century. Commoner boys learned to be warriors; girls learned songs, dances, and household skills. A third kind of school provided lessons in administration, ideology, and literacy for elite boys.

While the elites supported warfare, they also devoted themselves to poetry, which they considered the highest art. One of the rulers of another city in the Triple Alliance, Nezahualcoyotl (“Hungry Coyote”), composed this poem in the early 1400s, revealing the Aztec sense of the fleeting world:













The fall of the AztecsIn 1520, just as the Aztec civilization of the Fifth Sun was flourishing, it was destroyed. Spanish conquistadors led by Hernán Cortés used horses, guns and steel swords to defeat the Aztecs in battle. Eventually, the Spanish surrounded Tenochtitlan and starved its inhabitants.

Many Aztecs died of smallpox. They had no immunity to the disease since it originated in cows. When the Aztecs surrendered, only one-fifth of their initial population remained. The Spanish controlled all of Mexico within 10 years, easily overwhelming the traumatized survivors of this novel disease.

How do we know this? The Aztecs had a system of writing, although it was not as advanced as that of the Maya. The Spanish conquerors destroyed the books of the Aztecs, in an attempt to wipe out their religious beliefs. Only a few books, and many inscriptions, remain.

But a Franciscan priest, Bernadino de Sahagún (1499–1590), learned the Aztec language, Nahuatl, and interviewed many Aztec survivors. He produced a 12-volume encyclopedia of their customs and beliefs. Nahuatl is still a living language for hundreds of thousands of Mexicans. It has given English such important words as chocolate, tomato, coyote, and tamale.

There are some remarkable similarities between Tenochtitlan and Uruk. Both cities had hierarchies with elite rulers, slaves, lots of warfare, mandatory tribute, monumental buildings, powerful religious rituals, and fantastic art and literature. The differences are also striking: Tenochtitlan’s emphasis on human sacrifice, its anxiety about the world coming to an end, and its emergence thousands of years later than Uruk.

Comparing the Americas to Afro-EurasiaTo compare the Americas with Afro-Eurasia, let’s look around the Americas a bit. We have seen agrarian civilization develop in Mesoamerica; can we find it anywhere else?

In South America, civilization developed along the lengthy coastline on the western side of the continent. Early states developed along the coastline, but they could not overcome the frequent floods, earthquakes, and torrential rains to continue their development and increase their populations.


Finally, in the fifteenth century, the Incas built a state high in the mountains. Its capital was Cuzco, at 13,000 feet. At its most powerful, the Inca Empire controlled 10 million to 11 million people, covering lands from present-day Quito, Ecuador, all the way to Santiago, Chile. Strikingly, this civilization had no written language. It used knots tied into ropes as a system of writing called quipu. But smallpox spread to this area even before Spanish soldiers arrived. By 1527, the Spanish conquistadors under Francisco Pizzaro had used their technological advantage to conquer a vast Inca civilization weakened by disease.

Nowhere else in the Americas did civilization, as we have defined it, emerge. Many wonderful cultures and chiefdoms arose, but none achieved the surplus of food necessary for highly dense populations. The cultivation of tobacco and corn spread widely. Even the basin of the Amazon River may have been more densely populated than previously suspected. People farmed, but needed to supplement their agriculture with hunting and gathering.

The Americas did not develop many of the technological innovations present in Afro-Eurasia. For example, Americans did not use wheels — except the Maya, who put them on toys. Americans probably didn't use wheels because they had no large domestic animals to pull wheeled devices. Americans did not melt iron or steel; they used a glassy volcanic rock called obsidian for blades. Obsidian can be sharpened to a thinness of one molecule. They had no swords or guns. They had no horses, which had evolved in the Americas but became extinct at the end of the last ice age, about when humans were arriving in the Americas.

There wasn't as much long-distance travel in the Americas as in Afro-Eurasia. Afro-Eurasia stretches east to west. People could travel at approximately the same latitude in similar climates. The Americas stretch north to south, creating huge changes in climate. This made it more difficult to exchange crops, because they would not easily grow at different latitudes. Americans built large canoes but not sailing vessels. They stayed close to the shore and in calm waters. They made north-south connections, but these were less frequent than the east-west connections of Afro-Eurasia.

As a result of these factors, states and civilizations arose later in the Americas than they did in Afro-Eurasia. Once American civilizations emerged, they were not able to connect with each other, share their innovations, or learn collectively as much as their counterparts in Afro-Eurasia. The civilizations created were similar to those in Afro-Eurasia. It seems likely that they would have continued developing if they had not been prematurely destroyed by Europeans.

Most historians believe that the difference in disease immunity made the biggest impact when the people of the two hemispheres connected in 1492. Many common diseases in Afro-Eurasia — measles, smallpox, influenza, diphtheria, and bubonic plague — originated in domestic animals and then passed to humans, who are closely enough related that some of the same bacteria and viruses are harmful. Since Afro-Eurasians had frequent contact with domestic animals, they developed some immunity to the diseases by being exposed to mild forms of the dangerous microorganisms as children. Disease exchanges along the Silk Roads spread these immunities. This could not happen in the Americas without domestic


animals. When Africans and Europeans brought these “bugs” to the Americas, plus malaria and yellow fever from tropical Africa, disease and death overtook the Americans.

Historical and geographical factors gave Europeans the edge in conquering the people of the Americas, while many Africans were swept into events as slaves. It is a disturbing story, but it is the one that helped create the modern world.


Civilization in Mesoamerica blossomed and crashed repeatedly, creating a unique worldview and some mysteries that remain today.

The geography of the AmericasThe Americas are one of the world’s four geographical zones. Each zone is a large area of the world. During the eras of hunting and gathering and of early agriculture, societies in these zones developed almost entirely separately from each other. The four world zones are the Afro-Eurasian zone, the Americas, the Australasian zone, and the Pacific Islands.

About 245 million years ago, all the continents on Earth were joined into one continent called Pangaea. North and South America were closely stuck together. As Pangaea broke up, North and South America were separated. They weren't rejoined again until 3 million years ago.

Their reconnection was caused by tectonic activity and volcanoes. It had a huge impact on Earth's climate because it changed ocean currents. The Atlantic current could no longer flow into the Pacific Ocean so it turned north up the coast of North America and over to Europe, carrying warm water from the Caribbean. This raised temperatures in Europe.

Today North and South America are joined by a small strip of land called the Isthmus of Panama. It's only 40 miles wide and 400 miles long. An isthmus is a narrow strip of land connecting two larger land areas, usually with water on either side. In Mesoamerica, civilization developed in Mexico and neighboring parts of Central America, all just north of the Isthmus of Panama.

Early developments in MesoamericaPeople in the Americas grew and ate different foods than people in Mesopotamia. The Americas had different indigenous plants than the Fertile Crescent. The Fertile Crescent had wild grains, goats, and sheep. People in the highlands of Mexico had corn (maize), beans, peppers, tomatoes, and squash as their staple foods.

The ancestor of modern corn, “teosinte,” has cobs about the size of a human thumb. It took people about 5,000 years to domesticate teosinte and breed corncobs large enough to support city life. They also cultivated peanuts and cotton. Dogs and turkeys were the only domesticated animals early Americans had.


The OlmecsThe founding culture of Mesoamerica was the Olmecs ("rubber people”). Their society took root along the Gulf of Mexico, in a series of river valleys from about 1400 BCE to 100 BCE.

The Olmecs made epic and long-lasting art. Huge heads carved out of volcanic rock are their most famous productions. Some of the heads are 10 feet tall and weigh 20 tons.

Monumental sculptures are often evidence of a civilization with powerful leaders. But Olmec culture was more likely a chiefdom than a state with a strong central government.

The last Olmec site, Tres Zapotes, declined by about 100 BCE for unknown reasons. Was it volcanic eruptions? A shift in the flow of rivers? Scholars believe that the Olmecs may have deliberately destroyed their capital. Was there civil unrest? Class strife? No one knows.

The MayaAs the Olmecs declined, their neighbors to the east — the Maya — prospered. The Maya lived in an area the size of Colorado or Great Britain. This part of the Yucatan Peninsula had poor, infertile soil and no large rivers. Not ideal conditions for a successful civilization. Yet its people built terraces to trap silt from the small rivers. They grew corn, beans, squash, peppers, cassava, and cacao (chocolate). With no beasts of burden (horses, oxen), their luxury goods were portable — feathers, jade, gold, and shells.

The Maya organized themselves into small city-states instead of one big empire. The largest was Tikal, which by 750 CE, had about 40,000 inhabitants. Tikal's residents had specialized occupations and were ruled by elites. Mayan city-states fought each other frequently. The main goal was to capture enemies and sacrifice them to the Mayan gods.

We know a lot about the Mayans because they developed a sophisticated writing system. It was the most advanced in Mesoamerica. Mayan writing included both pictographs and symbols for syllables. Scholars have made great progress in translating the language. Though few books have survived, we have many carved inscriptions.

Maya shamans (priests) were quite advanced in cosmology and mathematics. They invented three kinds of calendars. A 365-day solar year calendar was used for agricultural cycles. A 260-day ritual calendar was used for daily affairs. A third calendar, called the Long Count calendar, went back to 3114 BCE. It recorded the large-scale passage of time.

The Maya calculated a solar year as 365.242 days, only about 17 seconds shorter than the figures of modern astronomers. They also introduced the concept of zero. In Afro-Eurasia, Hindu scholars first represented zero in the 800s CE.

Mayans believed the world had ended four times already and that the Maya were living in the fifth world — the Fifth Sun. The survival of this world depended on the life energy of sacrificial blood.

In the Mayan creation story, the Popol Vuh, the gods created people out of their own genius and sacrifice, nothing else. The Maya believed that the gods set the Sun burning by sacrificing themselves to start it. The only way to keep the Sun going was to offer human blood. The Maya practiced ritual blood-letting using cactus or bone spines to pierce their


earlobes, hands, or penises. They also carried out some ritual sacrifice of humans. The Maya may have inherited their calendar and sacrificial rituals from the Olmecs.

The Olmecs definitely invented a ball game that the Mayans adopted. This game was played with a rubber ball about 8 inches (20 centimeters) in diameter. The object was to put the ball through a high ring without using one’s hands. It's like basketball, but with no hands! Sometimes the game was played for simple sport. But sometimes, captives were forced to play for their lives. The losers were sacrificed to the gods. Their heads were displayed on racks alongside some ball courts.

Mayan society experienced a rapid transition between 800 and 925 CE. The world of cities ended as populations moved back into the countryside. Historians debate the possible causes of the change — civil revolts, invasions, erosion, earthquakes, disease, drought. Likely some combination of these brought down a once-vibrant civilization. The Maya didn’t just disappear; several million descendants are still alive today.

TeotihuacanIn the center of Mexico at about the same time, another amazing city developed: Teotihuacan (tay-oh-tee-wa-KAHN). It was located in the highlands of Mexico, more than a mile (some 2 kilometers) above sea level. Water flowing from surrounding mountains created several large lakes in this area.

Teotihuacan began as an agricultural village near present-day Mexico City. By 500 CE, it had an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 people. It ranked as one of the six largest cities in the world. Not much is understood about its government. Its art shows gods rather than royalty. Its people expanded Olmec graphic symbols, but all its books were destroyed about 750 CE, when it seems that unknown invaders burned the city.

Tenochtitlan and the AztecsMexica people, better known as Aztecs, carried Mesoamerican civilization to its height. They built the city of Tenochtitlan (the-noch-tee-TLAHN), or “place of the cactus fruit."

The Mexica (me-SHI-ka) came from northern Mexico looking for a place to settle. All the desirable places were already inhabited, except an island in a large lake in the Valley of Mexico. They settled there in 1325. The group was given the name Aztecs by the German explorer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt in the early 1800s.

The Mexica/Aztecs built up their food production by creating floating islands of soil held together by willow trees. Their men hired themselves out as paid soldiers to other towns until they became strong enough to conquer others on their own.

In 1428, they joined with two other neighboring cities to form the Triple Alliance. The Alliance set out to conquer other cities to collect tribute that could support its expanding population. The conquests also provided sacrificial victims for their religious rituals.

By the early 1500s, the Aztecs had conquered most of Mesoamerica. They ruled about 11 million to 12 million people. The annual tribute they received in corn alone was 7,000 tons. They also received 2 million cotton cloaks, as well as jewelry, obsidian knives, rubber balls,


jaguar skins, parrot feathers, jade, emeralds, seashells, vanilla beans, and chocolate. They had no coins or money. Everyone was paid in food and goods. Their population was at least 200,000 to 300,000 in the capital. This was several times the size of London at the time.

Warriors were honored in Aztec culture. They built their society around a military elite. A council of the most successful warriors chose the ruler. Warriors could wear fine cotton cloth and feathers instead of clothing made from plant fibers. Aztecs believed that warriors who died in battle went straight to the paradise of the Sun God. This also applied to women who died in childbirth with their first child. Priests were also considered among the elite. Most people were commoners who worked the land or slaves who were domestic servants.

The Aztecs adopted traditions that dated back to the Olmecs. They played the same ball game and kept a complex calendar. They adopted traditional religious beliefs, believing that the gods had set the world in motion through sacrifice. Priests practiced bloodletting on themselves and believed that ritual sacrifice of humans was essential to prevent the destruction of the Fifth Sun by earthquakes or famine.

The god of war, Huitzilopochli (we-tsee-loh-POCK-tlee), became the most important god in Tenochtitlan. His priests placed more emphasis on human sacrifice than did earlier traditions. Priests laid the victims — mostly captives of war — over a curved stone high on a pyramid and cut open the chest with an obsidian blade to fling the still-beating heart into a ceremonial basin. The desired blood flowed down the pyramid.

The elites supported warfare, but they also devoted themselves to poetry, which they considered the highest art. One Aztec ruler composed this poem in the early 1400s. It reveals the Aztec sense of the fleeting world:












The fall of the AztecsThe Aztec civilization of the Fifth Sun was destroyed just as it was thriving. In 1520, Spanish conquistadors led by Hernán Cortés used horses, guns, and steel swords to defeat the


Aztecs in battle. Eventually, the Spanish surrounded Tenochtitlan and starved its inhabitants.

Many Aztecs died of smallpox. They had no immunity to the disease since it originated in cows. When the Aztecs surrendered, 80 percent of their population had died. The Spanish controlled all of Mexico within 10 years, easily overwhelming the survivors of this new disease.

How do we know this? The Aztecs had a system of writing, though it was not as advanced as the Maya’s. The Spanish conquerors destroyed the Aztecs’ books in an attempt to wipe out their religious beliefs. Many inscriptions and a few books survive.

But a Franciscan priest, Bernadino de Sahagún (1499–1590), learned the Aztec language, Nahuatl, and interviewed many Aztec survivors. He produced a 12-volume encyclopedia of their customs and beliefs. Nahuatl is still a living language for hundreds of thousands of Mexicans. It has given English such important words as chocolate, tomato, coyote, and tamale.

There are some remarkable similarities between Tenochtitlan and Uruk. Both cities had hierarchies with elite rulers, slaves, lots of warfare, mandatory tribute, monumental buildings, powerful religious rituals, and fantastic art and literature. The differences are also striking: Tenochtitlan’s emphasis on human sacrifice, its anxiety about the world coming to an end, and its emergence thousands of years later than Uruk.

Comparing the Americas to Afro-EurasiaTo compare the Americas with Afro-Eurasia, let’s look around the Americas a bit. We have seen agrarian civilization develop in Mesoamerica. Can we find it anywhere else?

In South America, civilization developed along the long coastline on the western side of the continent. Early states there could not overcome frequent floods, earthquakes, and torrential rains to develop and increase their populations.

Finally, in the fifteenth century, the Incas built a state high in the mountains. Its capital was Cuzco, at 13,000 feet. At its most powerful, the Inca Empire controlled 10 million to 11 million people. It covered lands from present-day Quito, Ecuador, all the way to Santiago, Chile. This civilization had no written language. It used knots tied into ropes as a system of writing called quipu. But smallpox spread to this area even before Spanish soldiers arrived. By 1527, Spanish conquistadors under Francisco Pizzaro had used their superior technology to conquer a vast Inca civilization weakened by disease.

Civilization as we have defined it didn’t emerge anywhere else in the Americas. Many wonderful cultures and chiefdoms arose, but none were able to grow the food necessary for a highly dense population. Still, cultivation of tobacco and corn spread widely. Even the basin of the Amazon River may have been more densely populated than previously thought. People farmed, but supplemented their agriculture with hunting and gathering.

The Americas did not develop many of the technological innovations present in Afro-Eurasia. For example, Americans did not use wheels. Well, except the Maya, who put them on toys! Perhaps Americans didn't use wheels because they had no large domestic animals to pull


wheeled devices. Americans did not melt iron or steel. They used a glassy volcanic rock called obsidian for blades. They had no swords, guns or horses.

There wasn't as much long-distance travel in the Americas as in Afro-Eurasia. Afro-Eurasia stretches east to west. People traveling this way stayed in the same latitude and a similar climate. The Americas stretch north to south, creating huge changes in climate. This made it more difficult to exchange crops, because they would not easily grow at different latitudes. Americans built large canoes but not sailing vessels. They stayed close to the shore and in calm waters. They made some north-south connections, but these were less frequent than the east-west connections of Afro-Eurasia.

As a result of these factors, states and civilizations arose later in the Americas than they did in Afro-Eurasia. Once American civilizations emerged, they were not able to connect with each other, share their innovations, or learn collectively as much as their counterparts in Afro-Eurasia. The civilizations created were similar to those in Afro-Eurasia. It seems likely that they would have continued their development if they had not been destroyed by Europeans.

Most historians believe that differences in immunity to disease made the biggest impact when the people of the two hemispheres connected in 1492. Many common diseases in Afro-Eurasia — measles, smallpox, influenza, and bubonic plague — originated in domestic animals and then passed to humans. Since Afro-Eurasians had frequent contact with domestic animals, they developed some immunity to the diseases by being exposed to the dangerous microorganisms. Disease exchanges along the Silk Roads spread these immunities. This could not happen in the Americas without domestic animals. When Africans and Europeans brought these “bugs” to the Americas, disease and death overtook the Americans.

Historical and geographical factors gave Europeans the edge in conquering the people of the Americas, while many Africans were swept into events as slaves. It is a disturbing story, but it is the one that helped create the modern world.


Civilization bloomed and crashed in Mesoamerica several times. This pattern gave rise to a one-of-a-kind worldview and some mysteries that still remain.

The geography of the AmericasThe Americas are one of the world’s four geographical zones. Each zone is a large area of the world. Early human societies developed in these areas separately from each other. The four world zones are the Afro-Eurasian zone, the Americas, the Australasian zone, and the Pacific Islands.

About 245 million years ago, all the continents on Earth were joined as one continent called Pangaea. North and South America were stuck closely together. As Pangaea broke up, North and South America separated. They weren't rejoined again until 3 million years ago.


Their reconnection was caused by tectonic activity and volcanoes. It had a huge impact on Earth's climate and changed ocean currents.

Today, North and South America are linked by the Isthmus of Panama. An isthmus is a narrow strip of land connecting two larger land areas, usually with water on either side of it. Most civilizations in Mesoamerica developed just north of the Isthmus.

Early developments in MesoamericaPeople in the Americas grew and ate different foods than people in Mesopotamia. The Americas had different native plants than the Fertile Crescent. The Fertile Crescent had wild grains, goats, and sheep. People in the highlands of Mexico had corn (maize), beans, peppers, tomatoes, and squash as their staple foods. Dogs and turkeys were their only domesticated animals.

The OlmecsThe founding culture of Mesoamerica was the Olmecs ("rubber people”). Their society took root in river valleys along the Gulf of Mexico. They prospered from about 1400 BCE to 100 BCE.

The Olmecs made long-lasting art. Most famous are huge heads carved out of volcanic rock. Some are 10 feet tall and weigh 20 tons.

Monumental sculptures are often evidence of a civilization with powerful leaders. But Olmec culture was more likely a chiefdom than a state with a strong central government.

The last Olmec site declined by about 100 BCE for unknown reasons. Was it volcanic eruptions? A shift in the flow of rivers? Scholars believe that the Olmecs may have deliberately destroyed their capital. Was there civil unrest? Class strife? No one knows.

The MayaAs the Olmecs declined, their neighbors to the east — the Maya — prospered. The Maya lived in an area the size of Great Britain. This part of the Yucatan Peninsula had poor, infertile soil and no large rivers. Not ideal conditions for a successful civilization. Yet its people grew corn, beans, squash, peppers, and cacao (chocolate). The Maya had no horses or oxen. Without animals to carry things, they had portable luxury goods. Feathers, jade, gold, and shells were very valuable to them.

The Maya organized themselves into small city-states instead of one big empire. The largest city-state was Tikal. By 750 CE, it had about 40,000 inhabitants. Tikal's residents had specialized jobs and were ruled by elites. Mayan city-states fought each other frequently. The main goal was to capture enemies and sacrifice them to the Mayan gods.

We know a lot about the Maya because they had an advanced writing system. Mayan writing included both pictographs and symbols for syllables. Scholars have made great progress in translating the language. Though few books have survived, there are many carved inscriptions.


Mayan priests were known as shamans. They were quite advanced in cosmology and mathematics. They invented three kinds of calendars. A 365-day solar year calendar was used for agricultural cycles. A 260-day ritual calendar was used for daily affairs. A third calendar, called the Long Count calendar, went back to 3114 BCE. It recorded the longer passage of time.

The Maya calculated a solar year as 365.242 days. That number is only 17 seconds shorter than the figures of modern astronomers. They also introduced the idea of zero. In Afro-Eurasia, Hindu scholars first represented zero in the 800s CE.

The Maya believed the world had ended four times already. The thought they were living in the fifth world, or Fifth Sun. They believed its survival depended on the life energy that came from the blood of sacrificed humans.

Human sacrifice was important in Mayan culture. In their creation story, the gods started the Sun burning by sacrificing themselves to it. The only way to keep the Sun going was to offer human blood.

The Maya bled themselves using cactus or bone spines. They would pierce their earlobes, hands, or penises. They also ritually killed and sacrificed humans. Some of these customs may have been passed down from the Olmecs.

A ball game the Maya played was definitely taken from the Olmecs. This game was played with a rubber ball about 8 inches (20 cm) in diameter. The object was to put the ball through high rings. But you couldn’t use your hands. It was like basketball, just with no hands! Sometimes the game was played for simple sport. But sometimes, captives were forced to play for their lives. Losers were sacrificed to the gods. Their heads were displayed on racks alongside some ball courts.

Mayan society changed rapidly between 800 and 925 CE. People left the cities and moved back into the countryside. Historians aren’t sure why. Perhaps it was earthquakes, erosion, or drought. Or maybe revolts and invasions. Probably some combination of these brought down Mayan civilization. The Maya didn’t just disappear. Several million descendants are still alive today.

TeotihuacanIn the center of Mexico at about the same time, another amazing city developed: Teotihuacan (tay-oh-tee-wa-KAHN). It was located in the highlands of Mexico, more than a mile (some 2 kilometers) above sea level. Water flowing from surrounding mountains created several large lakes in this area.

Teotihuacan began as an agricultural village near present-day Mexico City. By 500 CE, it had 100,000 to 200,000 people. It ranked as one of the six largest cities in the world. Not much is understood about its government. Its art shows gods rather than royalty. Its people expanded Olmec graphic symbols. But all its books were destroyed about 750 CE, when it seems that unknown invaders burned the city.


Tenochtitlan and the AztecsMexica people, better known as Aztecs, carried Mesoamerican civilization to its height. They built the city of Tenochtitlan (the-noch-tee-TLAHN), or “place of the cactus fruit."

The Mexica (me-SHI-ka) came from northern Mexico. They settled on an island in a large lake in the Valley of Mexico in 1325. The group was given the name Aztecs by the German explorer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt in the early 1800s. In 1428, the Aztecs joined two other neighboring cities to form the Triple Alliance. The Alliance conquered other cities to collect payments that could support its expanding population. The conquests also provided sacrificial victims for their religious rituals.

By the early 1500s, the Aztecs had conquered most of Mesoamerica. They ruled about 11 million to 12 million people. The annual tribute they received in corn alone was 7,000 tons. They also received 2 million cotton cloaks, as well as jewelry, obsidian knives, rubber balls, jaguar skins, parrot feathers, jade, emeralds, seashells, vanilla beans, and chocolate. They had no money. Everyone was paid in food and goods. Their population was at least 200,000 to 300,000 in the capital. This was several times the size of London at the time.

Warriors were honored in Aztec culture. They built their society around a military elite. A council of the most successful warriors chose the ruler. Warriors could wear fine cotton cloth and feathers instead of clothing made from plant fibers. Aztecs believed that warriors who died in battle went straight to the paradise of the Sun God. Priests were also considered among the elite. Most people were commoners who worked the land or were slaves.

The Aztecs adopted traditions that dated back to the Olmecs. They played the same ball game and kept a complex calendar. They believed that the gods had set the world in motion through human sacrifices. Only ritual human sacrifice could prevent destruction of the culture by earthquakes or famine.

The god of war, Huitzilopochli (we-tsee-loh-POCK-tlee), became the most important god in Tenochtitlan. His priests placed more emphasis on human sacrifice than did earlier traditions. Priests laid the victims — mostly captives of war — over a curved stone high on a pyramid. They then cut open the chest with an obsidian blade and flung the still-beating heart into a ceremonial basin. The blood flowed down the pyramid.

The elites supported warfare, but they also devoted themselves to poetry. This, they considered the highest art. One Aztec ruler composed this poem in the early 1400s. It reveals the Aztec sense of the fleeting world:













The fall of the AztecsThe Aztec civilization of the Fifth Sun was destroyed as it reached its peak. In 1520, Spanish conquistadors led by Hernán Cortés used horses, guns, and steel swords to defeat the Aztecs in battle. Eventually, the Spanish surrounded Tenochtitlan and starved its inhabitants.

Many Aztecs died of smallpox. They had no immunity to the disease since it originated in cows. When the Aztecs surrendered, 80 percent of their population was already dead. The Spanish controlled all of Mexico within 10 years, easily defeating the survivors of this new disease.

How do we know this? The Aztecs had a system of writing, though it was not as advanced as the Maya’s. The Spanish conquerors destroyed the Aztecs’ books in an attempt to wipe out their religious beliefs. Many inscriptions and a few books survive.

But a Franciscan priest, Bernadino de Sahagún, learned the Aztec language. He interviewed many Aztec survivors. He produced a 12-volume encyclopedia of their customs and beliefs. The Aztec language Nahuatl is still used by hundreds of thousands of Mexicans. It has given English words such as chocolate, tomato, coyote, and tamale.

There are some surprising similarities between Tenochtitlan and Uruk. Both cities had a social rank, with rulers at the top and slaves at the bottom. War was common in both places. Both cities required others to pay them tribute. Large public structures, powerful religious rituals, and fantastic art and literature were found in both places. The differences are also striking. Tenochtitlan believed strongly in human sacrifice and was worried about the world coming to an end. It also formed thousands of years later than Uruk.

Comparing the Americas to Afro-EurasiaTo compare the Americas with Afro-Eurasia, let’s look around the Americas a bit. We have seen agrarian civilization develop in Mesoamerica. Can we find it anywhere else?

Civilization in South America developed along the western coast. Early states there faced floods, earthquakes and heavy rain. These prevented them from truly developing.

In the fifteenth century, the Incas built a state high in the mountains. Its capital was Cuzco, at 13,000 feet. At its most powerful, the Inca Empire controlled 10 million to 11 million people. It covered lands from present-day Ecuador all the way to Chile. The Incas had no written language. They used knots tied into ropes as a system of writing called quipu.


Smallpox spread to this area even before the Spanish arrived. By 1527, Francisco Pizzaro's soldiers had used their superior technology to conquer the huge Inca civilization already weakened by disease.

Civilization as we have defined it didn’t emerge anywhere else in the Americas. Many wonderful cultures and chiefdoms arose. Yet none were able to grow the food necessary for a dense population. Still, cultivation of tobacco and corn spread widely. People farmed, but still needed to hunt and gather.

The Americas did not develop many technologies that arose in Afro-Eurasia. For example, Americans did not use wheels. Well, except the Maya, who only put them on toys! Americans did not melt iron or steel. They used a glassy volcanic rock, called obsidian, for blades. They had no swords, guns or horses.

There wasn't as much long-distance travel in the Americas as in Afro-Eurasia. Afro-Eurasia stretches east to west. People traveling this way stayed in roughly the same latitude and a similar climate. The Americas stretch north to south. This creates huge changes in climate as you travel. It was more difficult to exchange crops, because they would not easily grow in different climates. Americans built large canoes but not sailing ships. They stayed close to the shore and in calm waters.

States and civilizations arose later in the Americas than they did in Afro-Eurasia. Once American civilizations emerged, they were not able to connect with each other. Therefore, they couldn't share their new ideas or learn collectively as much as the peoples of Afro-Eurasia. Still, the civilizations created were similar to those in Afro-Eurasia. These civilizations were still developing. It seems likely that they would have continued to if they had not been destroyed by Europeans.

Most historians believe that differences in disease immunity made the biggest impact when Europeans arrived in 1492. Many common diseases in Afro-Eurasia like smallpox and the flu started in domestic animals and passed to humans.

Afro-Eurasians developed immunity to these diseases. They had lived in close contact with domestic animals like cows and sheep for ages. But the Americans hadn't. When Africans and Europeans brought these “bugs” to the Americas, disease and death overtook the Americans.

History and geography gave Europeans the edge in conquering the people of the Americas, while many Africans were swept into events as slaves. It is a disturbing story, but it is the one that helped create the modern world.


JerichoJericho, located in the West Bank region of the Middle East, is the oldest continuously inhabited city on the planet.

Jericho: Endurance in the Fertile Crescent (1370L)By Craig Benjamin

Jericho, located in the West Bank region of the Middle East, is the oldest continuously inhabited city on the planet.

History and environmentJericho’s 14,000-year survival is a direct result of biological and geological advantages that explain why a settlement was established there in the first place. This essay explores the idea that the history of a place is just as much about its physical environment as it is about superior technology or government. Big Historians, who are interested in the appearance and development of the first agrarian civilizations, ask probing questions: What were the geographical and biological advantages favoring certain regions that facilitated the appearance of the first towns and cities there? What role did climate play in allowing for agrarian civilizations to appear in some regions, while others remained better suited for foraging? And why is it that, while some agrarian civilizations seem to have abused their environments, and thus sowed the seeds of their own destruction, others were able to husband the advantages provided by geography and biology and successfully sustain themselves for thousands of years?

To illustrate this critical relationship between history and its environmental context, we use the city of Jericho as a case study. Jericho is the oldest city on the planet, situated today in the West Bank region of the Middle East. The location and long-term survival of the city is an excellent example of the impact of the environment on human history. The establishment of Jericho 14,000 years ago resulted from the same geographical and biological factors that led to the most significant revolution in all human history — the appearance of agriculture.

To remind ourselves just how revolutionary this transition was, let’s consider the situation some 15,000 years ago. Humans had by then occupied every continent on the globe except Antarctica. Every single human, wherever they lived, survived by foraging, also known as hunting and gathering. Humans had invented a wide array of foraging techniques specifically adapted to different environments, which ranged from the deserts of Australia to the Arctic ice. But the small size of most foraging bands, and the fact that few exchanges took place between them, limited the amount of collective learning that went on.

But then something changed. Between 11,000 and 10,000 years ago, new ways of life and technologies associated with farming began to appear. Farming eventually gave humans access to more food and energy; consequently, humans began to multiply more rapidly and live in larger communities like villages, towns, and eventually cities. These processes led to


an entirely new level of complexity in the human condition. The transition to agriculture was the first step in a cultural revolution that utterly transformed human societies and drove our species onto a path that led rapidly toward the astonishing complexity of the modern world. And one of the most significant steps in the early stages of that process was the emergence of large settlements like Uruk and Tenochtitlan — and Jericho.

To explore the history of Jericho, we need first to take a look at the role of climate change in encouraging humans to make this transition to farming, particularly in the Fertile Crescent. Then we need to consider the Natufian people, who were some of the first humans to adopt farming and also were the founders of the small foraging base that went on to become the city of Jericho. Next we need to ask, why there? What particular geological and biological advantages did Jericho have that not only explain why it was established where it was but also account for its longevity? We conclude with a closer look at events in Jericho, further evidence of the importance of environmental factors in the rich tapestry of human history.

The role of climate changeAs we have seen elsewhere in the course, of all the factors that help explain the transition to agriculture and the appearance of large settlements, the most critical is the climate change that occurred at the end of the last ice age. It was only with the end of the last ice age early in the Holocene epoch, some 13,000 years ago, that the first evidence of farming begins to appear in the archaeological record. Conditions were warmer and more stable; entire landscapes were transformed. Forests spread across the steppes, displacing the large animal species, such as mammoths and bison, that had grazed there. As the herds of these big animals that humans had hunted for tens of thousands of years migrated northward, communities became dependent on smaller game like boar, deer, and rabbit, as well as on new root and seed plants.

