CHAPTER

2
Rivers, Cities,
and First States,
3500–2000 BCE

O
ne of the first urban centers in the world was the ancient city
of Uruk. Located in southern Mesopotamia on a branch of the
Euphrates River, it was home to more than 10,000 people by
KEY TERMS the late fourth millennium BCE and boasted many large public struc-
tures and temples. One temple had stood there since before 3000 BCE;
with plastered mud-brick walls that formed stepped indentations, it
bronze p. 47 perched high above the plain. In another area, administrative build-
city p. 51 ings and temples adorned with elaborate facades stood in courtyards
city-state p. 52 defined by tall columns. Colored stone cones arranged in elaborate
river basin p. 46 geometric patterns covered parts of these buildings. An epic poem de-
voted to its later king, Gilgamesh, described Uruk as the “shining city.”
scribes p. 54
Over the years Uruk became an immense commercial and admin-
social hierarchies p. 52 istrative center. A huge wall with seven massive gates surrounded the
territorial state p. 56 metropolis, and down the middle ran a canal carrying water from the
urban-rural divide p. 47 Euphrates. On one side of the city were gardens, kilns, and textile work-
shops. On the other was the temple quarter where priests lived, scribes
kept records, and lu-gal (“the big man”) conferred with the elders. As
Uruk grew, many small industries—including potters, metalsmiths,
stone bowl makers, and brickmakers—became centralized in response
to the increasing sophistication of construction and manufacturing.
46 ! !CHAPTER 2 ĕ Rivers, Cities, and First States, 3500–2000 BCE

Uruk was the first city of its kind in world history. Earlier humans had settled in
small communities scattered over the landscape. As some communities gradually be-
came focal points for trade, a few of these hubs grew into cities with large populations
and institutions of economic, religious, and political power. Most inhabitants no lon-
ger produced their own food, working instead in specialized professions.
Between 3500 and 2000 BCE, a handful of remarkable societies clustered in a few river
basins on the Afro-Eurasian landmass. These regions—in Mesopotamia (between the
Tigris and Euphrates rivers), in northwest India (on the Indus River), in Egypt (along
the Nile), and in China (near the Yangzi and Yellow rivers)—became the heartlands for
densely populated settlements with complex cultures. Here the world saw the birth of the
first large cities and territorial states. One of these settings (Mesopotamia) brought forth
humankind’s first writing system, and all laid the foundations for kingdoms radiating out
of opulent cities. This chapter describes how each society evolved, and it explores their
similarities and differences. It is important to note how exceptional these large cities and
territorial states were, and we will see that many smaller societies prevailed elsewhere.
The Aegean, Anatolia, western Europe, the Americas, and sub-Saharan Africa offer re-
minders that most of the world’s people dwelt in small communities, far removed cultur-
ally from the monumental architecture and accomplishments of the big new states.

Settlement and Pastoralism

COM PA R I S ON Around 3500 BCE, cultural changes, population growth, and technological innovations
gave rise to complex societies. Clustered in cities, these larger communities developed
IDENTIFY the earliest
new institutions, and individuals took on a wide range of social roles, resulting in new
river-basin societies and
ANALYZE their shared
hierarchies based on wealth and gender. At the same time, the number of small villages
characteristics. and pastoral nomadic communities grew.
Water was the key to settlement, since predictable flows of water determined where
humans settled. Reliable water supplies allowed communities to sow crops adequate to
feed large populations. Abundant rainfall allowed the
world’s first villages to emerge, but the breakthroughs
into big cities occurred in drier zones where large riv-
ers formed beds of rich soils deposited by flooding
rivers. With irrigation innovations, soils became ar-
able. Equally important, a worldwide warming cycle
expanded growing seasons. The river basins—with
their fertile soil, irrigation, and available domesticated
plants and animals—made possible the agricultural
surpluses needed to support city dwellers.

EARLY CITIES ALONG RIVER BASINS

The material and social advances of the early cities
occurred in a remarkably short period—from 3500
to 2000 BCE—in three locations: the basin of the Ti-
Early Mesopotamian Waterworks From the sixth millennium bce, gris and Euphrates rivers in central Southwest Asia;
irrigation was necessary for successful farming in southern Mesopotamia. the northern parts of the Nile River flowing toward
By the first millennium bce, sophisticated feats of engineering allowed
the Assyrians to redirect water through constructed aqueducts, like
the Mediterranean Sea; and the Indus River basin in
the one illustrated here on a relief from the palace of the Assyrian king northwestern South Asia. About a millennium later a
Sennacherib at Nineveh. similar process began along the Yellow River and the
 Settlement and Pastoralism! !47

Yangzi River in China. (See Map 2.1.) In these regions humans farmed and fed them-
selves by relying on intensive irrigation agriculture. Gathering in cities inhabited by rul-
ers, administrators, priests, and craftworkers, they changed their methods of organizing
communities by worshipping new gods in new ways and by obeying divinely inspired
monarchs and elaborate bureaucracies. New technologies appeared, ranging from the
wheel for pottery production to metal- and stoneworking for the creation of both luxury
objects and utilitarian tools. The technology of writing used the storage of words and
meanings to extend human communication and memory.
With cities and new technologies came greater divisions of labor. Dense urban settle-
ment enabled people to specialize in making goods for the consumption of others: weavers
made textiles, potters made ceramics, and jewelers made precious ornaments. Soon these
goods found additional uses in trade with outlying areas. And as trade expanded over longer
distances, raw materials such as wool, metal, timber, and precious stones arrived in the cit-
ies. (See Map 2.2.) One of the most coveted metals was copper: easily smelted and shaped
(not to mention shiny and alluring), it became the metal of choice for charms, sculptures,
and valued commodities. When combined with arsenic or tin, copper hardens and becomes
bronze, which is useful for tools and weapons. Consequently, this period is often called a
Bronze Age, though the term simplifies the breadth of the breakthroughs.
The emergence of cities as population centers created one of history’s most durable
worldwide distinctions: the urban-rural divide. Where cities appeared alongside rivers,
people adopted lifestyles based on specialized labor and the mass production of goods. In
contrast, most people continued to live in the countryside, where they remained on their
lands, cultivating the land or tending livestock, though they exchanged their grains and
animal products for goods from the urban centers. The two ways of life were interdepen-
dent and both worlds remained linked through family ties, trade, politics, and religion.

PASTORAL NOMADIC COMMUNITIES

Around 3500 BCE, Afro-Eurasia also witnessed the growth and spread of pastoral nomadic
communities. The transhumant herder communities that had appeared in Southwest Asia
around 5500 BCE (see Chapter 1) continued to be small and their settlements imperma-
nent. They lacked substantial public buildings or infrastructure, but their seasonal moves
followed a consistent pattern. Across the vast expanse of Afro-Eurasia’s great mountains
and its desert barriers, and from its steppe lands ranging across inner and central Eurasia
to the Pacific Ocean, these transhumant herders lived alongside settled agrarian people,
especially when occupying their lowland pastures. They traded meat and animal products
for grains, pottery, and tools produced in the agrarian communities.
In the arid environments of Inner Mongolia and central Asia, transhumant herding
and agrarian communities initially followed the same combination of herding animals
and cultivating crops that had proved so successful in Southwest Asia. However, because
the steppe environment could not support large-scale farming, these communities came
to focus on animal breeding and herding. As secondary pursuits they continued to fish,
hunt, and farm small plots in their winter pastures. Their economy centered on domes-
ticated cattle, sheep, and horses. As their herds increased, these horse-riding nomads
had to move often to new pastures, driving their herds across vast expanses of land.
By the second millennium BCE, they had become full-scale nomadic pastoral communi-
ties, and they dominated the steppes. In these pastoral nomadic economies of the arid
zones of central Eurasia, horses became crucial to survival. These nomadic and trans-
humant groups played a vital role in connecting cities and spreading ideas throughout
Afro-Eurasia.
48 ! !CHAPTER 2 ĕ Rivers, Cities, and First States, 3500–2000 BCE

Rh
i

ne
NORTH

R.
AMERICA

AT L A N T I C
OCEAN

S A H A R A

TEHUACAN VALLEY

Ni
SAHEL

ger
.

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AND
ES

PACIFIC CHICAMA VALLEY

OCEAN
SOUTH
M
O U N TA I N S

AMERICA

Desert
Pastoral belt – steppe lands
Tropical rain forest
Agricultural society 3000 BCE
0 1000 2000 Miles
Riverine societies (early cities)
Widespread village culture 0 1000 2000 Kilometers
 Settlement and Pastoralism! !49

ARCTIC OCEAN

A
I
S
A
R
EUROPE U
Dan
E
YANGSHAO ‘LONGSHAN’
ube R.
-
CA

ARAL
ANATOLIAN BLACK SEA SEA CULTURE CULTURE
SPIA

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EA

SEA
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MESOPOTAMIA
. HI
IA
i

MEDITERRANEAN YELLOW
s R.

SYRIAN IRANIAN
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SEA TAURUS M
Indus R

F DESERT PLATEAU AL
SEA
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MTS. A Yangzi R.
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AY
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Euphrates R. .
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ARABIAN
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Nile R.

