The Earliest Civilization

MESOPOTAMIA AFTER SUMER

The Near East was a growing confusion of people, including the Akkadians finished in Mesopotamia, which was taken over by the Caucasian Gutians. The Amorities who joined the Elamites to overthrow the armies of Ur, had established themselves in Damascus, Assyria, or upper Mesopotamia, and Babylon, in a series of kingdoms which stretched to the coast of Palestine. Southern Mesopotamia they continued to dispute with the Elamites. In Anatolia, Hittites, an Indo-European people which crossed from the Balkan.

THE FIRST CIVILIZATION

All the significant changes to the first civilization is man-made, which is the outcome of mixes of human skills and natural facts through a new order of life based on the exploitation of nature. Mesopotamia in 3500BC was the first acknowledged civilization, followed by Egypt, Minoan civilization in Crete, Mediterranean and Near East, India, and China, although civilization of China and India should be understood in the light of an isolated examples because interaction did not exist. The major features that the first civilization had in common include complete dependence on agriculture for material purposed, the achievement of writing, and the organization of society on a new scale in cities (settings) by overcoming the restraints of geography. The earliest civilization had a number of predisposing factors, including different environment like river valleys with rich lands, different influences from outside, different cultural inheritances from the past, and different geographical settings. Civilization is a word connected with a Latin word meaning "city," which has the most important concept for collecting people in larger masses and fostering innovation, producing wealth by agriculture, and elaborating complex religious and political structures.

The Chou era

Although the Shang succumbed to Chou in 1027BC, many of the Shang governmental and social structures were preserved and further refined in the Chou period, which also established the consolidation and further diffusion of the Shang's heritage and the hardening of the institutions of a future Imperial China. Chinese civilization began as a matter of tiny islands in a sea of barbarism and the Chou thought of themselves as surrounded by barbarian peoples waiting for the benevolent effects of Chou tranquillization. Before the Chou dynasty came to an end, the period of the Warring States started in 403 to 221 BC, which all the lands of the Chinese were for the first time ruled as one great empire, under the Ch'in, from whom the country was to get its name. At the end of the Period of Warring States the stage of Chinese history is about to be enlarged with Chou influence in the Yangtze valley to produce the first major culture and state.

Summerian life

Among the by-products of Sumerian religion were the first true likenesses of human beings, which are seen in pictorial art, war, and animal life. Sumerian art showed a daily life in agriculture, all of which seems to be the indication of status and the sign of growing social complexity. Within the patriarchal system, Sumarian women were less down-trodden with more powerful female sexuality and more important rights than many other women in Near-Eastern societies. By the end of their civilization the Sumerians had learnt to live in large communities with big demands on advanced technology in construction, wheel that was later applied to transport, and invention of glass and bronze. Gaining the raw material led Sumarians to have a widespread network of external contacts, both with the Persian Gulf peoples and with the distant Levant and Syria, which suggests an interregional trading system that was already creating patterns of economic interdependence.

Babylonian thought

Babylonian civilization remains a legend of magnificence in business, which was shown in palaces like Mari, high up the Euphrates. Babylonians' astrology pushed forward the observation of nature, leading foundation of astronomy that made the prediction of lunar eclipses possible by 1000BC, along with the path of the sun and the planets plotted with remarkable accuracy. Babylonian mathematics drew upon the intellectual and practical achievements of the Sumarians, with the decimal system, the circle of 360 degrees, the hour of sixty minutes, and an algebraic geometry. As Hammurabi's dynasty did not last long, the Hittites withdrew other peoples ruled Mesopotamia for 4 centuries of separation of Assyria and Babylonia, which shifted the focus of world history away from Mesopotamia.

Writing

Between 3300 to 2000 BC, Sumerian civilization with a big step towards true writing began with pictures and cuneiform, which made not only communication of information but also the complex operations of irrigating, harvesting, storing crops, and exploitation of resources, much easier, and which strengthened government and its links with the priestly castes who at first monopolized literacy. Literature as a result of invention of writing is the major source of understanding of civilization, including the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest story in the world with a tale of the first here in the world who ruled at the city of Uruk. On conclusion, although it is hard to get at history through the Epic, let alone relate it to the historical Gilgamesh, we owe something of our own intellectual ancestry to a mythical reconstruction by the Sumerians of their own pre-history.