These changes were especially notable in the Fertile Crescent, an arc of high ground that stretches north up the coast of the eastern Mediterranean, east through the mountains of Turkey and northern Iraq, and then south along the high ground between Iraq and Iran. All across the Fertile Crescent, the change in climate encouraged the spread of small game and warmth-loving cereal grasses. Abundance was particularly great in regions where there were good supplies of water, of course, and also where the local environment had produced a range of plants and animals that were good potential domesticates. These same locations attracted humans, too, and we have evidence of numerous Stone Age foraging communities that were experimenting with these plants and animals. The most important of the groups attracted to the abundance of the Fertile Crescent was the Natufians.

Natufians and the “trap of sedentism”From about 11,000 years ago, some groups of humans began to adopt less nomadic lifestyles, becoming at least “part-time” sedentary. There were two main reasons for this: climate change and local population pressure. With the arrival of more stable climates at the end of the last ice age, regions of natural abundance appeared where large numbers of humans were able to settle. These people were not farming, but living off the rich natural resources of the land. Those communities that abandoned nomadism but still lived as


foragers are called “affluent foragers,” or wealthy hunter-gatherers, meaning those who have enough resources to settle down and stay in one place. The most important affluent foragers in the story of Jericho were the Natufian people, who began occupying the western Fertile Crescent (present-day Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria) just over 14,000 years ago.

Evidence for the Natufian culture first came to light in 1928 with discoveries made in northern Israel by Dorothy Garrod at a place called Wadi en-Natuf (hence the name Natufian — we have no idea what they called themselves). We do know that they lived in villages, harvested wild grains, and hunted gazelles. The Natufian toolkit was not really any more sophisticated than that of other foragers, but their more intense use of stone sickle blades to harvest large quantities of wild cereal grains is evidence of a serious change in food-gathering practices. The grain they harvested was also subject to much higher levels of processing than ever before. Many Natufian sites show that standard mortars and grinding stones were supplemented by much larger pipe-shaped mortars dug deep into the bedrock.

The construction of regular cemeteries also separates the Natufians from their contemporaries, because they suggest more complex communities with leaders and social hierarchies. Some individuals were buried wearing personal adornments like caps, bracelets, and garters, which look like indicators of their higher status. It’s also worth noting that only a tiny minority of the population was selected for ceremonial burial, which reinforces this idea that Natufian society was more socially stratified than any earlier human community.

Evidence that the Natufian diet consisted mainly of harvested and prepared cereal grains was discovered at the important Ain Mallaha site in Syria. Skeletal remains showed that most of the residents had suffered from rotten teeth as a result of eating too much barley and wheat. Ain Mallaha also shows that affluent foraging was leading to increasing populations. Although the site’s estimated year-round population of 200 to 300 people might seem tiny by today’s standards, this may well have been one of the largest human communities that had ever existed up to that time. This tells us that one of the most important impacts of affluent foraging is that population pressure was forcing humans into smaller territories and denser settlements.

By 10,000 BCE, foragers had migrated to most parts of this region, and in some areas there was simply not enough room for them all to settle. With each group having to survive off smaller and smaller parcels of land, these communities found themselves caught in what Big Historian David Christian has called the “trap of sedentism.” Traditional foraging is almost always nomadic, requiring near constant migration, so human communities had to keep populations small. It is impossible for migrating bands to support too many feeding infants or less mobile elderly members. Survival necessitated not only natural birth control but also killing off unwanted infants and the elderly to keep populations sustainable.

Once groups like the Natufians decided to remain in one place through the pursuit of affluent foraging, all this changed. There were no longer the same constraints on population. Older members of the community did not have to be abandoned; more children could be supported. As a result, affluent foraging groups began to increase in size, and this led to the problem of overpopulation. This is, in fact, what we find at most Natufian sites — clear


evidence of population pressure. Eventually there were simply too many mouths to feed by foraging practices, which is what archaeologists have found at the site of Ain Ghazal on the outskirts of Amman, Jordan — a rapid fourfold increase in population around 9,000 years ago.

This created so much pressure that increasingly desperate and environmentally unsustainable attempts were made to increase food supplies. The result at Ain Ghazal and so many other sites was that groups were forced to leave the settlement to try to survive elsewhere. At a handful of more sustainable sites, however, agriculture did prove capable of supporting much larger populations, once the inhabitants learned to domesticate certain plant and animal species and increase their production through full-scale farming. One such site was Jericho.

The environmental advantages of Jericho’s siteThe ultimate significance of this transition to farming is that eventually sedentism led to the creation of larger settlements, until towns, cities, states, and empires appeared on the surface of the Earth for the first time. But cities and states emerged only in a handful of regions that possessed enough favorable environmental factors to allow for the establishment of these large communities. Rather than thinking of the emergence of cities and states as an inevitable outcome, we need to focus on the particular natural reasons that allowed some villages to continue to grow until they became towns and cities.

There are many examples of villages that did grow especially large, although the reasons are not always clear. Some may have become important ritual centers of great spiritual significance. Others had access to a critical resource, such as a reliable water supply. Yet others became important commercial centers because they controlled the trade in valuable goods, or they occupied a strategic site on important migration routes. Jericho has proven itself remarkably sustainable because it benefited from several of these advantages, most importantly a very favorable environment.

Jericho is located in the Jordan River Valley in the West Bank. At an elevation of 864 feet below sea level, Jericho is not only the oldest city on Earth but also the lowest one. The city is well known in the Judeo-Christian tradition as the place where the Israelites returned from slavery in Egypt under the leadership of Joshua. According to the Bible, the walls of Jericho came crashing down after the Israelites unleashed the devastating sound of ram’s horn trumpets, a story we will return to in a moment. But it is the natural walls surrounding Jericho that are of even greater importance in the story of this most ancient of cities.

The geological walls of Jericho were created by seismographic activity so intense that it tore a great rift in the Earth’s crust extending all the way from Palestine to northeastern Africa. Of course, the engine that drives plate tectonic movements such as this, and that forces entire continents to move about the surface of the Earth, is the heat trapped deep inside the planet, heat that can be traced back to the processes that created the Earth and Solar System in the first place, heat that can ultimately be traced back to the energy generated in the Big Bang itself.


Jericho lies deep in this Jordan Rift Valley, a tectonic feature formed by a fault along the boundary between the African and Arabian plates. As a result of the fault that opened up between these two plates, the land dropped 3,000 feet, eventually settling almost 900 feet below sea level. At this astonishingly low elevation Natufians established the settlement that became Jericho around 14,000 years ago. But we still haven’t answered the question why. What attracted these affluent foragers to this particular location? Again, it is geography and biology that provide the answer.

The Jordan River is the only major water source that flows into the Dead Sea, and Jericho is located just a couple of miles west of the river, about 10 miles north of the Dead Sea. The city is well protected by Mount Nebo to the east and the Central Mountains to the west. These geological features form natural defenses because they rise up over a mile above the city. Jericho’s location in central Palestine was also ideal for the control of trade and migration routes, which pass up and down this natural valley. Throughout the city’s long history these geographically strategic advantages have made it a source of envy and a coveted possession for a whole series of invaders, many of whom have seen Jericho as the key to controlling Palestine.

Despite the importance of these natural defenses and location, by far the most significant environmental advantage Jericho possessed is access to reliable supplies of water. This critical resource, essential for survival in the harsh desert environment, explains the city’s ancient origin and long history. Jericho is located in an oasis and sustained by an astonishingly dependable underground water supply known as the Ain es-Sultan. This natural spring — also known as Elisha’s spring, after a biblical story in the Book of Kings in which the prophet Elisha heals these waters — has apparently never dried up during 14,000 years of continuous human residency.

More than 1,000 gallons of fresh water bubble up from the source every minute. Early farmers quickly worked out a system of irrigation canals to disburse this precious resource to the surrounding farmland, which is made up of very fertile alluvial soil. It is this almost unique combination, of natural defenses, strategic location, rich soil, abundant sunshine, and, most of all, plentiful water, that has made Jericho such an attractive and sustainable place for foragers and farmers alike for so many thousands of years. When we tally up this list of environmental advantages it’s hardly surprising that Jericho has enjoyed the sort of long and rich history that it has.

The human history of JerichoArchaeologists have discovered at least 20 successive layers of settlement at the site of Jericho. Kathleen Kenyon was the first to extensively investigate the site using modern techniques, back in the 1950s. She was searching for the Bronze Age city named in the Hebrew Bible as the “city of palm trees,” but her excavations quickly revealed evidence of occupation dating back many thousands of years before the Bronze Age. Her trenches reached the remains of an early farming settlement about six acres in area, dated to circa 9600 BCE. Continued excavations revealed even earlier layers, proving that the site had been first occupied, most probably by Natufian foragers, as early as 12,000 BCE. This made Jericho the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in all human history.


After the original foraging settlement, evidence showed that early farmers had learned to domesticate emmer wheat and barley. The availability of these two cereal grains is another significant biological advantage enjoyed by this region. Of the hundred or so domesticated plants humans depend upon today, wheat is one of the most important. It is a superb example of a species genetically pre-adapted for domestication. It can grow in a wide range of environments, and it can generate new diversity at an incredibly rapid rate, which accounts for its tremendous global success as a food crop.

Domesticated emmer wheat rapidly spread from the Fertile Crescent all across West Asia until it was replaced in the Bronze Age by free-threshing wheat. Today, our planet produces more than 620 million tons of wheat each year, providing roughly one-fifth of all the calories consumed by the 6.5 billion members of the human community.

Over the thousand years between 8350 and 7350 BCE, the village of Jericho evolved into a town that was home to perhaps 3,000 farmers. They lived in mud-brick houses arranged without any obvious evidence of town planning. Subsequent residents learned to domesticate sheep and also developed a cult of preserving human skulls and placing shells in their eye sockets.

Later farming communities were more socially complex and better coordinated than their predecessors. The residents now lived in rectangular shaped buildings made of mud bricks resting on stone foundations. In each of these buildings, a number of rooms were clustered around a central courtyard. One room was usually larger — the living room — while the rest were small and probably used for storage. Kathleen Kenyon believed that one particularly large room she excavated may have been a shrine where some type of sacred object — perhaps a pillar of volcanic rock she found nearby — was worshipped in a niche in the wall.

Archaeologists working in these later agrarian layers have discovered farming implements like sickle blades, axes, and grindstones; eating vessels including dishes and bowls made from limestone; spinning whorls and loom weights for weaving textiles; and extraordinary full-sized plaster human figures that must have been associated with some sort of religious practice.

After more than 10,000 years of continuous occupation, Jericho reached its apex in the Bronze Age, between 1700 and 1550 BCE. A class of chariot-riding elites dominated and defended the city during an age of widespread intercity conflict across much of Palestine, or the “land of Canaan,” as it was then called. The defenses were based upon a massive stone wall, but even this was not strong enough to prevent disaster; evidence shows conclusively that around 1550 BCE the ancient city of Jericho was destroyed.

For more than a century, archaeologists and biblical historians have debated the question of whether this destruction might be evidence of the Battle of Jericho. This is described in the Book of Joshua as the first battle fought by the Israelites in their campaign for the conquest of Canaan. In the biblical account, Joshua’s army marched around the city walls for seven days. On the seventh day, the priests sounded their ram’s horn trumpets, the Israelites unleashed a mighty war cry, and the walls of Jericho collapsed, killing every man, woman, and child in the city.


According to biblical chronology, this battle would have taken place in 1400 BCE, but modern archaeologists date (with 95 percent certainty) the destruction of Jericho to a century and a half earlier. Because of the discrepancy, modern scholars often dismiss the historical accuracy of the Battle of Jericho, although many biblical historians continue to make claims for its veracity.

Despite this calamity, Jericho rose again in the centuries that followed. By the eighth century BCE it had fallen to the Assyrians. The powerful Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar also conquered the land of Israel and sent tens of thousands of residents into exile. But the exiles were freed soon after by the Persian king Cyrus the Great. Jericho then served as an administrative center for the Persians, and later as a private estate for Alexander the Great, both of whom were attracted to the city by its strategic location and abundant resources.

Three centuries later, the Hebrew king Herod the Great was granted control over Jericho by the Romans. Under Herod the city flourished as an important agricultural, commercial, and administrative center, and also as a winter resort for Jerusalem’s aristocracy. In the first century of the Common Era, the Greek geographer Strabo described the city’s environmental advantages like this:

Jericho is surrounded by mountainous country which slopes toward it like a theater. It is mixed with all kinds of cultivated and fruitful trees, though it consists mostly of palm trees. It is everywhere watered with streams.

In the same century, according to the Christian Gospels, Jesus passed through Jericho, where he healed a blind beggar and inspired the local tax collector Zacchaeus to repent of his unethical practices.

After the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in 70 CE, Jericho entered a period of decline, although it remained an important Christian pilgrimage site into the Byzantine period. In the seventh century, Jericho became part of the expansive realm of Islam, and we have another description of the advantages of the city written by the tenth-century Arab geographer Al Maqdisi:

The water of Jericho is held to be the highest and best in all Islam. Bananas are plentiful, also dates and flowers of fragrant odor.

During the Crusades, Christians occupied the city until they were driven out by Saladin, the leader of the Arab and Muslim opposition to the Crusaders. Throughout the long reign of the Ottomans, from 1517 to 1918, Jericho slowly shrank to the size of a village and was regularly raided by Bedouins. In the twentieth century, Jericho was controlled at various times by Britain, Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinians. Today Israel and the Palestinian Authority continue to argue over the status of Jericho, and the future of the city and its 20,000 residents is anything but clear.

Physical enduranceThe history of Jericho is rich and complex, punctuated with the same parade of triumphs and tragedies that so many other ancient cities have experienced. But Jericho’s status as the most ancient city on Earth makes it unique. This longevity strongly supports the idea that


history is ultimately as much about the physical environment in which it takes place as it is about technology or leadership. At the end of the last ice age the Fertile Crescent was favored with an array of natural advantages, which explains not only the emergence of agriculture but also that of the first villages, towns, and cities. These same advantages of geography, flora, fauna, and climate made it possible for the Natufians to establish a small foraging community deep in the tectonic fault of the Jordan Rift Valley, surrounded by natural defensive walls, and blessed with rich soil and a seemingly endless supply of fresh water, that easily transitioned into a thriving agricultural community.

The history of Jericho is a 14,000-year-long reminder that the story of humanity can really be understood only if it is embedded deeply into the natural context in which it has played out, for the environment is truly the great physical stage upon which our human drama continues to unfold.

Jericho: Endurance in the Fertile Crescent (1180L)By Craig Benjamin, adapted by Newsela


History and environmentJericho’s 14,000-year survival is a direct result of biological and geological advantages. These advantages explain why a settlement was established there in the first place. This essay explores the idea that the history of a place is as much about its physical environment as it is about superior technology or government.

Big Historians, who are interested in the appearance and development of the first agrarian civilizations, ask probing questions:

What were the geographical and biological advantages of certain regions that made possible the appearance of the first towns and cities there?

What role did climate play in allowing for agrarian civilizations to appear in some regions, while others remained better suited for foraging?

Why is it that some agrarian civilizations seem to have abused their environments, and thus caused their own destruction, while others were able to responsibly benefit from the advantages provided by geography and biology and successfully sustain themselves for thousands of years?

The city of Jericho is a case study of the critical relationship between history and its environmental context. Jericho is the oldest city on the planet, situated today in the West Bank region of the Middle East. The location and long-term survival of the city is an excellent example of the impact of the environment on human history. The establishment of Jericho 14,000 years ago resulted from the same geographical and biological factors that led to the most significant revolution in all human history — the appearance of agriculture.


This transition was revolutionary. Consider the situation 15,000 years ago. Humans had occupied every continent on the globe except Antarctica. All humans, no matter where they lived, survived by foraging, also known as hunting and gathering. Humans were able to forage successfully in different environments, from the deserts of Australia to the Arctic ice. But foraging bands were small, and few exchanges took place between them. This limited the amount of collective learning that went on.

But then something changed. Between 11,000 and 10,000 years ago, new ways of life and technologies associated with farming began to appear. Farming eventually gave humans access to more food and energy. Consequently, humans began to multiply more rapidly and live in larger communities like villages, towns, and eventually cities.

These developments led to an entirely new level of complexity in the human condition. The transition to agriculture was the first step in a cultural revolution that utterly transformed human societies and drove our species onto a path that led rapidly toward the astonishing complexity of the modern world. And one of the most significant steps in the early stages of that process was the emergence of large settlements like Uruk and Tenochtitlan — and Jericho.

To understand the history of Jericho, we first need to look at the role of climate change in encouraging humans to transition to farming. Then we need to consider the Natufian people, who were some of the first humans to adopt farming, and the first residents of early Jericho. Next we need to ask, why there? What geological and biological advantages allowed Jericho to survive for so long? We conclude with a closer look at events in Jericho.

The role of climate changeThe climate change at the end of the last ice age is the most important factor that explains the transition to agriculture and the appearance of large settlements. The first evidence of farming appears after the end of the last ice age, in the Holocene epoch about 13,000 years ago.

Conditions were warmer and more stable. Entire landscapes were transformed. Forest spread across the steppes and large animals like mammoths and bison were pushed out. As herds of animals that humans had hunted for tens of thousands of years migrated northward, communities became dependent on smaller game like boar, deer, and rabbit, as well as on new root and seed plants.

These changes were especially notable in the Fertile Crescent, an arc of high ground that stretches north up the coast of the eastern Mediterranean Sea, east through the mountains of Turkey and northern Iraq, and then south along the high ground between Iraq and Iran. Across the Fertile Crescent, the change in climate encouraged the spread of small game and warmth-loving cereal grasses.

There was great abundance in regions with good supplies of water and where the local environment had plants and animals that could be domesticated. These areas attracted humans. We have evidence of numerous Stone Age foraging communities that were experimenting with these plants and animals. The most important of the groups attracted to the abundance of the Fertile Crescent was the Natufians.


Natufians and the “trap of sedentism”Starting about 11,000 years ago, some human groups became less nomadic. They were sedentary at least part-time. This was caused by climate change and local population pressure.

The stable climates at the end of the ice age created areas of abundance where large numbers of humans were able to settle. These people were not farming, but living off the rich natural resources of the land.

Communities that gave up nomadism but still lived as foragers are called “affluent foragers,” or wealthy hunter-gatherers. They had enough resources to settle down and stay in one place.

The most important affluent foragers in the story of Jericho were the Natufian people, who began occupying the western Fertile Crescent (present-day Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria) just over 14,000 years ago.

The first evidence of Natufian culture was discovered in northern Israel in 1928 by Dorothy Garrod. The evidence was found at a place called Wadi en-Natuf. This is where the name “Natufian” comes from — we have no idea what they called themselves.

We do know that they lived in villages, harvested wild grains, and hunted gazelles. The Natufians hunted and gathered similarly to other groups of the time. But their use of stone sickle blades to harvest large quantities of wild cereal grains is evidence of a serious change in food-gathering practices. They also processed their grain more than anyone before. They built special mortars dug deep into the bedrock to grind their grain.

Natufian cemeteries also separate the group from others of the time. The cemeteries suggest more complex communities with leaders and social hierarchies. Some individuals were buried wearing personal ornaments like caps, bracelets and garters. These may have been indicators of their higher status. Only a small minority of Natufians was selected for ceremonial burial. This shows that Natufian society had more social levels than other early human communities. There is evidence that the Natufian diet consisted mainly of harvested and prepared cereal grains. Skeletal remains showed that most of the residents had suffered from rotten teeth as a result of eating too much barley and wheat.

At the Ain Mallaha site in Syria, we also see evidence that affluent foraging was leading to increasing populations. At this site, 200 to 300 people lived year round. This may seem tiny by today’s standards, but it may have been one of the largest human communities that had ever existed at the time. One of the most important effects of affluent foraging is that population pressure was forcing humans into smaller territories and denser settlements.

By 10,000 BCE, foragers had migrated to most parts of this region, and in some areas there was simply not enough room for them all to settle. Each group had to survive on smaller and smaller parcels of land. These communities found themselves in what has been called the “trap of sedentism.”

Traditional foraging ways are almost always nomadic. They require almost constant migration. Human communities had to keep populations small. It is impossible for migrating


bands to support too many feeding infants or less mobile elderly members. In order to survive, these bands had to practice natural birth control. They also killed off unwanted infants and the elderly to keep populations sustainable.

But when groups like the Natufians decided to stay in one place, all this changed. There were no longer the same limits on population. Older members of the community did not have to be abandoned. More children could be supported. As a result, affluent foraging groups began to increase in size. This led to the problem of overpopulation.

Indeed, evidence found in Jordan shows that many Natufian sites experienced population pressure. There were simply too many mouths to feed by foraging.

Different groups tried increasingly desperate and environmentally unsustainable ways to increase food supplies. Many groups were forced to leave their settlements and try to survive elsewhere. At some sustainable sites, though, the inhabitants learned to domesticate plant and animal species. They began full-scale farming. Jericho was one of these sites.

The environmental advantages of Jericho’s siteThe transition to farming ultimately led to the creation of larger settlements, until towns, cities, states, and empires appeared for the first time. But cities and states emerged only in a few regions where environmental factors made them possible.

Cities and states were not inevitable. Natural reasons allowed some villages to continue to grow until they become towns and cities.

There are many examples of villages that grew quite large. The reasons why are not always clear. Some may have been important religious centers. Others had access to a critical resource, such as a reliable water supply. Still others became important trade centers.

Jericho has been sustainable because it benefited from several of these advantages, most importantly a very favorable environment.

Jericho is located in the Jordan River Valley in the West Bank. At 864 feet below sea level, Jericho is not only the oldest city on Earth but also the lowest one.

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the city is well known as the place where the Israelites returned after their slavery in Egypt. According to the Bible, the walls of Jericho came crashing down after the Israelites unleashed the devastating sound of ram’s horn trumpets. But it is the natural walls surrounding Jericho that are of even greater importance.

The geological walls of Jericho were created by seismographic activity so intense that it tore a great rift in the Earth’s crust extending all the way from Palestine to northeastern Africa. Of course, the engine that drives plate tectonic movements like this is the heat trapped deep inside the planet. This heat can be traced back to the processes that created the Earth and Solar System in the first place, all the way back to the Big Bang itself.

Jericho lies deep in this Jordan Rift Valley, a tectonic feature formed by a fault along the boundary between the African and Arabian plates. Because of the fault between these two plates, the land dropped 3,000 feet, eventually settling almost 900 feet below sea level. At


this astonishingly low elevation, Natufians established the settlement that became Jericho around 14,000 years ago.

But we still haven’t answered the question why. What attracted these affluent foragers to this particular location? Again, it is geography and biology that provide the answer.

The Jordan River is the only major water source that flows into the Dead Sea. Jericho is located just a couple of miles west of the river, about 10 miles north of the Dead Sea. The city is well protected by Mount Nebo to the east and the Central Mountains to the west. These geological features form natural defenses. Jericho’s location in central Palestine was also ideal for the control of trade and migration routes, which pass up and down this natural valley. Throughout the city’s long history, these geographic advantages have made it the target of a series of invaders who saw Jericho as the key to controlling Palestine.

Jericho had natural defenses and a favorable location. But its most significant environmental advantage was its access to reliable supplies of water. Water was essential for survival in the harsh desert. Access to water explains the city’s origin and long history.

Jericho is located in an oasis. It is sustained by an astonishingly dependable underground water supply known as the Ain es-Sultan. This natural spring — also known as Elisha’s spring, after a biblical story in the Book of Kings in which the prophet Elisha heals these waters — has apparently never dried up during 14,000 years of continuous human residency.

More than 1,000 gallons of fresh water bubble up from the source every minute. Early farmers quickly worked out a system of irrigation canals to send this precious resource to the surrounding farmland, which is made up of very fertile alluvial soil.

It is this almost unique combination, of natural defenses, strategic location, rich soil, abundant sunshine, and, most of all, plentiful water, that has made Jericho such an attractive and sustainable place for foragers and farmers alike for so many thousands of years. When we tally up this list of environmental advantages it’s hardly surprising that Jericho has enjoyed the sort of long and rich history that it has.

The human history of JerichoArchaeologists have discovered at least 20 layers of settlement at the site of Jericho. Kathleen Kenyon was the first to extensively investigate the site using modern techniques, back in the 1950s. She was searching for the Bronze Age city named in the Hebrew Bible as the “city of palm trees,” but her excavations quickly revealed evidence of occupation dating back many thousands of years before the Bronze Age.

Her trenches reached the remains of an early farming settlement about six acres in area, dated to about 9600 BCE. More excavations revealed even earlier layers, proving that the site had been first occupied, probably by Natufian foragers, as early as 12,000 BCE. This made Jericho the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in all human history.

After the original foraging settlement, evidence showed that early farmers had learned to domesticate emmer wheat and barley. The availability of these two cereal grains is another significant biological advantage enjoyed by this region.


Of the hundred or so domesticated plants humans depend upon today, wheat is one of the most important. It is a superb example of a species that is perfect for domestication. It can grow in a wide range of environments, and it can generate new diversity at an incredibly rapid rate, which accounts for its tremendous global success as a food crop.

Domesticated emmer wheat rapidly spread from the Fertile Crescent all across West Asia until it was replaced in the Bronze Age by free-threshing wheat. Today, our planet produces more than 620 million tons of wheat each year, providing roughly one-fifth of all the calories consumed by the 6.5 billion members of the human community.

Over the thousand years between 8350 and 7350 BCE, the village of Jericho evolved into a town that was home to perhaps 3,000 farmers. They lived in mud-brick houses arranged without any obvious evidence of town planning. Later residents learned to domesticate sheep. They also developed a cult of preserving human skulls and placing shells in their eye sockets.

Later farming communities were more socially complex and better organized than their predecessors. The residents now lived in rectangular shaped buildings made of mud bricks resting on stone foundations. In each of these buildings, a number of rooms were clustered around a central courtyard. One room was usually larger — the living room — while the rest were small and probably used for storage. Kathleen Kenyon believed that one particularly large room she excavated may have been a shrine where some type of sacred object — perhaps a pillar of volcanic rock she found nearby — was worshipped in a niche in the wall.

Archaeologists working in these later agrarian layers have discovered farming tools like sickle blades, axes, and grindstones; eating vessels including dishes and bowls made from limestone; spinning whorls and loom weights for weaving textiles; and extraordinary full-sized plaster human figures that must have been used in a religious practice.

After more than 10,000 years of continuous occupation, Jericho reached its height in the Bronze Age, between 1700 and 1550 BCE. Chariot-riding elites dominated and defended the city during an age of widespread conflict across much of Palestine, or the “land of Canaan,” as it was then called. The defenses were based upon a massive stone wall. But even this was not strong enough to prevent disaster. Evidence shows conclusively that around 1550 BCE the ancient city of Jericho was destroyed.

For more than a century, archaeologists and biblical historians have debated the question of whether this destruction might be evidence of the Battle of Jericho. This is described in the Book of Joshua as the first battle fought by the Israelites in their campaign for the conquest of Canaan. In the biblical account, Joshua’s army marched around the city walls for seven days. On the seventh day, the priests sounded their ram’s horn trumpets, the Israelites unleashed a mighty war cry, and the walls of Jericho collapsed, killing every man, woman, and child in the city.

According to biblical chronology, this battle would have taken place in 1400 BCE, but modern archaeologists date the destruction of Jericho to a century and a half earlier. Because of the discrepancy, modern scholars often dismiss the historical accuracy of the Battle of Jericho, although many biblical historians continue to make claims for its truth.


Despite this disaster, Jericho rose again in the centuries that followed. By the eighth century BCE it had fallen to the Assyrians. The powerful Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar also conquered the land of Israel and sent tens of thousands of residents into exile. But the exiles were freed soon after by the Persian king Cyrus the Great. Jericho then served as an administrative center for the Persians, and later as a private estate for Alexander the Great, both of whom were attracted to the city by its strategic location and abundant resources.

Three centuries later, the Hebrew king Herod the Great was granted control over Jericho by the Romans. Under Herod the city flourished as an important agricultural, commercial, and administrative center, and also as a winter resort for Jerusalem’s aristocracy. In the first century of the Common Era, the Greek geographer Strabo described the city’s environmental advantages like this:


In the same century, according to the Christian Gospels, Jesus passed through Jericho, where he healed a blind beggar and inspired the local tax collector Zacchaeus to give up his unethical practices.

After the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in 70 CE, Jericho entered a period of decline. In the seventh century, Jericho became part of the expansive realm of Islam, and we have another description of the advantages of the city written by the tenth-century Arab geographer Al Maqdisi:


During the Crusades, Christians occupied the city until they were driven out by Saladin, the leader of the Arab and Muslim opposition to the Crusaders. Throughout the long reign of the Ottomans, from 1517 to 1918, Jericho slowly shrank to the size of a village and was regularly raided by Bedouins. In the twentieth century Jericho was controlled at various times by Britain, Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinians. Today Israel and the Palestinian Authority continue to argue over the status of Jericho, and the future of the city and its 20,000 residents is anything but clear.

Physical enduranceThe history of Jericho is rich and complex. It has seen the same parade of triumphs and tragedies that so many other ancient cities have experienced. But Jericho’s status as the most ancient city on Earth makes it unique.

This longevity strongly supports the idea that history is ultimately as much about the physical environment as it is about technology or leadership. At the end of the last ice age, the Fertile Crescent was favored with an array of natural advantages, which explains not only the emergence of agriculture but also that of the first villages, towns, and cities. These same advantages of geography, flora, fauna, and climate made it possible for the Natufians to establish a small foraging community deep in the tectonic fault of the Jordan Rift Valley,


surrounded by natural defensive walls, and blessed with rich soil and a seemingly endless supply of fresh water, that easily transitioned into a thriving agricultural community.

The history of Jericho is a 14,000-year-long reminder that the story of humanity can really be understood only if it is embedded deeply into the natural context in which it has played out. For the environment is truly the great physical stage upon which our human drama continues to unfold.



History and environmentBiological and geological advantages have allowed Jericho to survive for 14,000 years. These advantages explain why a settlement was established there in the first place. In this essay, we explore the idea that the history of a place is as much about its physical environment as it is about superior technology or government.

Big Historians, who are interested in the appearance and development of the first agrarian civilizations, ask probing questions:

What were the geographical and biological advantages of certain regions that made possible the appearance of the first towns and cities there?

What role did climate play in allowing for agrarian civilizations to appear in some regions, while others remained better suited for foraging?

Why did some agrarian civilizations abuse their environments and cause their own destruction? And why were others able to benefit from the advantages provided by geography and biology and successfully survive for thousands of years?

By studying Jericho we can examine the important relationship between the history of a place and its environment. Jericho is the oldest city on the planet. It is located in the West Bank region of the Middle East.

Jericho’s location and long-term survival show how environment affects human history. The same reasons that Jericho was established 14,000 years ago led to the most significant revolution in human history — the appearance of agriculture.

The transition was revolutionary. Consider the situation 15,000 years ago. Humans occupied every continent on the globe except Antarctica. All humans everywhere survived by foraging, also known as hunting and gathering. Humans were able to forage successfully in different environments, from the deserts of Australia to the Arctic ice. But foraging bands were small, and few exchanges took place between them. This limited the amount of collective learning that went on.


But then something changed. Between 11,000 and 10,000 years ago, new ways of life and technologies associated with farming began to appear. Farming gave humans access to more food and energy. As a result, humans began to multiply more rapidly and live in larger communities.

These developments increased the complexity of the human condition. The transition to agriculture was the first step in a cultural revolution that transformed human societies. The revolution put our species on a path that led us to the amazing complexity of the modern world. One of the most significant steps in the early stages of that process was the emergence of large settlements like Jericho.

To understand the history of Jericho, we must examine the role of climate change in encouraging humans to transition to farming. Then we must consider the Natufian people. They were some of the first humans to adopt farming, and the first residents of early Jericho. Next we need to ask, why there? What geological and biological advantages allowed Jericho to survive for so long? We conclude with a closer look at events in Jericho.

The role of climate changeThe climate change at the end of the last ice age is the most important factor that explains the transition to agriculture and the appearance of large settlements. The first evidence of farming appears after the end of the last ice age about 13,000 years ago.

Conditions became warmer and more stable. Entire landscapes were transformed. Forest spread across the grasslands and large animals like mammoths and bison were pushed out. Herds of animals that humans had hunted for tens of thousands of years migrated northward. Communities then became dependent on smaller game like boar, deer, and rabbit, as well as on new root and seed plants.

These changes were especially notable in the Fertile Crescent. The Fertile Crescent is an arc of high ground that stretches north up the coast of the eastern Mediterranean Sea, east through the mountains of Turkey and northern Iraq, and then south along the high ground between Iraq and Iran. The change in climate encouraged the spread of small game and cereal grasses.

Regions with plants and animals that could be domesticated and water supplies were attractive to humans. Numerous Stone Age foraging communities were experimenting with these plants and animals. The most important of the groups attracted to the abundance of the Fertile Crescent was the Natufians.