Chad CHINA
ETHIOPIAN SOUTHEAST SEA
HIGHLANDS ASIA
R.
ngo

Lake
Co

Victoria
SUB-SAHARAN
AFRICA

INDIAN
OCEAN

AUSTRALIA

MAP 2.1 | The World in the Third Millennium bce

Human societies became increasingly diversified as agricultural, urban, and pastoral nomadic communities expanded.
ƨ In what different regions did pastoralism and river basin societies emerge?
ƨ Considering the geographic features highlighted on this map, why do you think cities appeared in the regions that they did?
ƨ How did geographic and environmental factors promote interaction between nomadic pastoral and sedentary agricultural
societies?
50 ! !CHAPTER 2 ĕ Rivers, Cities, and First States, 3500–2000 BCE

ARAL

CA
SEA
CAUCA

SP
EUROPE BLACK SEA S US M

IAN
TS.

SOUTHWEST ASIA

SEA
ANATOLIAN Lake
GR EECE PLATEAU US Urmia TA K L A M A K A N
Tig
R . ris R. DESERT
AU TS
M
T

Nineveh
Euph
rat
CYPRUS Ebla es Ashur
CRETE R.
Eshunna ZA IRANIAN
MTS.
MEDITERRANEAN SEA GR PLATEAU KUNLUN
Sippar Kermanshah

O
Kish

SM
Nippur

TS
Uruk Ur INDUS Harappa HI

.
Memphis VALLEY MA
Saqqara Eridu L AY
A MT
ARABIAN S.

Pe
. Mohenjo Daro

rs
DESERT an

R
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EGYPT lf DESERT
SAHARA
DESERT
ARABIAN
RED

PENINSULA
SE A

.
eR
l
Ni

ARABIAN SEA
Bay
Zone of urban civilization Urban centers of
Trading hinterlands Trade routes Bengal

Traded Raw Materials

Alabaster Iron
Dolerite Lead
Flint Carnelian
Granite Lapis lazuli
Limestone Timber Mogadishu INDIAN OCEAN
Copper Turquoise
0 500 1000 Miles
Gold Shells (Indus River Basin)
0 500 1000 Kilometers
Tin

MAP 2.2 | Trade and Exchange in Southwest Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean—Third Millennium bce
Extensive commercial networks linked the urban cores of Southwest Asia.
ƨ Of the traded raw materials shown on the map, which ones were used for building materials, and which ones for luxury items?
ƨ Why were there more extensive trade connections between Mesopotamians and people to their northwest and east than with Egypt to the west?
ƨ According to the map, in what ways did Mesopotamia become the crossroads of Afro-Eurasia?

Between the Tigris and Euphrates

Rivers: Mesopotamia
COM PA R I SON
The world’s first complex society arose in Mesopotamia. Here the river and the first cities
EXPLAIN the religious, changed how people lived. Mesopotamia, whose name is a Greek word meaning “[region]
social, and political devel- between two rivers,” is a landmass including all of modern-day Iraq and parts of Syria
opments that accompany
and southeastern Turkey. From their headwaters in the mountains to the north and east
early urbanization in the
river basin societies from to their destination in the Persian Gulf, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers are wild and
3500 to 2000 bce. unpredictable. Unpredictable floodwaters could wipe out years of hard work, but when
managed properly they could transform the landscape into verdant and productive fields.
 Between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers: Mesopotamia ! !51

Both rivers provided water for irrigation and, although hardly navigable, were important
routes for transportation and communication by pack animal and by foot. Mesopotamia’s
natural advantages—its rich agricultural land and water, combined with easy access to
neighboring regions—favored the growth of cities and later territorial states. These cities
and states became the sites of important cultural, political, and social innovations.

TAPPING THE WATERS

The first rudimentary advances in irrigation occurred in the foothills of the Zagros Moun-
tains along the banks of the smaller rivers that feed the Tigris. Converting the floodplain
of the Euphrates River into a breadbasket, however, required mastering the unpredictable
waters. (A floodplain is an area where the river overflows and deposits fertile soil.) Both the
Euphrates and the Tigris, unless controlled by waterworks, were unfavorable to cultivators
because the annual floods occurred at the height of the growing season, when crops were
most vulnerable. Low water levels occurred when crops required abundant irrigation. To
prevent the river from overflowing during its flood stage, farmers built levees along the
banks and dug ditches and canals to drain away the floodwaters. Engineers devised an
irrigation system whereby the Euphrates, the riverbed of which is higher than the Tigris,
essentially served as the supply and the Tigris as the drain. Storing and channeling water
year after year required constant maintenance and innovation by a corps of engineers.
The Mesopotamians’ technological breakthrough was in irrigation, not in agrarian
methods. Because the soils were fine, rich, and constantly replenished by the floodwaters’
silt, soil tillage was light work. Farmers sowed a combination of wheat, millet, sesame,
and barley (the basis for beer, a staple of their diet).

CROSSROADS OF SOUTHWEST ASIA

Though its soil was rich and water was abundant, southern Mesopotamia had few other
natural resources apart from the mud, marsh reeds, spindly trees, and low-quality lime-
stone that served as basic building materials. To obtain high-quality, dense wood, stone,
metal, and other materials for constructing and embellishing their cities with their tem-
ples and palaces, Mesopotamians had to interact with the inhabitants of surrounding
regions. In return for textiles, oils, and other commodities, they imported cedar wood
from Lebanon, copper and stones from Oman, more copper from Turkey and Iran, and
the precious blue gemstone called lapis lazuli, as well as the ever-useful tin, from faraway
Afghanistan. Maintaining trading contacts was easy, given Mesopotamia’s open boundar-
ies on all sides. The area became a crossroads for the peoples of Southwest Asia, includ-
ing Sumerians, who concentrated in the south; Hurrians, who lived in the north; and
Akkadians, who populated western and central Mesopotamia. Trade and migration con-
tributed to the growth of cities throughout the river basin, beginning with the Sumerian
cities of southern Mesopotamia.

THE WORLD’S FIRST CITIES

During the first half of the fourth millennium BCE, a demographic transformation occurred
in the Tigris-Euphrates river basin, especially in the southern area called Sumer. The pop-
ulation expanded as a result of the region’s agricultural bounty, and many Mesopotamians
migrated from country villages to centers that eventually became cities. (A city is a large,
well-defined urban area with a dense population.) The earliest Sumerian cities—Eridu,
Nippur, and Uruk—developed over about 1,000 years, dominating the southern part of
the floodplain by 3500 BCE. Buildings of mud brick show successive layers of urban devel-
opment, as at Eridu, where more than twenty reconstructed temples were piled atop one
52 ! !CHAPTER 2 ĕ Rivers, Cities, and First States, 3500–2000 BCE

Offering table

Central room

Offering table

Central room
Offering
Altar table Altar Altar

0 3m
0 10 ft

Level XVI Level IX Level VII

Layout of Eridu Over several millennia, temples of increasing size and complexity were built atop each other at Eridu in southern
Iraq. The culmination came with the elaborate structure of level VII.

another across four millennia, resulting in a final temple that rose from a platform like a
mountain, visible for miles in all directions.
As the temple grew skyward, the village expanded outward and became a city. From
their homes in temples located at the center of cities, the cities’ gods broadcast their pow-
ers. In return, urbanites provided luxuries, fine clothes, and enhanced lodgings for the
gods and their priests. In Sumerian cosmology, created by ruling elites, man existed solely
to serve the gods, so the urban landscape reflected this fact: a temple at the core, with
goods and services flowing to the center and with divine protection and justice flowing
outward.
Some thirty-five cities with religious sanctuaries dotted the southern plain of Meso-
potamia. Sumerian ideology glorified a way of life and a territory based on politically
equal city-states, each with a guardian deity and sanctuary supported by its inhabitants.
(A city-state is a political organization based on the authority of a single, large city that
controls outlying territories.) Because early Mesopotamian cities served as meeting places
for peoples and their deities, they gained status as religious and economic centers. Whether
enormous (like Uruk and Nippur) or modest (like Ur and Abu Salabikh), all cities were
spiritual, economic, and cultural homes for Mesopotamian subjects.
Simply making a city was therefore not enough: urban design reflected the city’s role
as a wondrous place to pay homage to the gods and their human intermediary, the king.
Within their walls, early cities contained large houses separated by date-palm plantations
and extensive sheepfolds. As populations grew, the Mesopotamian cities became denser,
houses smaller, and new suburbs spilled out beyond the old walls. The typical layout of
Mesopotamian cities reflected a common pattern: a central canal surrounded by neigh-
borhoods of specialized occupational groups. The temple marked the city center, with the
palace and other official buildings on the periphery. In separate quarters for craft produc-
tion, families passed down their trades across generations. In this sense, the landscape
of the city mirrored the growing social hierarchies (distinctions between the privileged
and the less privileged).