ANCIENT CHINA (pp. 68-77)

China constituted a single unit of state using a Chinese language for 2500 years whose civilization continued without disturbed from the outside, which shaped a Chinese historical identity as much cultural as political. The beginning of social organization, characterized by agriculture, happened around the Yellow River, with the notion of "under heaven every spot is the sovereign's ground,' which meant that all land belonged to the community as a whole. Clan structure, totems, and kinship with complex social roles have developed. The Chinese civilization can be understood in the light of the rulers called the Shang, the first name shown in the traditional list of dynasties.

Confucius and Chinese culture

Confucius is one of the most respected philosophers in Chinese history, whose texts were treated as religious awe and used in a unified and creative way to shape his countrymen's thinking for over 2000 years. His teaching aimed at presenting a purified and more abstract version of the truths to lie at the heart of traditional practice and thus at reviving personal integrity and disinterested service in the governing class. While Confucius did not emphasized on the supernatural or theological enigmas, but on the practical duties that taught men who would respect the traditional culture, emphasize the value of good form and regular behavior, and seek to realize their moral obligations in the scrupulous discharge of duties. Two major opponents of Confucianism included Lao-Tse and Mencius. While Mencius taught men to seek the welfare of mankind in a development of Confucian teaching rather than a departure from it, Lao-Tse, the author of "Taoism," emphasized the cosmic principle which sustains the harmoniously ordered universe, whose practical results were political quietism, non-attachment, and an idealization of simplicity and poverty. Although China had little to do with the outside world until well into the historical era, China's civilization show much potential for expanding beyond its cradle.

Sumer

Early civilization started in Sumer in the southernmost part of Mesopotamia, where the river valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates gave a soil of great richness around the deltas. In order to make Sumer both a challenge and an opportunity, new technique for collective management of irrigation and social organization of reclamation were developed in the Tigris and Euphrates. The development of town, or the first true urbanism, as the first observable civilization of Sumer, happened by fighting and cooperation among people for self-protection as well as for management of the environment. The early Sumerians, who spoke the Sumerian language, arrived and established the cult centers, which provided the grounds for developing cities and the close relationship religion and government always had in ancient Mesopotamia.

THE ROOTS OF CIVILIZATION

History is called the era of written record, because, without the written documents, we cannot explain the evidence about people' life. Just as much people in pre-history would have preparations for the first writing, we have to understand what lies behind the first civilization. Civilization is the interaction of human beings that a critical mass of cultural potential and material resources has been built up, and human capacities are released for development which becomes in large measure self-sustaining. To understand what constitutes a civilization, it is very important to start with something more than the mere agglomeration of human beings in the same place, religious practices, art, or a certain technology, because it is important not only to recognize early civilization when it is in place but also to know how it came to be there. Therefore, this chapter deals with what the ancestors brought with them into the era of civilization, shown in Mesopotamia, the Fertile Crescent, Sumer, and Babylon, of which civilization did not happen simultaneous nor equally successful.

Shang China

Shang kings and warrior landlords were major figures in Chinese civilization, whose government achieved a standardized currency, built fortifications and cities. Shang monarchy was the first truly literate culture east of Mesopotamia, which gave rich evidence in scribes and archivists of Chinese court, and the oracles for making decisions of state. Although the language was used by a small elite group called shih, or the readers of the oracles, it was of enormous importance as a unifying and stabilizing force that elite could tie a huge and diverse country together with the power of Chinese language.

Sumerian religion

Since the most important ideas kept alive by the Sumerian language were religious, a pantheon of individual gods had emerged, providing the backbone of Mesopotamian religion and the beginning of theology. The gods played critical roles in controlling environment, resisting the sudden disasters of flood and dust-storm, assuring the continuation of the cycle of the seasons by the repetition of the great spring festival, and creating the notion of Hell. The top hierarchy of gods consisted of a trinity of 3 great male gods, called the father of the gods or a 'Lord of Air," followed by city gods with special roles, two of whom are the gods of wisdom and of the sweet waters that literally meant life to Sumer. Because lower Mesopotamia did not have mountains for the gods to dwell in, Sumarians, who saw themselves as a person created to serve and to labor for the gods, built the towers and Ziggurats as well as many temples. As for the political aspects of Sumerian religion, all land belonged to the gods and the king or a king-priest, was their vicar who had charge of the first organized system of education.