Natufians and the “trap of sedentism”Starting about 11,000 years ago, some human groups became less nomadic. They were sedentary at least part-time, and began to settle down. This was caused by climate change and local population pressure.

The stable climates at the end of the ice age created areas where large numbers of humans were able to settle. These people were not farming yet. They were still living off the rich natural resources of the land.


Communities that gave up nomadism but still lived as foragers are called “affluent foragers,” or wealthy hunter-gatherers. They had enough resources to settle down and stay in one place.

The most important affluent foragers in the story of Jericho were the Natufian people. They began occupying the western Fertile Crescent (present-day Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria) just over 14,000 years ago.

Dorothy Garrod discovered the first evidence of Natufian culture in northern Israel in 1928. The name “Natufian” comes from Wadi en-Natuf, the place where she found the evidence. We have no idea what this group actually called themselves.

We do know that they lived in villages, harvested wild grains, and hunted gazelles. The Natufians hunted and gathered like other groups of the time. But they used tools such as sickles to harvest wild cereal grains. This was a serious change in food-gathering practices. They also processed their grain more than anyone before.

We also know Natufian society was different thanks to its cemeteries. The cemeteries suggest complex communities with leaders and different social levels. Some individuals had special burials, where they were dressed in ornaments like caps and bracelets. Because only some Natufians got special burials, we can assume that they had more social ranks that other early human communities.

There is evidence that the Natufian diet consisted mainly of grains. Skeletal remains showed that most of the residents suffered from rotten teeth. The Natufians had been eating too much barley and wheat.

At the Ain Mallaha site in Syria, we also see evidence that affluent foraging was leading to increasing populations. At this site, 200 to 300 people lived year round. This may seem tiny by today’s standards. At the time, however, it may have been one of the largest human communities in the world. One of the most important effects of affluent foraging is the population pressure it created. Humans were practically forced into smaller territories and denser settlements.

By 10,000 BCE, foragers had migrated to most parts of this region. In some areas, there was simply not enough room for them all to settle. Each group had to survive on smaller and smaller pieces of land. These communities found themselves in what has been called the “trap of sedentism.”

Traditional foraging ways of life are almost always nomadic. They require almost constant migration. Human communities had to keep populations small. It’s impossible for migrating bands to support too many feeding infants or less mobile elderly members. In order to survive, these bands had to practice natural birth control. They also killed off unwanted infants and the elderly to keep populations sustainable.

But when groups like the Natufians decided to stay in one place, all this changed. There were no longer the same limits on population. Older members of the community did not have to be abandoned. More children could be supported. As a result, affluent foraging groups began to get bigger. This led to the problem of overpopulation.


Indeed, evidence found in Jordan shows that many Natufian sites experienced population pressure. There were simply too many mouths to feed by foraging.

Different groups tried desperate and unsustainable ways to increase food supplies. Many groups were forced to leave their settlements. At some sustainable sites, though, the inhabitants learned to domesticate plant and animal species. They began full-scale farming. Jericho was one of these sites.

The environmental advantages of Jericho’s siteFarming led to larger settlements. Eventually, towns, cities, states, and empires appeared for the first time. But cities and states emerged only in a few regions where environmental factors made them possible.

Cities and states were not inevitable. Natural reasons allowed some villages to continue to grow until they became towns and cities.


Jericho has been sustainable because it benefited from several of these advantages. Most importantly, it has a very favorable environment.

Jericho is located in the Jordan River Valley in the West Bank. At 864 feet below sea level, Jericho is not only the oldest city on Earth but also the lowest one.

The city is known in the Judeo-Christian tradition as the place the Israelites returned to after their slavery in Egypt. According to the Bible, the walls of Jericho came crashing down after the Israelites unleashed the devastating sound of ram’s horn trumpets. But it is the natural walls surrounding Jericho that are of even greater importance.

The geological walls of Jericho were created by powerful tectonic activity. The movement of the plates was so intense that it tore a great crack in the Earth’s crust. Of course, plate tectonic movements like this are driven by the heat trapped deep inside the planet. This heat can be traced back to the processes that created the Earth and Solar System in the first place, all the way back to the Big Bang itself.

Jericho lies deep in this Jordan Rift Valley. The valley was formed by a fault , or crack, along the boundary between the African and Arabian tectonic plates. Because of the fault between these two plates, the land dropped 3,000 feet. It eventually settled almost 900 feet below sea level. At this astonishingly low elevation, Natufians established the settlement that became Jericho around 14,000 years ago.

But we still haven’t answered the question why. What attracted these affluent foragers to this particular location? Again, it is geography and biology that provide the answer.

The Jordan River is the only major water source that flows into the Dead Sea. Jericho is located just a couple of miles west of the river, about 10 miles north of the Dead Sea. The city is well protected by Mount Nebo to the east and the Central Mountains to the west. These geological features form natural defenses. Jericho’s location in central Palestine was


also ideal for the control of trade and migration routes, which pass up and down the valley. Throughout the city’s long history, these geographic advantages have made it the target of invaders who saw Jericho as the key to controlling Palestine.

Jericho had natural defenses and a favorable location. But its most significant environmental advantage was its access to reliable water supplies. Water was essential for survival in the harsh desert. Access to water explains the city’s origin and long history.

Jericho is located in an oasis. It is supplied by an amazingly dependable underground water supply known as the Ain es-Sultan. In the Bible it's known as Elisha’s spring. The biblical story tells of the prophet Elisha healing these waters. This natural spring has apparently never dried up during the 14,000 years humans have lived there.

More than 1,000 gallons of fresh water bubble up from the source every minute. Early farmers quickly took advantage of it. They worked out a system of irrigation canals to send this precious resource to the surrounding fertile farmland.

Natural defenses. Strategic location. Rich soil. Abundant sunshine. Plentiful water. All these have made Jericho an attractive and sustainable place for thousands of years. When we tally up these environmental advantages, it’s not surprising that Jericho has enjoyed a long and rich history.

The human history of JerichoArchaeologists have discovered at least 20 layers of settlement at the site of Jericho. In the 1950s, Kathleen Kenyon was the first to investigate the site using modern techniques. She was searching for the Bronze Age city named in the Hebrew Bible as the “city of palm trees.” But her excavations quickly revealed evidence of occupation dating back many thousands of years before the Bronze Age.

Her trenches reached the remains of an early farming settlement about six acres in area, dated to about 9600 BCE. More excavations revealed even earlier layers. There was now proof that the site had been first occupied, probably by Natufian foragers, as early as 12,000 BCE. This made Jericho the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in human history.

After the original foraging settlement, evidence showed that early farmers learned to domesticate emmer wheat and barley. The availability of these two cereal grains is another major biological advantage for the region.

Wheat is one of the most important domesticated plants used by humans today. It is a great example of a species that is perfect for domestication. It can grow in a wide range of environments, and it can generate new diversity at an incredibly rapid rate. This accounts for its tremendous global success as a food crop.

Domesticated emmer wheat rapidly spread from the Fertile Crescent all across West Asia. Today, our planet produces more than 620 million tons of wheat each year. Wheat provides roughly one-fifth of all the calories consumed by the 7 billion members of the human community.


Over the thousand years between 8350 and 7350 BCE, the village of Jericho evolved into a town that was home to about 3,000 farmers. They lived in mud-brick houses arranged without any obvious evidence of town planning. Later residents learned to domesticate sheep. They also developed a cult of preserving human skulls and placing shells in their eye sockets.

Later farming communities became more socially complex and better organized. The residents now lived in rectangular shaped buildings made of mud bricks on stone foundations. In each of these buildings, a number of rooms were clustered around a central courtyard. One room was usually larger — the living room — while the rest were small and probably used for storage. Kathleen Kenyon believed that one particularly large room she excavated may have been a shrine where some type of sacred object was worshipped.

Archaeologists working in these later agrarian layers have discovered farming tools like sickle blades, axes, and grindstones; eating vessels including dishes and bowls made from limestone; spinning whorls and loom weights for weaving textiles; and extraordinary full-sized plaster human figures that must have been used in a religious practice.

After more than 10,000 years of continuous occupation, Jericho reached its height in the Bronze Age, between 1700 and 1550 BCE. Chariot-riding elites dominated and defended the city. This was a time of widespread conflict across much of Palestine, or the “land of Canaan,” as it was then called. The defenses were based upon a massive stone wall. But even this was not strong enough to prevent disaster. Evidence shows conclusively that around 1550 BCE the ancient city of Jericho was destroyed.

Archaeologists and biblical historians have debated whether this destruction might be evidence of the Battle of Jericho. This is described in the Book of Joshua as the first battle fought by the Israelites in their conquest of Canaan. In the biblical account, Joshua’s army marched around the city walls for seven days. On the seventh day, the priests sounded their ram’s horn trumpets, the Israelites unleashed a mighty war cry, and the walls of Jericho collapsed. Every man, woman, and child in the city was killed.

According to biblical chronology, this battle would have taken place in 1400 BCE. But modern archaeologists date the destruction of Jericho to a century and a half earlier. Because of the discrepancy, modern scholars often dismiss the historical accuracy of the Battle of Jericho. Still, many biblical historians continue to make claims for its truth.

Despite this disaster, Jericho rose again in the centuries that followed. By the eighth century BCE, it was taken over by the Assyrians. The powerful Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar also conquered the land of Israel and sent tens of thousands of residents into exile. But the exiles were freed by the Persian king Cyrus the Great. Jericho then served as an administrative center for the Persians. Later it was a private estate for Alexander the Great. Both were attracted to the city by its strategic location and abundant resources.

Three centuries later, the Hebrew king Herod the Great was given control of Jericho by the Romans. Under Herod the city thrived as an important agricultural, commercial, and administrative center, and also as a winter resort for Jerusalem’s aristocracy. In the first


century of the Common Era, the Greek geographer Strabo described the city’s environmental advantages like this:


Jesus passed through Jericho, according to the Christian Gospels. In Jericho, he healed a blind beggar and inspired the local tax collector Zacchaeus to give up his unethical practices.

Jericho entered a period of decline after Jerusalem fell to the Romans in 70 CE. In the seventh century, Jericho became part of the expansive realm of Islam. We have another description of the advantages of the city written by the tenth-century Arab geographer Al Maqdisi:


During the Crusades, Christians occupied the city until they were driven out by Saladin, the leader of the Arab and Muslim opposition to the Crusaders. Throughout the long reign of the Ottomans, from 1517 to 1918, Jericho slowly shrank to the size of a village and was regularly raided by Bedouins. In the twentieth century Jericho was controlled at various times by Britain, Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinians. Today Israel and the Palestinian Authority continue to argue over Jericho. The future of the city and its 20,000 residents is not clear.

Physical enduranceThe history of Jericho is rich and complex. It has seen the same parade of triumphs and tragedies that so many other ancient cities have experienced. But what makes Jericho unique is that it's the most ancient city on Earth.

Jericho’s enduring history shows that history is ultimately as much about the physical environment as it is about technology or leadership.

At the end of the last ice age, the Fertile Crescent had many natural advantages. These advantages explain why agriculture and the first villages, towns, and cities appeared. These same advantages of geography, flora, fauna, and climate made it possible for the Natufians to start a small foraging community deep in the tectonic fault of the Jordan Rift Valley. Thanks to natural defensive walls, and blessed with rich soil and a seemingly endless supply of fresh water, they were able to grow into a thriving agricultural community.

Jericho is a 14,000-year-old reminder that the history of humanity can really only be understood if it is viewed in the natural setting where it happens. For the environment is truly the great physical stage upon which our human drama continues to unfold.



Jericho is located in the West Bank region of the Middle East. It is the oldest city on Earth that still exists today.

History and environmentAdvantages in Jericho’s environment have allowed the city to survive for 14,000 years. They also explain why humans settled there in the first place. In this essay, we’ll explore the idea that a place's environment is as important as its technology or government.

Big Historians are interested in the appearance and development of the first agrarian civilizations.

They want to answer these questions:

What advantages did some regions have that made possible the first cities and towns there?

What role did climate play in allowing agrarian civilization to appear in some regions?

Why did some agrarian civilizations abuse their environments and cause their own destruction? How did others benefit from natural resources and survive for thousands of years?

Studying Jericho can teach us about the important relationship between a place's history and its environment.

The factors that made Jericho a sustainable city 14,000 years ago also led to the biggest revolution in human history — the appearance of agriculture.

The transition from hunting and gathering to farming was revolutionary. Think of the world 15,000 years ago. Humans lived on every continent except Antarctica. All humans survived by foraging, also known as hunting and gathering. Humans learned to forage successfully in many different environments. They searched for food in deserts as well as the Arctic. But groups of foragers were small. They did not trade much with other groups. There was little collective learning.

But then something changed. About 10,000 years ago, farming began to appear. Farming gave humans access to more food, more energy. As a result, humans began to multiply more rapidly. They lived in larger communities.

Human society became more complex. Agriculture began a revolution that transformed human civilization. That transformation led to the amazing complexity of the modern world. Early settlements like Jericho were an important early step in that process.

Climate change plays a large role in the history of Jericho. Climate change led to farming in early Jericho. But why there? What natural advantages have allowed Jericho to survive for so long?

The role of climate changeThe end of the last ice age caused a gradual warming of the Earth. It allowed humans to transition to agriculture and form large settlements.


Conditions became warmer and more stable about 13,000 years ago. Entire landscapes were transformed. Forest took over grasslands. Large animals like mammoths and bison were pushed out. Animals that humans had hunted for tens of thousands of years migrated north. Communities then became dependent on smaller game like boar, deer, and rabbit. Root and seed plants became more necessary for food.

These changes were important in the Fertile Crescent. This area of river valleys stretched from the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea, through Turkey, and into Iraq and Iran.

Early humans were attracted to places with favorable conditions. Regions with water supplies and plants and animals that could be domesticated were suitable. Many Stone Age foraging communities were experimenting with these plants and animals. The most important of the groups in the early Fertile Crescent was the Natufians.

Natufians and the “trap of sedentism”About 11,000 years ago, some human groups began to settle down. They became sedentary. That is, they now lived in one place — at least part-time. A changing and growing population caused humans to set down roots.

The stable climates at the end of the ice age created areas where large numbers of humans were able to settle. These people did not farm. They lived off the rich natural resources of the land.

There is a special name for groups that stayed in one place, but lived as foragers. They are called “affluent foragers,” or wealthy hunter-gatherers.

The Natufian people were affluent foragers. They began to settle in the western Fertile Crescent just over 14,000 years ago.

Dorothy Garrod discovered the first evidence of Natufian culture in northern Israel in 1928. The name “Natufian” comes from Wadi en-Natuf. It is the place where she found the evidence. We have no idea what this group actually called themselves.

We do know that they lived in villages, harvested wild grains, and hunted gazelles. The Natufians hunted and gathered like other groups of the time. But they used tools such as sickles to harvest wild cereal grains. This was a serious change in food-gathering practices. They also processed their grain more than anyone before.

Natufian cemeteries also show that society was becoming more complex. Some individuals received special burials, while others did not. This suggests a society with different social levels.

The Natufian diet consisted mainly of grains. Skeletal remains showed that most of the residents had rotten teeth. The Natufians had been eating too much barley and wheat.

Affluent foraging led to increasing populations. Perhaps 200 to 300 people lived in one Naufian site in Syria year-round. This may seem tiny today. At the time, however, it may have been one of the largest human communities on Earth. Affluent foraging caused growing communities, and "population pressure." Humans were almost forced into smaller territories and denser settlements.


By 10,000 BCE, foragers had migrated to most parts of this region. In some areas there was simply not enough room for them all to settle. Each group had to survive on smaller and smaller pieces of land. These communities found themselves in the “trap of sedentism.”

Traditional foraging ways of life are almost always nomadic. They require almost constant migration. Human communities had to keep populations small. It’s impossible for migrating bands to support too many infants or elderly people. In order to survive, these bands had to practice natural birth control. They also killed off unwanted infants and the elderly to keep populations small.

But when groups like the Natufians decided to stay in one place, all this changed. There were no longer the same limits on population. Older members of the community did not have to be abandoned. More children could be supported. As a result, more well-off foraging groups got bigger. This led to the problem of overpopulation.

Evidence found in Jordan shows that many Natufian sites experienced population pressure. There were simply too many mouths to feed by foraging.

Different groups tried desperate ways to increase food supplies. Many were forced to leave their settlements. At some sites though, the inhabitants learned to domesticate plant and animal species. They began full-scale farming. Jericho was one of these sites.

The environmental advantages of Jericho’s siteFarming led to larger settlements. Eventually, towns, cities, states, and empires appeared for the first time. But cities and states emerged only in a few regions. They needed certain environmental factors to make them possible.

Cities and states didn't just happen. Environmental reasons allowed some villages to continue to grow. They expanded into towns and cities.


Jericho was sustainable because it had several of these advantages. Most importantly, it had a very favorable environment.

Jericho is located in the Jordan River Valley in the West Bank. It is 864 feet below sea level. Jericho is not just the oldest city on Earth. It is also the lowest one.

The city is well known in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Israelites returned here after their slavery in Egypt. According to the Bible, Jericho’s walls were destroyed when the Israelites sounded their ram’s horn trumpets. But the natural walls around Jericho are even more important.

The geological walls around Jericho were created by tectonic activity. The movement of the plates there was powerful. It was so intense it tore a great crack in the Earth’s crust. Of course, plate tectonic movements like this are driven by heat trapped deep inside the planet. This heat can be traced back to the processes that created the Earth and Solar System in the first place, all the way back to the Big Bang itself.


Jericho lies deep in this Jordan Rift Valley. The valley was formed by a fault — or crack. The fault formed between the African and Arabian tectonic plates. Because of the fault between these two plates, the land dropped 3,000 feet. It eventually settled almost 900 feet below sea level. At this astonishingly low elevation, Natufians established the settlement that became Jericho around 14,000 years ago.

But we still haven’t answered the question why. What attracted these affluent foragers to this particular location? Again, geography and biology provide the answer.

The Jordan River is the only major water source that flows into the Dead Sea. Jericho is located just west of the Jordan River. And it is just north of the Dead Sea. The city is well protected by Mount Nebo to the east and the Central Mountains to the west. These geological features form natural defenses. Jericho’s location in central Palestine was also ideal for the control of trade and migration routes. Traders passed up and down the valley.

Throughout the city’s history, these geographic advantages made it the target of invaders. Jericho was seen as the key to controlling Palestine. We've established that Jericho had natural defenses and a favorable location. But its most important environmental advantage was its water supplies. Water was essential for survival in the harsh desert. Access to water explains the city’s origin and long history.

Jericho is located in an oasis. It is supplied by an amazingly dependable underground water supply known as the Ain es-Sultan. In the Bible it's known as Elisha’s spring. The biblical story tells of the prophet Elisha healing these waters. This natural spring has apparently never dried up during the 14,000 years humans have lived there.

More than 1,000 gallons of fresh water bubble up from the source every minute. Early farmers took advantage of it. They quickly figured out a system of canals to send the precious water to farmland nearby.

Natural defenses. Strategic location. Rich soil. Abundant sunshine. Plentiful water. All these have made Jericho an attractive and sustainable place for thousands of years. When we list these environmental advantages, it’s not surprising that Jericho has enjoyed a long and rich history.

The human history of JerichoArchaeologists have discovered at least 20 layers of settlement at Jericho. In the 1950s, Kathleen Kenyon was the first to investigate the site using modern techniques. She was searching for a Bronze Age city. In the Hebrew Bible it was called the “city of palm trees.” But her excavations found something else. She discovered that humans had been there thousands of years before the Bronze Age.

She found an early farming settlement that dated to about 9600 BCE. More digging uncovered remains of foragers from as early as 12,000 BCE. This made Jericho the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in human history.

Early farmers at Jericho domesticated wheat and barley. Wheat is one of the most important global food crops. Today, our planet produces more than 620 million tons of wheat each


year. Wheat provides roughly one-fifth of all the calories consumed by the 7 billion people on Earth.

Between 8350 and 7350 BCE, the village of Jericho evolved into a town. About 3,000 farmers had homes there. They lived in simple mud-brick houses. Later residents learned to domesticate sheep. They also developed a cult of preserving human skulls and placing shells in their eye sockets.

Later farming communities became more socially complex and better organized. Their houses were bigger, with multiple rooms. They may have begun religious practices at this time as well.

Archaeologists investigating this period have discovered farming tools like sickle blades and axes; dishes and bowls made from limestone; looms for weaving textiles; and extraordinary full-sized plaster human figures likely used in a religious practice.

After more than 10,000 years of continuous occupation, Jericho reached its height in the Bronze Age, between 1700 and 1550 BCE. Chariot-riding elites dominated and defended the city. This was a time of widespread conflict across much of Palestine. At the time it was known as Canaan. The city’s defenses were based upon a massive stone wall. But even this was not strong enough to prevent disaster. Around 1550 BCE, the ancient city of Jericho was destroyed.

Archaeologists and biblical historians debate whether this was the Battle of Jericho discussed in the Bible. Modern archaeologists don't think it was. They say the timing of the collapse doesn’t match the chronology of the Bible. Biblical historians argue that it must have been the Battle of Jericho.

Despite this disaster, Jericho rose again in the centuries that followed. By the eighth century BCE it was taken over by the Assyrians. The powerful Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar also conquered the land of Israel. He sent tens of thousands of its residents into exile. But the exiles were freed by the Persian king Cyrus the Great. Jericho then served as an administrative center for the Persians. Later it was a private estate for Alexander the Great. Both were attracted to the city by its strategic location and abundant resources.

Three centuries later, the Hebrew king Herod the Great was given control of Jericho by the Romans. Under Herod the city thrived. It became an important agricultural, commercial, and administrative center. Rich aristocrats from Jerusalem spent their winters there. In the first century of the Common Era, the Greek geographer Strabo described the city’s environmental advantages like this:


Jesus passed through Jericho, according to the Christian Gospels. In Jericho he is said to have healed a blind beggar. The Bible also says it was there that Jesus inspired the tax collector Zacchaeus to give up his unethical practices.


Jericho entered a period of decline after Jerusalem fell to the Romans in 70 CE. In the seventh century, Jericho became part of the realm of Islam. We have another description of the advantages of the city written by the tenth-century Arab geographer Al Maqdisi:


During the Crusades, Christians occupied the city. Saladin, who led the Arab and Muslim opposition to the Crusaders, drove the Christians from the city. During the long reign of the Ottomans, from 1517 to 1918, Jericho slowly shrank to the size of a village. In the twentieth century, Jericho was controlled at various times by Britain, Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinians. Today Israel and the Palestinian Authority continue to argue over the city. The future of Jericho and its 20,000 residents is not clear.

Physical enduranceThe history of Jericho is rich and complex. It has seen the same triumphs and tragedies that so many other ancient cities have experienced. What makes Jericho unique is that it is the most ancient city on Earth.

Jericho has been inhabited continuously for 14,000 years. Its long life shows that history is as much about the physical environment as it is about technology or leadership.

The Fertile Crescent at the end of the last ice age had many natural advantages. These advantages explain the emergence of agriculture and the first towns and cities. Natufians started as a small foraging community. They developed into a thriving agricultural civilization.

Jericho shows that human history can really only be understood by looking at it in the natural setting where it happens. For the environment is truly the great physical stage upon which our human drama continues to unfold.


East AsiaThe complex and powerful states, dynasties, and civilizations that emerged in East Asia were strongly influenced by the environments in which they prospered.

East Asia: Geography Shapes Culture and History in the Far East (1370L)By Craig Benjamin, adapted by Newsela

The complex and powerful states, dynasties, and civilizations that emerged in East Asia were strongly influenced by the environments in which they prospered.

Floods help shape a worldviewWhat were the geologic and geographic advantages favoring certain locations that facilitated the establishment of villages and towns — some of which grew into cities — in various regions of East Asia? What role did climate play in enabling powerful states, and eventually agrarian civilizations, to appear in some areas while other locations remained better suited for foraging? Let’s begin to answer these questions with a story about floods in China.

China’s two great rivers — the Yangtze and the Yellow — have been susceptible to regular flooding for as long as we can measure in the historical and geological record; nothing, however, can compare to the catastrophic floods of August 19, 1931. In just one day the Yangtze River rose an astonishing 53 feet above its normal level, unleashing some of the most destructive floodwaters ever seen. These floods were a product of a “perfect storm” of conditions — monsoons, heavy snowmelt, and tremendous and unexpected rains that pounded huge areas of southern China. As all this water poured into the Yangtze’s tributaries, the river rose until it burst its banks for hundreds of miles. The results were devastating — 40 million people affected, 24 million forced to relocate, and more than 140,000 people drowned. An area the size of Oklahoma was underwater, and the southern capital city of Nanjing was flooded for six weeks.

Such is the power of nature. People throughout history have been forced to acknowledge it, but in China the realization has led to a widely quoted maxim: “Heaven nourishes and Heaven destroys.” Despite the best efforts of emperors to regulate episodes of environmental boom and bust, these natural and uncontrollable cycles have profoundly influenced the core foundations of Chinese and East Asian culture. The behavior of rivers has become a model for the constant flux of natural forces, the balance between nature as creator and nature as destroyer. This is an example of why historical processes rely so heavily on the environmental context in which they take place. Big Historians believe that understanding geography and climate is necessary background to the study of any civilization. In this essay, we look at the physical geography of China, Korea, and Japan to see how it has influenced the cultural and political history of East Asia.


ChinaChina and the United States share several geographical similarities. They are about the same size, reside in the middle latitudes of the northern hemisphere, and have lengthy coastlines and diverse topographies. China is located in the eastern part of Asia, along the west coast of the Pacific Ocean, a region that is also home to the Korean Peninsula and the island nation of Japan. With a total land area of more than 3 million square miles, China is the third-largest country in the world after Russia and Canada. China also has extensive seas and numerous islands, and a coastline that extends for more than 11,000 miles.

In a country the size of China, it is hardly surprising to find a great variety of topography, climate, and vegetation. The eastern regions are fertile alluvial plains that have been built up by China’s great river systems. This is the region that has been densely settled and farmed for thousands of years, and where all the great dynasties and their capitals were located.

Along the edges of the Mongolian Plateau in the north lie extensive grasslands, the home of the pastoral nomadic peoples who interacted (and competed and clashed) with China’s sedentary populations virtually from the beginning of history. The vast “grass oceans” hosted Saka and Yuezhi, Xiongnu and Hun, Jurchen and Mongol — militarized archer warriors whom segments of the Great Wall were built to keep out.

The southern regions of China consist of hill country and low mountain ranges. The south receives extensive rainfall, which is ideal for rice cultivation. The success of rice farmers through the ages — from around 8000 BCE, when the grain was first harvested and domesticated — explains why China has been consistently able to support a very large population.

China is also a mountainous country. The highest of these mountain ranges, including the Himalaya, the Karakoram, and the Tien Shan, are all located in the west, where they have long acted as a formidable barrier to communication. To make these topographical barriers even more challenging, the mountain ranges are interspersed with harsh deserts like the Taklimakan and Gobi.

There is little arable land for agriculture in the west, so the smallish populations there have been confined to oasis settlements or have lived as pastoral nomads on the steppes. This led to Chinese civilization emerging in the more arable east, north, and south. Isolated by its own “wild west,” China was cut off from the rest of Eurasia and from competing agrarian civilizations. Even today, these formidable topographical barriers, and the vast distances necessary to cross western China, affect China’s relations with its western neighbors. Yet these barriers have their advantages too. Chinese governments from the earliest dynasties have been forced to focus on internal cultural and ethnic integration rather than on external expansion.

Although the mountains and deserts of the west limited contact between early imperial dynasties and other Afro-Eurasian civilizations for thousands of years, they were eventually breached by traders moving along the Silk Roads, the first connection between China and the rest of Afro-Eurasia. It was the Silk Roads (land and maritime) that allowed many of the


ideas and technological inventions of East Asian civilization — paper, printing, gunpowder — to reach the West, where their impact was profound.

China’s two river systems have also greatly influenced its history and culture. The Huang He in the north, called the Yellow River because of huge amounts of silt (yellow loess soil) that it carries from the plains into the ocean, rises in the mountains of Tibet and flows 2,920 miles to the Yellow Sea. During its journey, it crosses the high western plateau, flows through the arid northern deserts, and then spills out onto the broad alluvial plain.

About midway along its course, the river takes a series of sharp turns — the so-called “great bend” — before resuming its path. This bend was long perceived as a frontier, the very edge of the civilized world beyond which lay the endless and dangerous steppes where one entered the realm of the “barbarians” — militarized pastoral nomads like the Xiongnu and the Mongols, China’s most formidable enemies.

The Huang He is also known as “China’s Sorrow” because of the misery its devastating floods have caused. The earliest cities, states, and civilizations of East Asia all appeared along the Huang He – the Xia, Shang, Zhou, Qin, Han, and Tang dynasties were all centered there. So for millennia some of the largest populations in the world lived within the Yellow River system and faced the potential of regular flood devastation. Emperors and court officials tried numerous schemes to control these floods, but with little success.

The other major river of China is the Yangtze, the third longest river in the world after the Nile and the Amazon. It flows from the Tibetan Plateau nearly 4,000 miles through southern China, until it empties into the sea beside Shanghai. The river’s basin area, about one-fifth the size of China, is home to so many people (almost 500 million) that if the Yangtze valley were a country it would be the third most populous in the world!

The Yangtze also has its great bend to the north, a bend that perhaps has been of even greater consequence to Chinese civilization than its Yellow River counterpart. In southwestern China, all the mountainous valleys are arranged in a north-south direction, products of the twisting of the landscape caused by the collision between the Indian and Asian tectonic plates. The great rivers that flow through these Himalayan valleys, like the south-running Brahmaputra and Mekong, all flow from the Tibetan Plateau in the north toward the seas that lap Southeast Asia.

The Yangtze would have gone the same way, depriving millions of Chinese people of its life-giving water, were it not for a singular topographical feature called Cloud Mountain. This massive wall of limestone is placed right across the path of the onrushing Yangtze, forcing the river to abruptly interrupt its journey south and turn sharply back to the north. The Chinese attribute the fortuitous placement of Cloud Mountain to the work of legendary emperor Yu the Great, who labored mightily to keep the river in China. Geologists, more accurately, attribute it to a particular quirk in twisting of the plate tectonic collision zone. Either way, without Cloud Mountain, Chinese history would have played out very differently.

The societies that emerged in Korea and Japan reflect their participation in an East Asian regional identity that revolved around China. We can talk about the existence of an “Eastern Hemispheric cultural zone” by the beginning of the Era of Agrarian Civilizations, just as we


speak about the “East Asian region” as a semi-unified cultural and economic entity today. But Korean and Japanese civilizations never became carbon copies of China.

KoreaThe Korean Peninsula extends from northeastern China and is otherwise surrounded by the Yellow Sea to the west, the Sea of Japan to the east, and the Korea Strait connecting the two seas. The Yellow Sea dividing China and the peninsula is only 120 miles wide at its narrowest point, and if you were to sail from southern Korea to Kyushu in Japan on a clear day, land would never be out of sight. The peninsula is about 85,000 square miles — or about the same size as England or the state of Utah. Most of the land is extremely rugged, mountainous, and heavily forested. This presented the first human migrants to Korea with a host of environmental challenges but also a range of possible settlement sites: a long, sinuous coastline with many microenvironments and marine resources, and many wooded interior environments such as river flats, and mountain valleys with access to forest foods, timber, fresh water, and caves.

Geologically, Korea consists mostly of a block of ancient granite that was laid down before the Cambrian era. On top of this are younger rocks — gneiss, more recent granites, and limestone. The limestone has produced large caves that are mostly accessible through fissures and cracks rather than through flat floors and entrances. Although these might have seemed attractive to early human migrants, few of these caves were the right shape or size to become practical dwellings. The ancient granites contain important metals – gold, copper, tin, and iron – all of which were accessed by early Korean states. Korea has been a major gold producer for a very long time.

Although Japan is so close, Korea has almost none of the volatile volcanic activity of its eastern neighbor. The only volcano is Mount Baekdu in the far north, which at 9,000 feet is also the highest mountain in Korea. Today the mountain contains an extinct crater filled with Heaven Lake; according to ancient legend, this was home to the gods. From Baekdu in the far north all the way to the southern tip of the peninsula, 70 percent of Korea’s land consists of steep-sided mountains. It is their ruggedness rather than their height that has been so influential: the hills made it very difficult to cross from east to west, allowing cultures and kingdoms to develop in relative geographical isolation from each other. One of these, the Silla Kingdom, grew strong enough in its remote southeastern enclave behind the Sobaek Mountains that it eventually overcame the mountainous terrain to conquer the other kingdoms and establish the first unified Korean state.

As with China, rivers have also played a critical role in the emergence of Korean culture. All of Korea’s rivers twist and turn as they cut their way down from the mountains. Six are more than 400 kilometers long, and most of them run west or south. All the great capitals of Korean history have been located along the major rivers of the Taedong (where Pyongyang lies today); the Imjin-Han system (where Seoul is located); and the Kum further south.