GODS AND TEMPLES

The worldview of the Sumerians and, later, the Akkadians included a belief in a group
of gods that shaped their political institutions and controlled everything—including
the weather, fertility, harvests, and the underworld. As depicted in the Epic of Gilgamesh
 Between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers: Mesopotamia ! !53

(a second-millennium BCE composition based on oral tales about Gilgamesh, a historical

but mythologized king of Uruk), the gods could give but could also take away—with
droughts, floods, and death. Gods, and the natural forces they controlled, had to be
revered and feared. Faithful subjects imagined their gods as immortal beings whose
habits were capricious, contentious, and gloriously work-free.
Each major god of the Sumerian pantheon (an officially recognized group of gods)
dwelled in a lavish temple in a particular city that he or she had created, giving rise to
each city’s character, institutions, and relationships with its urban neighbors. Inside these
temples were altars displaying the god’s image. Benches lined the walls, with statues
of humans standing in perpetual worship of the deity’s images. By the end of the third
millennium BCE, the temple’s platform base had changed to a stepped platform called a
ziggurat, with the main temple on top. Surrounding the ziggurat were buildings that
housed priests, officials, laborers, and servants.
Temples functioned as the god’s estate, engaging in all sorts of productive and com-
mercial activities. Temple dependents cultivated cereals, fruits, and vegetables by using
extensive irrigation and cared for flocks of livestock. Other temples operated workshops
for manufacturing textiles and leather goods, employing craftworkers, metalworkers, ma-
sons, and stoneworkers. Enormous labor forces were involved in maintaining this high
level of production.

ROYAL POWER, FAMILIES, AND SOCIAL HIERARCHY

Like the temples, royal palaces reflected the power of the ruling elites.
Royal palaces appeared around 2500 BCE and served as the official resi-
dence of a ruler, his family, and his entourage. As access to palaces and
temples over time became limited, gods and kings became inaccessible to
all but the most elite. Although located at the edge of cities, palaces were
the symbols of permanent secular, military, and administrative authority
distinct from the temples’ spiritual and economic power.
The Royal Cemetery at Ur shows how Mesopotamian rulers used elabo-
rate burial arrangements to reinforce their religious and socioeconomic
hierarchies. Housed in a mud-brick structure, the royal burials held not
only the primary remains but also the bodies of more than eighty men
and women who had been sacrificed. Huge vats for cooked food, bones of
animals, drinking vessels, and musical instruments suggest the lifestyle
of those who joined their masters in the graves. Honoring the royal dead
by including their followers and possessions in their tombs underscored
the social hierarchies—including the vertical ties between humans and
gods—that were the cornerstone of these early city-states.
Social hierarchies were an important part of the fabric of Sumerian
city-states. Ruling groups secured their privileged access to economic
and political resources by erecting systems of bureaucracies, priesthoods,
and laws. Priests and bureaucrats served their rulers well, championing
rules and norms that legitimized the political leadership. Occupations
within the cities were highly specialized, and a list of professions circu-
The Royal Tombs of Ur The Royal Tombs of Ur,
lated across the land so that everyone could know his or her place in the excavated in the 1930s, contained thousands of
social order. The king and priest in Sumer were at the top of the list, fol- objects in gold, silver, lapis lazuli, and shell that
lowed by bureaucrats (scribes and household accountants), supervisors, were buried along with elites of the First Dynasty
of Ur. Pu-Abi, identified as a queen by the cylinder
and craftworkers, such as cooks, jewelers, gardeners, potters, metalsmiths,
near her body, was buried in a separate chamber.
and traders. The biggest group, which was at the bottom of the hierarchy, She was interred in full regalia, including the
comprised workers who were not slaves but who were dependent on their elaborate headdress shown here.
54 ! !CHAPTER 2 ĕ Rivers, Cities, and First States, 3500–2000 BCE

employers’ households. Movement among economic classes was not impossible but, as in
many traditional societies, it was rare.
The family and the household provided the bedrock for Sumerian society, and its patri-
archal organization, dominated by the senior male, reflected the balance between women
and men, children and parents. The family consisted of the husband and wife bound by
a contract: she would provide children, preferably male, while he provided support and
protection. Monogamy was the norm unless there was no son, in which case a second wife
or a slave girl would bear male children to serve as the married couple’s offspring. Adop-
tion was another way to gain a male heir. Sons would inherit the family’s property in equal
shares, while daughters would receive dowries necessary for successful marriage into
other families. Some women joined the temple staff as priestesses and gained economic
autonomy that included ownership of estates and productive enterprises, although their
fathers and brothers remained responsible for their well-being.

FIRST WRITING AND EARLY TEXTS

Mesopotamia was the birthplace of the world’s first writing system, inscribed to promote
the economic power of the temples and kings. Those who wielded new writing tools were
scribes; from the very beginning they were near the top of the social ladder, under the big
man and the priests. As the writing of texts became more important to the social fabric of
cities, and facilitated information sharing across wider spans of distance and time, scribes
consolidated their elite status.
Mesopotamians were the world’s first record keepers and readers. The precursors to
writing appeared in Mesopotamian societies when farming peoples and officials who had
been using clay tokens and images carved on stones to seal off storage areas began to use
them to convey messages. These images, when combined with numbers drawn on clay
tablets, could record the distribution of goods and services.
Around 3200 BCE, someone, probably in Uruk, understood that the marks (most were
pictures of objects) could also represent words or sounds. Before long, scribes connected
visual symbols with sounds, and sounds with meanings, and they discovered they could
record messages by using abstract symbols or signs to denote concepts. Such signs later
came to represent syllables, the building blocks of words. By impressing signs into wet
clay with the cut end of a reed, scribes pioneered a form of wedge-shaped writing that we
call cuneiform; it filled tablets with information that was intelligible to anyone who could
decipher it, even in faraway locations or in future generations. Developing over 800 years,
this Sumerian innovation enhanced the urban elites’ ability to trade goods, to control
property, and to transmit ideas through literature, historical records, and sacred texts.
The result was a profound change in human experience, because representing symbols of
spoken language facilitated an extension of communication and memory.
Much of what we know about Mesopotamia rests on our ability to decipher cuneiform
script. By around 2400 BCE, texts began to describe the political makeup of southern Mesopo-
tamia, giving details of its history and economy. Adaptable to different languages, cuneiform
was borrowed by cities in northern Mesopotamia to write their Semitic language.
City life and literacy gave rise also to written narratives, the stories of a “people” and
their origins. “The Temple Hymns,” written around 2100 BCE, describe thirty-five divine
sanctuaries. The Sumerian King List, known from texts written around 2000 BCE, recounts
the reigns of kings by city and dynasty and narrates the long reigns of legendary kings be-
fore the so-called Great Flood. A crucial event in Sumerian identity, the Great Flood, found
also in Biblical narrative, explained Uruk’s demise as the gods’ doing. Flooding was the
most powerful natural force in the lives of those who lived by rivers, and it helped shape
the foundations of Mesopotamian societies.
 Between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers: Mesopotamia ! !55

SPREADING CITIES AND FIRST TERRITORIAL STATES

No single state dominated Mesopotamia in the fourth and third millennia BCE, but the
most powerful and influential were the Sumerian city-states (2850–2334 BCE) and their
successor, the Akkadian territorial state (2334–2193 BCE). In the north, Hurrians urban-
ized their rich agricultural zone around 2600 BCE. (See Map 2.3.)
Sumerian city-states, with their expanding populations, soon found themselves compet-
ing for agrarian lands, scarce water, and lucrative trade routes. And as pastoralists far and
wide learned of the region’s bounty, they journeyed in greater numbers to the cities, fueling
urbanization and competition. The world’s first great conqueror—Sargon the Great (r. 2334–
2279 BCE), king of Akkad—emerged from one of these cities. By the end of his reign he had
united (by force) the independent Mesopotamian cities south of modern-day Baghdad and
brought the era of competitive independent city-states to an end. Sargon’s unification of the

BLACK
Troy SEA

C
AS
PI
A N AT O L I A

AN
SEA
Kultepe
S
AIN
NT
MOU Tigris R.
U S
Per Hussein
UR
TA
Urkesh Bassetki
Tell Brak
Nineveh
Ebla

Ashur
ZA

IRANIAN
Euphrat
G

MEDITERRANEAN Mari es PLATEAU

R
R.

MESOPOTAMIA
S

SEA
Tell Agrab
M
O

Sippar
U

Kish
N

A
T

Girsu Susa IN
Umman
Lagash S
EGYPT Uruk Ur ELAM
Eridu
.
eR
Nil

Pe
rs

Northern Mesopotamia cities after 2600 BCE

ia

Northern alluvium (Akkad) cities before 2600 BCE

n
RE

Southern alluvium (Sumer) cities before 2600 BCE

u
D

lf

0 100 200 300 Miles

Akkadian power, 2334 – 2193 BCE
SE

0 100 200 300 Kilometers

A

MAP 2.3 | The Spread of Cities in Mesopotamia and the Akkadian State, 2600–2200 bce
Urbanization began in the southern river basin of Mesopotamia and spread northward. Eventually, the region achieved uni-
fication under Akkadian power.
ƨ According to this map, what were the natural boundaries of the Mesopotamian cities?
ƨ How did proximity to the Zagros Mountains affect the new urban centers?
ƨ How did the expansion northward reflect the continued influence of geographic and environmental factors on urbanization?
56 ! !CHAPTER 2 ĕ Rivers, Cities, and First States, 3500–2000 BCE

southern cities by alliance, though relatively short-lived, created a territorial state. (A terri-
torial state is a form of political organization that holds authority over a large population and
landmass; its power extends over multiple cities.) Sargon’s dynasty sponsored monumental
architecture, artworks, and literary works, which in turn inspired generations of builders,
architects, artists, and scribes. And by encouraging contact with distant neighbors, many
of whom adopted aspects of Mesopotamian culture, the Akkadian kings increased the geo-
graphic reach of Mesopotamian influence. Just under a century after Sargon’s death, foreign
tribesmen from the Zagros Mountains conquered the capital city of Akkad around 2190 BCE,
setting the beginning of a pattern that would fuel epic history writing, namely the struggles
between city-state dwellers and those on the margins who lived a simpler way of life. The
impressive state created by Sargon was made possible by Mesopotamia’s early innovations in
irrigation, urban development, and writing. While Mesopotamia led the way in creating city-
states, Egypt went a step further, unifying a 600-mile-long landmass under a single ruler.

