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Summary Introduction to the Ancient World - Questions, Homework, Notes
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An introduction to the Ancient WorldLukas de Blois and R.J. van der Spek
Dating systems: layers (not only ground, but new buildings were often built on ruins of older ones)
references in encient texts to astronomical phenomena such as solar eclipses
the radiocarbon method - rough estimate of the age od dead organic matter by measuring the decrease in
radiation in the org.matter and the amount of time this will have involved
dendrochronology - long sequences of growth rings in old tree wood
Language Groups - closely related to one another
Indo-European: Latin: modern: Italians, Spanish, French, Romanian
Aryan/Iranian: Median, Persian, Parthian, Kurdish
Slavic: Russian, Polish, Serbian, Croatian, Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian
Celtic: Celts, Galatians, Britons(Asia Minor), Celtiberians(Spain)
modern: Breton, Welsh, Irish Gaelic
Germanic: Franks, Saxons, Batavians, Angels, Goths
modern: English, Germand, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwergian
Greek, Armenian, Hittite, Sanskrit
Semitic: Hebrew, Phoenician, Arabic, Aramaic+Chaldean, Amorite, Canaanite
Akkadian (Old Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian), Egyptian (affinities with Semitic and Cushitic/African l.)
Language of unknown families: Sumerian, Hurrian+Urartian, Kassite, Elamic
, The Ancient Near East
Mesopotamia (Euphrates and Tigris (todays Iraq)) and Egypt (Nile)
Factors of rise (3000BC): the increasing urbanisation. birth of states, invention of writing
Stone Age: divided on basis of changes in the stone implements
Old and Middle - people lived of what happened to come acroos (animals/plants - hunters and gatherers)
- they were following the animals (on the move all the time)
New - improved tools (more efficient use of natural resources) → could remain in one area for a longer period
- started building shelters: huts/caves
- Neolithic Revolution: start of cultivation of the cereals+domestication of animals
(10 000BC) -termination of global glacial period (´Ice Age´)
- 2 kinds of agriculture: rainfall - annual need of 250 mm (only in Iran/Iraq,Syria,Mediterranean coast)
- in Near East 250-400mm per year = very dependent/vulnerable
- slight decrease → foor crisis
- bigger decrease → social and political consequences
irrigation - includes both natural and artificial irrigation
- Egypt - best place for natural irrigation
- floods before sowing their crops
- grew both barley and wheat (wheat predominated)
- Mesopotamia - need for artificial irrigation (contained water w salts)
- floods before the harvesting time (sowing plough)
- grew barley (more resistant to salt)
- people started to specialize (carpenters, tanners, scribes (3400BC), metalworkes (3000BC - bronze)
- civil service and prieshoot emerged (associated institutions: the state and the temple)
- temples had vast estates (engaged in agriculture, stock breeding and crafts - a lots of employees)
- required a way of writting → cuneiform scrips (wedge-shaped appearance of letters) - Mesopotamia
→ hieroglyphic script - Egypt
- both were partly ideographic (word = symbol)
pictographic (word = picture)
- later signs came to stand for sounds (syllables, in Egypt only consonants, no vowels)
- only used by professional scribes
- no difference between city and non city life = peasants returned to their villages in morning to work
- small difference between herders (sedentary way of life) - moved from exhausted soils to new ones
- stayed close to trade agriculturalists (nomads way of life) - sometimes winter/summer pastures
- differences were written a lot about in literature of that era - seasonal migrations = transhumance
- geographical aspects: both dependent on river water (absence of rain)
poor in various resources (metals, timber)
surrounding areas: Egypt - abrupt difference between arable land and desert land
- inhabitable deserts = less accessible = isolated
- faced intruders only since around 2500 BC
- stable and static
Mesopotamia - gradual transision from fertille to less fertille
- constant invasions of foreign peoples
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