During the last ice age sea levels were about 400 feet lower than they are today, which meant that much of the Yellow Sea was dry land, and Korea was connected to Japan. Paleolithic migrants were able to walk from China across the Yellow Sea Plain to Korea, and


then on to Japan. As temperatures warmed about 11,000 years ago, sea levels rose, sealing off the inhabitants of Japan, and separating Korea from China, except along the northern border.

Early Korean people constructed a series of rituals, survival strategies, and ideas about the relationship of families to larger organizations that were products of the geographical context in which they emerged. These influenced their origin stories, such as the legend that Korean history dates to 2333 BCE, when King Tangun (a mythical figure born of the son of Heaven and a woman from a bear-totem tribe) established the first kingdom of Choson, or “Land of the Morning Calm.” The name reflected well the tranquil forest camps, seaside villages, and river terraces of the Choson state.

JapanJapanese culture was perhaps even more powerfully influenced by the environment in which it formed. Modern Japan consists of four large islands — Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu — and thousands of smaller ones, with a combined area of roughly 145,000 square miles, which means it is just a little larger than Italy, and a little smaller than California. The 1,500-mile-long chain stretches from cool northern latitudes to warmer southern ones.

Because the islands are separated from the mainland by several hundred miles of water (120 miles at the closest point), this has fostered a sense of security that has allowed for the emergence of distinct Japanese culture. This isolation also helps explain why attempts to invade Japan were largely unsuccessful. But Japan has never been completely isolated from the cultural influences coming from sophisticated neighboring states like Korea and China.

The geographical chain of islands to which Japan belongs is much more extensive than just the Japanese archipelago; it stretches along the northwest edge of the Pacific from the Aleutian Islands in the north all the way to the Philippines in the south. This chain is the product of, and still heavily influenced by, the tectonic forces that shape the surface of the Earth. Japan sits at the intersection of no fewer than four tectonic plates (part of the Pacific region’s “Ring of Fire”) so has undergone regular violent shaping and upheaval. The devastating earthquake of 2011, which generated a massive tsunami, was just one of about a thousand earthquakes that rattle Japan every year.

Another product of Japan’s tectonic location is that most of the country consists of geologically young mountains, driven up by these plate collisions. These mountains are steep and jagged, producing fast-moving streams and regular landslides. The tectonic plate boundaries have also spawned volcanoes, the highest and most famous of which is Mount Fuji at 12,388 feet. These rugged and unstable mountain ranges are unsuitable for farming, limiting to settlement patterns, and difficult to climb or cross, so have been serious barriers for internal transportation and communication from the beginning of Japanese history. This led to the emergence of regionally autonomous states in early Japan, and to an early reliance on water transport.

The sediment regularly washed from these young mountains joins with rich volcanic soil to create narrow but very fertile coastal plains. Although the plains make up only 13 percent of Japan’s area, their fertility marked them as where the first rice farmers settled, and where


the first towns, cities, and states appeared. One of the most important of these plains is the Tsukushi Plain in northern Kyushu. Influenced by nearby civilizations in Korea and China, it became an early center of emerging Japanese culture.

Japan’s location between the great mainland continent of Asia and the wide Pacific also creates a distinctive and challenging weather environment. In winter, cold winds blow out of Asia and dump large quantities of snow on the mountains of Japan. In the summer, warm moist air blows in from the south, bringing high temperatures and often torrential rains and typhoons. These weather systems have strongly influenced settlement patterns, and the formidable hurricane-like storms have had enormous historical consequences. Two attempted invasions of Japan by the Mongols were thwarted by powerful storms and strong winds that the Japanese considered divine, calling them kamikaze.

Because of its long north-south stretch and varied terrain, Japan also contains a wide variety of plants and animals. The combination of plentiful fresh water and a long growing season created a paradise for plants, and for the herbivores that feed off them. When foraging humans first crossed the land bridges connecting the Japanese archipelago to the Asian mainland about 35,000 years ago, they found a rich variety of potential foodstuffs awaiting them — forest and sea food, along with plentiful boar, deer, and many smaller animals.

Land and climate shape civilizationAll these naturally occurring geological, geographic, and biological features — the flooding rivers, towering mountains, arid deserts, and rich alluvial plains of China; the narrow coasts, rugged mountains, and fast-flowing rivers of Korea; and the violent storms, earthquakes, volcanoes, and plains of the island nation of Japan — have been as fundamental in shaping East Asian civilization as any products of human ingenuity or will.

East Asia: Geography Shapes Culture and History in the Far East (1200 L)By Craig Benjamin, adapted by Newsela

The complex and powerful states, dynasties, and civilizations that emerged in East Asia were strongly influenced by the environments in which they prospered.

Floods help shape a worldviewWhat were the geologic and geographic advantages that favored certain locations for villages, towns and cities? What role did climate play in allowing powerful states and agrarian civilizations to appear in some areas? Let’s begin to answer these questions with a story about floods in China.

China’s two great rivers — the Yangtze and the Yellow — have been flooding regularly for as long as we can measure in the historical and geological record.

Nothing, however, can compare to the catastrophic floods of August 19, 1931. In just one day the Yangtze River rose an astonishing 53 feet above its normal level, unleashing some of the most destructive floodwaters ever seen. These floods were a product of a “perfect


storm” of conditions — monsoons, heavy snowmelt, and tremendous and unexpected rains that pounded huge areas of southern China.

As all this water poured into the Yangtze, the river rose until it burst its banks for hundreds of miles. The results were devastating — 40 million people affected, 24 million forced to relocate, and more than 140,000 people drowned. An area the size of Oklahoma was underwater, and the southern capital city of Nanjing was flooded for six weeks.

Such is the power of nature. People throughout history have been forced to acknowledge it, but in China the realization has led to a widely quoted maxim: “Heaven nourishes and Heaven destroys.”

Emperors tried to control the ups and downs of the environment. Despite their best efforts, these natural and uncontrollable cycles have profoundly influenced the foundations of Chinese and East Asian culture.

The behavior of rivers has become a model for the constant change of natural forces. Nature is both creator and destroyer.

Big Historians believe that understanding geography and climate is necessary to the study of any civilization. In this essay we look at the physical geography of China, Korea, and Japan to see how it has influenced the cultural and political history of East Asia.

ChinaChina and the United States share several geographical similarities. They are about the same size, reside in the middle latitudes of the northern hemisphere, and have lengthy coastlines and diverse topographies.

China is located in the eastern part of Asia, along the west coast of the Pacific Ocean, a region that is also home to the Korean Peninsula and the island nation of Japan. With a total land area of more than 3 million square miles, China is the third-largest country in the world after Russia and Canada. China also has extensive seas and numerous islands, and a coastline of more than 11,000 miles.

In a country the size of China, it is not surprising to find a great variety of topography, climate, and vegetation. The eastern regions are fertile alluvial plains that have been built up by China’s great river systems. This region has been densely settled and farmed for thousands of years, and is where all the great dynasties and their capitals were located. Along the edges of the Mongolian Plateau in the north are extensive grasslands, the home of the pastoral nomadic peoples who interacted (and competed and clashed) with China’s sedentary populations virtually from the beginning of history. The vast “grass oceans” hosted Saka and Yuezhi, Xiongnu and Hun, Jurchen and Mongol — militarized archer warriors. Segments of the Great Wall were built to keep them out.

The southern regions of China consist of hill country and low mountain ranges. The south receives extensive rainfall, which is ideal for rice cultivation. The success of rice farmers through the ages — since around 8000 BCE — explains why China has been consistently able to support a very large population.


China is also a mountainous country. The highest of these mountain ranges, including the Himalaya, the Karakoram, and the Tien Shan, are all located in the west, where they have long acted as a formidable barrier to communication. To make these barriers even more challenging, between the mountain ranges are harsh deserts like the Taklimakan and Gobi.

There is little land for agriculture in the west, so the smallish populations there have been confined to oasis settlements or have lived as pastoral nomads on the steppes. This led to Chinese civilization emerging in the more fertile east, north, and south. Isolated by its own “wild west,” China was cut off from the rest of Eurasia and from competing agrarian civilizations. Even today, these formidable barriers, and the vast distances necessary to cross western China, affect China’s relations with its western neighbors. Yet these barriers have their advantages too. Chinese governments from the earliest dynasties have been forced to focus on internal cultural and ethnic integration rather than on external expansion.

The mountains and deserts of the west limited contact between early imperial dynasties and other Afro-Eurasian civilizations for thousands of years. Eventually, they were breached by traders moving along the Silk Roads. These were the first connections between China and the rest of Afro-Eurasia. It was the Silk Roads that allowed many of the ideas and technological inventions of East Asian civilization — paper, printing, gunpowder — to reach the West, where their impact was profound.

China’s two river systems have also greatly influenced its history and culture. The Huang He in the north, called the Yellow River because of huge amounts of yellow soil that it carries from the plains into the ocean, rises in the mountains of Tibet and flows 2,920 miles to the Yellow Sea. During its journey it crosses the high western plateau, flows through the northern deserts, and then spills out onto the broad alluvial plain.

About midway along its course the river takes a series of sharp turns — the so-called “great bend” — before resuming its path. This bend was long thought of as a frontier, the very edge of the civilized world. Beyond this lay the endless and dangerous steppes where one entered the realm of the “barbarians” — militarized pastoral nomads like the Xiongnu and the Mongols, China’s most formidable enemies.

The Huang He is also known as “China’s Sorrow” because of the misery its devastating floods have caused. The earliest cities, states, and civilizations of East Asia all appeared along the Huang He – the Xia, Shang, Zhou, Qin, Han, and Tang dynasties were all centered there. So for thousands of years some of the largest populations in the world lived within the Yellow River system and faced the potential of regular flood devastation. Emperors and court officials tried numerous schemes to control these floods, but with little success.

The other major river of China is the Yangtze, the third longest river in the world after the Nile and the Amazon. It flows from the Tibetan Plateau nearly 4,000 miles through southern China, until it empties into the sea beside Shanghai. The river’s basin area, about one-fifth the size of China, is home to almost 500 million people. If the Yangtze valley were a country, it would be the third most populous in the world.


The Yangtze also has its great bend to the north. The Yangtze’s bend perhaps has been of even greater consequence to Chinese civilization than its Yellow River counterpart. In southwestern China, all the mountainous valleys are arranged in a north-south direction, products of the twisting of the landscape caused by the collision between the Indian and Asian tectonic plates. The great rivers that flow through these Himalayan valleys, like the south-running Brahmaputra and Mekong, all flow from the Tibetan Plateau in the north toward the seas of Southeast Asia.

The Yangtze would have gone the same way, depriving millions of Chinese people of its life-giving water, were it not for Cloud Mountain. This massive wall of limestone is placed right across the path of the onrushing Yangtze. It forces the river to abruptly interrupt its journey south and turn sharply back to the north. The Chinese attribute the lucky placement of Cloud Mountain to the work of legendary emperor Yu the Great, who labored mightily to keep the river in China. Geologists, more accurately, attribute it to plate tectonics. Either way, without Cloud Mountain, Chinese history would have been very different.

The societies that emerged in Korea and Japan were influenced by a regional identity that revolved around China. At the beginning of the Era of Agrarian Civilizations there was an “Eastern Hemispheric cultural zone,” just as the “East Asian region” is a semi-unified cultural and economic entity today. But Korean and Japanese civilizations never became carbon copies of China.

KoreaThe Korean Peninsula extends from northeastern China. It is surrounded by the Yellow Sea to the west, the Sea of Japan to the east, and the Korea Strait connecting the two seas. The peninsula is about 85,000 square miles — about the same size as England or the state of Utah. Most of the land is extremely rugged, mountainous, and heavily forested.

This presented the first human migrants to Korea with many environmental challenges but also many possible settlement sites. Korea contains a long, curvy coastline with many microenvironments and marine resources, wooded interior environments such as river flats, and mountain valleys with access to forest foods, timber, fresh water, and caves.

Geologically, Korea consists mostly of a block of ancient granite that was laid down before the Cambrian era. On top of this are younger rocks — gneiss, more recent granites, and limestone. The limestone has produced large caves that are mostly accessible through fissures and cracks rather than through flat floors and entrances. Although these might have seemed attractive to early human migrants, few of these caves were the right shape or size to become practical dwellings. The ancient granites contain important metals – gold, copper, tin, and iron – all of which were accessed by early Korean states. Korea has been a major gold producer for a very long time.

Although Japan is so close, Korea has almost none of the volcanic activity of its eastern neighbor. The only volcano is Mount Baekdu in the far north, which at 9,000 feet is also the highest mountain in Korea. Today the mountain contains an extinct crater filled with Heaven Lake; according to ancient legend, this was home to the gods.


From Baekdu in the far north all the way to the southern tip of the peninsula, 70 percent of Korea’s land consists of steep mountains. It is their ruggedness rather than their height that has been so influential. The hills made it very difficult to cross from east to west, so cultures and kingdoms developed in relative geographical isolation from each other.

One of these cultures, the Silla Kingdom, grew strong in its remote southeastern location behind the Sobaek Mountains. Eventually it overcame the mountainous terrain to conquer the other kingdoms and establish the first unified Korean state.

As with China, rivers have also played a critical role in the emergence of Korean culture. All of Korea’s rivers twist and turn as they cut their way down from the mountains. Six are more than 400 kilometers long. Most of them run west or south. All the great capitals of Korean history have been located along the major rivers of the Taedong (where Pyongyang lies today); the Imjin-Han system (where Seoul is located); and the Kum further south.

During the last ice age, sea levels were about 400 feet lower than they are today. This meant that much of the Yellow Sea was dry land. Korea was still connected to Japan. Paleolithic migrants were able to walk from China across the Yellow Sea Plain to Korea. From there they could continue on to Japan. As temperatures warmed about 11,000 years ago, sea levels rose, sealing off the inhabitants of Japan, and separating Korea from China, except along the northern border.

Early Korean people had rituals, survival strategies and culture that reflected the geography where they lived. These influenced their origin stories such as one dating to 2333 BCE. In this story, King Tangun, a mythical figure, established the first kingdom of Choson, or “Land of the Morning Calm.” The name reflected well the tranquil forest camps, seaside villages, and river terraces of the Choson state.

JapanJapanese culture was perhaps even more powerfully influenced by the environment where it formed. Modern Japan consists of four large islands — Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu — and thousands of smaller ones. Their combined area is roughly 145,000 square miles. This makes Japan a little larger than Italy, and a little smaller than California. The 1,500-mile-long island chain stretches from cool northern latitudes to warmer southern ones.

Because the islands are separated from the Asian mainland by several hundred miles of water (120 miles at the closest point), a distinct Japanese culture has emerged. But Japan has never been completely isolated from the cultural influences coming from sophisticated neighbors like Korea and China.

Japan belongs to a geographical chain of islands that stretches from the Aleutian Islands in the north, all the way to the Philippines in the south. This chain is the product of the tectonic forces that shape the surface of the Earth. It is still heavily influenced by them.

Japan sits at the intersection of at least four tectonic plates. Part of the Pacific region’s “Ring of Fire,” it has undergone regular violent shaping and upheaval. The devastating earthquake of 2011, which generated a massive tsunami, was just one of about a thousand earthquakes that rattle Japan every year.


Japan’s tectonic location means that most of the country consists of geologically young mountains, driven up by these plate collisions. These mountains are steep and jagged, producing fast-moving streams and regular landslides.

The tectonic plate boundaries have also created volcanoes. The highest and most famous is Mount Fuji at 12,388 feet. These rugged and unstable mountain ranges are unsuitable for farming, not ideal for settlement, and difficult to climb or cross. They have been serious barriers for internal transportation and communication from the beginning of Japanese history. This led to the emergence of regionally autonomous states in early Japan, and to an early reliance on water transport.

The sediment regularly washed from these young mountains joins with rich volcanic soil to create very fertile coastal plains. The plains make up only 13 percent of Japan’s area, but they are crucial to Japanese civilization. Because of their fertility, the plains are where the first rice farmers settled, and where the first towns, cities, and states appeared. One of the most important of these plains is the Tsukushi Plain in northern Kyushu. Influenced by nearby civilizations in Korea and China, it became an early center of emerging Japanese culture.

Japan’s location between the great mainland continent of Asia and the wide Pacific also creates a distinctive and challenging weather environment. In winter, cold winds blow out of Asia and dump a lot of snow on the mountains of Japan. In the summer, warm moist air blows in from the south, bringing high temperatures and torrential rains and typhoons. These weather systems have strongly influenced settlement patterns, and the strong hurricane-like storms have had enormous historical consequences. Two attempted invasions of Japan by the Mongols were stopped by powerful storms and strong winds that the Japanese considered divine, calling them kamikaze.

Because of its long north-south stretch and varied terrain, Japan also contains a wide variety of plants and animals. The combination of plentiful fresh water and a long growing season created a paradise for plants, and for the herbivores that feed off them. When foraging humans first crossed the land bridges connecting the Japanese archipelago to the Asian mainland about 35,000 years ago, they found a rich variety of potential food awaiting them — forest and sea food, along with plentiful boar, deer, and many smaller animals.

Land and climate shape civilizationFlooding rivers, towering mountains, arid deserts, and rich alluvial plains of China; the narrow coasts, rugged mountains, and fast-flowing rivers of Korea; and the violent storms, earthquakes, volcanoes, and plains of the island nation of Japan — have been as fundamental in shaping East Asian civilization as any products of human intelligence or will.

East Asia: Geography Shapes Culture and History in the Far East (1010L)By Craig Benjamin, adapted by Newsela


The complex and powerful states, dynasties, and civilizations that formed in East Asia were strongly influenced by the environments in which they prospered.

Floods help shape a worldviewWhat were the geographic advantages that favored certain locations for villages, towns and cities? What role did climate play in allowing powerful states to appear in some areas but not others? Let’s begin to answer these questions with a story about floods in China.

China’s two great rivers — the Yangtze and the Yellow — have flooded regularly for as long as we can measure in the historical and geological record.

Nothing can compare, though, to the catastrophic floods of August 19, 1931. The Yangtze river rose an astonishing 53 feet above its normal level in just one day. It unleashed some of the most destructive floodwaters ever seen. The floods were caused by a “perfect storm” of conditions. Monsoon rains, heavy snowmelt, and unexpected rains pounded huge areas of southern China.

All this water poured into the Yangtze. The river rose and burst its banks for hundreds of miles. The results were devastating: 24 million people were forced to relocate, and more than 140,000 people drowned. An area the size of Oklahoma was underwater, and the southern capital city of Nanjing was flooded for six weeks.

This is the power of nature. People throughout history have been forced to acknowledge it. In China, the realization has led to a widely quoted proverb: “Heaven nourishes and Heaven destroys.”

Emperors have tried to control the ups and downs of the environment. Yet, they've had little success. These natural and uncontrollable cycles profoundly influenced the formation of Chinese and East Asian culture.

The behavior of rivers has become a model for the constant change of natural forces. Nature is both creator and destroyer.

Big Historians believe that understanding geography and climate is necessary to the study of any civilization. In this essay, we look at the physical geography of China, Korea, and Japan to see how it has influenced the cultural and political history of East Asia.

ChinaChina and the United States share some geographical similarities. They are about the same size, reside in the middle latitudes of the northern hemisphere, and have long coastlines and diverse topographies.

China is located in the eastern part of Asia, alongside the Pacific Ocean. This region is also home to the Korean Peninsula and the island nation of Japan. With a total land area of more than 3 million square miles, China is the third-largest country in the world after Russia and Canada. China also has extensive seas, numerous islands, and more than 11,000 miles of coastline.


In a country the size of China, it is not surprising to find a great variety of topography, climate, and vegetation. The eastern regions are fertile plains that have been built up by China’s great river systems. This area has been settled and farmed for thousands of years. It is where all the great dynasties and their capitals were located.

In the north are extensive grasslands. They were the home of the cattle-raising nomadic peoples who interacted and clashed with China’s settled populations virtually from the beginning of history. The vast “grass oceans” hosted warriors such as the Mongols. Parts of the Great Wall were built to keep them out.

The southern regions of China consist of hill country and low mountain ranges. The south receives extensive rainfall. It's ideal for growing rice. The success of rice farmers through the ages — since around 8000 BCE — explains why China has been able to support a very large population.

China is also a mountainous country. The highest of these mountain ranges, including the Himalaya, the Karakoram, and the Tien Shan, are all located in the west. For ages they have acted as a formidable barrier to communication. To make these barriers even more challenging, between the mountain ranges are harsh deserts like the Taklimakan and Gobi.

There is little land for agriculture in the west, so the smallish populations there have been confined to oasis settlements or have lived as nomads on the steppes. Chinese civilization emerged in the more fertile east, north, and south.

China was isolated by its own “wild west.” It was cut off from the rest of Eurasia and from competing agrarian civilizations. Even today, these formidable barriers, and the vast distances necessary to cross western China, affect China’s relations with its western neighbors. Yet these barriers have their advantages too. Chinese governments from the earliest dynasties have been forced to focus internally. Instead of trying to expand the country through conquest, China has focused on cultural and ethnic integration.

The mountains and deserts of the west limited contact between early imperial dynasties and other Afro-Eurasian civilizations for thousands of years. Eventually the barriers were opened by traders moving along the Silk Roads. These were the first connections between China and the rest of Afro-Eurasia. It was the Silk Roads that allowed many of the ideas and technological inventions of East Asian civilization — paper, printing, gunpowder — to reach the West. The impact they had on Europe was profound.

China’s two river systems have also greatly influenced its history and culture. The Huang He in the north is also known as the Yellow River. It got its name because of huge amounts of silt (yellow soil) that it carries from the plains into the ocean. Huang He rises in the mountains of Tibet and flows 2,920 miles to the Yellow Sea. During its journey, it crosses the high western plateau, flows through the northern deserts, and then spills out onto the alluvial plain.

About midway along its course the river takes a series of sharp turns — the so-called “great bend” — before resuming its path. This bend was long thought of as a frontier, the very edge of the civilized world. Beyond it lay the endless and dangerous steppes. This was the realm


of the “barbarians” — militarized pastoral nomads like the Xiongnu and the Mongols, China’s strongest enemies.

The Huang He is also known as “China’s Sorrow” because of the misery its devastating floods have caused. The earliest cities, states, and civilizations of East Asia all appeared along the Huang He. The Xia, Shang, Zhou, Qin, Han, and Tang dynasties were all centered there. So for thousands of years some of the largest populations in the world lived within the Yellow River system. They faced the potential of regular flood devastation. Emperors tried numerous schemes to control these floods, but had little success.

The other major river of China is the Yangtze. The Yangtze is the third longest river in the world after the Nile and the Amazon. It flows from the Tibetan Plateau nearly 4,000 miles through southern China, until it empties into the sea beside Shanghai. The river’s basin area, about one-fifth the size of China, is home to almost 500 million people. If the Yangtze valley were a country it would be the third most populous in the world.

The Yangtze also has its great bend to the north. The Yangtze’s bend has perhaps been more important to Chinese civilization than the Yellow River’s. In southwestern China, all the mountainous valleys are arranged in a north-south direction thanks to the collision between the Indian and Asian tectonic plates. The great rivers that flow through these Himalayan valleys all start in the Tibetan Plateau in the north. Then they flow south toward the seas of Southeast Asia.

The Yangtze would have gone the same way, and millions of Chinese wouldn’t have its life-giving water, if it weren’t for Cloud Mountain. This massive wall of limestone sits right across the path of the onrushing Yangtze. The river is forced to suddenly interrupt its journey south and turn sharply back to the north.

The Chinese give credit for the placement of Cloud Mountain to legendary emperor Yu the Great, who worked mightily to keep the river in China. Geologists attribute it to plate tectonics. Either way, without Cloud Mountain, Chinese history would have been very different.

The societies that emerged in Korea and Japan were influenced by China's identity. Still, Korean and Japanese civilizations never became exact copies of China.

KoreaThe Korean Peninsula juts out from northeastern China. It is surrounded by the Yellow Sea to the west and the Sea of Japan to the east. The Korea Strait connects the two seas. The peninsula is about 85,000 square miles — about the same size as England or the state of Utah. Most of the land is extremely rugged, mountainous, and heavily forested.

This geography presented many challenges to the first migrants to Korea, but also offered many possible sites to settle in. There was a long, curvy coastline with many marine resources; wooded interior environments; and mountain valleys with access to forest foods, timber, fresh water, and caves.

Geologically, Korea consists mostly of a block of ancient granite that was laid down before the Cambrian era. On top of this are younger rocks. The limestone has produced large


caves. Although the caves might have seemed attractive to early human migrants, few of them were the right shape or size to live in. The ancient granite contains important metals – gold, copper, tin, and iron. Korea has been a major gold producer for a very long time.

Although Japan is so close, Korea has almost none of the volcanic activity of its eastern neighbor. The only volcano is Mount Baekdu in the far north. At 9,000 feet, it’s also the highest mountain in Korea. Today the mountain contains an extinct crater filled by Heaven Lake. According to ancient legend, this was home to the gods.

From Baekdu in the far north all the way to the southern tip of the peninsula, 70 percent of Korea’s land consists of steep mountains. It is their ruggedness rather than their height that has been so influential. The hills made it very difficult to cross from east to west. Cultures and kingdoms developed in relative geographical isolation from each other.

One of these cultures, the Silla Kingdom, grew strong in its remote southeastern location behind the Sobaek Mountains. Eventually it overcame the mountainous terrain to conquer the other kingdoms. The Silla established the first unified Korean state.

As with China, rivers have also played a critical role in the emergence of Korean culture. All of Korea’s rivers twist and turn as they cut their way down from the mountains. Six are more than 400 kilometers long. Most of them run west or south. All the great capitals of Korean history have been located along the major rivers of the Taedong (where Pyongyang lies today); the Imjin-Han system (where Seoul is located); and the Kum further south.

During the last ice age, sea levels were about 400 feet lower than they are today. This meant that much of the Yellow Sea was dry land. At the time, Korea was still connected to Japan. Paleolithic migrants were able to walk from China across the Yellow Sea Plain to Korea. Then they could continue on to Japan. When temperatures warmed about 11,000 years ago, sea levels rose. This sealed off the inhabitants of Japan, and separated Korea from China, except along the northern border.

Early Korean culture reflected the geography. One Korean origin story dates to 2333 BCE. In this story, mythical King Tangun established the first kingdom of Choson, or “Land of the Morning Calm.” The name reflected the tranquil forest camps, seaside villages, and river terraces of the Choson state.

JapanJapanese culture was perhaps even more powerfully influenced by the environment where it formed. Modern Japan consists of four large islands — Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu — and thousands of smaller ones. Their combined area is roughly 145,000 square miles. This makes Japan a little larger than Italy, and a little smaller than California. The 1,500-mile-long island chain stretches from cool northern latitudes to warmer southern ones.

The islands of Japan are separated from the Asian mainland by several hundred miles of water. Because of this great distance a distinct Japanese culture emerged. But Japan has never been completely isolated from the cultural influences coming from neighbors like Korea and China.


Japan belongs to a geographical chain of islands that stretches from the Aleutian Islands in the north, all the way to the Philippines in the south. This chain is the product of the tectonic forces that shape the surface of the Earth. It is still heavily influenced by them.

Japan sits at the intersection of at least four tectonic plates. Part of the Pacific region’s “Ring of Fire,” it has undergone regular violent shaping and upheaval. The devastating earthquake of 2011, which generated a massive tsunami, was just one of about a thousand earthquakes that rattle Japan every year.

Japan’s tectonic location means that most of the country consists of geologically young mountains, driven up by these plate collisions. These mountains are steep and jagged, producing fast-moving streams and regular landslides.

The tectonic plate boundaries have also created volcanoes. The highest and most famous is Mount Fuji at 12,388 feet. These rugged and unstable mountain ranges are unsuitable for farming, not ideal for settlement, and difficult to cross. They have been serious barriers to transportation and communication from the beginning of Japanese history. This led to the emergence of regional independent states in early Japan, and to an early reliance on water transport.

Sediment washed down from these young mountains joins with rich volcanic soil to create very fertile coastal plains. The plains make up only 13 percent of Japan’s area, but they are crucial to Japanese civilization. Because of their fertility, the plains are where the first rice farmers settled, and where the first towns, cities, and states appeared. One of the most important of these plains is the Tsukushi Plain in northern Kyushu. Influenced by nearby civilizations in Korea and China, it became an early center of emerging Japanese culture.

Japan’s location between the continent of Asia and the wide Pacific also creates a distinctive and challenging weather environment. In winter, cold winds blow out of Asia and dump snow on the mountains of Japan. In the summer, warm moist air blows in from the south, bringing high temperatures, torrential rains and typhoons. These weather systems have strongly influenced settlement patterns.

The strong hurricane-like storms have had enormous historical consequences. Two attempted invasions of Japan by the Mongols were stopped by powerful storms and strong winds. The Japanese considered these storms divine and called them kamikaze.

Because of its long north-south stretch and varied terrain, Japan also contains a wide variety of plants and animals. The combination of plentiful fresh water and a long growing season created a paradise for plants, and for the herbivores that feed off them. Land bridges once connected Japan to the Asian mainland. About 35,000 years ago, humans first crossed them into Japan. A rich variety of potential food awaited them. There was forest and sea food, along with plentiful boar, deer, and many smaller animals.

Land and climate shape civilizationFlooding rivers, towering mountains, arid deserts, and rich alluvial plains of China; the narrow coasts, rugged mountains, and fast-flowing rivers of Korea; and the violent storms,


earthquakes, volcanoes, and plains of the island nation of Japan — have been as fundamental in shaping East Asian civilization as any products of human intelligence or will.

East Asia: Geography Shapes Culture and History in the Far East (790 L)By Craig Benjamin, adapted by Newsela

The environment of East Asia had a great influence on the states and civilizations that blossomed there. The mountains, rivers, and climate helped them gain wealth and power.

Floods help shape a worldviewHow did geography determine where cities would begin? What role did climate play in the appearance of powerful states in certain areas? Let’s begin to answer these questions with a story about floods in China.

China’s two greatest rivers are the Yangtze and the Yellow. For as long as we can measure the historical and geological record, they have flooded regularly.

Still, nothing can compare to the devastating floods of August 19, 1931. The Yangtze River rose an amazing 53 feet in just one day. The resulting flood was one of the most destructive ever seen. The floods were caused by monsoon rains, heavy snowmelt, and unexpected rains. They pounded huge areas of southern China.

All this water poured into the Yangtze. The river rose and burst its banks for hundreds of miles. It was devastating. Twenty-four million people fled their homes. More than 140,000 people drowned. An area the size of Oklahoma was underwater, and the southern capital city of Nanjing was flooded for six weeks.

This is the power of nature. People have understood it throughout history. In China, there is a popular saying that expresses this idea: “Heaven nourishes and Heaven destroys.”

Emperors have tried to control the ups and downs of the environment. But natural cycles have strongly influenced the foundations of Chinese and East Asian culture. The behavior of rivers has become a model for the constant change of natural forces. Nature is both creator and destroyer.

Big Historians believe that understanding geography and climate is necessary to study any civilization. In this essay, we look at the physical geography of China, Korea, and Japan. The land itself has influenced the cultural and political history of East Asia.

ChinaChina and the United States share some similar geography. They are about the same size. Both reside in the middle latitudes of the northern hemisphere. Both have long coastlines and diverse topographies.

China is located in eastern Asia, alongside the Pacific Ocean. This region is also home to the Korean Peninsula and the island nation of Japan. China is the third-largest country in the


world. Only Russia and Canada are bigger. China's total land area is more than 3 million square miles. China also has extensive seas and many islands. Its coastline stretches for 11,000 miles.

In a country the size of China, it is not surprising to find a great variety of topography, climate, and vegetation. In the east are fertile plains that have been built up by China’s great rivers. This region has been settled and farmed for thousands of years. It is where all the great dynasties and their capitals were located.

In the north are huge grasslands. They were the home of the cattle-raising nomadic peoples who interacted and clashed with China’s settled populations. The vast “grass oceans” hosted militarized archer warriors such as the Mongols. Parts of the Great Wall were built to keep them out.

The southern regions of China consist of hill country and low mountain ranges. The south receives extensive rainfall. It's the perfect place for growing rice. The success of rice farmers for the last 10,000 years explains why China can support a very large population.

China is also a mountainous country. The highest of these mountain ranges, including the Himalaya, the Karakoram, and the Tien Shan, are all located in the west. They have long acted as a serious barrier to communication between people. But these aren't the only barrier. Between the mountain ranges are harsh deserts like the Taklimakan and Gobi.

There is little land for agriculture in the west. Smallish populations there have lived in oasis settlements or as nomads on the steppes. Chinese civilization emerged in the more fertile east, north, and south.

China was isolated by its own “wild west.” It was cut off from the rest of Eurasia. Even today, these geographic barriers and the hugeness of western China affect China’s relations with its western neighbors. There barriers have advantages too, though. Chinese governments since the beginning have been forced to focus internally. Instead of looking to expand their land, they've focused on improving within.