“The Gift of the Nile”: Egypt

In Egypt, complex societies grew on the banks of the Nile River, and by the third millen-
nium BCE their peoples created a distinctive culture and a powerful, prosperous state. The
earliest inhabitants along the banks of the Nile were a mixed people. Some had migrated
from the eastern and western deserts in Sinai and Libya as these areas grew barren from
climate change. Others came from the Mediterranean. Equally important were peoples
who trekked northward from Nubia and central Africa. Ancient Egypt was a melting pot
where immigrants blended cultural practices and technologies.
Like Mesopotamia, Egypt had densely populated areas whose inhabitants depended
on irrigation, built monumental architecture, gave their rulers immense authority, and
created a complex social order based in commercial and devotional centers. Yet the an-
cient Egyptian culture was profoundly shaped by its geography. The environment and
the natural boundaries of deserts, river rapids, and sea dominated the country and its
inhabitants. Only about 3 percent of Egypt’s land area was cultivable, and almost all of
that cultivable land was in the Nile Delta—the rich alluvial land lying between the river’s
two main branches as it flows north of modern-day Cairo into the Mediterranean Sea.
This environment shaped Egyptian society’s unique culture.

THE NILE RIVER AND ITS FLOODWATERS

Knowing Egypt requires appreciating the pulses of the Nile. The world’s longest river, it
stretches 4,238 miles from its sources in the highlands of central Africa to its destination in
the Mediterranean Sea. Egypt was deeply attached to sub-Saharan Africa; not only did its
waters and rich silt deposits come from the African highlands, but much of its original popu-
lation had migrated into the Nile valley from the west and the south many millennia earlier.
The Upper Nile is a sluggish river that cuts through the Sahara Desert. Rising out
of central Africa and Ethiopia, its two main branches—the White and Blue Niles—meet
at present-day Khartoum and then scour out a single riverbed 1,500 miles long to the
Mediterranean. The annual floods gave the basin regular moisture and enriched the soil.
Although the Nile’s floodwaters did not fertilize or irrigate fields as broad as those in Meso-
potamia, they created green belts flanking the broad waterway. These gave rise to a society
whose culture stretched along the navigable river and its carefully preserved banks. Away
from the riverbanks, on both sides, lay a desert rich in raw materials but largely uninhab-
ited. (See Map 2.4.) Egypt had no fertile hinterland like the sprawling plains of Mesopota-
mia. In this way, Egypt was arguably the most river-focused of river-basin cultures.
 “The Gift of the Nile”: Egypt! !57

CYPRUS

MEDITERRANEAN
Byblyos

SEA

Heliopolis
Giza
LOWER Memphis E G Y P T
Saqqara
El Bahariya
Oasis

EASTERN SINAI
DESERT
ARABIAN
PENINSULA
Nil

El Dakhla
e R.

Oasis
RE

WESTERN El Kharga
Thebes
D

DESERT Oasis

Elephantine
SE

Aswan
First Cataract
A
To Ea

UPPER EGYPT
st Afri
ca and

NUBIAN
Arabia

DESERT
Second Cataract
Areas under Egyptian control
Urban centers
Third Cataract Fertile area
Fourth Pyramids
Cataract Cataracts
Napata
Trade routes
Fifth Cataract
Natural resources
Alabaster Gold
Granite Copper
Limestone Emerald
Meroe
Sandstone Turquoise
0 100 200 Miles
Quartzite
0 100 200 Kilometers

MAP 2.4 | Old Kingdom Egypt, 2686–2181 bce

Old Kingdom Egyptian society reflected a strong influence from its unique geographical location.
ƨ What geographical features contributed to Egypt’s isolation from the outside world and the people’s
sense of their unity?
ƨ What natural resource enabled the Egyptians to build the Great Pyramids?
ƨ Based on the map, why do you think it was important to the people and their rulers for Upper and
Lower Egypt to be united?
58 ! !CHAPTER 2 ĕ Rivers, Cities, and First States, 3500–2000 BCE

The Nile’s predictability as the source of life and abundance shaped the character
of the people and their culture. In contrast to the wild and uncertain Euphrates and
Tigris rivers, the Nile was gentle, bountiful, and reliable. During the summer, as the
Nile swelled, local villagers built earthen walls that divided the floodplain into basins.
By trapping the floodwaters, these basins captured the rich silt washing down from the
Ethiopian highlands. Annual flooding meant that the land received a new layer of topsoil
every year. The light, fertile soils made planting simple. Peasants cast seeds into the allu-
vial soil and then had their livestock trample them to the proper depth. The never-failing
sun, which the Egyptians worshipped, ensured an abundant harvest. In the early spring,
when the Nile’s waters were at their lowest and no crops were under cultivation, the sun
dried out the soil.
The peculiarities of the Nile region distinguished it from Mesopotamia. The Greek
historian and geographer Herodotus 2,500 years ago noted that Egypt was the gift of
the Nile and that the entire length of its basin was one of the world’s most self-contained
geographical entities. Bounded on the north by the Mediterranean Sea, on the east and
west by deserts, and on the south by waterfalls, Egypt was destined to achieve a common
culture. Due to these geographical features, the region was far less open to outsiders than
was Mesopotamia, which was situated at a crossroads. Egypt created a common culture
by balancing a struggle of opposing forces: the north or Lower Egypt versus the south
or Upper Egypt; the red sand versus the black, rich soil; life versus death; heaven versus
earth; order versus disorder. For Egypt’s rulers the primary task was to bring stability or
order, known as ma’at, out of these opposites. The Egyptians believed that keeping chaos,
personified by the desert and its marauders, at bay through attention to ma’at would allow
all that was good and right to occur.

THE EGYPTIAN STATE AND DYNASTIES

Once the early Egyptians harnessed the Nile to agriculture, the area changed quickly
from being scarcely inhabited to socially complex. A king, called pharaoh and considered
semidivine, ensured that the forces of nature, in particular the regular flooding of the Nile,
continued without interruption. This task had more to do with appeasing the gods than
with running a complex hydraulic system. The king protected his people from chaos-
threatening invaders from the eastern desert, as well as from Nubians on the southern
borders. In wall carvings, artists portrayed early kings carrying the shepherd’s crook
and the flail, indicating their responsibility for the welfare of their flocks (the people)
and of the land. Under the king an elaborate bureaucracy organized labor and pro-
duced public works, sustaining both his vast holdings and general order throughout
the realm.
The narrative of ancient Egyptian history follows its thirty-one dynasties, spanning
nearly three millennia from 3100 BCE down to its conquest by Alexander the Great in 332
BCE. Since the nineteenth century, scholars have recast the story around three periods of
dynastic achievement: the Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom, and the New Kingdom. At
the end of each era, cultural flourishing suffered a breakdown in central authority, known
respectively as the First, Second, and Third Intermediate Periods.

PHARAOHS, PYRAMIDS, AND COSMIC ORDER

The Third Dynasty (2686–2613 BCE) launched the foundational period known as the Old
Kingdom, the golden age of ancient Egypt. By the time it began, the basic institutions of
the Egyptian state were in place, as were the ideology and ritual life that legitimized the
dynastic rulers.
 “The Gift of the Nile”: Egypt! !59