Babylon

The city of Babylon, the symbolic center of the Semitic people of the south, is a landmark of a new empire in Mesopotamia, and Hammurabis was the first ruler to unify the entire Mesopotamia until 1600s BC when Mesopotamia was once more divided. Hammurabi, who ruled from Sumer and the Gulf north to Assyria, including the cities of Nineveh and Nimrud on the Tigris, Mari high on the Euphrates, and Aleppo, constructed an elaborate administrative structure, and the famous Hammurabi's code of the common law, which was used to deal with a variety of matters. Hammurabi's code of the common law was not legislation but a declaration of existing law, which long provided one of the major continuities of Mesopotamian history. Some Babylonian slaves enjoyed remarkable economic independence, engaging in business and even owning slaves on their own account and had legal rights, if narrow ones, which can be understood in the light of the diversity of things.

The interplay of Culture in the Fertile Crescent

The mutually stimulating interactions of different cultures first become obvious in the Near East, which a turmoil of over-population and wanderings of people are the background for the first civilization appeared and prospered in the Fertile Crescent. Linguistic differences provide another distinction among the people of early civilized times in the Fertile Crescent, including Hamitic(evolved in Africa north and north-east of the Sahara), Semities of the Arabian peninsula, the Indo-Europeans from southern Russia, and Caucasian from Gergia and Caucasus region. The Caucasian occupied the Fertile Crescent in 4000BC, followed by Semitic people established in central Mesopotamia, across the middle reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates. The interplay and rivalry of the Semitic people with the Caucasians is a continuing theme in the early history of the area, followed by Hittites, one of Indo-European groups, entered into Anatolia from Europe, to dispute and mingle with the Semitic and Caucasion people in the Crescent by 2000BC.

Political change

There are three broad phases for political change in Sumer: The first phase of Sumer is its archaic period between 3360 and 2400BC. Although, originally, Sumerian society seems to have had some representative on the democratic basis, a growth of scale led to the distinction of kings from the early priestly rulers, emerged as warlords appointed by cities The second phase came when the King Sargon I of Akkad City conquered the Sumarian cities with his people from Semitic tribes between 2400 and 2340BC. Sargon I inaugurated an Akkadian supremacy with the rule based on a unified empire integrating the cities into a whole. The second phase is characterized by a new achievement in organization, by which lay and priestly authority had completely diverged and the gods lay behind the empire living in palaces. The third phase began with the overthrown of the AKkadian hegemony and neo-Sumarian phase started as the hegemony again passed to the native Sumarians whose center was Ur. Third phase was the sunset of the first civilization when the Elamites came and Ur fell to them to the end.

Iron and cities

Two major changes under the later Chou period included the increasing use of iron and the growth of cities, with which the need for using iron sprang from the pressure upon resources in agriculture, followed by iron weapons, which led China to an advanced country in handling the metal with various technique. As the Chou period came to the end, the landowning class showed unmistakable signs of growing independence of its kings whereas the Chou king had been reduced to dependence on the greatest nobles, which caused decaying centuries of the Chou and the Period of Warring States and produced an important burst of thought about the foundations of government and ethics. One school of teachers, the "Legalist,' urged that law-making power should be the key principle of the state and there should be one law for all, applied by one ruler, which was criticized by followers of Confucius.

Early Chinese society

Under both Shang and Chou, the ground plan for a future society can be understood in the light of the fundamental division between a landowning nobility and the common people of peasants who paid for all the civilization and state power. In Chinese society, the distinction of peasants from the nobility was enduring, in legal punishment, monopoly of wealth, religious standing through a monopoly of certain ritual practices, and belonging to a family which meant that only noble people had ancestors. The kings in the earliest China had little to do except fulfil his religious duties with the supernatural. Some scientific technology, such as astronomy, was developed from which an intimate connection between government and the determination of time and the calendar.