The mountains and deserts of the west limited contact between early Chinese dynasties and other civilizations. For thousands of years there was virtually no contact. Eventually, traders moving along the Silk Roads broke though the barriers. These were the first connections between China and the rest of Afro-Eurasia. The Silk Roads allowed many ideas and inventions from East Asia to reach the West. Paper, printing, and gunpowder were invented in China. The Silk Roads brought them to Europe. The impact there was profound.

China’s two river systems have also greatly influenced its history and culture. The Huang He in the north is also known as the Yellow River. It gets its nickname because it carries huge amounts of yellow soil, called silt, from the plains into the ocean. The Yellow River rises in the mountains of Tibet. It flows 2,920 miles to the Yellow Sea. During its journey, it crosses the high western plateau and flows through northern deserts. Finally, it spills out onto the broad alluvial plain.

About midway along its course, the river takes a series of sharp turns before resuming its path. This is called the “great bend.” The bend was long thought of as a frontier. To early


people it was the very edge of the civilized world. Beyond it lay barbarians on the steppes. Militarized nomads like the Xiongnu and Mongols, China’s strongest enemies, lived there.

The Huang He is also known as “China’s Sorrow.” Its devastating floods have caused great misery. The earliest cities, states, and civilizations of East Asia all appeared along the Huang He. For thousands of years, some of the largest populations in the world lived within the Yellow River system. They risked devastation from flooding. Emperors tried many plans to control the floods. They met with little success.

The other major river of China is the Yangtze. The Yangtze is the third longest river in the world. Only the Nile and Amazon are longer. The Yangtze flows from the Tibetan Plateau nearly 4,000 miles through southern China. Finally, it empties into the sea beside Shanghai. The river’s basin area is about one-fifth the size of China. It is home to almost 500 million people. If the Yangtze valley were a country it would be the third most populous in the world.

The Yangtze also has a great bend to the north. The Yangtze’s bend has perhaps been more important to Chinese civilization than the Yellow River’s. In southwestern China, the great rivers all flow though Himalayan valleys from north to south. They all head south to the seas of Southeast Asia.

The Yangtze could have gone the same way. Millions of Chinese wouldn’t have had its life-giving water. Yet, sitting right in the middle of the Yangtze is Cloud Mountain. This massive wall of limestone blocks the onrushing Yangtze. The river is forced to suddenly interrupt its journey south and turn sharply back to the north.

The Chinese give credit for the placement of Cloud Mountain to legendary emperor Yu the Great. He worked mightily to keep the river in China. Geologists attribute it to plate tectonics. Either way, without Cloud Mountain, Chinese history would have been very different.

The societies that emerged in Korea and Japan were influenced by China's identity. Still, Korean and Japanese civilizations never became exact copies of China.

KoreaThe Korean Peninsula sticks out from northeastern China. It is surrounded by the Yellow Sea to the west and the Sea of Japan to the east. The Korea Strait connects the two seas. The peninsula is about 85,000 square miles. It’s about the same size as England or Utah. Most of the land is extremely rugged, mountainous, and heavily forested.

This tough geography presented many challenges to the first migrants to Korea. Yet Korea also presented many possible sites to settle in. It had a long, curvy coastline with many resources from the ocean. Wooded areas area lay in the interior of the country. Mountain valleys offered access to forest foods, timber, fresh water, and caves.

Geologically, Korea consists mostly of a block of ancient granite that was laid down before the Cambrian era. On top of this are younger rocks. The limestone has produced large caves. The ancient granite contains important metals – gold, copper, tin, and iron. Korea has been a major gold producer for a very long time.


Although Japan is very close, Korea has almost none of the volcanic activity of its eastern neighbor. The only volcano is Mount Baekdu in the far north. At 9,000 feet, it’s also the highest mountain in Korea. Today the mountain contains an extinct crater filled with Heaven Lake. According to ancient legend, this was home to the gods.

Seventy percent of Korea’s land consists of steep mountains. They are so rugged that it is difficult to cross from east to west. Cultures and kingdoms developed completely separate from each other.

One of these cultures, the Silla Kingdom, grew strong despite its isolated location. Eventually it crossed the mountains and conquered the other kingdoms. Silla first unified Korea.

As with China, rivers played a critical role in Korean culture. All the great capitals of Korean history have been located along major rivers.

During the last ice age, sea levels were about 400 feet lower than they are today. At the time, much of the Yellow Sea was dry land. Korea was still connected to Japan. Ancient migrants were able to walk from China across the Yellow Sea Plain to Korea. From there they could continue on to Japan. When temperatures warmed about 11,000 years ago, sea levels rose. This sealed off the inhabitants of Japan. Korea separated from China, except along the northern border.

Early Korean culture reflected its geography. One Korean origin story dates to 2333 BCE. In this story, mythical King Tangun established the first kingdom of Choson. It means the “Land of the Morning Calm.” The name reflected the tranquil forest camps, seaside villages, and river terraces of the Choson state.

JapanJapanese culture was perhaps even more powerfully influenced by the environment where it formed. Modern Japan consists of four large islands — Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu. But it also has thousands of smaller ones. Their combined area is roughly 145,000 square miles. This makes Japan a little larger than Italy, and a little smaller than California. Altogether it's a 1,500-mile-long chain of islands. It stretches from cool northern latitudes to warmer southern ones.

The Japanese islands are separated from the Asian mainland by several hundred miles of water. Because of this, a distinct Japanese culture has emerged. But Japan has never been completely isolated from the cultural influences of neighbors like Korea and China.

Japan sits at the intersection of at least four tectonic plates. It is part of the Pacific region’s “Ring of Fire.” Throughout history it has undergone violent shaping and upheaval. The devastating earthquake of 2011 generated a massive tsunami wave. Amazingly, it was just one of about a thousand earthquakes that rattle Japan every year.

Japan’s tectonic location means that most of the country consists of young mountains. When the tectonic plates collided these mountains were driven up. The mountains are steep and jagged. They produce fast-moving rivers and frequent landslides.


The tectonic plate boundaries have also created volcanoes. The highest and most famous is Mount Fuji at 12,388 feet. These rugged and unstable mountain ranges are difficult to cross. They aren't suitable for farming. And they are not ideal for settlement. Since early Japanese history they have been serious barriers to transportation and communication. This led to regional independent states in early Japan. It also caused early Japan to rely on water transport.

Sediment washed down from Japan's mountains. At the bottom it joined with rich volcanic soil to create fertile coastal plains. The plains make up only 13 percent of Japan’s area. However, they are crucial to Japanese civilization. Because of their fertility, the plains are where the first rice farmers settled. They are where the the first towns, cities, and states appeared. One of the most important of these plains is the Tsukushi Plain in northern Kyushu. It was influenced by nearby civilizations in Korea and China. It became an early center of Japanese culture.

Japan’s location between Asia and the wide Pacific also creates difficult weather patterns. In winter, cold winds blow out of Asia. They dump snow on the mountains of Japan. In the summer, warm moist air blows in from the south. The warm air brings high temperatures, heavy rains and typhoons. These weather systems have strongly influenced where people settle. The strong hurricane-like storms have had huge historical consequences. Two attempted invasions of Japan by the Mongols were stopped by powerful storms and strong winds. The Japanese considered these storms divine. They called them kamikaze.

Japan stretches a long ways from north to south. Its terrain has great variety. Because of this, Japan also contains a wide variety of plants and animals. It is lucky to have both plentiful fresh water and a long growing season. The combination created a paradise for plants, and for the animals that feed off them. Land bridges once connected Japan to the Asian mainland. About 35,000 years ago humans first crossed them into Japan. A rich variety of potential food awaited them. There was forest and sea food, along with plentiful boar, deer, and smaller animals.

Land and climate shape civilizationFlooding rivers, towering mountains, deserts, and rich alluvial plains of China; the narrow coasts, rugged mountains, and fast-flowing rivers of Korea; and the violent storms, earthquakes, volcanoes, and plains of the island nation of Japan — all have been fundamental in shaping East Asian civilization. They have been just as important to its culture as anything created by human intelligence or will.


Greco RomanInstead of rule by a single person, Athens and Rome developed governments with widespread participation by male elites, which lasted about 170 years in Athens and 480 years in Rome.

Greco-Roman: Early Experiments in Participatory Government (1270 L)By Cynthia Stokes Brown

Instead of rule by a single person, Athens and Rome developed governments with widespread participation by male elites, which lasted about 170 years in Athens and 480 years in Rome.

Deep timePresent-day Greece, with Athens as its capital, and Italy, with Rome as its capital, are neighbors along the northern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Eighty-five million years ago they were already neighbors, but across the sea on a thumb of land, a promontory of the continent of Africa. By 55 million years ago continental drift had carried the European and African continents together, and by 5 million years ago the promontory consisting of the future Italy and Greece had collided with the European crust, overriding it and piling the deformed crust higher and higher, creating the Alps and the mountains of Greece.

After 5 million years of rocks and water pouring out of the Alps over Italy, countless earthquakes, the apparent drying out and refilling of the Mediterranean Sea, and microplates (Corsica and Sardinia) swinging down the Italian peninsula, the northern coast of the Mediterranean became the setting for the development of two distinctive societies, with the Romans eventually swallowing the Greeks as part of the Roman Empire.

Location and foodOn the Greek peninsula, the Greeks occupied the southern shoreline, called Attica. Another group, the Macedonians, inhabited the northern territories. Attica was composed of rocky soil on steep mountains. The poor soil could sustain barley, grapes, and olive trees, and could accommodate sheep and goats, but not much else — just some figs and lentils. Hence, Greeks stayed near the coast and took to the sea for extra food and for trading with other people.

Fortunately for the Athenians, who had built their city near the southern coast of Attica, a large silver deposit near Athens brought them wealth and paid for additional timber from Italy, which they used to build warships that gave them a powerful navy. The Athenians reduced their own forest cover from about 50 percent in 600 BCE to about 10 percent in 200 BCE.)


The Romans had a more productive site on the western side of the Italian peninsula. They built their city on seven hills by the Tiber River, not at the seashore, but inland 18 miles (30 kilometers). This gave them protection from naval attacks, while they could still access the Mediterranean by river to the port city of Ostia. To the north lived the Etruscans, and to the south the Greeks formed colonies along the coast and on the island of Sicily.

In their fertile river valley, early Romans grew wheat, barley, oats, rye, grapes, and olives. They used goat’s and sheep’s milk for cheese. Their local fruit trees included apples, pears, plums, and quince. They harvested many vegetables, but not corn, potatoes, or tomatoes — those came later from the Americas. For meat, they had fish, oysters, chickens, ducks, geese, and pigs; they seldom consumed cows. Salt, found in selected places, was controlled by the government. Soldiers were sometimes paid in salt, a practice from which our word salary derives, as does the phrase “worth your salt.”

Athens and GreeceFrom 1600 to 1100 BCE, Indo-European immigrants, called the Mycenaeans, occupied the mainland of the Greek peninsula. They attacked Troy, a city in Anatolia (now Turkey), on the other side of the Aegean Sea from Greece. This war is described in The Iliad, one of the earliest written pieces of Western literature, attributed to Homer and written down around the eighth century BCE.

By 800 BCE small, competing city-states, called “poleis” (or singular, polis), were forming in the mountains of southern Greece. These city-states each contained some 500 to 5,000 male citizens and had varying degrees of popular participation in political life. The total Greek population may have been 2 to 3 million. The city-states shared a common language and religion, and after 776 BCE they came together every four years for competitive games held near Mount Olympus.

The Greeks used their expanding population to set up more than 400 colonies along the shores of the Mediterranean and the Black seas between the mid-eighth and late sixth centuries. Their colonies in the Black Sea gave them access to fish, furs, timber, honey, gold, amber, and slaves from southern Russia. Greece introduced metallic coins in the seventh century BCE to facilitate trade; by 520 BCE they carried Athens’ emblem of an owl, the sacred bird of the goddess Athena. Instead of expansion by conquest, the early Greeks expanded by colonization.

Sparta and Athens, the chief city-states, differed profoundly in their culture and politics. The Spartans conquered their neighbors and forced them to live as slaves, providing agricultural labor. To keep them in control, Sparta developed an austere culture based on maintaining an elite military force, with a ruling council of 28 elders.

Athens, on the other hand, gave wealthy men full political rights. A growing number were added as they could afford armor and weapons to serve in the army, which was a duty of all participants in government. By 450 BCE, holders of public office were chosen by lot, and even the 10 military generals were elected.

Since women, children, slaves, and foreigners had no vote, perhaps 10 to 12 percent of the estimated 300,000 Athenians were participating in government.


Five hundred years before the Common Era, the largest and wealthiest agrarian civilization in the world was the Persian Empire. It conquered some of the Greek colonies on the shores of Anatolia. But when the Athenians fought the Persians, they won — on land at Marathon in 490 BCE and in great sea battles. A runner, Phidippides, carried the news of victory the 26 miles from Marathon to Athens and died after shouting, “Rejoice, we conquer.” (Before that, he had run 140 miles to Sparta and back, asking for help, which for religious reasons the Spartans wouldn’t give until the Moon was full.) Phidippides’s effort 2,500 years ago also spawned the 26.2-mile marathon running races that are so popular today.

After their victory over the Persians, the Athenians enjoyed a golden age of cultural creativity of some 150 years. The high tide of democratic participation took place under the elected general Pericles, who served 32 years in the mid-fifth century. Athenian merchants had earlier brought knowledge and ideas from Mesopotamia and Egypt; Athenian scientists, philosophers, and playwrights developed and combined cultural traditions that would later spread throughout Europe and serve as a foundation for Western culture. (Just for reference: the philosophers Socrates died in 399 BCE, Plato about 348 BCE, and Aristotle in 322 BCE.)

Of course, most Greeks did not have an advanced education; the literacy rate for that time is estimated at about 5 percent. The more educated Greeks believed in a pantheon of gods, headed by the sky god, Zeus, who emerged triumphant from the battle of the gods. (See the Greek origin story in Unit 1.) Many Greeks believed in mystery religions, which involved secrets known only to initiates and often entailed a savior whose death and resurrection would lead to salvation for followers.

The Greek city-states never figured out how to live together peaceably; instead, Athens and Sparta fought the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE), in which Athens was defeated and all city-states were weakened. In the mid-300s BCE, Macedonia, their neighbor to the north, conquered the Greek cities. When the Macedonian leader, Philip II, was assassinated in 336 BCE, his 20-year-old son, Alexander, took the stage. In 13 amazing years, Alexander conquered enough land to form the largest empire the world had yet seen, from Macedonia and Greece to Bactria (Afghanistan) and parts of India, and including Anatolia, Egypt, the Middle East, Babylonia, and Persia.

Alexander died suddenly and mysteriously in 323 BCE after a big drinking party; his empire was divided among three of his generals — Egypt under Ptolemy (not to be confused with the scientist Claudius Ptolemy), Greece and Macedonia under Antigonus, and central Asia under Seleucus. For a little more than a hundred years, these Greek rulers brought Greek culture to their areas. For example, the city of Alexandria at the mouth of the Nile became the most important port in the Mediterranean. The Ptolemaic rulers there funded a museum that served as an institute of higher learning and research; it included a library that by the first century BCE had some 700,000 scrolls. Scholars came from around the Mediterranean to work in Alexandria. There Eratosthenes measured the diameter of the Earth, Euclid wrote the rules of geometry, and the scientist Ptolemy wrote theAlgamest, unfortunately ignoring the ideas of Aristarchus, who also studied at Alexandria and theorized almost 2,000 years before Copernicus that the Earth circled the Sun.


Meanwhile, over on the Italian peninsula the Romans had developed a powerful agrarian civilization, one that was not fragmented into city-states. Between 215 and 146 BCE they gradually conquered the Greek cities in Italy, only to absorb much of Greek culture into their own.

Rome and empireRome began as a merging of small towns on seven hilltops by the Tiber River, halfway down the west coast of the Italian peninsula. A hundred years after the union, in 509 BCE, Roman aristocrats overthrew their king and set up a republic ruled by the patrician class. (A republic is a form of government in which delegates represent the interests of varied constituencies.) The poorer classes, called plebeians, insisted on some protections and participation. The idea of the republic came to include the rule of law, the rights of citizens, and upright moral behavior.

As its population grew, Roman rule expanded. For various reasons — food supplies, defense, land, glory — Roman armies fought the powerful city of Carthage, across the Mediterranean near modern-day Tunis, Tunisia. After 120 years Rome finally won and went on to conquer Greece, Egypt, and the Middle East by 133 BCE.

The republican form of government, however, produced seething rivalries among its military leaders, who competed for power with their personal armies. Out of this competition emerged the winner, Julius Caesar (100–44 BCE), who conquered Gaul (modern France) and England, but not Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, where the Celts held the line. By 46 BCE Julius Caesar declared himself dictator for life, ending the republic. Two years later other members of the Senate stabbed him to death in hopes of restoring the republic. Instead, after 13 more years of civil war, Caesar’s adopted son, Octavian, known as Augustus, took power and ruled for 45 years virtually unopposed.

The empire reached its height in the first two centuries of the Common Era. From 27 BCE to 180 CE, a time known as the Pax Romana, or Roman Peace, Roman leaders controlled about 130 million people across an area of about 1.5 million square miles, from a city of 1 million people. Roman roads linked all parts of the empire. Roman law, which featured key concepts such as the principle that the accused are innocent until proven guilty, was administered everywhere.

Under Roman law men had most of the rights, as was also the case in Greece. The father of the Roman family could arrange the marriages of his children, sell them into slavery, or even kill them without punishment. Roman law limited women’s rights to inherit property and assets, but some clever individuals managed to skirt this law.

Like all agrarian civilizations of its time, Romans made use of slave labor — but on a larger scale than most. No reliable data exist, but at the height of the empire maybe one-third of the population were slaves; an emperor alone might have about 20,000 slaves. In 73 BCE an escaped slave, Spartacus, assembled 70,000 rebellious slaves; after several years Roman troops crushed them and crucified 6,000 survivors along the Appian Way.

Romans put more of their creativity into roads, aqueducts (for carrying water), and law than into philosophy and science, unlike the Greeks. In a way, though, the Roman Empire was a


vehicle for the spread of Greek culture. The Romans honored many gods, renaming the Greek ones and taking them as their own. Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BCE) adopted a version of Stoicism, a Greek philosophy seeking to identify universal moral standards based on nature and reason; Epicetus and Marcus Aurelius further popularized it. The older mystery religions — the Anatolian rites of Mithras and Cybele and the Egyptian rites of Isis — proved immensely popular in the Roman Empire.

Out of a remote corner of the Roman Empire emerged a small sect that has become the most widespread religion of today’s world — Christianity. The Romans conquered Judea (modern Israel) in 6 CE. Jesus, whom Christians consider the Son of God, grew up at a time of great tension between the Roman overlords and their Jewish subjects. The Romans allowed Jesus to be crucified in the early 30s CE to forestall rebellion, which they believed he was advocating with his message that “the kingdom of God is at hand.”

In 66–70 CE, the Jews actually did revolt against Roman rule; the Romans crushed this by destroying the Jewish temple, taking thousands of Jews to Rome as slaves, and sending most of the rest into exile.

After this revolt, Christianity spread to non-Jewish communities, led by Paul of Tarsus, Anatolia, who preached in the Greek-speaking eastern regions of the Roman Empire. At first Rome persecuted Christians, but by the third century CE Rome had become the principal seat of Church authority, with the religion appealing to the lower classes, women, and urban populations. In 313 Emperor Constantine (who ruled 306-337) legalized Christian worship after his own conversion, and by the end of the fourth century it had become the official state religion.

History books used to refer to the “fall” of Rome in 476 when a Germanic general, Odovacar (435–493), became the ruler of the western part of the empire. But the fall was a gradual dissolution, not a sudden collapse. After 200, Rome faced many problems. Strong leadership was lacking; during a 50-year span in the 200s there were 26 emperors, only one of whom died a natural death. Epidemics of disease spread along the Silk Roads; afflictions that began in animals — smallpox, measles, mumps, whooping cough — could spread rapidly in urban populations. The Roman world lost about one-quarter of its population before 450. Monetary inflation occurred; people lost confidence in coins and returned to bartering. The dissolving empire meant the decline of urban life, reduced international trade, loss of population, and widespread insecurity for ordinary people.

In 324 Emperor Constantine moved the capital to Byzantium (renamed Constantinople and now called Istanbul) in Turkey, and from there the Eastern Roman Empire became the Byzantine Empire, which lasted another thousand years until the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453. The Western Roman Empire ended in 476. Centralized authority did not hold; government reverted to city-states and small territories ruled by princes, bishops, or the pope, with the Roman Catholic Church often at odds with state authorities. The common tongue, Latin, evolved into many splinter languages — French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian.


Connections and legaciesEven so, Greco-Roman collective learning managed to live on. Much credit must go to the Ptolemaic rulers in Egypt, who supported scholarship and research at the Museum and Library of Alexandria. Nobody knows for sure what happened to Alexandria’s library, but eventually it disappeared. The part of the city where it stood now lies underwater; in 2004 excavators discovered 13 lecture halls. Three main claims have been made about the library’s destruction: that Julius Caesar accidentally, or on purpose, set part of the city on fire in 48 BCE when fighting his rival general, Pompey; that Christians destroyed it in the early fifth century CE; and that Muslims, who took Alexandria in 640, ransacked the library and burned the documents as tinder for their bathhouses. (This was written 300 years after the purported event by a Christian bishop known for describing Muslim atrocities without much documentation.) Possibly all of these events, or versions of them, contributed to the library’s eventual demise.

Whatever documents were at hand, Muslim scholars became interested in Greek ideas. These scholars spread their learning across North Africa and into modern Spain. In the eleventh century, Latin Christians took Toledo and Sicily back from the Muslims, and southern Italy from the Byzantines, acquiring many manuscripts written by Greek and Muslim scholars and monks.

In the twelfth century, the Muslim scholar Ibn Rushd (1126–1198), known as Averroes in Latin, wrote commentaries on the Greek philosopher Aristotle and included some Arabic translations of the original Greek. By 1300, universities had been organized in many European cities, through which Greco- Roman ideas entered European intellectual life.

Scholars in the Byzantine Empire also played a large role in preserving Greek knowledge. During the centuries when scholarship disappeared in the western part of the former Roman Empire, Byzantine monks and academics copied and recopied the Greek manuscripts.

The Roman legacy seems a bit more concrete. Hundreds of miles of Roman road still exist, after 20 centuries of use. Emperor Justinian (reigned 527–565) reorganized Roman law with the Code of Justinian, which is still the basis of legal systems in most of Europe. (U.S. law is based on English case law.) Humanists in Europe used the ideas of Roman non-Christians, especially Cicero, to discuss how to live well rather than arguing about theology. The names of our months also derive from Roman times, carrying the names of their gods and of a couple of their most famous leaders.

Perhaps the most important legacy of Greco-Roman civilization is its experiments with male citizen participation in political life. Though these exercises seem rather short-lived in both societies, the ideas later reemerged in Europe and the fledging United States to play a significant role in the shaping of modern governments.



Instead of rule by a single person, Athens and Rome developed governments with widespread participation by male elites, which lasted about 170 years in Athens and 480 years in Rome.

Deep timePresent-day Greece, with Athens as its capital, and Italy, with Rome as its capital, are neighbors along the northern shore of the Mediterranean Sea.

Eighty-five million years ago they were already neighbors, but across the sea in Africa. By 55 million years ago, continental drift had carried the European and African continents together. By 5 million years ago, the promontory consisting of the future Italy and Greece had collided with the European crust, overriding it, creating the Alps and the mountains of Greece.

After 5 million years of rocks and water pouring out of the Alps over Italy, countless earthquakes, the apparent drying out and refilling of the Mediterranean Sea, and microplates (Corsica and Sardinia) swinging down the Italian peninsula, the northern coast of the Mediterranean became the setting for the development of two distinctive societies, with the Romans eventually swallowing the Greeks as part of the Roman Empire.

Location and foodOn the Greek peninsula, the Greeks occupied the southern shoreline, called Attica. Another group, the Macedonians, inhabited the northern territories. Attica was composed of rocky soil on steep mountains.

The soil was poor, so Greeks had limited options for food. They grew barley, grapes, olive trees, figs, and lentils. They also raised sheep and goats. The Greeks stayed near the coast so they could fish for extra food and trade with other groups.

The Athenians had built their city near the southern coast of Attica. They were lucky to find a large silver deposit near Athens that made them very rich. They used the money to pay for timber from Italy, which they used to build warships and a powerful navy. The Athenians had reduced their own forest cover from about 50 percent in 600 BCE to about 10 percent in 200 BCE.

The Romans had a more productive site on the western side of the Italian peninsula. They built their city on seven hills by the Tiber River, not at the seashore, but inland 18 miles (30 kilometers). This gave them protection from naval attacks, while they could still access the Mediterranean by river to the port city of Ostia. To the north lived the Etruscans, and to the south the Greeks formed colonies along the coast and on the island of Sicily. -- Early Romans grew wheat, barley, oats, rye, grapes, and olives in their fertile river valley. They used goat’s and sheep’s milk for cheese. Their local fruit trees included apples, pears, plums, and quince. They harvested many vegetables, but not corn, potatoes, or tomatoes — those came later from the Americas. For meat, they had fish, oysters, chickens, ducks, geese, and pigs; they seldom consumed cows. Salt, found in selected places, was controlled by the government. Soldiers were sometimes paid in salt. Our word “salary” is derived from this practice. So is the phrase “worth your salt.”


Athens and GreeceFrom 1600 to 1100 BCE, Indo-European immigrants called the Mycenaeans occupied the mainland of the Greek peninsula. They attacked Troy, a city in Anatolia (now Turkey), on the other side of the Aegean Sea from Greece. This war is described in The Iliad, one of the earliest written pieces of Western literature, attributed to Homer and written down around the eighth century BCE.

By 800 BCE small, competing city-states, called “poleis” (singular, polis), were forming in the mountains of southern Greece. These city-states each contained about 500 to 5,000 male citizens. They had varying degrees of popular participation in political life. The total Greek population may have been two to three million. The city-states shared a common language and religion. After 776 BCE, they came together every four years for competitive games held near Mount Olympus.

Thanks to their expanding population, the Greeks were able to set up more than 400 colonies along the shores of the Mediterranean and the Black seas. Their colonies in the Black Sea gave them access to fish, furs, timber, honey, gold, amber, and slaves from southern Russia.

Greece introduced metal coins in the seventh century BCE to ease trade. Instead of expansion by conquest, the early Greeks expanded by colonization.

Sparta and Athens were the most powerful city-states in Greece. Their culture and politics were very different. The Spartans conquered their neighbors and forced them to live as slaves. Sparta developed a strict culture based on maintaining an elite military force, with a ruling council of 28 elders.

Athens, on the other hand, gave wealthy men full political rights. A growing number were added as they could afford armor and weapons to serve in the army, which was a duty of all participants in government. By 450 BCE, holders of public office were chosen randomly. Even the 10 military generals were elected.

In Athens, women, children, slaves, and foreigners had no vote. So perhaps 10 to 12 percent of the estimated 300,000 Athenians were allowed to participate in government.

Five hundred years before the Common Era, the largest and wealthiest agrarian civilization in the world was the Persian Empire. It conquered some of the Greek colonies on the shores of Anatolia.

But when the Athenians fought the Persians, the Athenians won — on land at Marathon in 490 BCE and in great sea battles. A runner, Phidippides, carried the news of victory 26 miles from Marathon to Athens and died after shouting, “Rejoice, we conquer.” Before that, he had run 140 miles to Sparta and back, asking for help, which for religious reasons the Spartans wouldn’t give until the Moon was full. Phidippides’s effort 2,500 years ago also inspired the 26.2-mile marathon running races that are so popular today.

After their victory over the Persians, the Athenians enjoyed a golden age of cultural creativity for about 150 years. Under the elected general Pericles, who served in the fifth century BCE, democratic participation was at its highest.


Athenian merchants brought knowledge and ideas from Mesopotamia and Egypt. Scientists, philosophers, and playwrights developed and combined cultural traditions that would later spread throughout Europe and serve as a foundation for Western culture. (Just for reference: the philosophers Socrates died in 399 BCE, Plato about 348 BCE, and Aristotle in 322 BCE.)

Of course, most Greeks did not have an advanced education. The literacy rate for that time is estimated at about 5 percent. The more educated Greeks believed in a pantheon of gods, headed by the sky god, Zeus, who emerged triumphant from the battle of the gods. (See the Greek origin story in Unit 1.) Many Greeks believed in mystery religions, which involved secrets known only to members. These often entailed a savior whose death and resurrection would lead to salvation for followers.

The Greek city-states never figured out how to live together peaceably. Instead, Athens and Sparta fought the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE). In it, Athens was defeated and all city-states were weakened.

In the mid-300s BCE, Macedonia, their neighbor to the north, conquered the Greek cities. When the Macedonian leader, Philip II, was assassinated in 336 BCE, his 20-year-old son, Alexander, took the stage. In 13 amazing years, Alexander conquered enough land to form the largest empire the world had yet seen, from Macedonia and Greece to Bactria (Afghanistan) and parts of India, and including Anatolia, Egypt, the Middle East, Babylonia, and Persia.

Alexander died suddenly and mysteriously in 323 BCE after a big drinking party. His empire was divided among three of his generals — Egypt under Ptolemy (not to be confused with the scientist Claudius Ptolemy), Greece and Macedonia under Antigonus, and central Asia under Seleucus.

For a little more than a hundred years, these Greek rulers brought Greek culture to their areas. For example, the city of Alexandria at the mouth of the Nile became the most important port in the Mediterranean. The Ptolemaic rulers there funded a museum that served as an institute of higher learning and research. It included a library that by the first century BCE had about 700,000 scrolls. Scholars came from around the Mediterranean to study in Alexandria. There Eratosthenes measured the diameter of the Earth, Euclid wrote the rules of geometry, and the scientist Ptolemy wrote the Algamest. Unfortunately, he ignored the ideas of Aristarchus, who also studied at Alexandria and theorized almost 2,000 years before Copernicus that the Earth circled the Sun.

Meanwhile, on the Italian peninsula, the Romans had developed a powerful agrarian civilization, one that was not fragmented into city-states. Between 215 and 146 BCE, they gradually conquered the Greek cities in Italy, only to absorb much of Greek culture into their own.

Rome and empireRome began as a merging of small towns on seven hilltops by the Tiber River, halfway down the west coast of the Italian peninsula. A hundred years after the union, in 509 BCE, Roman


aristocrats overthrew their king and set up a republic ruled by the elites. A republic is a form of government where delegates represent the interests of the people.

The poorer classes, called plebeians, insisted on some protections and participation. The idea of the republic came to include the rule of law, the rights of citizens, and upright moral behavior.

As its population grew, Roman rule expanded. For various reasons — food supplies, defense, land, glory — Roman armies fought the powerful city of Carthage, across the Mediterranean near modern-day Tunis, Tunisia. After 120 years Rome finally won and went on to conquer Greece, Egypt, and the Middle East by 133 BCE.

The republican form of government, however, produced intense rivalries among its military leaders. These leaders competed for power with their personal armies.

Julius Caesar (100–44 BCE) emerged as the winner of this competition. He conquered Gaul (modern France) and England, but not Scotland, Wales, or Ireland, where the Celts held him back. By 46 BCE, Julius Caesar declared himself dictator for life, ending the republic. Two years later, other members of the Senate stabbed him to death in hopes of restoring the republic. Instead, after 13 more years of civil war, Caesar’s adopted son, Octavian, known as Augustus, took power and ruled for 45 years virtually unopposed.

The empire reached its height in the first two centuries of the Common Era. From 27 BCE to 180 CE, a time known as the “Pax Romana,” or Roman Peace, Roman leaders controlled about 130 million people across an area of about 1.5 million square miles, from a city of 1 million people. Roman roads linked all parts of the empire. Roman law, which featured key concepts such as the principle that the accused are innocent until proven guilty, was in force everywhere.

Under Roman law, men had most of the rights. This was also the case in Greece. The father of the Roman family could arrange the marriages of his children, sell them into slavery, or even kill them without punishment. Roman law limited women’s rights to inherit property and assets, but some clever individuals managed to get around this law.

Like all agrarian civilizations of its time, Romans made use of slave labor — but on a larger scale than most. No reliable data exist, but at the height of the empire perhaps one-third of the population were slaves. An emperor alone might have about 20,000 slaves.

In 73 BCE, an escaped slave, Spartacus, assembled 70,000 rebellious slaves. After several years Roman troops crushed them and crucified 6,000 survivors along the Appian Way.

While the Greeks had focused on philosophy and science, the Romans put their creativity into roads, aqueducts (for carrying water), and law.