The pharaoh—king as god—presented himself

to the population by means of impressive architec- TABLE 2.1 | Dynasties of Ancient Egypt
tural spaces, and the priestly class performed rituals
reinforcing his supreme status within the universe’s s p ec i es ti me
natural order. One of the most important rituals was Pre-dynastic Period
the Sed festival, which renewed the king’s vitality %dynasties I and II 3100–2686 bce
after he had ruled for thirty years and sought to en-
Old Kingdom
sure the perpetual presence of water. King Djoser, of %dynasties III–VI 2686–2181 bce
the Third Dynasty, celebrated the Sed festival at his
tomb complex at Saqqara. This magnificent complex First Intermediate Period
%dynasties VII–X 2181–2055 bce
is the world’s oldest stone structure, dating to around
2650 BCE. Djoser’s architect, Imhotep, designed a step Middle Kingdom
pyramid that ultimately rose some 200 feet above the %dynasties XI–XIII 2055–1650 bce
plain. The whole complex became a stage for state rit- Second Intermediate Period
uals that emphasized the divinity of kingship and the %dynasties XIV–XVII 1650–1550 bce
unity of Egypt. New Kingdom
Pharaohs used their royal tombs, and the ritual %dynasties XVIII–XX 1550–1069 bce
of death leading to everlasting life, to embody the
Third Intermediate Period
state’s ideology and the principles of the Egyp- %dynasties XXI–XXV 1069–747 bce
tian cosmos. The pharaoh also employed symbols,
Late Period
throne names, and descriptive titles for himself and
%dynasties XXVI–XXXI 747–332 bce
his advisers to represent his own power and that of
his administrators, the priests, and the landed elite. Source: Compiled from Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson, eds., The Dictionary of
The Egyptian cosmic order was one of inequality Ancient Egypt (1995), pp. 310–11.
and stark hierarchy, not dissimilar to the hierar-
chies of Mesopotamia. Established at the time of creation, the universe was the king’s
responsibility to maintain for eternity.
The step pyramid at Djoser’s tomb complex was a precursor to the grand pyramids of
the Fourth Dynasty (2613–2494 BCE). These kings erected their monumental structures
at Giza, just outside modern-day Cairo and not far from the early royal cemetery site
of Saqqara. The pyramid of Khufu, rising 481 feet above ground, is the largest stone
structure in the world, and its corners are almost perfectly aligned to due north, west,
south, and east. Surrounding these royal tombs at Giza were those of high officials,
almost all members of the royal family. The enormous amount of labor involved in
building these monuments came from peasant-workers, slaves brought from Nubia, and
captured Mediterranean peoples. Through their majesty and complex construction, the
Giza pyramids reflect the degree of centralization and the surpluses in Egyptian society
at this time.

GODS, PRIESTHOOD, AND MAGICAL POWER

Egyptians understood their world as inhabited by three groups: gods, kings, and the rest of
humanity. Official records only showed representations of gods and kings. Yet the people did
not confuse their kings with gods—at least during the kings’ lifetimes. Mortality was the bar
between rulers and deities; after death, kings joined the gods whom they had represented
while alive.
As in Mesopotamia, every region in Egypt had its resident god. Some gods, such
as Amun (believed to be physically present in Thebes, the political center of Upper
Egypt), transcended regional status because of the importance of their hometown. Over
the centuries the Egyptian gods evolved, combining often-contradictory aspects into
single deities, including: Horus, the hawk god; Osiris, the god of regeneration and the
60 ! !CHAPTER 2 ĕ Rivers, Cities, and First States, 3500–2000 BCE

underworld; Isis, who represented the ideals of sisterhood and motherhood; Hathor,
the goddess of childbirth and love; Ra, the sun god; and Amun, a creator considered to
be the hidden god.
Official religious practices took place in the main temples. The king and his agents
offered respect, adoration, and thanks to the gods in their temples. In return, the gods
maintained order and nurtured the king and —through him—all humanity. In this con-
tractual relationship, the gods were passive while the kings were active, a difference that
reflected their unequal relationship.
The tasks of regulating religious rituals and mediating among gods, kings, and society
fell to one specialist class: the priesthood. Creating this class required elaborate rules for
selecting and training the priests. Only priests could enter the temples’ inner sanctuaries,
and the gods’ statues only left the temples for great festivals. Thus, priests monopolized
communication between spiritual powers and their subjects.
Unofficial religion was also important. Ordinary Egyptians matched their elite rulers
in faithfulness to the gods, but their distance from temple life caused them to find differ-
ent ways to fulfill their religious needs and duties. They visited local shrines, where they
prayed, made requests, and left offerings to the gods. Magic had a special importance for
commoners, who believed that amulets held extraordinary powers, such as preventing

Egyptian Gods Osiris (left) is the dying god who rules over the netherworld. Most frequently he is
depicted as a mummy wearing a white crown with plumes and holding the scepter across his chest. The
god Horus (right), who was also rendered as Ra-Horakhty, is the falcon-headed Egyptian sky god. Horus
is the earliest state god of Egypt and is always closely associated with the king. Horus is a member of the
nine deities of Heliopolis and is the son of Osiris and Isis.
 “The Gift of the Nile”: Egypt! !61

illness and guaranteeing safe childbirth. To deal with profound questions, commoners
looked to omens and divination. Spiritual expression was central to Egyptian culture at
all levels, and religion helped shape other cultural achievements, including the develop-
ment of a written language.

WRITING AND SCRIBES

Egypt, like Mesopotamia, was a scribal culture. By the middle of the third millennium
BCE, literacy was well established among small circles of scribes in Egypt and Mesopo-
tamia. The fact that few individuals were literate heightened the scribes’ social status.
Most high-ranking Egyptians were also trained as scribes working in the king’s court, the
army, or the priesthood. Some kings and members of the royal family learned to write as
well. Although in both cultures writing emerged in response to economic needs, people
soon grasped its utility for commemorative and religious purposes. As soon as literacy
took hold, Mesopotamians and Egyptians were drafting historical records and literary
compositions.
Ancient Egyptians used two forms of writing. Elaborate hieroglyphs (from the Greek
“sacred carving”) served in formal temple, royal, or divine contexts. More common, how-
ever, was hieratic writing, a cursive script written with ink on papyrus or pottery. (Demotic
writing, from the Greek demotika, meaning “popular” or “in common use,” developed
much later and became the vital transitional key on the Rosetta Stone that ultimately
allowed the nineteenth-century decipherment of hieroglyphics. (See Analyzing Global
Developments: The Development of Writing.) Used for record keeping, hieratic writing
also found uses in letters and works of literature—including narrative fiction, manuals
of instruction and philosophy, cult and religious hymns, love poems, medical and math-
ematical texts, collections of rituals, and mortuary books.

Egyptian Hieroglyphs and “Cursive Script” The Egyptians wrote in two distinctive types of script.
The more formal is hieroglyphs, which is based on pictorial images that carry values of either ideas
(logograms) or sounds (phonemes). All royal and funerary inscriptions, such as this funerary relief from
the Old Kingdom, are rendered in hieroglyphic script. Daily documents, accountings, literary texts, and the
like were most often written in a cursive script called hieratic, which was written with ink on papyrus. The
form of the cursive signs is based on the hieroglyphs but is more abstract and can be formed more quickly.
62 ! !CHAPTER 11 ĕ Crisis and Recovery in Afro-Eurasia, 1300–1500

Analyzing Global Developments

The Development of Writing

A
gricultural surplus, and the urbanization and labor
specialization that accompanied it, prompted the ear-
liest development of writing and the profession of the ƨɢ Non-alphabetic Systems: symbols are letters that are
scribes whose job it was to write. Early forms of writing were assembled to create words.
employed for a variety of purposes such as keeping economic Scholars know more about early cultures whose writing has
and administration records, recording the reigns of rulers, and since been deciphered. Undeciphered scripts, such as the Indus
preserving religious events and practices (calendars, rituals, and Valley script and Rongorongo, offer intrigue and promise to those
divinatory purposes). By the third millennium bce, some early who would attempt their decipherment.
societies (Mesopotamia and Egypt, in particular) used writing
to produce literature, religious texts, and historical documents. QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
Different types of writing developed in early societies, in part be-
ƨɢ What is the relationship between writing and the development
cause each society developed writing for different purposes (see
of earliest river basin societies? (See also Map 2.1.)
table below):
ƨɢ To what extent does the type of society (river basin, seafaring,
ƨɢ Ideographic/Logographic/Pictographic Systems: symbols etc.) seem to impact the development of writing in that region
represent words (complex and cumbersome). (date, type, purpose, etc.)?
ƨɢ Logophonetic and Logosyllabic Systems: symbols represent ƨɢ How has the decipherment, or lack thereof, of these scripts
sounds, usually syllables (alphabetic, fewer symbols). impacted scholars’ understandings of the societies that
ƨɢ Syllabic Systems: symbols represent syllables. produced them?

NAME/TYPE WRITING FORM AND TYPE OF WRITING DATE AND MEANS

OF SOCIETY DATE OF EMERGENCE AND PURPOSE OF DECIPHERMENT
Mesopotamia Cuneiform, 3200 bce Transitions from c. 1,000 pictographs to about Deciphered in 19th century via
(Sumer)/Riverine 400 syllables (record keeping) Behistun/Beisitun inscription
(Tigris-Euphrates)
Egypt (Old Kingdom)/ Hieroglyphs, 3100 bce Mixture of thousands of logograms and Deciphered in early 19th century
Riverine (Nile) phonograms (religious) via trilingual Rosetta Stone (written
in hieroglyphs, demotic script, and
Greek)
Harappa/Riverine Indus Valley script, 2500 bce 375–400 logographic signs (nomenclature Undeciphered
(Indus) and literature)
Minoan/Mycenaean Phaistos Disk and Linear Phaistos Disk (45 pictographic symbols in Phaistos (undeciphered);
Greece/Seafaring A (Minoan Crete); Linear a spiral); Linear A (90 logographic-syllabic Linear A (undeciphered);
micro-society B (Mycenaean, Crete and symbols); Linear B (roughly 75 syllabic Linear B (deciphered in
Greece) 1900–1300 bce symbols with some logographs) (record mid-20th century)
keeping)
Shang Dynasty/ Oracle bone script, Thousands of characters (divinatory Deciphered in early 20th century
Riverine (Yellow River) 14th–11th century bce purposes)
Maya/Central Mayan glyphs, 250 bce Mixture of logograms (numeric glyphs) and Decipherment begun in 20th century
American rainforest phonograms (around 85 phonetic glyphs), and
hundreds of “emblem glyphs” (record of rulers
and calendrical purposes)
Vikings/Seafaring Futhark (runic alphabet), 24 alphabetic runes (ritual use; or to identify Deciphered in 19th century
(Scandinavia) 200 ce owner or craftsperson)
Inca/Andean Quipu, 3000? bce Knotted cords, essentially a tally system Deciphered
highlands (record keeping)
Easter Island/Sea- Rongorongo, 1500 ce 120 glyphs (calendrical or genealogical) Undeciphered
faring micro-society