In a way, though, the Roman Empire was a vehicle for the spread of Greek culture. The Romans honored many gods, renaming the Greek ones and taking them as their own. Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BCE) adopted a version of Stoicism, a Greek philosophy seeking to identify universal moral standards based on nature and reason. Epicetus and Marcus Aurelius further popularized it. The older mystery religions — the


Anatolian rites of Mithras and Cybele and the Egyptian rites of Isis — proved immensely popular in the Roman Empire.

The rise of ChristianityOut of a remote corner of the Roman Empire emerged a small sect that has become the most widespread religion of today’s world — Christianity. The Romans conquered Judea (modern Israel) in 6 CE. Jesus, whom Christians consider the Son of God, grew up at a time of great tension between the Roman overlords and their Jewish subjects. The Romans allowed Jesus to be crucified in the early 30s CE to prevent rebellion, which they believed he was advocating with his message that “the kingdom of God is at hand.”

In 66–70 the Jews actually did revolt against Roman rule. The Romans crushed this by destroying the Jewish temple, taking thousands of Jews to Rome as slaves, and sending most of the rest into exile.

After this revolt, Christianity spread to non-Jewish communities, led by Paul of Tarsus, Anatolia, who preached in the Greek-speaking eastern regions of the Roman Empire. At first Rome persecuted Christians, but by the third century, Rome had become the center of Church authority. Christianity appealed to the lower classes, women, and urban populations. In 313, Emperor Constantine legalized Christian worship after his own conversion. By the end of the fourth century it had become the official state religion.

The fall of RomeHistory books used to refer to the “fall” of Rome in 476 when Germanic general Odovacar became the ruler of the western part of the empire. But the fall was a gradual breaking up, not a sudden collapse.

After 200, Rome faced many problems. The empire lacked strong leadership. During a 50-year span in the 200s, there were 26 emperors. Only one of these died a natural death.

Epidemics of disease spread along the Silk Roads. Sicknesses that began in animals — smallpox, measles, mumps, whooping cough — could spread rapidly in urban populations. The Roman world lost about one-quarter of its population before 450. Monetary inflation occurred; people lost confidence in coins and returned to bartering. The dissolving empire meant the decline of urban life, reduced international trade, loss of population, and widespread insecurity for ordinary people.

In 324, Emperor Constantine moved the capital to Byzantium (renamed Constantinople and now called Istanbul) in Turkey. From there the Eastern Roman Empire became the Byzantine Empire, which lasted another thousand years until the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453.

The Western Roman Empire ended in 476. Centralized authority did not hold. Government reverted to city-states and small territories ruled by princes, bishops, or the pope, with the Roman Catholic Church often disagreeing with state authorities. The common tongue, Latin, evolved into many splinter languages — French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian.


Connections and legaciesEven after the collapse of the empire, Greco-Roman collective learning managed to live on. A lot of credit goes to the Ptolemaic rulers in Egypt, who supported scholarship and research at the Museum and Library of Alexandria.

Nobody knows for sure what happened to Alexandria’s library, but eventually it disappeared. The part of the city where it stood now lies underwater. Excavators discovered 13 lecture halls in 2004.

Three main claims have been made about the library’s destruction: that Julius Caesar accidentally, or on purpose, set part of the city on fire in 48 BCE when fighting his rival general, Pompey; that Christians destroyed it in the early fifth century; and that Muslims, who took Alexandria in 640, ransacked the library and burned the documents.

Whatever documents were at hand, Muslim scholars became interested in Greek ideas. These scholars spread their learning across North Africa and into modern Spain. In the eleventh century, Latin Christians took Toledo and Sicily back from the Muslims, and southern Italy from the Byzantines, acquiring many manuscripts written by Greek and Muslim scholars and monks.

In the twelfth century, the Muslim scholar Ibn Rushd, known as Averroes in Latin, wrote commentaries on the Greek philosopher Aristotle and included some Arabic translations of the original Greek. By 1300, universities had been organized in many European cities, through which Greco-Roman ideas entered European intellectual life.

Scholars in the Byzantine Empire also played a large role in preserving Greek knowledge. During the centuries when scholarship disappeared in the western part of the former Roman Empire, Byzantine monks and academics copied and recopied the Greek manuscripts.

The Roman legacy is a bit more concrete. Hundreds of miles of Roman road still exist, after 20 centuries of use. Emperor Justinian reorganized Roman law with the Code of Justinian, which is still the basis of legal systems in most of Europe. (U.S. law is based on English case law.) Humanists in Europe used the ideas of Roman non-Christians, especially Cicero, to discuss how to live well rather than arguing about theology. The names of our months also derive from Roman times, carrying the names of their gods and of a couple of their most famous leaders.

Perhaps the most important legacy of Greco-Roman civilization is its experiments with male citizen participation in political life. Though these exercises seem short-lived in both societies, the ideas later reemerged in Europe and the young United States to play a significant role in the shaping of modern governments.

Greco-Roman: Early Experiments in Participatory Government (990L)By Cynthia Stokes Brown


Instead of rule by a single person, Athens and Rome allowed some male citizens to participate in government, which lasted about 170 years in Athens and 480 years in Rome.

Deep timePresent-day Greece, with Athens as its capital, and Italy, with Rome as its capital, are neighbors. They both lie along the northern shore of the Mediterranean Sea.

Eighty-five million years ago they were already neighbors, but across the sea. They were sitting on the edge of Africa. By 55 million years ago, continental drift had pushed the European and African continents together. By 5 million years ago, the land consisting of the future Italy and Greece had collided with the European crust. This created the Alps and the mountains of Greece.

Eventually, the northern coast of the Mediterranean became the setting for the development of two distinctive societies. After some time, the Romans swallowed the Greeks as part of the Roman Empire.

Location and foodThe Greeks occupied the southern shoreline of the Greek peninsula. This was called Attica. Another group, the Macedonians, inhabited the northern territories. Attica was composed of rocky soil on steep mountains.

Because the soil was poor, Greeks had limited food options. They grew barley, grapes, olive trees, figs, and lentils. They also raised sheep and goats. The Greeks stayed near the coast so they could fish for extra food and trade with other groups.

The Athenians built their city near the southern coast of Attica. A large silver deposit near the city made them very rich. They used the money to pay for timber from Italy, which they used to build warships and a powerful navy.

The Romans had a more productive site on the western side of the Italian peninsula. They built their city on seven hills near the Tiber River. Their site wasn’t at the seashore, but 18 miles (30 km) inland. This gave them protection from naval attacks. They could still access the Mediterranean by river. To the north lived the Etruscans, and to the south the Greeks had formed colonies along the coast and on the island of Sicily.

Early Romans grew wheat, barley, oats, rye, grapes, and olives in their fertile river valley. They used goat’s and sheep’s milk for cheese. Their local fruit trees included apples, pears, plums, and quince. They harvested many vegetables, but not corn, potatoes, or tomatoes. Those came later from the Americas. For meat, they had fish, oysters, chickens, ducks, geese, and pigs; they seldom ate cows. Salt, found in selected places, was controlled by the government. Soldiers were sometimes paid in salt. Our word “salary” is derived from this practice. So is the phrase “worth your salt.”

Athens and GreeceFrom 1600 to 1100 BCE, Indo-European immigrants called the Mycenaeans occupied the Greek peninsula. They attacked Troy, a city in Anatolia (now Turkey), on the other side of


the Aegean Sea. This war is described in The Iliad, one of the earliest written pieces of Western literature. The Iliad, attributed to Homer, was written down around the eighth century BCE.

By 800 BCE, small, competing city-states were forming in the mountains of southern Greece. These city-states each contained about 500 to 5,000 male citizens. The total Greek population may have been two to three million. The city-states shared a common language and religion. After 776 BCE, they came together every four years for competitive games held near Mount Olympus.

The Greeks set up more than 400 colonies along the shores of the Mediterranean and the Black seas. Their colonies in the Black Sea gave them access to fish, furs, timber, honey, gold, amber, and slaves from southern Russia.

Greece introduced metal coins in the seventh century BCE to make trade easier. Instead of expansion by conquest, the early Greeks expanded by colonization.

Sparta and Athens were the most powerful city-states in Greece. Their culture and politics were very different. The Spartans conquered their neighbors and forced them to live as slaves. Sparta developed a strict culture based on maintaining an elite military force. The Spartans were ruled by a council of 28 elders.

Athens, on the other hand, gave full political rights to wealthy men. If men could afford armor and weapons to serve in the army, they were allowed to participate in the government. By 450 BCE, holders of public office were chosen randomly. Even the 10 military generals were elected.

In Athens, women, children, slaves, and foreigners didn’t have political rights. Perhaps 10 to 12 percent of the estimated 300,000 Athenians were allowed to participate in government.

Five hundred years before the Common Era, the Persian Empire was the largest and wealthiest agrarian civilization. It conquered some of the Greek colonies on the shores of Anatolia.

But when the Athenians fought the Persians, the Athenians won. They were victorious on land at Marathon in 490 BCE and in great sea battles. A runner, Phidippides, carried the news of victory 26 miles from Marathon to Athens and died after shouting, “Rejoice, we conquer.” Before that, he had run 140 miles to Sparta and back, asking for help, which for religious reasons the Spartans wouldn’t give until the Moon was full. Phidippides’s effort 2,500 years ago also inspired the 26.2-mile marathon running races that are so popular today.

After their victory over the Persians, the Athenians enjoyed a golden age of cultural creativity for about 150 years. Under the elected general Pericles, democratic participation was at its highest.

Athenian merchants brought knowledge and ideas from Mesopotamia and Egypt. Scientists, philosophers, and playwrights developed and combined cultural traditions that would later spread throughout Europe and serve as a foundation for Western culture. Just for reference: the philosophers Socrates died in 399 BCE, Plato about 348 BCE, and Aristotle in 322 BCE.


Still, most Greeks did not have an advanced education. The literacy rate for that time is estimated at about 5 percent. The more educated Greeks believed in a pantheon of gods, headed by the sky god, Zeus, who emerged triumphant from the battle of the gods. (See the Greek origin story in Unit 1.) Many Greeks believed in mystery religions, which involved secrets known only to members. These often entailed a savior whose death and resurrection would lead to salvation for followers.

The Greek city-states never figured out how to live together peacefully. Instead, Athens and Sparta fought the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE). In it, Athens was defeated and all city-states were weakened.

In the mid-300s BCE, Macedonia, their neighbor to the north, conquered the Greek city-states. When the Macedonian leader, Philip II, was assassinated in 336 BCE, his 20-year-old son Alexander took over. In 13 amazing years, Alexander conquered enough land to form the largest empire the world had yet seen, from Macedonia and Greece to Bactria (Afghanistan) and parts of India, and including Anatolia, Egypt, the Middle East, Babylonia, and Persia.

Alexander died suddenly and mysteriously in 323 BCE after a wild party. His empire was divided among three of his generals. Egypt went to Ptolemy — not to be confused with the scientist Claudius Ptolemy, however. Greece and Macedonia fell under the rule of Antigonus. Central Asia was ruled by Seleucus.

For more than a hundred years, these Greek rulers brought Greek culture to their areas. For example, the city of Alexandria at the mouth of the Nile became the most important port in the Mediterranean. The rulers there funded a museum that served as an institute of higher learning and research. It included a library that had about 700,000 scrolls. Scholars came from around the Mediterranean to study in Alexandria.

It was in Alexandria that Eratosthenes measured the diameter of the Earth, Euclid wrote the rules of geometry, and the scientist Ptolemy wrote the Algamest. Unfortunately, he overlooked the ideas of Aristarchus, who also studied at Alexandria. Almost 2,000 years before Copernicus figured out that the Earth circled the Sun, Aristarchus had already theorized about it.

Meanwhile, on the Italian peninsula, the Romans had developed a powerful agrarian civilization. This one was not fragmented into city-states. Between 215 and 146 BCE, they gradually conquered the Greek cities in Italy, only to absorb much of Greek culture into their own.

Rome and empireRome began when small towns on seven hilltops by the Tiber River merged. A hundred years after the union, in 509 BCE, Roman aristocrats overthrew their king and set up a republic ruled by the elites. A republic is a form of government where delegates represent the interests of the people.


The poorer classes, called plebeians, insisted on some protections and participation. The idea of the republic came to include the rule of law, the rights of citizens, and moral behavior.

Rome expanded as its population grew. For various reasons — food supplies, defense, land, glory — Roman armies fought the powerful city of Carthage across the Mediterranean. After 120 years, Rome finally won and went on to conquer Greece, Egypt, and the Middle East by 133 BCE.

The republican form of government produced intense rivalries among its military leaders. These leaders competed for power with their personal armies.

Julius Caesar (100–44 BCE) emerged as the winner of this competition. He conquered Gaul (modern France) and England, but not Scotland, Wales, or Ireland, where the Celts fought off his armies.

Julius Caesar declared himself dictator for life, ending the republic. Two years later, members of the Senate stabbed him to death in hopes of restoring the republic. Instead, after 13 more years of civil war, Caesar’s adopted son, Octavian, known as Augustus, took power and ruled for 45 years virtually unopposed. In the first two centuries of the Common Era, the Roman Empire reached its height. The time from 27 BCE to 180 CE is known as the “Pax Romana,” or Roman Peace. Rome was a city of one million people. Roman leaders controlled about 130 million people across an area of about 1.5 million square miles. Roman roads linked all parts of the empire. Roman law, which featured key concepts such as “innocent until proven guilty,” was enforced throughout the empire.

Under Roman law men had most of the rights. This was also the case in Greece. The father of a Roman family could arrange the marriages of his children, sell them into slavery, or even kill them without punishment. Roman law limited women’s rights to inherit property and assets, but some clever people managed to get around this law.

Like all agrarian civilizations of its time, Romans used slave labor — but on a larger scale than most. No reliable data exist, but at the height of the empire perhaps one-third of the population were slaves. An emperor alone might have about 20,000 slaves.

In 73 BCE, an escaped slave, Spartacus, assembled 70,000 rebellious slaves. After several years Roman troops crushed them and crucified 6,000 survivors along the Appian Way.

While the Greeks had focused on philosophy and science, the Romans put their creativity into roads, aqueducts for carrying water, and law.

In a way, the Roman Empire helped to spread Greek culture. The Romans honored many gods, renaming the Greek ones and taking them as their own. Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero adopted Greek Stoicism, a philosophy that sought to identify universal moral standards based on nature and reason. The older mystery religions proved immensely popular in the Roman Empire.


The rise of ChristianityIn a remote corner of the Roman Empire, a small religious sect emerged. It was Christianity, now the world’s most widespread religion.

The Romans conquered Judea (modern Israel) in 6 CE. Jesus, whom Christians consider the Son of God, grew up at a time of great tension between the Roman overlords and their Jewish subjects. The Romans allowed Jesus to be crucified in the early 30s CE. They believed Jesus was calling for rebellion with his message that “the kingdom of God is at hand.”

In 66–70, the Jews actually did revolt against Roman rule. The Romans crushed this by destroying the Jewish temple and taking thousands of Jews to Rome as slaves. Most of the rest were sent into exile.

After this revolt, Christianity spread to non-Jewish communities, led by Paul of Tarsus. Paul preached in the Greek-speaking eastern regions of the Roman Empire. At first Rome persecuted Christians, but by the third century Rome had become the center of Church authority.

Christianity appealed to the lower classes, women, and city dwellers. In 313, Emperor Constantine legalized Christian worship after his own conversion. By the end of the fourth century, it had become the official state religion.

The fall of RomeHistory books used to refer to the “fall” of Rome in 476 when Germanic general Odovacar became the ruler of the western part of the empire. But the fall was a gradual breaking up of the empire. The Roman Empire didn't collapse all at once.

After 200, Rome faced many problems. The empire lacked strong leadership. During a 50-year span in the 200s, there were 26 emperors. Most of them died violent deaths.

Epidemics of disease spread along the Silk Roads. Sicknesses that began in animals — smallpox, measles, mumps, whooping cough — spread rapidly in urban populations. The Roman world lost about one-quarter of its population before 450. People lost confidence in coins because of inflation. They returned to bartering (trading).

The dissolving empire meant the decline of urban life, reduced international trade, and loss of population. Insecurity among ordinary people was widespread.

In 324, Emperor Constantine moved the capital to Byzantium in modern-day Turkey. Byzantium was later renamed Constantinople, and is now called Istanbul. From there the Eastern Roman Empire became the Byzantine Empire. It lasted another thousand years until the Ottoman Turks took Constantinople in 1453.

The Western Roman Empire ended in 476. Centralized authority fell apart. Governments went back to city-states and small territories ruled by princes, bishops, or the pope. The Roman Catholic Church often had disagreements with state authorities. The common tongue, Latin, evolved into many splinter languages — French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian.


Connections and legaciesEven after the collapse of the empire, Greco-Roman collective learning lived on. A lot of credit goes to the Ptolemaic rulers in Egypt, who supported scholarship and research at the Museum and Library of Alexandria.

Nobody knows for sure what happened to Alexandria’s library, but it eventually disappeared. The part of the city where it stood now lies underwater. Excavators discovered 13 lecture halls there in 2004.

Three main claims have been made about the library’s destruction: that Julius Caesar accidentally, or on purpose, set part of the city on fire in 48 BCE when fighting his rival general, Pompey; that Christians destroyed it in the early fifth century; and that Muslims, who took Alexandria in 640, raided the library and burned the documents.

Muslim scholars became interested in Greek ideas. These scholars spread their learning across North Africa and into Spain. In the eleventh century, Latin Christians took Toledo and Sicily back from the Muslims, and southern Italy from the Byzantines. In the process, they acquired many manuscripts written by Greek and Muslim scholars and monks.

In the twelfth century, the Muslim scholar Ibn Rushd wrote commentaries on the Greek philosopher Aristotle. He also made Arabic translations of the original Greek. By 1300, universities had been organized in many European cities, through which Greco-Roman ideas entered European intellectual life.

Byzantine Empire scholars also played a large role in preserving Greek knowledge. When scholarship disappeared in the western part of the former Roman Empire, Byzantine monks and scholars copied the Greek manuscripts.

The Roman legacy is a bit more concrete. Hundreds of miles of Roman road still exist, after 20 centuries of use. Emperor Justinian reorganized Roman law with the Code of Justinian, which is still the basis of legal systems in most of Europe. (U.S. law is based on English case law.) Humanists in Europe used the ideas of Roman non-Christians, especially Cicero, to discuss how to live well rather than arguing about religion. The names of our months also derive from Roman times, carrying the names of their gods and of a couple of their most famous leaders.

Perhaps the most important legacy of Greco-Roman civilization is its experiments with male citizen participation in political life. These exercises seem short-lived in both societies. But the ideas later reemerged in Europe and the young United States to play a significant role in the shaping of modern governments.



Athens and Rome allowed some male citizens to take part in government. At the time, most other places were ruled by a single person. This new type of republic lasted about 170 years in Athens and 480 years in Rome.

Deep timeToday, Greece and Italy are neighbors along the northern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Eight-five million years ago they were neighbors across the sea. They once sat along the coast of Africa. Plate tectonics pushed them into Europe. This created the Alps and the mountains of Greece.

The area became the setting for two important ancient civilizations: the Greeks and the Romans.

Location and foodThe Greeks lived on the southern shoreline of the Greek peninsula. The area was called Attica. The Macedonians lived to the north. Attica had rocky soil on steep mountains.

Because the soil was poor, the Greeks had limited food options. They grew barley, grapes, olive trees, figs, and lentils. They also raised sheep and goats. The Greeks stayed near the coast so they could fish and trade with other groups.

Athens was built near the southern coast of Attica. A large silver mine near the city made Athenians very rich. They used their money to buy wood from Italy. The wood went to build warships for the city's powerful navy.

The site of Rome was more productive. Rome began on seven hills near the Tiber River on the Italian peninsula. Rome wasn’t along the seashore. It was 18 miles, or 30 kilometers, inland. This gave Rome protection from naval attacks. And the Romans could still access the Mediterranean Sea by river.

Early Romans grew wheat, barley, oats, rye, grapes, and olives in their fertile river valley. They used goat’s and sheep’s milk for cheese. Their local fruit trees included apples, pears, plums, and quince. They harvested many vegetables, but not corn, potatoes, or tomatoes. Those came later from the Americas. For meat, they had fish, oysters, chickens, ducks, geese, and pigs; they seldom ate cows. Salt could be found in certain places. It was very valuable and was controlled by the government. Soldiers were sometimes paid in salt. Our word “salary” comes from this practice. So does the phrase “worth your salt.”

Athens and GreeceBefore the Greeks, the Mycenaeans lived on the Greek peninsula. They attacked Troy, a city in Anatolia (now Turkey). Troy was on the other side of the Aegean Sea. This war is described in The Iliad, one of the earliest written pieces of Western literature. The Iliad, by Homer, was written down around the 700s BCE.

By 800 BCE, small city-states were forming in the mountains of southern Greece. Each city state had about 500 to 5,000 male citizens. The total Greek population may have been two to three million. The city-states shared a common language and religion. After 776 BCE,


they came together every four years for competitive games held near Mount Olympus. Greece introduced metal coins in the seventh century BCE to make trade easier. The early Greeks used their large population to expand by colonization.

Sparta and Athens were the most powerful city-states in early Greece. Their culture and politics were very different. The Spartans conquered their neighbors and forced them to live as slaves. Sparta developed a strict culture based on maintaining an elite military force. The Spartans were ruled by a council of 28 elders.

Athens was more democratic. It gave political rights to wealthy men. If a man could afford armor and weapons to serve in the army, he was allowed to participate in the government. By 450 BCE, public officeholders were chosen randomly. Even the 10 military generals were elected. In Athens, women, children, slaves, and foreigners didn’t have political rights. Only 10 to 12 percent of the 300,000 Athenians were allowed to participate in government.

In 500 BCE, the Persian Empire was the largest and wealthiest agrarian civilization. It began to conquer some Greek colonies. But when the Athenians fought the Persians, the Athenians won. They were victorious on land at Marathon in 490 BCE and in great sea battles.

A runner named Phidippides carried the news of victory 26 miles from Marathon to Athens. He arrived, shouting, “Rejoice, we conquer.” Shortly after, he died. Before that, he had run 140 miles to Sparta and back, asking for help. For religious reasons the Spartans wouldn’t give any help until the Moon was full. Phidippides’s run 2,500 years ago inspired the 26.2-mile marathon races that are so popular today.

After the victory over the Persians, Athens enjoyed a golden age. For the next 150 years, Athens experienced a period of cultural creativity. Under the elected general Pericles, democratic participation was at a high point.

Through trade, Athens received knowledge and ideas from Mesopotamia and Egypt. Scientists, philosophers, and playwrights developed and combined cultural traditions. Their works would later spread through Europe. They would serve as the foundation of Western culture. Just for reference: the philosophers Socrates died in 399 BCE, Plato about 348 BCE, and Aristotle in 322 BCE.

Still, most Greeks at the time did not have an advanced education. The literacy rate for that time is estimated at about 5 percent. The more educated Greeks believed in a group of gods, headed by the sky god, Zeus. (See the Greek origin story in Unit 1.) Many Greeks believed in mystery religions, which involved secrets known only to members. These religions often taught of a savior who died and was resurrected. When he rose from the dead, his followers would be saved.

The Greek city-states never figured out how to live together peacefully. Instead, Athens and Sparta fought the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE). In it, Athens was defeated and all city-states were weakened.

In the mid-300s BCE, northern neighbor Macedonia conquered the Greek city-states. After Macedonian leader Philip II was assassinated, his 20-year-old son Alexander took over. In


13 amazing years, Alexander conquered enough land to form the largest empire the world had seen. He became known as Alexander the Great.

Alexander died suddenly and mysteriously in 323 BCE after a wild party. His empire was divided among three of his generals. Egypt went to Ptolemy — not to be confused with the scientist Claudius Ptolemy. Greece and Macedonia fell under the rule of Antigonus. Central Asia was ruled by Seleucus.

For more than a hundred years, these Greek rulers brought Greek culture to areas they controlled. For example, the city of Alexandria became the most important port in the Mediterranean. The city sits on the coast of Egypt. Rulers there funded a museum that served as an institute of higher learning and research. It included a library that had about 700,000 scrolls. Scholars came from around the Mediterranean to study in Alexandria.

It was in Alexandria that Eratosthenes measured the diameter of the Earth. It was there that Euclid wrote the rules of geometry. And it was there that the scientist Ptolemy wrote the Algamest.

Meanwhile, the Romans had developed a powerful agrarian civilization on the Italian peninsula. This one was not fragmented into city-states. Between 215 and 146 BCE, they gradually conquered the Greek cities in Italy. In the process, the Romans absorbed much of Greek culture into their own.

Rome and empireRome began as small towns on seven hilltops by the Tiber River. The towns combined to form Rome. A hundred years later, Roman aristocrats overthrew the king and set up a republic ruled by the elites. A republic is a form of government where delegates represent the interests of the people. The poorer classes insisted on some protections and participation. The idea of the republic came to include the rule of law, the rights of citizens, and moral behavior.

Rome expanded as its population grew. Roman armies fought the powerful city of Carthage across the Mediterranean. They fought Carthage for various reasons — food supplies, defense, land, glory. After more than 100 years of fighting, Roman armies finally won. They went on to conquer Greece, Egypt, and the Middle East by 133 BCE.

The republican form of government produced intense rivalries among its military leaders. These leaders competed for power with their personal armies. Julius Caesar emerged as the winner of this competition. He conquered England and Gaul, now known as France.

Julius Caesar declared himself dictator for life. This act ended the republic. Two years later Caesar was stabbed to death by members of the Senate. They hoped to restore the republic. Instead, 13 years of civil war followed. After that, Caesar’s adopted son, Octavian, or Augustus, took over and ruled for 45 years.

The Roman Empire reached its height in the first two centuries of the Common Era. The time from 27 BCE to 180 CE is known as the “Pax Romana,” or Roman peace.


Rome was a city of one million people. But its leaders controlled about 130 million people across an area of about 1.5 million square miles. Roman roads linked all parts of the empire. Roman law was enforced throughout the empire. It featured concepts such as “innocent until proven guilty.”

Men had most of the rights under Roman law. This was also true in Greece. The father of a Roman family could arrange the marriages of his children or sell them into slavery. He could even kill them without punishment. Roman law limited women’s rights to inherit property and money.

Romans used slave labor like all agrarian civilizations of the time. Historians think that at the height of the empire perhaps one-third of the population were slaves. An emperor alone might have about 20,000 slaves.

In 73 BCE, an escaped slave, Spartacus, assembled 70,000 slaves. They rebelled. After several years Roman troops crushed them. The troops crucified 6,000 survivors along the Appian Way.

The Greeks had focused on philosophy and science. The Romans put their creativity into roads, aqueducts for carrying water, and law.

In a way, the Roman Empire helped to spread Greek culture. The Romans honored many gods, renaming the Greek ones and taking them as their own. Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero adopted Greek Stoicism. This philosophy tried to identify moral standards based on nature and reason. The older mystery religions were very popular in the Roman Empire.

The rise of ChristianityIn a remote corner of the Roman Empire, a small religious sect emerged. It was Christianity, now the world’s most widespread religion.

The Romans conquered Judea (modern Israel) in 6 CE. It was a time of great tension between the Roman overlords and their Jewish subjects. Jesus grew up in the middle of that tension. To Christians, he is the Son of God. The Romans allowed Jesus to be crucified in the early 30s CE. They believed Jesus was calling for rebellion with his message that “the kingdom of God is at hand.”

In 66–70, the Jews actually did revolt against Roman rule. The Romans crushed the revolt. They destroyed the Jewish temple and took thousands of Jews to Rome as slaves. Most of the rest were sent into exile.

After this revolt, Christianity spread to non-Jewish communities, led by Paul of Tarsus. Paul preached in the Greek-speaking eastern regions of the Roman Empire. At first Rome mistreated Christians. Yet, by the 200s, Rome had become the center of Church authority.

Christianity appealed to the lower classes, women, and city dwellers. In 313, Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity after he converted. By the end of the fourth century, Christianity was the official state religion.


The fall of RomeHistory books used to refer to the “fall” of Rome in 476. This was when a Germanic general took over the western part of the empire. But the fall of Rome was a gradual breaking up of an empire. It didn't collapse suddenly.

After 200, Rome faced many problems. The empire lacked strong leadership. During a 50-year span in the 200s, there were 26 emperors. Most died violent deaths.

Disease spread by trade devastated Roman cities. Sicknesses that began in animals like smallpox, measles, mumps and whooping cough spread rapidly in cities. The Roman world lost about one-quarter of its population before 450. People lost confidence in coins because of inflation. They returned to bartering (trading).

In 324, Emperor Constantine moved the capital to Byzantium, in Turkey. Byzantium was later renamed Constantinople, then Istanbul. The Eastern Roman Empire became the Byzantine Empire. It lasted another thousand years until the Ottoman Turks took Constantinople in 1453.

The Western Roman Empire ended in 476. Central authority broke down. Smaller regions became independent city-states again. These were ruled by princes, bishops, or the pope. The common tongue had been Latin. Now it evolved into many splinter languages — French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian.

Connections and legaciesGreco-Roman collective learning survived even after the Roman empire collapsed. A lot of credit goes to the Ptolemaic rulers in Egypt. They supported scholarship at the Library of Alexandria. Nobody knows for sure what happened to Alexandria’s library, but it eventually disappeared.

Three main claims have been made about the library’s destruction. One was that Julius Caesar set part of the city on fire in 48 BCE when fighting his rival general, Pompey. Another claims that Christians destroyed it in the early 400s CE. A third says that Muslims raided the library and burned the documents. In 640, the Muslims took control of Alexandria.

Muslim scholars became interested in Greek ideas. These scholars spread their learning across North Africa and into Spain. In the eleventh century, Latin Christians took Toledo and Sicily back from the Muslims, and southern Italy from the Byzantines. In the process, they acquired many manuscripts written by Greek and Muslim scholars and monks.

In the twelfth century, the Muslim scholar Ibn Rushd wrote commentaries on the Greek philosopher Aristotle. He also translated Aristotle's work into Arabic. By 1300, universities had been organized in many European cities. These allowed Greco-Roman ideas to enter European intellectual life.

Byzantine Empire scholars also played a large role in preserving Greek knowledge. Scholarship eventually disappeared in the western part of the former Roman Empire. When that happened, Byzantine monks and scholars copied the Greek manuscripts.


The Roman legacy is a bit more concrete. Hundreds of miles of Roman road still exist, after 2,000 years of use. Emperor Justinian reorganized Roman law with the Code of Justinian. It remains the basis of legal systems in most of Europe. (U.S. law is based on English case law.) Humanists in Europe used the ideas of Roman non-Christians to discuss how to live well without arguing about religion. The names of our months also come from Roman times. They still carry the names of Roman gods and of a couple of their most famous leaders.

Perhaps the most important legacy of Greco-Roman civilization is its experiments with citizen participation in political life. These exercises seem short-lived in both societies. But the ideas of democracy later reemerged in Europe and the young United States. The Greek and Roman ideas of democracy still play a role in shaping governments today.


Recordkeeping and HistoryMany species note the passing of time, but only Homo sapiens, is capable of sharing accounts, or memories, of past events and turning these into stories or “histories.”

Recordkeeping and History: How We Chronicle the Past (1220L)By David Christian, adapted by Newsela

Although many species note the passing of time, only our own species, Homo sapiens, is capable of sharing accounts, or memories, of past events and turning these into stories or “histories.”

What is history anyway?As humans discovered ever more precise ways of keeping track of time, so we have also developed more accurate ways of keeping records and recording history.

What exactly is history? We could argue forever about that, but let’s just agree that it means “a shared knowledge of the past.”

Why is it important to know about the past? How does that help us? Do animals need history? Did our ancestors have a sense of history in the Paleolithic era, and how has that sense changed over time?

How do animals and plants “do” history?All living things carry “memories” of the past. Animals need to be able to keep track of the seasons so they know when to hibernate, when to hunt, and when to have children. Many rodents and birds store nuts and other food in special hiding places, and they need to remember where they stashed them so they can find them months later. Wolves leave their marks on the perimeters of their turf, creating a sort of record that says to other wolf packs: “This is owned by the BHP pack. Keep out!”

Even plants seem to record the passing of time. If you slice through a tree, particularly in a region with lots of seasonal changes, you’ll see “growth rings.” Every year, a new layer grows just under the bark. There is often a light part formed early in the year and a darker part that forms later, so each ring represents one year of growth. Wet seasons typically produce thicker rings than dry seasons, so dendrochronologists — the scientists who study growth rings — can frequently figure out the exact year in which each layer was formed. They can also see evidence of climatic events such as droughts or forest fires.

But “tracking the past” isn’t the same as having a “memory” of the past. A tree ring might record the date of a major fire, but the tree wouldn’t respond if I asked, “Do you remember the great fire of 1730?” Only humans can share their knowledge of the past because only humans have a communication system powerful enough to share what they know and learn.