Sources: Chris Scarre (ed.), The Human Past: World Prehistory and the Development of Human Societies (2005); Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Genes, Peoples, and Languages, translated
by Mark Selestad from the original 1996 French publication (2000).
 The Indus River Valley: A Parallel Culture! !63

Literacy spread first among upper-class families. Most students started training when they
were young. After mastering the copying of standard texts in hieratic cursive or hieroglyphs,
students moved on to literary works. The upper classes prized literacy as proof of high in-
tellectual achievement. When they died, they had their student textbooks placed alongside
their corpses as evidence of their talents. The literati produced texts mainly in temples,
where these works were also preserved. Writing in hieroglyphs and the composition of texts
in hieratic, and later demotic, script continued without break in ancient Egypt for almost
3,000 years.

PROSPERITY AND THE DEMISE OF OLD KINGDOM EGYPT

Cultural achievements, agrarian surpluses, and urbanization ultimately led to higher stan-
dards of living and rising populations. Under pharaonic rule, Egypt enjoyed spectacular
prosperity. Its population swelled from 350,000 in 4000 BCE to 1 million in 2500 BCE and
nearly 5 million by 1500 BCE. However, expansion and decentralization eventually exposed
the weaknesses of the Old and Middle Kingdom dynasties.
The state’s success depended on administering resources skillfully, especially agricul-
tural production and labor. Everyone, from the most powerful elite to the workers in the
field, was part of the system. In principle, no one possessed private property; in practice,
Egyptians treated land and tools as their own—but submitted to the intrusions of the
state. The state’s control over taxation, prices, and the distribution of goods required
a large bureaucracy that maintained records, taxed the population, appeased the gods,
organized a strong military, and aided local officials in regulating the Nile’s floodwaters.
Royal power, and the Old Kingdom, collapsed with the death of Pepy II in 2184 BCE.
Local magnates assumed hereditary control of the government in the provinces and treat-
ed lands previously controlled by the royal family as their personal property. An extended
drought strained Egypt’s extensive irrigation system, which could no longer water the
lands that fed the region’s million inhabitants. (See Current Trends in World History:
Climate Change at the End of the Third Millennium BCE in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and
the Indus Valley.) In this so-called First Intermediate Period (2181 to 2055 BCE), local
leaders plunged into bloody regional struggles to keep the irrigation works functioning for
their own communities until the century-long drought ended. Although the Old Kingdom
declined, it established institutions and beliefs that endured and were revived several
centuries later.

The Indus River Valley: A Parallel Culture

Cities emerged in the Indus River valley in South Asia in the third millennium BCE. The urban
culture of the Indus area is called “Harappan” after the urban site of Harappa that arose on the
banks of the Ravi River, a tributary of the Indus. Developments in the Indus basin reflected
local tradition combined with strong influences from Iranian plateau peoples, as well as indi-
rect influences from distant Mesopotamian cities. Villages appeared around 5000 BCE on the
Iranian plateau along the Baluchistan Mountain foothills, to the west of the Indus. By the early
third millennium BCE, frontier villages had spread eastward to the fertile banks of the Indus
River and its tributaries. (See Map 2.5.) The river-basin settlements soon yielded agrarian sur-
pluses that supported greater wealth, more trade with neighbors, and public works. Urbanites
of the Indus region and the Harappan peoples began to fortify their cities and to undertake
public works similar in scale to those in Mesopotamia, but strikingly different in function.
The Indus Valley ecology boasted many advantages—especially compared to the area
near the Ganges River, the other great waterway of the South Asian landmass. The melting
64 ! !CHAPTER 11 ĕ Crisis and Recovery in Afro-Eurasia, 1300–1500

Current Trends in World History

Climate Change at the End of the Third Millennium bce in Egypt,
Mesopotamia, and the Indus Valley

D
uring the long third this disruption. Whether this was caused In northern Mesopotamia, the responses
millennium bce, the solely by human activity, in particular to the challenges of aridity were more var-
first urban centers agriculture on a large scale, or was also ied. Some centers were able to weather the
in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran, related to cosmic causes such as the ro- crisis by changing strategies of food produc-
central Asia, and South tation of the earth’s axis away from the tion and distribution. Some fell victim to
Asia flourished and grew sun, is still a hotly debated topic. It was intraregional warfare, while others, on the
in complexity and wealth likely a combination of factors. rainfall margin, were abandoned. When
in a wet and cool climate. The urban centers dependent on the region was settled again, society was
This smooth development the three major river systems in Egypt, differently organized. Population did not
was sharply if not universally Mesopotamia, and the Indus Valley, all drastically decrease, but rather it distributed
interrupted beginning around experienced disruption. In Egypt, the hi- across the landscape more evenly in smaller
2200 bce. Both archaeological eroglyphic inscriptions tell us that the Nile settlements that required less water and
and written records agree that across no longer flooded over its banks to replen- food. It appears that a similar solution was
Afro-Eurasia, most of the urban, rural, ish the fields with fresh soil and with water found by communities to the east on the
and pastoral societies underwent radical for crops. Social and political chaos fol- Iranian plateau, where the inhabitants of the
change. Those watered by major rivers were lowed for more than a century. In southern huge urban center of Shahr i Sokhta abruptly
selectively destabilized, while the settled Mesopotamia, the deeply down-cut rivers left the city and settled in small communi-
communities on the highland plateaus changed course, disrupting settlement ties across the oasis landscape.
virtually disappeared. After a brief hiatus, patterns and taking fields out of cultiva- The solutions found by people living in
some recovered, completely reorganized tion. Other fields were poisoned by salts the cities of the Indus Valley also varied.
and used new technologies to manage ag- brought on through overcultivation and Some cities, like Harappa, saw their popu-
riculture and water. The causes of this rad- irrigation without fallow periods. Fierce lation decrease rapidly. It seems that the
ical change have been the focus of much competition for water and land put pres- bed of the river shifted, threatening the
interest. sure on the central authority. To the east settlement and its hinterland. Mohenjo
After four decades of research by cli- and west, transhumant pastoralists, faced Daro, on the other hand, continued to be
mate specialists working together with with shrinking pasture for their flocks, occupied for another several centuries, al-
archaeologists, a consensus has emerged pressed in on the river valleys, disrupting though the large civic structures fell out of
that climate change toward a warmer the already challenged social and political use, replaced by more modest structures.
and drier environment contributed to structure of the densely urban centers. And to the south, on the Gujarat Peninsula,

snows in the Himalayas watered the semitropical Indus Valley, ensuring flourishing vegeta-
tion, plus the region did not suffer the yearly monsoon downpours that flooded the Ganges
plain. The expansion of agriculture in the Indus basin, as in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and
China, depended on the river’s annual floods to replenish the soil and avert droughts. From
June to September, the rivers inundated the plain. Once the waters receded, farmers planted
wheat and barley, harvesting the crops the next spring. Villagers also improved their tools
of cultivation. Researchers have found evidence of furrows, probably made by plowing, that
date to around 2600 BCE. These developments suggest that, as in Mesopotamia and Egypt,
farmers were cultivating harvests that yielded a surplus that allowed many inhabitants to
specialize in other activities.
In time, rural wealth produced urban splendor. More abundant harvests, now stored in large
granaries, brought migrants into the area and supported expanding populations. By 2500 BCE
cities began to replace villages throughout the Indus River valley, and within a few generations
towering granaries marked the urban skyline. Harappa and Mohenjo Daro, the two largest cit-
ies, each covered a little less than half a square mile and may have housed 35,000 residents.
 Forces ofThe
Upheaval
Indus River
and the
Valley:
RiseAofParallel Culture! !65
Early Empires

population and the number of settlements QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS

increased. They abandoned wheat as a
ƨ What technological innovations
crop, instead cultivating a kind of drought-
resulted from the drought in the Indus
enduring millet that originated in West Af-
Valley? Why?
rica. Apparently conditions there became
even more hospitable, allowing farming and ƨ Imagine that the climate during
fishing communities to flourish well into the the third millennium bce had not
second millennium bce. changed. How do you think this
The evidence for this widespread phe- might have affected the development
nomenon of climate change at the end of of ancient Egypt?
the third millennium bce is complex and ƨ How has our understanding of global
contradictory. This is not surprising, be- climate change affected the way we
cause every culture and each community study prehistory?
naturally had an individual response to en-
vironmental and other challenges. Those
with perennial sources of freshwater Explore Further
were less threatened than those in mar- Wolfgang Behringer, A Cultural History of
ginal zones where only a slight decrease in Climate (2010).
rainfall can mean failed crops and herds.
Barbara Bell, “The Dark Ages in Ancient
As important, certain types of social and History. 1. The First Dark Age in
political institutions were resilient and in- Egypt,” American Journal of Archae-
troduced innovations that allowed them to ology, vol. 75, no. 1 (January 1971),
adapt, while others were too rigid or short- pp. 1–26.
sighted to find local solutions. A feature of Millet This hardy grain, cultivated for its resis-
tance to drought, persists in the desert environ- Max Weiss et al., “The Genesis and
human culture is its remarkable ability to
ment of present-day western Pakistan. Collapse of Third Millennium North
adapt rapidly. When faced with challenges,
Mesopotamian Civilization,” Science,
resilience, creativity, and ingenuity lead
New Series, vol. 261, no. 5124 (August
to cultural innovation and change. This is
20, 1993), pp. 995–1004.
what we can see, even in our own times,
during the period of environmental stress.