The first historiesWe don’t really know when humans first began to share their knowledge of the past. But our understanding of collective learning suggests that they probably did so early on. If we assume, as we have done in this course, that even the earliest members of our species were capable of collective learning, then we must assume that they could share ideas not just about where water holes or lions are, but also about last year’s bush fire, or that fight that took place with the people who live beyond the river, or even of earlier geologic events. All modern foraging societies tell stories about the past, many focused on ancestors, but also on the creation of what’s around us. Indeed, most humans tell “origin stories,” and origin stories count as history because they share ideas about the world.

In the beginning the Earth was a bare plain. All was dark. There was no life, no death. The Sun, the Moon, and the stars slept beneath the Earth. All the eternal ancestors slept there, too, until at last they woke themselves out of their own eternity and broke through to the surface.

This is the beginning of an Australian Aboriginal origin story from recent times. We don’t know if the people who told this story believed it was literally true, but it provided a way of thinking about how things came to be as they are. Here is the same origin story recounting the creation of humans:

With their great stone knives, the Ungambikula carved heads, bodies, legs, and arms out of the bundles. They made the faces and the hands and feet. At last human beings were finished.

It’s very tempting to believe that at ancient sites like Blombos Cave in South Africa, where humans lived and worked and made different colored paints more than 70,000 years ago, they were also telling stories about the past, passing them on from generation to generation and tribe to tribe, and perhaps also illustrating and recording them in some way.

History based on memoryBut if there were historians in Blombos Cave, they relied mainly on their memory for the stories of the past, because there were no written records. We know from studies of modern foraging societies that people who cannot write down information rely on such “oral tradition,” and develop powerful ways of remembering. Ancient storytellers could keep telling stories for days, and poets had many techniques to help them recall long epic poems so they could recite them at will. For example, it seems likely that the Greek poet Homer used similar phrases over and over again, such as “the wine-dark sea,” as well as rhymes and regular rhythms, mainly to help him remember his epics.

In ancient Greece, Mnemosyne, or the goddess of memory, was regarded as the mother of all nine muses — the various goddesses of literature, art, and science. (The modern word mnemonic, which means “a technique for remembering things,” comes from her name.) And even in societies with writing, memory remained an admired skill. The Roman philosopher Augustine of Hippo had a friend who could recite backward the works of the poet Virgil. In the Muslim world it was commonplace to memorize the entire Qur'an. People continued to


develop ways of memorizing, such as walking in your imagination through a large building in which you had placed objects, each of which helped you remember something special.

History based on written recordsToday, though, we expect proper history writing to be based not on the memory of the historian, but on evidence, and mostly on written evidence. I think you’d worry if a history teacher said, “Well, I think World War I began in about 1914 because that’s what my grandmother’s dad told her.”

History based on written records appears quite late in human history. The first written records date back a little more than 5,000 years in Egypt and ancient Sumer. The earliest Sumerian records were made using reeds cut at an angle to make wedge-shaped (cuneiform) marks on clay, which was then baked hard. Many of these clay tablets survive today, and scholars can still read them. The earliest records look like accounts: lists of property, cattle, sheep, and wheat. But even that is history of a sort, and it’s pretty important because it provides details of who owned what.

Within a few centuries, we begin to find elaborate written chronicles, such as the great Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk. We also find stories of floods, of gods, and of the creation of the world, some of which made their way into the Jewish Scriptures, the Christian Bible, and the Qur'an. Wherever writing appeared it was used to write accounts of the past. And despite most people not being able to read or write, those accounts started to become the basis for further historical accounts. Written documents began to be seen as more authoritative than oral stories, because once something was written down it was much harder to keep changing the story.

The importance of evidenceAs societies became more interconnected and people began to compare different accounts of the past, they became more concerned with a crucial question: Which version is truest? Let’s look at a modern portrayal of human origins: “Our hominine ancestors evolved over several million years. But during the last million years, species appeared with very large brains, and our own species, Homo sapiens, probably appeared about 200,000 years ago. We know this because we have fossil remains of individuals that seem identical to modern humans, and we begin to find evidence of technological innovation and symbolic activity.” I wrote that, but it is typical of today’s history writing because it is so concerned with evidence. Where there are competing versions of the past, you have to give evidence for yours if you want to be taken seriously.

We can already see this growing concern with evidence 2,000 years ago in the writings of some of the greatest historians of the classical era, such as Herodotus of Greece and China’s Sima Qian. Both lived in worlds where different peoples made different claims about the past, so both understood the need to base their accounts of the past on evidence wherever possible. Herodotus (c. 484–425 BCE) traveled widely in the eastern Mediterranean as well as to Olbia, on the northern shores of the Black Sea, where he met some of the Scythian pastoral nomads about whom he wrote so vividly. Modern archaeologists have shown that his somewhat gruesome accounts of Scythian royal burials


were very accurate. He also described some Scythian origin stories, and he did so with all the skepticism of a modern anthropologist.

About three centuries later, the Chinese historian Sima Qian (c. 145–86 BCE) provided lengthy descriptions of the nomadic Xiongnu, who lived north of China, in Mongolia. For example, he wrote that “they move about in search of water and pasture and have no walled cities or fixed dwellings, nor do they engage in any kind of agriculture.” His account was not made up; it was based on the writings and memories of many Chinese travelers who had visited Mongolia, including Silk Road adventurer Zhang Qian, who was captured by the Xiongnu in 139 BCE, and lived among them for 10 years.

But it was really from the Enlightenment era, in the eighteenth century, that the notion of evidence-based history as the most important form of history writing became more prominent. Today, all professional historians understand that their first task is to get the history right. That means checking all the details against hard evidence, and preferably against written documents. The great nineteenth-century German historian Leopold von Ranke pioneered the modern art of writing history on the basis of detailed archival records. And these days, history based on written documents remains the primary form of historical scholarship.

But document-based history has some serious limitations. First of all, history based on written documents often only tells us about the lives of the rich and powerful. That’s because until a century or two ago most other people could not read or write, so they weren’t very well represented in the documents of earlier times. Sometimes, archaeology and anthropology can step in by helping us use material objects — houses, clothes, bits of pottery, or skeletons — left behind by ordinary people, or by using studies of modern societies that give us some hints about how ordinary people lived in the past.

Written records have another serious limitation. They only reach back a few thousand years. When H.G. Wells, just after World War I, tried to write a history of the entire Universe, he complained that “chronology only begins to be precise enough to specify the exact year of any event after the establishment of the eras of the First Olympiad [776 BCE] and the building of Rome [753 BCE].”

Only in the middle of the twentieth century did we start finding accurate ways of dating events that happened before there were written records. In the 1950s, the American chemist Willard Libby showed how you could use the breakdown of radioactive materials such as carbon 14 to date objects such as bones or food remains that contained carbon. Libby’s work was the beginning of a “chronometric” revolution, as a whole series of new techniques emerged for dating events in the distant past, eventually right back to the Big Bang. Those dates have made it possible for us to write and teach Big History.

Have we gotten better at studying the past?Today we have access to better records and more types of evidence about the past than ever before. It is astonishing to think that we can actually say something serious about the origins of the Earth or of the Universe, and we have so much evidence about recent


centuries that historians will never be able to use it all. So in some sense it seems that we must be doing history better than our ancestors did.

But have there been losses as well as gains in the history of history? Haven’t we lost the vivid, personal sense of engagement with the past that existed in oral cultures where history was always told as a story? Almost 2,500 years ago, in the Phaedrus, Plato described this sense of loss. In this dialogue, Socrates tells how the Egyptian god Thoth, who claimed to have invented writing, bragged that his invention would improve people’s memories. King Thamus (also an Egyptian god) replied that this was nonsense:

For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are not part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant…since they are not wise, but only appear wise.

(Plato in Twelve Volumes, sections 275a–275b)

Can it be that both arguments have merit? That speech and memory have distinct, perhaps irreplaceable, advantages over writing, but that writing has both broadened and sharpened our collective memory?


Although many species note the passing of time, only our own species, Homo sapiens, is capable of sharing accounts, or memories, of past events and turning these into stories or “histories.”




How do animals and plants “do” history?All living things carry “memories” of the past. Animals need to be able to keep track of the seasons so they know when to hibernate, when to hunt, and when to have children. Many rodents and birds store nuts and other food in special hiding places, and they need to remember where they stashed them so they can find them months later. Wolves leave their


marks on the perimeters of their turf, creating a sort of record that says to other wolf packs: “This is owned by the BHP pack. Keep out!”

Even plants seem to record the passing of time. If you slice through a tree, you’ll see “growth rings.” Every year a new layer grows just under the bark. There is often a light part formed early in the year and a darker part that forms later. Each ring represents one year of growth.

Rings become particularly noticeable in a region with lots of seasonal changes. Wet seasons typically produce thicker rings than dry seasons, so dendrochronologists — the scientists who study growth rings — can frequently figure out the exact year in which each layer was formed. They can also see evidence of climatic events such as droughts or forest fires.

But “tracking the past” isn’t the same as having a “memory” of the past. A tree ring might record the date of a major fire. But the tree wouldn’t respond if I asked, “Do you remember the great fire of 1730?” Only humans can share their knowledge of the past because only humans have a communication system powerful enough to share what they know and learn.

The first historiesWe don’t really know when humans first began to share their knowledge of the past. But our understanding of collective learning suggests that they probably did so early on. Throughout this course, we have assumed that even the earliest members of our species were capable of collective learning. If this is true, then we must assume that they could share ideas not just about where water holes or lions are, but also about last year’s bush fire. Maybe they discussed that fight that took place with the people who live beyond the river, or even earlier geologic events. All modern foraging societies tell stories about the past. Many focused on ancestors, but also on the creation of what’s around us. Indeed, most humans tell “origin stories,” and origin stories count as history because they share ideas about the world.


This is the beginning of an Australian Aboriginal origin story from recent times. We don’t know if the people who told this story believed it was literally true. We do know it provided a way of thinking about how things came to be as they are. Here is the same origin story recounting the creation of humans:


At ancient sites like Blombos Cave in South Africa, humans lived and worked and made different colored paints more than 70,000 years ago. It’s very tempting to believe that they were also telling stories about the past, passing them on from generation to generation and tribe to tribe. Perhaps they also illustrated and recorded them in some way.

History based on memory


But if there were historians in Blombos Cave, they relied mainly on their memory for the stories of the past. No written records were found there. We know from studies of modern foraging societies that people who cannot write down information rely on such “oral tradition.” To remember the oral histories, storytellers developed powerful ways of remembering.

Ancient storytellers could keep telling stories for days. Poets had many techniques to help them recall long epic poems so they could recite them at will. For example, it seems likely that the Greek poet Homer used similar phrases over and over again, such as “the wine-dark sea,” as well as rhymes and regular rhythms, mainly to help him remember his epics.

In ancient Greece, Mnemosyne, or the goddess of memory, was regarded as the mother of all nine muses — the various goddesses of literature, art, and science. The modern word mnemonic, which means “a technique for remembering things,” comes from her name. And even in societies with writing, memory remained an admired skill. The Roman philosopher Augustine of Hippo had a friend who could recite backward the works of the poet Virgil. In the Muslim world it was common to memorize the entire Qur'an. As history progressed, people continued to develop ways of memorizing.

History based on written recordsToday, though, we don't expect proper history writing to be based on the memory of the historian. Rather, we expect it to rely on evidence, and mostly on written evidence. I think you’d worry if a history teacher said, “Well, I think World War I began in about 1914 because that’s what my grandmother’s dad told her.”

History based on written records appears quite late in human history. The first written records date back a little more than 5,000 years in Egypt and ancient Sumer. The earliest Sumerian records were made using reeds. They were cut at an angle to make wedge-shaped (cuneiform) marks on clay, which was then baked hard. Many of these clay tablets survive today, and scholars can still read them. The earliest records look like accounts: lists of property, cattle, sheep, and wheat. But even that is history of a sort, and it’s pretty important because it provides details of who owned what.

Within a few centuries, we begin to find elaborate written chronicles, such as the great Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk. We also find stories of floods, of gods, and of the creation of the world, some of which made their way into the Jewish Scriptures, the Christian Bible, and the Qua'an. Wherever writing appeared it was used to write accounts of the past. At the time most people were not able to read or write. Despite this, those accounts started to become the basis for further historical accounts. Written documents began to be seen as more authoritative than oral stories. Once something was written down it was much harder to keep changing the story.

The importance of evidenceAs societies became more interconnected and people began to compare different accounts of the past, they became more concerned with a crucial question: Which version is truest? Let’s look at a modern portrayal of human origins: “Our hominine ancestors evolved over


several million years. But during the last million years, species appeared with very large brains, and our own species, Homo sapiens, probably appeared about 200,000 years ago. We know this because we have fossil remains of individuals that seem identical to modern humans, and we begin to find evidence of technological innovation and symbolic activity.” I wrote that, but it is typical of today’s history writing because it is so concerned with evidence. Where there are competing versions of the past, you have to give evidence for yours if you want to be taken seriously.

We can already see this growing concern with evidence 2,000 years ago in the writings of some of the greatest historians of the classical era, such as Herodotus of Greece and China’s Sima Qian. Both lived in worlds where different peoples made different claims about the past. As a result, both understood the need to base their accounts of the past on evidence wherever possible.

Herodotus (c. 484–425 BCE) traveled widely in the eastern Mediterranean. He went as well to Olbia, on the northern shores of the Black Sea, where he met some of the Scythian pastoral nomads about whom he wrote so vividly. Modern archaeologists have shown that his somewhat gruesome accounts of Scythian royal burials were very accurate. He also described some Scythian origin stories, and he did so with all the skepticism of a modern anthropologist.

About three centuries later, the Chinese historian Sima Qian (c. 145–86 BCE) provided lengthy descriptions of the nomadic Xiongnu, who lived north of China, in Mongolia. For example, he wrote that “they move about in search of water and pasture and have no walled cities or fixed dwellings, nor do they engage in any kind of agriculture.” His account was not made up; it was based on the writings and memories of many Chinese travelers who had visited Mongolia. One traveler, Silk Road adventurer Zhang Qian, who was captured by the Xiongnu in 139 BCE, and lived among them for 10 years.

But it was really from the Enlightenment era, in the eighteenth century, that the notion of evidence-based history as the most important form of history writing became more prominent. Today, all professional historians understand that their first task is to get the history right. That means checking all the details against hard evidence, and preferably against written documents. The great nineteenth-century German historian Leopold von Ranke pioneered the modern art of writing history on the basis of detailed archival records. And these days, history based on written documents remains the primary form of historical scholarship.

But document-based history has some serious limitations. First of all, history based on written documents often only tells us about the lives of the rich and powerful. That’s because until a century or two ago most other people could not read or write, so they weren’t very well represented in the documents of earlier times. Sometimes, archaeology and anthropology can step in by helping us use material objects — houses, clothes, bits of pottery, or skeletons — left behind by ordinary people. Or they may use studies of modern societies to give us some hints about how ordinary people lived in the past.

Written records have another serious limitation. They only reach back a few thousand years. When H.G. Wells, just after World War I, tried to write a history of the entire Universe, he


complained that “chronology only begins to be precise enough to specify the exact year of any event after the establishment of the eras of the First Olympiad [776 BCE] and the building of Rome [753 BCE].”

Only in the middle of the twentieth century did we start finding accurate ways of dating events that happened before there were written records. In the 1950s, the American chemist Willard Libby showed how you could use the breakdown of radioactive materials such as carbon 14 to date objects such as bones or food remains that contained carbon. Libby’s work was the beginning of a “chronometric” revolution. A whole series of new techniques then emerged for dating events in the distant past, eventually right back to the Big Bang. Those dates have made it possible for us to write and teach Big History.

Have we gotten better at studying the past?Today we have access to better records and more types of evidence about the past than ever before. It is astonishing to think that we can actually say something serious about the origins of the Earth or of the Universe. We now have so much evidence about recent centuries that historians will never be able to use it all. So in some sense it seems that we must be doing history better than our ancestors did.

But have there been losses as well as gains in the history of history? Haven’t we lost the vivid, personal sense of engagement with the past that existed in oral cultures where history was always told as a story? Almost 2,500 years ago, in the Phaedrus, Plato described this sense of loss. In this dialogue, Socrates tells how the Egyptian god Thoth, who claimed to have invented writing, bragged that his invention would improve people’s memories. King Thamus (also an Egyptian god) replied that this was nonsense:

For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are not part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant…since they are not wise, but only appear wise.


Can it be that both arguments have merit? That speech and memory have distinct, perhaps irreplaceable, advantages over writing, but that writing has both broadened and sharpened our collective memory?


Many species mark the passing of time, but only our own species, Homo sapiens, can share memories of past events and turn them into stories or “histories.”





How do animals and plants “do” history?All living things carry “memories” of the past. Animals need to be able to keep track of the seasons so they know when to hibernate, when to hunt, and when to have children. Many rodents and birds store nuts and other food in special hiding places. They'll need to remember where they stashed them so they can find them months later. Wolves mark the perimeters of their turf, creating a sort of record that says to other wolf packs: “This is owned by the BHP pack. Keep out!”


Rings become particularly noticeable in a region with lots of seasonal changes. Wet seasons typically produce thicker rings than dry seasons. That enables dendrochronologists — the scientists who study growth rings — to often figure out the exact year in which each layer was formed. They can also see evidence of climatic events such as droughts or forest fires.

But “tracking the past” isn’t the same as having a “memory” of the past. A tree ring might show the date of a major fire. But the tree wouldn’t respond if I asked, “Do you remember the great fire of 1730?” Only humans can share their knowledge of the past.

The first historiesWe don’t really know when humans first began to share their knowledge of the past. But our understanding of collective learning suggests that they probably did so early on. Throughout this course, we have assumed that even the earliest members of our species were capable of collective learning. If this is true, then we must assume that they could share ideas. They'd be able to describe where water holes or lions are, sure. But they'd also be able to talk about last year’s bush fire. Maybe they discussed the fight that took place with the people who live beyond the river, or even earlier geologic events. All modern foraging societies tell stories about the past. Many focused on ancestors, but also on the creation of what’s around us. Indeed, most humans tell “origin stories,” and origin stories count as history because they share ideas about the world.

Here is the beginning of an Australian Aboriginal origin story from recent times:



We don’t know if the people who told this story believed it was literally true. We do know it provided a way of thinking about how things came to be as they are. Here is the same origin story recounting the creation of humans:


At ancient sites like Blombos Cave in South Africa, we have discovered human remains from more than 70,000 years ago. They lived and worked there and made different colored paints. It’s very tempting to believe that they were also telling stories about the past, passing them on from generation to generation and tribe to tribe. Perhaps they also illustrated and recorded them in some way.

History based on memoryBut if there were historians in Blombos Cave, they relied mainly on their memory for the stories of the past. No written records were found there. We know from studies of modern foraging societies that people who cannot write down information rely on such “oral tradition.” To remember oral histories, storytellers developed powerful ways of remembering.

Ancient storytellers could tell stories for days. Poets had many techniques to help them recall long epic poems so they could recite them at will. For example, it seems likely that the Greek poet Homer used similar phrases over and over again. The phrase “the wine-dark sea” appears frequently, for example. He also used rhymes and regular rhythms to help him remember his epics.

In ancient Greece, Mnemosyne was known as the goddess of memory. The word mnemonic, which means “a technique for remembering things,” comes from her name. And even in societies with writing, memory remained an admired skill. The Roman philosopher Augustine of Hippo had a friend who could recite backward the works of the poet Virgil. In the Muslim world it was common to memorize the entire Qur'an. As history progressed, people continued to develop ways of memorizing.

History based on written recordsToday, though, we don't expect proper history writing to be based on the memory of the historian. Rather, we expect it to rely on evidence, and mostly on written evidence. I think you’d worry if a history teacher said, “Well, I think World War I began in about 1914 because that’s what my grandmother’s dad told her.”

History based on written records appears quite late in human history. The first written records date back a little more than 5,000 years in Egypt and ancient Sumer. The earliest


Sumerian records were made using reeds. They were cut at an angle to make wedge-shaped (cuneiform) marks on clay. The clay tablets were then baked until hard. Many of these clay tablets survived. Scholars today can still read them. The earliest records look like accounts: lists of property, cattle, sheep, and wheat. But even that is history of a sort, and it’s pretty important because it provides details of who owned what.

Within a few centuries, we begin to find elaborate written chronicles, such as the great Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk. We also find stories of floods, of gods, and of the creation of the world. Some of these stories made their way into the Jewish Scriptures, the Christian Bible, and the Qur'an. Wherever writing appeared it was used to write accounts of the past. At the time most people were not able to read or write. Despite this, those accounts started to become the basis for further historical accounts. Written documents began to be seen as more authoritative than oral stories. Once something was written down it was much harder to keep changing the story.

The importance of evidenceAs societies advanced they became more interconnected. People began to compare different accounts of the past. In the process they became more concerned with a crucial question: Which version is truest? Let’s look at a modern portrayal of human origins: “Our hominine ancestors evolved over several million years. But during the last million years, species appeared with very large brains, and our own species, Homo sapiens, probably appeared about 200,000 years ago. We know this because we have fossil remains of individuals that seem identical to modern humans, and we begin to find evidence of technological innovation and symbolic activity.” I wrote that, but it is typical of today’s history writing because it is so concerned with evidence. There are often competing versions of the past. If you want to be taken seriously, you have to give evidence for yours.

We can already see this growing concern with evidence 2,000 years ago. In that period, the "classical era," evidence appears in the writings of the great historians Herodotus of Greece and China’s Sima Qian. Both lived in worlds where different peoples made different claims about the past. As a result, both understood the need to base their accounts of the past on evidence wherever possible.

Herodotus (c. 484–425 BCE) traveled widely in the eastern Mediterranean. He went as well to Olbia, on the northern shores of the Black Sea, where he met some of the Scythian pastoral nomads about whom he wrote so vividly. Modern archaeologists have shown that his somewhat gruesome accounts of Scythian royal burials were very accurate. He also described some Scythian origin stories. And he did so with all the skepticism of a modern anthropologist.

About three centuries later, the Chinese historian Sima Qian (c. 145–86 BCE) provided lengthy descriptions of the Xiongnu. These nomads lived north of China, in Mongolia. For example, he wrote that “they move about in search of water and pasture and have no walled cities or fixed dwellings, nor do they engage in any kind of agriculture.” His account was not made up; it was based on the writings and memories of many Chinese travelers who had


visited Mongolia. One traveler, Silk Road adventurer Zhang Qian was captured by the Xiongnu in 139 BCE. He spent 10 years living among them.

But it was really with the start of the Enlightenment era, in the eighteenth century, that the writing of history progressed. It was then that the writing of history based on evidence became truly important. Today, all professional historians know that their first task is to get the history right. That means checking all the details against hard evidence. Written documents are the preferable form of evidence.

But document-based history has some serious limitations. First of all, history based on written documents often only tells us about the lives of the rich and powerful. That’s because until a century or two ago most other people could not read or write. Ordinary people weren’t well represented in the documents of earlier times.

Sometimes, archaeology and anthropology can step in and help us understand earlier times, without the help of documents. Ordinary people may not have left written records. But they left behind houses, clothes, bits of pottery, or skeletons. Archaeologists and anthropologists can study these objects. Or they may use studies of similar modern societies to give us some hints about how ordinary people lived in the past.

Written records have another serious limitation. They only reach back a few thousand years. Only in the middle of the twentieth century did we start finding accurate ways of dating events that happened before there were written records. In the 1950s, the American chemist Willard Libby found a way to date events using science. He showed how you could use the breakdown of radioactive materials such as carbon 14 to date objects such as bones or food remains that contained carbon. Libby’s work was the beginning of a “chronometric” revolution. A whole series of new techniques soon emerged for dating events in the distant past. Dating techniques can now take us right back to the Big Bang. Those dates have made it possible for us to write and teach Big History.

Have we gotten better at studying the past?Today we have access to better records and more types of evidence about the past than ever before. It is astonishing to think that we can actually say something serious about the origins of the Earth or of the Universe. We now have so much evidence about recent centuries that historians will never be able to use it all. So in some sense it seems that we must be doing history better than our ancestors did.

But have there been losses as well as gains in the history of history? Haven’t we lost the vivid, personal sense of engagement with the past that existed in oral cultures? It must have been more exciting when history was always told as a story. Almost 2,500 years ago, in the Phaedrus, Plato described this sense of loss. In this dialogue, Socrates tells how the Egyptian god Thoth, who claimed to have invented writing, bragged that his invention would improve people’s memories. King Thamus (also an Egyptian god) replied that this was nonsense:

For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are not part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory


within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant…since they are not wise, but only appear wise.


Can it be that both arguments have merit? Maybe speech and memory have distinct, perhaps irreplaceable, advantages over writing. Perhaps, though, writing has both broadened and sharpened our collective memory.


Many species note the passing of time, but only humans can share memories of past events and turn them into stories or “histories.”

What is history anyway?As humans have progressed, we have discovered more precise ways of keeping track of time. We have also developed more accurate ways of keeping records and recording history.

What exactly is history? Let’s agree that it means “a shared knowledge of the past.”

Why is it important to know about the past? How does that help us? Do animals need history? Did our ancestors have a sense of history in the Paleolithic era? How has that sense changed over time?

How do animals and plants “do” history?All living things carry “memories” of the past. Animals need to be able to keep track of the seasons so they know when to hibernate, when to hunt, and when to have children. Many rodents and birds store nuts and other food in special hiding places. They need to remember where they stashed them so they can find them months later. Wolves mark the perimeters of their turf. It creates a sort of record that says to other wolf packs: “This is owned by the BHP pack. Keep out!”


Rings are more noticeable in a region with lots of seasonal changes. Wet seasons typically produce thicker rings than dry seasons. That enables us to often figure out the exact year in which each layer was formed. Dendrochronologists — the scientists who study growth rings — cut trees open. They can date trees by counting the rings. They can also see evidence of climatic events. Droughts or forest fires will also show up in the rings.


But “tracking the past” isn’t the same as having a “memory” of the past. A tree ring might show the date of a major fire. But the tree wouldn’t respond if I asked, “Do you remember the great fire of 1730?” Only humans can share their knowledge of the past.

The first historiesWe don’t really know when humans first began to share their knowledge of the past. But our understanding of collective learning suggests that they probably did so early on. We have assumed that even early humans were capable of collective learning. If this is true, then we must assume that they could share ideas. Sure, they could describe where water holes or lions are. But they'd also be able to talk about last year’s bush fire. Maybe they discussed the fight that took place with the people who live beyond the river. They might even talk of earlier geologic events.

All modern foraging societies tell stories about the past. Many stories focused on ancestors. Others explained the creation of what’s around us. Indeed, most humans tell “origin stories.” And origin stories are history because they share ideas about the world.

Here is the beginning of an Australian Aboriginal origin story:

In the beginning the Earth was a bare plain. All was dark. There was no life, no death. The Sun, the Moon, and the stars slept beneath the Earth. All the eternal ancestors slept there, too. At last they woke themselves out of their own eternity and broke through to the surface.

We don’t know if the people who told this story believed it was literally true. We do know it provided a way of thinking about how things came to be as they are. Here is the same origin story recounting the creation of humans:


History based on memoryAt ancient sites like Blombos Cave in South Africa, we have discovered human remains from more than 70,000 years ago. They lived and worked there and made different colored paints.

But if there were historians in Blombos Cave, they didn't write anything down. No written records were found. We know from studying hunter-gatherers today that people who cannot write down information rely on “oral tradition.” To remember oral histories, storytellers developed powerful ways of remembering.

Ancient storytellers could tell stories for days. Poets had many techniques to help them recall long epic poems. Then they could recite them at will. The Greek poet Homer used rhymes and regular rhythms to help him remember his epics.

In ancient Greece, Mnemosyne was known as the goddess of memory. The word mnemonic, which means “a technique for remembering things,” comes from her name. And even in societies with writing, memory remained an admired skill. The Roman philosopher


Augustine of Hippo had a friend who could recite backward the works of the poet Virgil. In the Muslim world it was common to memorize the entire Qur'an. As history progressed, people continued to develop ways of memorizing.

History based on written recordsToday, we don't expect history writing to be based on the memory of the historian. We expect it to rely on evidence. And written evidence is most important. I think you’d worry if a history teacher said, “Well, I think World War I began in about 1914 because that’s what my grandmother’s dad told her.”

History based on written records appears quite late in human history. The first written records date back a little more than 5,000 years in Egypt and ancient Sumer. The earliest Sumerian records were made using reeds. They were cut at an angle to make triangle-shaped (cuneiform) marks on clay. The clay tablets were then baked until hard. Many of these clay tablets survived. Scholars today can still read them. The earliest records were lists of property, cattle, sheep, and wheat. But even that is history of a sort.

Within a few centuries, we begin to find elaborate written chronicles. The great Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk, was one of the first. We also find stories of floods, of gods, and of the creation of the world. Some of these stories made their way into the Jewish Scriptures, the Christian Bible, and the Muslim Qur'an.

Wherever writing appeared it was used to write accounts of the past. At the time most people were not able to read or write. Despite this, those accounts started to become the basis for further historical accounts. Written documents were seen as more trustworthy than oral stories. Once something was written down it was much harder to keep changing the story.

The importance of evidenceAs societies advanced they became more interconnected. People began to compare different accounts of the past. They became more concerned with a crucial question: Which version is truest?

Let’s look at a modern portrayal of human origins: “Our hominine ancestors evolved over several million years. During the last million years, species appeared with very large brains. Our own species, Homo sapiens, probably appeared about 200,000 years ago. We know this because we have fossil remains of individuals that seem identical to modern humans, and we begin to find evidence of technological innovation and symbolic activity.” I wrote that. But it is typical of today’s history writing. You can tell because it is so concerned with evidence. There are often competing versions of the past. If you want to be taken seriously, you have to give evidence for yours.

We can already see this growing concern with evidence 2,000 years ago. This period was the "classical era.” Evidence appears in the writings of the great historians Herodotus of Greece and China’s Sima Qian. Both lived in worlds where different peoples made different claims about the past. As a result, both understood the need to base their accounts of the past on evidence wherever possible.


Herodotus (c. 484–425 BCE) traveled widely in the eastern Mediterranean. He also went to Olbia, on the northern shores of the Black Sea. There he met Scythian nomads. Modern archaeologists have shown that his gruesome accounts of Scythian royal burials were very accurate. He also described some Scythian origin stories. And he did so with all the skepticism of a modern anthropologist.

About three centuries later, the Chinese historian Sima Qian (c. 145–86 BCE) described the Xiongnu people. These nomads lived north of China, in Mongolia. He wrote that “they move about in search of water and pasture and have no walled cities or fixed dwellings, nor do they engage in any kind of agriculture.” His account was not made up. It was based on the writings and memories of many Chinese travelers who had visited Mongolia.

Written history really progressed during the Enlightenment. In the eighteenth century, history based on evidence became truly important. All professional historians today know they must get the history right. That means checking all the details against hard evidence. Written documents are often a very good form of evidence.

But documents have some serious limitations. Documents often only tell us about the lives of the rich and powerful. That’s because until a century or two ago most other people could not read or write. So, ordinary people weren’t well recorded in early documents.

Sometimes, archaeology and anthropology can help us. It's possible to understand something about earlier times without the help of documents. Ordinary people may not have left written records. But they left behind houses, clothes, bits of pottery, or skeletons. Archaeologists and anthropologists can study these objects. Or they may use studies of similar modern societies for hints about how ordinary people lived in the past.

Written records have another serious limitation. They only reach back a few thousand years. It wasn't until the 1950s that we learned to date events that happened before written records. In the 1950s, the American chemist Willard Libby found a way to date events using science. He discovered that the breakdown of radioactive materials could date objects. If materials contain carbon they can be dated. Luckily carbon is in nearly every living thing. This includes bones and food remains. Other methods soon emerged for dating events in the distant past. Dating techniques can now take us right back to the Big Bang. Those dates make it possible for us to write Big History.

Have we gotten better at studying the past?Today we have access to better records. We have more types of evidence about the past than ever before. We now have so much evidence about recent centuries that historians will never be able to use it all. So in some sense it seems that we must be doing history better than our ancestors did.

But maybe we lost something when we began writing down history? Haven’t we lost a sense of engagement with the past that existed in oral cultures? It must have been more exciting when history was always told as a story. Almost 2,500 years ago, Plato described this sense of loss in his book the Phaedrus. In this dialogue, Socrates tells of Thoth, an Egyptian god. Thoth claimed to have invented writing. Socrates says Thoth bragged that his invention


would improve people’s memories. Another Egyptian god, King Thamus, called this nonsense:

This invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it. They will no longer practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are not part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory but of reminding. You offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom. They will read many things without instruction. And they will therefore seem to know many things. In fact, they will be for the most part ignorant…since they are not wise, but only appear wise.


Maybe both arguments have a point? Maybe speech and memory have distinct, perhaps irreplaceable, advantages over writing. Perhaps, though, writing has both broadened and sharpened our collective memory.


TimekeepingAll life forms have some innate method for keeping track of time, but humans keep time with greater precision and in more diverse ways than any other species.