Harappan cities sprawled across a vast floodplain covering 500,000 square miles—
two or three times the Mesopotamian cultural zone. At the height of their development,
the Harappan peoples reached the edge of the Indus ecological system and encountered
the cultures of northern Afghanistan, the inhabitants of the desert frontier, the nomadic
hunter-gatherers to the east, and the traders to the west. Although scholars know less
about Harappan society than about Mesopotamia or Ancient Egypt, what we know about
their urban culture and trade routes is impressive.

HARAPPAN CITY LIFE AND WRITING

The well-planned layout of Harappan cities and towns included a fortified citadel hous-
ing public facilities alongside a large residential area. The main street running through
the city had covered drainage on both sides, with house gates and doors opening onto
back alleys. Citadels were likely centers of political and ritual activities. At the center of
the citadel of Mohenjo Daro was the famous great bath. The location, size, and quality of
66 ! !CHAPTER 2 ĕ Rivers, Cities, and First States, 3500–2000 BCE

Trade routes
4th and early 3rd millennium BCE
CENTRAL ASIA Later 3rd millennium
Urban centers
Traded commodities
Tin Lapis lazuli
S
IN

Copper Turquoise
TA

H Gold Shells
UN

I
M
C H I S TA N M O

A
L
A
Mundigak Y
A
Shahr-i Sohkta M
Dabarkot O
U
N
BALU

Harappa T
A
I N
INDUS V Kalibangan S
Judeirjo Daro ALLE
.
s R Y Ganweriwala
Indu
Mohenjo Daro
THAR DESERT

A R A B I A N
Lothal

S E A
0 200 400 Miles

0 200 400 Kilometers

MAP 2.5 | The Indus River Valley in the Third Millennium bce
Historians know less about the urban society of the Indus Valley in the third millennium bce than they do about its
contemporaries in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Recent scholarship has even suggested the importance of a second river, the
Chagar-Hakra (Saraswati) to the east of the Indus, in this region. Archaeological evidence gives insight into this urban context.
ƨ Where were cities concentrated in the Indus Valley?
ƨ How did the region’s environment shape urban development?
ƨ What functions do you think outposts such as Lothal played in Harappan society?

the bath’s steps, mortar and bitumen sealing, and drainage channel all suggest that the
structure was used for public bathing rituals.
The Harappans used brick extensively—in houses for notables, city walls, and under-
ground water drainage systems. Workers used large ovens to manufacture the durable
construction materials, which the Harappans laid so skillfully that basic structures remain
intact to this day. A well-built house had private bathrooms, showers, and toilets that
drained into municipal sewers, also made of bricks. Houses in small towns and villages
were made of less durable and less costly sun-baked bricks.
Many of the remains of Harappan culture lie buried under deep silt deposits accumulated
over thousands of years of heavy flooding. Consequently, we know less about it than about
 The Indus River Valley: A Parallel Culture! !67

Mohenjo Daro Mohenjo Daro,

the “mound of dead,” is a large
urban site of the Harappan
culture. The view of the city
demonstrates a neat layout of
houses and civic facilities such
as sewer draining.

other contemporary cultures of Afro-Eurasia. Additionally, scholars are still working to identify
the Indus peoples’ language and decipher the script of about 400 symbols. Although a ten-
glyph-long public inscription has been found at the Harappan site of Dholavira, most of what
remains of the Indus Valley script appears on a thousand or more stamp seals and small plaques
excavated from the region, which may represent the names and titles of individuals rather
than complete sentences. Moreover, because the Harappans did not produce King Lists (as the
Mesopotamians and Egyptians did)—and may not even have had kings—scholars cannot
chart a Harappan political history by tracing the rise and fall of dynasties and kingdoms. Rely-
ing only on fragmentary archaeological evidence, scholars have been unable to draw the rich
portraits of Harappan life that they have supplied for the Mesopotamians and the Egyptians.

TRADE
The Harappans engaged in trade along the Indus River, through the mountain passes to the Ira-
nian plateau, and along the coast of the Arabian Sea as far as the Persian Gulf and Mesopotamia.
They traded copper, flint, shells, and ivory, as well as pottery, flint blades, and jewelry created
by their craftworkers, in exchange for gold, silver, gemstones, and textiles. Carnelian, a precious
red stone, was a local resource, but lapis lazuli had to come from what is now northern Afghani-
stan. Some of the Harappan trading towns nestled in remote but strategically important places.
Consider Lothal, a well-fortified port at the head of the Gulf of Khambhat (Cambay). Although
distant from the center of Harappan society, it provided vital access to the sea and to valuable raw
materials. Its many workshops processed precious stones, both local and foreign. Because the
demand for gemstones and metals was high on the Iranian plateau and in Mesopotamia, control
of their extraction and trade was essential to maintaining the Harappans’ economic power. So COMPARISON
the Harappans built fortifications and settlements near sources of carnelian and copper mines.
TRACE and ANALYZE
Through a complex and vibrant trading system, the Harappans maintained access to min-
the trade connections
eral and agrarian resources. To facilitate trade, rulers relied not just on Harappan script but also stretching from Mesopota-
on a system of weights and measures that they devised and standardized. Archaeologists have mia to the Indus River
found Harappan seals, used to stamp commodities with the names of their owners or the na- Valley societies.
ture of the goods, at sites as far away as the Persian Gulf, Mesopotamia, and the Iranian plateau.
68 ! !CHAPTER 2 ĕ Rivers, Cities, and First States, 3500–2000 BCE

The general uniformity in Harappan sites suggests a cen-

tralized and structured state. Unlike the Mesopotamians
and the Egyptians, however, the Harappans apparently
built neither palaces nor grand royal tombs. What the Indus
River people show us is how much the urbanized parts of
the world were diverging from one another, even as they
borrowed from and imitated their neighbors.
Dholavira inscription This is an artist’s rendering of the 10 glyph-long
inscription from Dholavira, an exceptional specimen of Indus Valley
script both for its size, length, and inscription in stone. While Indus
Valley script is still undeciphered, the excavator of this inscription has The Yellow and Yangzi River
suggested it might record the name of a ruler or of the town, or even
an incantation of some sort. Most examples of Indus Valley script are Basins: East Asia
much briefer and appear on small seal stones along with images of
animals and human figures.
Like the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, and Harappans, East
Asian peoples clustered in river basins. Their settlements
along the Yellow River in the north and the Yangzi River to the south became the founda-
tion of the future Chinese state. By 5000 BCE, both millet in the north and rice in the south
were under widespread cultivation.
Yet in the following three millennia (when Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Indus Valley
were creating complex, city-based cultures), the Chinese moved slowly toward urbanization.
(See Map 2.6.) Like the other regions’ waterways, the Yellow and Yangzi rivers had an-
nual floods and extensive floodplains suitable for producing high agricultural yields and
supporting dense populations. In China, however, the evolution of hydraulic works, big
cities, priestly and bureaucratic classes, and a new writing system took longer. A lack
of easily domesticated animals and plants contributed to the different developmental
path in China, as did geographic barriers. The Himalayan Mountains and the Takla-
makan and Gobi deserts prevented large-scale migrations between East Asia and cen-
tral Asia and hindered the diffusion of cultural breakthroughs occurring elsewhere in
Afro-Eurasia.