Timekeeping: Why We Need Clocks and Calendars (1320L) By David Christian, adapted by Newsela

All life forms have some innate method for keeping track of time, but humans do it with greater precision and in more diverse ways than any other species.

Why bother to keep time?Why do we need clocks and calendars? Looking at our lives today, some of the answers may seem obvious. To survive in this complex society, you need to track what others are doing and when they’re doing it. You also need to know what’s happening in the natural world (what season it is, for example). If you didn’t know the time or date, you’d be seriously out of sync with your world. You’d miss a train or walk in late to your Big History class.

But it’s not just modern humans who need to keep track of time. All living things have ways of tracking time so they can keep adjusting to their environment as it changes. Bears know when to hibernate, and when to wake up. Plants know when to blossom and fruit, making seeds for the next generation. Many birds know when it’s time to head south for the winter.

In fact, keeping track of time is so important that evolution has built body clocks — some of them especially attuned to the differences in daylight hours that the changing seasons can bring — into all living organisms. These “circadian rhythms,” though not perfectly aligned with our man-made clocks and calendars, work well in nature. Your body clock will tell you that it’s not a good idea to get up at 2 a.m., when it’s pitch dark, unless you have to.

What’s different about human time?

As with many other things, we humans track time differently than other creatures. We’ve developed many intricate ways to measure time, often with incredible precision. And as human societies have become larger and more complex, we have gotten better and more precise about marking the time at varying scales, from the stopwatch precision of the Olympic games to our daily schedules of work or travel to the dates of historical events, and even those of geological events that may have happened millions or billions of years ago. To do this, modern humans have had to devise increasingly sophisticated clocks, calendars, and timetables. It wasn’t always this way.


Keeping time in the Paleolithic eraIf you were a Paleolithic forager living 100,000 years ago, how would you have kept track of time? We have little direct evidence about Paleolithic time-tracking, but we do have some indirect evidence based mainly on studies of modern foraging societies.

In a foraging society, the rhythms of the natural world are critical. You need a pretty good sense of the changing seasons and of the schedules that other species keep so that you can decide when to move to a new campground, what plants to collect, and what animals to hunt. Modern foragers sense such changes with a precision and subtlety no contemporary urban dweller can match.

Keeping track of the time of day and the time of year was not difficult in societies whose members spent most of their time outdoors, as the positions of the Sun and the stars told you all you needed to know. And aligning your activities with those of your family and friends was much less complicated than it is today because people lived in small groups and met face to face.

Meetings with other communities were often seasonal and didn’t require great scheduling precision. If a group normally met with a neighboring tribe “when the reindeer returned” or “after the burdock went to seed,” it didn’t really matter if their schedules were a few days off. Foraging societies were much more forgiving about appointments than most modern city dwellers.

So no special instruments were required for timekeeping. But there are clues that even Paleolithic foragers didn’t rely entirely on their memories and their senses to keep track of time. In South Africa’s Blombos Cave, which was occupied perhaps as early as 100,000 years ago, archaeologists have found chunks of ochre with strange marks on them dating to about 70,000 years ago. These are the oldest known “artworks,” and, though most archaeologists are cautious about interpreting them, it’s tempting to think that the engravings were used to mark the passing of time. Perhaps they were lists of lunar cycles or dates of important rituals. More serious — if not universally accepted — evidence of calendars of some kind comes from about 40,000 years later. The American archaeologist Alexander Marshack (1918–2004) became fascinated by marks on Paleolithic objects, and argued that some of them should be regarded as calendars because they seem to have been tracking the movements of the Moon. In a 1984 lecture at New York’s Museum of Natural History, Marshack talked of his first visit (c. July 1964) to Les Eyzies, a prehistoric site in southwest France:

Professor Movius and I stood on the shelf looking across the valley as the Sun went slowly down behind the hills far to the right, sinking as a great red disc. As it was going down, the first crescent of the new Moon appeared in the sky as a thin silver arc, facing the sinking Sun. It was instantly apparent that the Les Eyzies horizon formed a perfect natural “calendar” and that the first crescent would appear over those hills at sunset every 29 or 30 days...that the Sun was sinking at its farthest point north on that horizon, its position at summer solstice, and that it would now begin to move south.... The visual effect of the silver first crescent, aiming its arc at the setting Sun and following the summer Sun down, was stark and dramatic. There was no way that generations of hunters living on that shelf over a


period of 18,000 years or more could fail to notice these periodic changes and movements of the Sun and Moon.... It took the next 18 years, however, before I could properly put together the seasonal and ecological dynamics of that valley and work out its relations to the art, images, and paintings in the caves.

(“Hierarchical Evolution of the Human Capacity,” pp. 14-16)

Keeping time in agrarian societiesAgricultural societies began to appear from about 11,000 years ago. As they expanded and linked up with their neighbors, they needed new and more reliable methods of keeping time. If you wanted to sell some produce in a nearby town or worship at a nearby temple you had to know exactly when the markets and religious rituals were held — and you needed to know in advance. Drifting in a week or two later no longer cut it, so you needed calendars that everyone agreed on and shared. If your village depended on irrigation, everyone needed to know exactly when the irrigation gates would be opened. Similarly, seeds were sown at particular times, and the harvest collected according to seasonal calendars based on Earth’s orbit around the Sun and associated climate patterns. And if you were sowing or harvesting alongside your neighbors, you all needed to agree exactly when to start.

This is why new devices began to appear that could track time more precisely. One method of timekeeping was to watch the Sun’s shadow using sundials. A stick in the ground would often do the job (as long as the Sun was shining), but some sundials were extremely precise. Time was also measured by how long it took sand to move through a narrow hole in a glass container or by the rate at which water dripped from an urn.

More elaborate instruments were used to track the movements of the stars and planets. It is possible that Stonehenge in England, which was constructed between 4,000 and 5,000 years ago, was designed partly to determine the exact dates of the summer and winter solstices (the days when the Sun reached its highest and lowest points in the sky). The most elaborate and precise of all agrarian-era calendars were probably those of Mesoamerica, which appeared in the first millennium BCE. The Mayan calendars, for example, included a 260-day cycle based on biweekly rituals and a 365-day version organized around the agricultural and solar phases. The Maya also had a “long-count” calendar measuring time from the beginning of their civilization. Meanwhile, the Romans developed a calendar with 10 months, and the names they used are mostly familiar (for example, Martius is our March). Eventually, they refined their calendar, adding two more months and even including the concept of a leap day.

Toward the modern eraIn his book Time: An Essay, the German scholar Norbert Elias argued that, as societies became larger and more complex, people began to require more and more precise clocks and better and more accurate records. This was because more and more individual schedules were getting linked together in networks of increasing complexity. As schedules began to interlace, people had to start thinking about time more precisely and more carefully:


Just as the chains of interdependency in the case of pre-state societies are comparatively short, so their members’ experience of past and future as distinct from the present is less developed. In people’s experience, the immediate present — that which is here and now — stands out more sharply than either past or future. Human actions, too, tend to be more highly centered on present needs and impulses. In later societies, on the other hand, past, present and future are more sharply distinguished. The need and the capacity to foresee, and thus considerations of a relatively distant future, gain stronger and stronger influence on all activities to be undertaken here and now.

(Time: An Essay, p. 144)

Improved methods of keeping time evolved in many different contexts. Monks needed to know when to pray, so they developed various methods, including the ringing of bells. Travelers needed to schedule their departures and arrivals more carefully, and increasingly elaborate clocks were built, some using carefully controlled drips of water, while others used falling weights.

Precise clocks were particularly important for navigators, who needed them to calculate their longitude, or how far west or east they had traveled. Once ships began to travel around the globe, from the late fifteenth century, the need for accurate timekeeping was well-recognized. Indeed, the British Royal Observatory at Greenwich was commissioned in 1675 to help solve this problem. In 1714, the British government offered a prize of £20,000 (nearly $5 million in today’s equivalent) for the first person to build a clock that could stay accurate to within two minutes during long ocean voyages. Yorkshire-born carpenter and clockmaker John Harrison spent most of his life on the task and was finally awarded the prize in 1773, three years before he died.

In the nineteenth century, the invention of railways and steamships — and their widespread use — required entirely new levels of precision. With so many passengers and important cargo relying on transportation lines, on-time departures, connections, and arrivals were critical to the whole network. The first English train timetable was published in 1839 and, for the first time, different British cities needed to coordinate their clocks to the same national clock, that of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), the time at the Royal Observatory. But not until 1880 was Greenwich Mean Time adopted officially throughout Britain. In the United States, regional time zones were not systematized until 1918. At about the same time, the idea of daylight saving was introduced in numerous countries around the world.

International steamships required equally precise coordination across the entire globe. Not until 1929 did most countries begin to link their local time to Greenwich Mean Time — and the Himalayan mountain nation of Nepal waited until the 1980s.

In today’s world of international plane schedules and electronic bank transfers, we need even greater precision, levels so high they can be thrown off by tiny alterations in the rotation or orbit of our Earth. So now, timekeeping depends less on measurements of astronomical phenomena and more on complex devices such as atomic clocks, which measure time using signals emitted by electrons as they change energy levels.


One final breakthrough in timekeeping was particularly important for Big History. That was the invention of “radiometric” dating, a suite of techniques for dating past events by measuring the breakdown of radioactive materials.

Before about 1950, the only way to assign an absolute date to a past event was to use written records, and of course these could not be used for any date more than a few thousand years ago. The first workable method of radiometric dating, devised by American chemist Willard Libby in the early 1950s, used the breakdown of an isotope of carbon, C14, to date materials containing carbon. Since then, a whole range of new dating techniques have been developed, and they can now give us reasonably accurate dates for events reaching back to the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago.

Accurate timekeeping and recordkeeping are the foundation for histories of all kinds, including Big History. Next time you fly or take a bus, be grateful that your pilot or driver is not planning to arrive at your destination any old time in the next week or two!


All life forms are born with some method for keeping track of time, but humans do it with greater precision and in more diverse ways than any other species.


But it’s not just modern humans who need to keep track of time. All living things have ways of tracking time. Animals must adjust to their environment as it changes. Bears know when to hibernate, and when to wake up. Plants know when to blossom and grow fruit, making seeds for the next generation. Many birds know when it’s time to head south for the winter.

In fact, keeping track of time is so important that evolution has built body clocks into all living organisms. Some of them are especially in tune with the differences in daylight hours caused by the change in seasons. These “circadian rhythms” are not perfectly aligned with our man-made clocks and calendars, but work well in nature. Your body clock will tell you that it’s not a good idea to get up at 2 a.m., when it’s pitch dark, unless you have to.

What’s different about human time?

As with many other things, we humans track time differently than other creatures. We’ve developed many intricate ways to measure time, often with incredible precision. And as human societies have become larger and more complex, we have gotten better and more precise about marking the time. We can mark time from the stopwatch precision of the Olympic games to our daily schedules of work. We can even date geological events that


may have happened millions or billions of years ago. To do this, modern humans have had to devise increasingly sophisticated clocks, calendars, and timetables. It wasn’t always this way.

Keeping time in the Paleolithic eraIf you were a Paleolithic forager living 100,000 years ago, how would you have kept track of time? We have little direct evidence about Paleolithic time-tracking. But we do have some indirect evidence based mainly on studies of modern foraging societies.

In a foraging society, the rhythms of the natural world are critical. You need a pretty good sense of the changing seasons and of the schedules that other species keep so that you can decide when to move to a new campground, what plants to collect, and what animals to hunt. Modern foragers sense such changes with a precision no modern city dweller can match.

Keeping track of the time of day and the time of year was not difficult in societies whose members spent most of their time outdoors. You could find out all you needed to know by the positions of the Sun and the stars. And aligning your activities with those of your family and friends was much less complicated than it is today. Back then people lived in small groups and met face to face.

Meetings with other communities often happened based on the season and didn’t require great precise scheduling. If a group normally met with a neighboring tribe “when the reindeer returned” it didn’t really matter if their schedules were a few days off. Foraging societies were much more forgiving about appointments than most modern city dwellers.

So no special instruments were required for timekeeping. But there are clues that even Paleolithic foragers didn’t rely entirely on their memories and their senses to keep track of time. In South Africa’s Blombos Cave, which was occupied perhaps as early as 100,000 years ago, archaeologists have found chunks of ochre with strange marks on them dating to about 70,000 years ago. These are the oldest known “artworks.” Though most archaeologists are cautious about interpreting them, it’s tempting to think that the engravings were used to mark the passing of time. Perhaps they were lists of the cycles of the Moon or dates of important rituals.

More serious evidence of calendars of some kind comes from about 40,000 years later. The American archaeologist Alexander Marshack (1918–2004) became fascinated by marks on Paleolithic objects. He was sure that some of them should be regarded as calendars because they seem to have been tracking the movements of the Moon. In a 1984 lecture, Marshack talked of his 1964 visit to Les Eyzies, a prehistoric site in France:

Professor Movius and I stood on the shelf looking across the valley as the Sun went slowly down behind the hills far to the right, sinking as a great red disc. As it was going down, the first crescent of the new Moon appeared in the sky as a thin silver arc, facing the sinking Sun. It was instantly apparent that the Les Eyzies horizon formed a perfect natural “calendar” and that the first crescent would appear over those hills at sunset every 29 or 30 days...that the Sun was sinking at its farthest point north on that horizon, its position at summer solstice, and that it would now begin to move south.... The visual effect of the silver


first crescent, aiming its arc at the setting Sun and following the summer Sun down, was stark and dramatic. There was no way that generations of hunters living on that shelf over a period of 18,000 years or more could fail to notice these periodic changes and movements of the Sun and Moon....


Keeping time in agrarian societiesAgricultural societies began to appear about 11,000 years ago. As they expanded they linked up with their neighbors. Now they needed new and more reliable methods of keeping time. If you wanted to sell some produce in a nearby town or worship at a nearby temple you had to know exactly when the markets and religious rituals were held — and you needed to know in advance. Drifting in a week or two later no longer cut it, so you needed calendars that everyone agreed on and shared. If your village depended on irrigation, everyone needed to know exactly when the irrigation gates would be opened.

Similarly, seeds were sown at particular times, and the harvest collected according to seasonal calendars based on Earth’s orbit around the Sun and associated climate patterns. And if you were sowing or harvesting alongside your neighbors, you all needed to agree exactly when to start.

This is why new devices began to appear that could track time more precisely. One method of timekeeping was to watch the Sun’s shadow using sundials. A stick in the ground would often do the job (as long as the Sun was shining), but some sundials were extremely precise. Time was also measured by how long it took sand to move through a narrow hole in a glass container or by the rate at which water dripped from an urn.

More elaborate instruments were used to track the movements of the stars and planets. It is possible that Stonehenge in England, which was constructed between 4,000 and 5,000 years ago, was designed partly to determine the exact dates of the summer and winter solstices (the days when the Sun reached its highest and lowest points in the sky).

The most elaborate and precise of all agrarian-era calendars were probably those of Mesoamerica, which appeared in the first millennium BCE. The Mayan calendars, for example, included a 260-day cycle based on biweekly rituals and a 365-day version organized around the agricultural and solar phases. The Maya also had a “long-count” calendar measuring time from the beginning of their civilization. Meanwhile, the Romans developed a calendar with 10 months, and the names they used are mostly familiar (for example, Martius is our March). Eventually, they refined their calendar, adding two more months and even including the concept of a leap day.

Toward the modern eraIn his book Time: An Essay, the German scholar Norbert Elias argued that, as societies became larger and more complex, people began to require more and more precise clocks and better and more accurate records. This was because more and more individual schedules were getting linked together in networks of increasing complexity. As schedules


began to interlace, people had to start thinking about time more precisely and more carefully:



Improved methods of keeping time evolved in many different contexts. Monks needed to know when to pray, so they developed various methods, including the ringing of bells. Travelers needed to schedule their departures and arrivals more carefully. Increasingly, elaborate clocks were built. Some used carefully controlled drips of water, while others used falling weights.

Precise clocks were particularly important for navigators. They needed them to calculate their longitude, or how far west or east they had traveled. Once ships began to travel around the globe, from the late fifteenth century, the need for accurate timekeeping was well-recognized. Indeed, the British Royal Observatory at Greenwich was commissioned in 1675 to help solve this problem. In 1714, the British government offered a prize of £20,000 (nearly $5 million in today’s money) for the first person to build a clock that could stay accurate to within two minutes during long ocean voyages. Clockmaker John Harrison spent most of his life on the task and was finally awarded the prize in 1773, three years before he died.

In the nineteenth century, the invention of railways and steamships — and their widespread use — required entirely new levels of precision. With so many passengers and important cargo relying on transportation lines, on-time departures, connections, and arrivals were critical to the whole network. The first English train timetable was published in 1839. For the first time, different British cities needed to coordinate their clocks to the same national clock, that of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), the time at the Royal Observatory. But not until 1880 was Greenwich Mean Time adopted officially throughout Britain. In the United States, regional time zones were not systematized until 1918. At about the same time, the idea of daylight saving was introduced in numerous countries around the world.

International steamships required equally precise coordination across the entire globe. Not until 1929 did most countries begin to link their local time to Greenwich Mean Time. The Himalayan mountain nation of Nepal waited until the 1980s to do so.

In today’s world of international plane schedules and electronic bank transfers, we need even greater precision. So, timekeeping today relies more on complex devices such as atomic clocks, which measure time using signals emitted by electrons as they change energy levels.


One final breakthrough in timekeeping was particularly important for Big History. That was the invention of “radiometric” dating. This technique can date past events by measuring the breakdown of radioactive materials.

Before about 1950, the only way to be sure of the date of a past event was to use written records. Of course these could not be used for any date more than a few thousand years ago. The first workable method of radiometric dating was devised by American chemist Willard Libby in the early 1950s. It used the breakdown of an isotope of carbon, C14, to date materials containing carbon. Since then, a whole range of new dating techniques have been developed. They can now give us reasonably accurate dates for events reaching back to the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago.




All life forms are born with some way of keeping track of time, but humans do it in more ways and with greater precision than any other species.


But it’s not just modern humans who need to keep track of time. All living things must know the time to adjust to their environment as it changes. Bears know when to hibernate. When winter is over, they know when to wake up. Plants know when to blossom. Many birds know when it’s time to head south for the winter.

In fact, keeping track of time is so important that evolution has given us internal clocks in our body. Some of them are especially in tune with the differences in daylight hours caused by the change in seasons. These are known as “circadian rhythms.” Your body clock will tell you that it’s not a good idea to get up at 2 a.m., when it’s pitch dark, unless you have to.

What’s different about human time?We humans track time differently than other creatures. And as human societies have become larger and more complex, we have gotten more precise at marking the time. We can mark time from the stopwatch precision of the Olympic games to our daily schedules of work. We can even date geological events that happened millions or billions of years ago. To do this, modern humans have had to devise increasingly sophisticated clocks, calendars, and timetables. It wasn’t always this way.

Keeping time in the Paleolithic eraIf you were a Paleolithic forager living 100,000 years ago, how would you have kept track of time? We have little direct evidence about Paleolithic time-tracking. However, we can study modern foraging societies for hints.

In a foraging society, the rhythms of the natural world are critical. You need a pretty good sense of the changing seasons and of the schedules that other species keep. Then you can decide when to move to a new campground, what plants to collect, and what animals to hunt. Modern foragers sense such changes with a precision no modern city dweller can match.

Keeping track of the time of day and the time of year was not difficult in early societies. Ancient people typically spent most of their time outdoors. They could find out all they


needed to know by the positions of the Sun and the stars. And aligning your activities with those of your family and friends was much less complicated than it is today. Back then, people lived in small groups and met face to face.

Meetings with other communities often happened based on the season. There was no need for precise scheduling. If a group normally met with a neighboring tribe “when the reindeer returned” it didn’t really matter if their schedules were a few days off. Foraging societies were much more forgiving about appointments than we are.

So no special instruments were required for timekeeping. But there are clues that even Paleolithic foragers didn’t rely entirely on their memories and their senses to keep track of time. South Africa’s Blombos Cave was lived in by humans perhaps as early as 100,000 years ago. Inside, archaeologists have found chunks of ochre with strange marks on them. Scientists date them to about 70,000 years ago. These are the oldest known “artworks.” It’s possible that the engravings were used to mark the passing of time. Perhaps they were lists of the cycles of the Moon or dates of important rituals.

More serious evidence of calendars of some kind comes from about 40,000 years later. The American archaeologist Alexander Marshack (1918–2004) became fascinated by marks on Paleolithic objects. He was sure that some of them were simple calendars. Paleolithic people seemed to have been tracking the movements of the Moon. In a 1984 lecture, Marshack talked of his 1964 visit to Les Eyzies, a prehistoric site in France:

As [the Sun] was going down, the first crescent of the new Moon appeared in the sky as a thin silver arc, facing the sinking Sun. It was instantly apparent that the Les Eyzies horizon formed a perfect natural “calendar” and that the first crescent would appear over those hills at sunset every 29 or 30 days...that the Sun was sinking at its farthest point north on that horizon, its position at summer solstice, and that it would now begin to move south.... There was no way that generations of hunters living on that shelf over a period of 18,000 years or more could fail to notice these periodic changes and movements of the Sun and Moon....


Keeping time in agrarian societiesAgricultural societies began to appear about 11,000 years ago. As they expanded they linked up with their neighbors. Now they needed more reliable methods of keeping time. If you wanted to sell some vegetables in a nearby town or worship at a nearby temple you had to know exactly when the markets and religious rituals were held — and you needed to know in advance. Drifting in a week or two later no longer cut it. Now you needed calendars that everyone agreed on and shared. If your village depended on irrigation, everyone needed to know exactly when the irrigation gates would be opened.

Similarly, seeds were planted at particular times. The harvest was also collected according to seasonal calendars. These early calendars were based on Earth’s orbit around the Sun and associated climate patterns.

This is why new devices began to appear that could track time more precisely. One method of timekeeping was to watch the Sun’s shadow using sundials. A stick in the ground would


often do the job — as long as the Sun was shining. But some sundials were extremely precise. Time was also measured by how long it took sand to move through a narrow hole in a glass container or by the rate at which water dripped from an urn.

More elaborate instruments were used to track the movements of the stars and planets. The famous Stonehenge rocks in England were constructed between 4,000 and 5,000 years ago. Stonehenge may have been designed partly to determine the exact dates of the summer and winter solstices. These events occur two times a year when the Sun reaches its highest and lowest points in the sky.

The most elaborate and precise of all agrarian-era calendars were probably those of Mesoamerica. This region hosted early civilizations appearing in Mexico and Central America in the first millennium BCE. The Mayan calendar included a 260-day cycle based on biweekly rituals. The Maya also designed a 365-day version organized around the agricultural and solar phases. They even had a calendar measuring time from the beginning of their civilization. Meanwhile, the Romans developed a calendar with 10 months. The names they used should be mostly familiar. For example, Martius is our March. Eventually, the Romans refined their calendar. They added two more months and even included the concept of a leap day.

Toward the modern eraIn his book Time: An Essay, the German scholar Norbert Elias argued that as societies became larger and more complex, people began to require more and more precise clocks and more accurate records. This was because individual schedules were getting linked together in networks of increasing complexity. As schedules began to interlace, people had to start thinking about time more carefully:



Improved methods of keeping time evolved in many different contexts. Monks needed to know when to pray, so they developed various methods, including the ringing of bells. Travelers needed to schedule their departures and arrivals more carefully. Increasingly, elaborate clocks were built. Some used carefully controlled drips of water. Others used falling weights.

Precise clocks were particularly important for navigators. They needed them to calculate their longitude, or how far west or east they had traveled. Ships began to travel around the globe from the late fifteenth century. With that came recognition of the need for accurate timekeeping. In 1714, the British government offered a prize of £20,000 (nearly $5 million in


today’s money) for the first person to build a clock that could stay accurate to within two minutes during long ocean voyages. Clockmaker John Harrison spent most of his life on the task. He finally won the prize in 1773, three years before he died.

In the nineteenth century, the invention of railways and steamships required entirely new levels of precision. Now many more passengers and important cargo could travel. On-time departures and arrivals were critical to the whole network. The first English train schedule was published in 1839. For the first time, different British cities needed to coordinate their clocks to the same national clock, that of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). But not until 1880 was Greenwich Mean Time adopted officially throughout Britain. In the United States, regional time zones were not systematized until 1918. At about the same time, the idea of daylight saving was introduced in numerous countries around the world.

International steamships required equally precise coordination across the entire globe. Not until 1929 did most countries begin to link their local time to Greenwich Mean Time. The nation of Nepal waited until the 1980s to do so.

In today’s world of international plane schedules and electronic bank transfers, we need even greater precision. So, timekeeping today relies more on complex devices such as atomic clocks. These clocks measure time using signals emitted by electrons as they change energy levels.


Before about 1950, the only way to be sure of the date of a past event was to use written records. Of course these don't exist for any date more than a few thousand years ago. The first workable method of radiometric dating was devised by American chemist Willard Libby in the early 1950s. It used the breakdown of an isotope of carbon, C14, to date materials containing carbon. Since then, a whole range of new dating techniques have been developed. They can now give us reasonably accurate dates for events reaching back to the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago.


Timekeeping: Why We Need Clocks and Calendars (780L)By David Christian, adapted by Newsela

All life forms come with their own way of keeping track of time. However, no other species does it better than humans. We have more ways of marking time, and we do it more precisely.


Why bother to keep time?Why do we need clocks and calendars? The answer may seem obvious. Nowadays we need to know what others are doing and when they’re doing it. We also need to know what's happening in nature. It's important to know what season it is, for example. If you didn’t know the time or date, you’d be seriously out of sync with your world. You’d miss a train or walk in late to your Big History class.

But it’s not just modern humans who need to keep track of time. All living things must know the time to adjust to their environment as it changes. Bears know when to hibernate. When winter is over, they know when to wake up. Plants know when to blossom. Many birds know when it’s time to head south for the winter.

Keeping track of time is critically important. It's so important that evolution has given us clocks in our body. Our body clocks are sensitive to daylight and the seasons changing. These are known as “circadian rhythms.” Your body clock tells you it’s not a good idea to get up at 2 a.m., when it’s pitch dark.

What’s different about human time?We humans track time differently than other creatures. Human societies have become larger and more complex. We have become more precise at marking the time. The Olympics need extremely accurate clocks. We also need to schedule our daily work. We can even date geological events that happened billions of years ago. To do this, modern humans have designed sophisticated clocks, calendars, and timetables. It wasn’t always this way.

Keeping time in the Paleolithic eraIf you were a Paleolithic forager living 100,000 years ago, how would you have kept track of time? We have little direct evidence about Paleolithic time-tracking. However, we can study modern foraging societies for hints.

The rhythms of the natural world are critical in a foraging society. You need to track the changing seasons. And you need to follow the schedules that other species keep. Then you can decide when to move to a new campground, what plants to collect, and what animals to hunt. Modern foragers are more sensitive to these changes than any city dweller could be.

Keeping track of the time of day and the time of year was not difficult in early societies. Ancient people typically spent most of their time outdoors. They could watch the positions of the Sun and the stars. Planning activities with family and friends was much less complicated than it is today. Back then people lived in small groups and met face to face.

Tribes might meet other tribes based on the season. There was no need for precise scheduling. Maybe one tribe met with a neighboring tribe “when the reindeer returned.” So, it didn’t really matter if their schedules were a few days off. Foraging societies were much more flexible about appointments than we are.

South Africa’s Blombos Cave was lived in by humans as early as 100,000 years ago. Archaeologists found chunks of ochre (an orange/red rock) with strange marks on them in the cave. These rocks date back 70,000 years. They are the oldest known “artworks.” It’s


possible that the engravings were used to mark the passing of time. Perhaps the markings tracked the Moon or important rituals.

More evidence of early calendars comes from about 40,000 years later. The American archaeologist Alexander Marshack (1918–2004) became fascinated by marks on Paleolithic objects. He was sure that some of them were simple calendars that tracked the Moon’s movements. In 1964 he visited Les Eyzies, a prehistoric site in France. Here's what Marshack saw:

As [the Sun] was going down, the first crescent of the new Moon appeared in the sky as a thin silver arc. It was facing the sinking Sun. It was instantly apparent that the Les Eyzies horizon formed a perfect natural “calendar.” The first crescent would appear over those hills at sunset every 29 or 30 days...One could tell that the Sun was sinking at its farthest point north on that horizon, its position at summer solstice. It would now begin to move south.... There was no way that generations of hunters living on that shelf over a period of 18,000 years or more could fail to notice these periodic changes and movements of the Sun and Moon....


Keeping time in agrarian societiesAgricultural societies began to appear about 11,000 years ago. As they expanded, they connected with their neighbors. Now they needed more reliable methods of keeping time. If you wanted to sell vegetables in a nearby town you had to know when the markets were held. To plan your travel to the markets you needed the time in advance. Drifting in a week or two later no longer cut it. Now you needed calendars that everyone agreed on and shared.

Similarly, seeds were planted at particular times. The harvest was also collected according to seasonal calendars. These early calendars were based on Earth’s orbit around the Sun.

This is why new devices began to appear that could track time more precisely. One method of timekeeping was to watch the Sun’s shadow using sundials. A stick in the ground was a simple sundial. Of course the Sun had to be shining. But some sundials were extremely precise.

Time was also kept through an invention called an hourglass. It was a simple glass container with sand that flowed slowly through a narrow hole. You measured time by how long it took the sand to hit the bottom of the glass. Time could also be measured using water dripping from an urn.

More elaborate instruments were used to track the movements of the stars and planets. The famous Stonehenge rocks in England were constructed between 4,000 and 5,000 years ago. Stonehenge may have been designed to determine the exact dates of the summer and winter solstices. These events occur two times a year. They mark the days when the Sun reaches its highest and lowest points in the sky.

The most elaborate agrarian-era calendars were probably those of Mesoamerica. The Maya were one of the great civilizations of Mesoamerica. They created a 260-day calendar based


on biweekly rituals. They also designed a 365-day version. It was organized around the agricultural and solar phases. One calendar even measured time from the beginning of their civilization.

Meanwhile, the Romans developed a calendar with 10 months. The names they used are familiar to us. For example, Martius is our March. Eventually, the Romans refined their calendar. They added two more months and even included the concept of a leap day.

Toward the modern eraIn his book Time: An Essay, the German scholar Norbert Elias argued that as societies became larger and more complex, people needed more precise clocks. Human records became more accurate as well. Individual schedules linked together in more and more complex networks. As schedules linked up, people had to think about time more carefully:

The chains of interdependency in pre-state societies are short. People then didn't experience past and future as being so distinct from the present. In people’s experience then, the immediate present stood out more sharply than either past or future. Human actions, too, tended to be more centered on present needs and impulses. In later societies, on the other hand, past, present and future are more sharply distinguished. There is a greater need and capacity to foresee the future. Thus considerations of a relatively distant future gain stronger and stronger influence on all activities to be undertaken here and now.


Improved methods of keeping time evolved in many different contexts. Monks needed to know when to pray, so they developed the ringing of bells. Travelers needed to schedule their departures and arrivals more carefully. Increasingly, elaborate clocks were built. Some used carefully controlled drips of water. Others used falling weights.

Precise clocks were particularly important for navigators. They needed them to calculate their longitude. Then they would know how far west or east they had traveled. Ships began to travel around the globe from the late 1400s.

More accurate timekeeping was now needed. In 1714, the British government offered a prize of £20,000 (about $5 million today) to the first person who could build an accurate clock. The clock would have to keep time within two minutes on long sea trips. Clockmaker John Harrison spent most of his life on the task. He finally won the prize in 1773, three years before he died.

In the nineteenth century, the invention of railways and steamships required even more accuracy. Now many more passengers could travel. More cargo could be shipped. On-time departures and arrivals were critical to the whole network. The first English train schedule was published in 1839. For the first time, different British cities needed to coordinate their clocks. Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) became the standard time in Britain. But GMT was not adopted throughout Britain until 1880. In the U.S., time zones were not standard until 1918. Around then, the idea of daylight saving was introduced in numerous countries.


Steamships were traveling from country to country. They needed precise coordination across the globe. It took until 1929 for most countries to start linking their local time to Greenwich Mean Time. But, the nation of Nepal waited until the 1980s to do so.

In today’s world, we need even greater precision. International plane schedules require extreme accuracy. Electronic transfers of money have to be timed precisely. So, ultra-precise atomic clocks were invented. They measure time using signals sent by electrons.


Before about 1950, we mainly relied on written records of the past. These records only go back a couple thousand years. An American chemist developed radiometric dating to figure out the age of very old objects. His method used the breakdown of carbon to date things. New dating techniques have been developed since then. They can now reach back to the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago.

Accurate timekeeping and recordkeeping are the foundation for histories of all kinds. This includes Big History. Next time you fly or take a bus, be grateful. Imagine if your pilot or driver let you off at your destination any old time in the next week or two!


s3. Web viewUnit 7—Agriculture & Civilization. This Word document contains ALL of the...

Documents

Transcript of s3. Web viewUnit 7—Agriculture & Civilization. This Word document contains ALL of the...