FROM YANGSHAO TO LONGSHAN CULTURE

China’s classical histories have claimed that China’s cultural traditions originated in the
Central Plains of the Yellow River basin and spread outward to less developed regions
inside and even beyond mainland China. These histories place the beginnings of Chinese
culture at the Xia dynasty, dating from 2200 BCE. Archaeological studies of river-basin en-
vironments in East Asia tell a different story, however. Whether or not the Xia existed as
a historical dynasty, archaeological evidence suggests our study of the Yellow River basin
and Yangzi delta should begin earlier—in the two millennia from 4000 to 2000 BCE.
China in 4000 BCE was very different geographically and culturally from what it is
today. A warmer and moister climate divided its vast landmass into distinctive regions. Re-
cent archaeological research records that at least eight distinct regional cultures appeared
between 4000 and 2000 BCE, and only as these communities interacted did their institu-
tions and ways of life come together to create a unified Chinese culture.
Although it was geographically divided, China was never devoid of outside influences.
Some travelers did arrive via the ocean, but more came via the Mongolian steppe, through
which nomads introduced important technologies such as metalworks. Nomads were
drawn to the agricultural settlements (as they were in Mesopotamia), and they brought
innovations, such as bronze and other goods, from the west. Through trade and migra-
tion, nomadic cultures and technologies filtered from the steppes to settled communities
on the rivers.
 The Yellow and Yangzi River Basins: East Asia! !69

Mongolian steppe lands Rice

Gobi Desert Millet
Extent of Longshan culture Spread of rice farming
M Amur R.
O
NG Extent of Yangshao culture Initial farming settlement
OL
Extent of Liangzhu culture before 3000 BCE
IAN
STEP
PE
Farming settlement after
Longshan migration 3000 BCE

T SEA
SER
I DE OF
TAKLAMAKAN
GOB J A PA N
JAPAN
DESERT
EAST ASIA
Cishan
R.

o
Yell
w

Hougang
YELLOW
Jiangzhai Dawenkou
Banpo Dahecun SEA
Erlitou
P L AT E A U
Hangzhou
OF Peiligang Bay
TIBET Yangshaocun
Qiantang R.
CHINA
EAST
HIMAL Liangzhu
A YA M T S . . CHINA
zi R PACIFIC
S. AN

Yang SEA
MT SH

OCEAN
YI
WU
R.

Pearl R
waddy

. TAIWAN
Mekong R

0 250 500 Miles

Irra

SO 0 250 500 Kilometers

UT
.

HE
Bay AST
of ASI SOUTH
A
Bengal CHINA
SEA LUZON

MAP 2.6 | River Basin Peoples in East Asia, 5000–2000 bce

Complex agricultural societies emerged in East Asia during the third millennium bce.
ƨ What were the regional cultures that flourished here during this time?
ƨ What are the major geographic differences between the northern and southern regions of China in
this period?
ƨ Based on geographic differences among the areas, how were these cultures different, and how were
they similar?

The major divide in China was between the northern Yellow and more centrally located
Yangzi river basins. Not only did these two regions rely on different crops—millet in the
north and rice to the south—but they built their houses differently, buried their dead in
different ways, and produced distinctive pottery styles. The best known of the early cul-
tures developed along the Yellow River and in the Central Plains area and is known as the
Yangshao culture.
Yangshao villages typically covered ten to fourteen acres and were composed of houses
erected around a central square. Villagers had to move frequently because they practiced
slash-and-burn agriculture. Once having exhausted the soil, residents picked up their
70 ! !CHAPTER 2 ĕ Rivers, Cities, and First States, 3500–2000 BCE

belongings, moved to new lands, and constructed

new villages. Their lives were hard. Excavated cem-
eteries reveal that nearly 20 percent of the burials
were of children fifteen years and younger; only a
little more than half of those buried lived past the age
of forty.
Around 3000 BCE the Yangshao culture gave way to
the Longshan culture, which had an even larger geo-
graphical scope and would provide some of the cultural
foundations for the first strong states that emerged in
the Central Plains. Longshan flourished from 3000 BCE
to 2000 BCE, and had its center in Shandong Province.
Although the Longshan way of life first took form in
coastal and southern China, outside the Central Plains,
Yangshao Bowl with Dancing Figures, c. 5000–1700 bce The Yangshao, it moved quickly into this hub of economic and politi-
also referred to as the “painted pottery” culture, produced gray or red cal activity. Proof of its widespread cultural influence
pottery painted with black geometric designs and occasionally with pictures
of fish or human faces and figures. Because the potter’s wheel was unknown can be seen from the appearance of a unique style of
at the time, the vessels were probably fashioned with strips of clay. black pottery, stretching all the way from Manchuria in
the north through the Central Plains to the coast and
beyond to the island of Taiwan.
The Longshan people likely migrated in waves from
the peripheries of East Asia to the eastern China seashore. Their achievements, compared
to those of the Yangshao, suggest marked development between 5000 and 2000 BCE. Several
independent regional cultures in northern and southern China began to produce similar
pottery and tools and to plant the same crops, probably reflecting contact. They did not
yet produce city-states, but agriculture and small settlements flourished in the increasingly
populated Yellow River valley.
Some of the hallmarks of early urban life are evident in the archaeological remains. Long-
shan communities built defensive walls for protection and dug wells to supply water. They
buried their dead in cemeteries outside their villages. Of several thousand graves uncovered
in southern Shanxi province, the largest ones contain ritual pottery vessels, wooden musical
instruments, copper bells, and painted murals. Shamans performed rituals using jade axes.
Jade quarrying in particular indicated technical sophistication, as skilled craftworkers incised
jade tablets with powerful expressions of ritual and military authority. The threat of orga-
nized violence among Longshan villages was real. Discoveries at one Longshan site revealed
a household whose members were scalped. At this same site, attackers filled the water wells
with five layers of human skeletons, some decapitated. Clearly, the villages’ defensive walls
were essential.
As communities became more centralized, contact between regions increased. Links
between northern and southern China arose when Longshan peoples began to migrate
along the East Asian coast to Taiwan and the Pearl River delta in the far south. Similarities
in artifacts found along the coast and at Longshan sites in northern China, such as the
form and decoration of pottery and jade items, also point to a shared sphere of culture
and trade.
Archaeologists also have found evidence of short-lived political organizations. Al-
though they were nothing like the dynastic systems in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the
Indus Valley, they were wealthy—if localized—polities. They constituted what scholars
call the era of Ten Thousand States (Wan’guo). One of them, the Liangzhu, has drawn par-
ticular interest for its remarkable jade objects and its sophisticated farming techniques.
The Liangzhu grew rice and fruits and domesticated water buffalo, pigs, dogs, and sheep.
Archaeologists have discovered the remains of net sinkers, wooden floats, and wooden
 Life Outside the River Basins! !71

paddles, which demonstrate a familiarity with water-

craft and fishing. Artisans produced a black pottery
from soft paste thrown on a wheel, and like the Long-
shan they created ritual objects from several variet-
ies of jade. Animal masks and bird designs adorned
many pieces, revealing a shared cosmology that in-
formed the rituals of the Liangzhu elite.
In the late third millennium BCE, a long drought
hit China (as it did Egypt, Mesopotamia, and India).
Although the climate change limited progress and
forced migrations to more dependable habitats, the
Chinese recovered early in the second millennium BCE.
Now they created elaborate agrarian systems along
the Yellow and Yangzi rivers that were similar to
earlier irrigation systems along the Euphrates, Indus,
and Nile. Extensive trading networks and a stratified
social hierarchy emerged; like the other river-basin
complexes of Asia and North Africa, China became
a centralized polity. Here, too, a powerful monarchy
eventually united the independent communities. But
what developed in China was a social and political
system that emphasized an idealized past and a tradi-
tion represented by sage-kings, which later ages emu-
lated. In this and other ways, China diverged from the
rest of Afro-Eurasia. Longshan Beaker, c. 2500 bce Longshan has been called the “black
pottery” culture, and its exquisite black pottery was not painted but rather
decorated with rings, either raised or grooved. Longshan culture was more

Life Outside the River Basins

advanced than the Yangshao culture, and its distinctive pottery was likely
formed on a potter’s wheel.

In 3500 BCE, the vast majority of humans lived outside

of the complex cities that emerged in parts of Afro-Eurasia. At the other end of the spec-
trum, many peoples continued to live as hunters and gatherers, or in small agricultural
villages or nomadic groups. In between were worlds such as those in the Aegean, Anato-
lia, Europe, and parts of China, where towns emerged and agriculture advanced, but not
with the leaps and bounds of the great river-basin civilizations.
Some cultures outside the river basins—in the Aegean, Anatolia, and in Europe—
had a distinctive warrior-based ethos, such that the top tiers of the social ladder held
chiefs and military men instead of priests and scribes. In Europe and Anatolia especially,
weaponry rather than writing, forts rather than palaces, and conquest rather than com-
merce dominated everyday life. Settlements in the Americas and sub-Saharan Africa were
smaller and remained based around agriculture. Here, too, the inhabitants moved beyond
stone implements and hunting and gathering, but they remained more egalitarian than
river basin peoples.

AEGEAN WORLDS
COMPARISON
Contact with Egypt and Mesopotamia affected the worlds of the Aegean Sea (the part of the
Mediterranean Sea between the Greek Peloponnese and Anatolia), but it did not transform COMPARE early urbaniza-
tion with the ways of life in
them. Geography stood in the way of significant urban development on the mountain-
small villages and among
ous islands of the Aegean, on the Anatolian plateau, and in Europe. Even though people pastoral nomads.
from Anatolia, Greece, and the Levant had populated the Aegean islands in the sixth
72 ! !CHAPTER 2 ĕ Rivers, Cities, and First States, 3500–2000 BCE

millennium BCE, their small villages, of 100 inhabitants or fewer, endured for 2,000 years
before becoming more complex. On mainland Greece and on the Cycladic islands in the
Aegean, fortified settlements housed local rulers who controlled a small area of agricul-
turally productive countryside. Metallurgy developed in both the island of Crete and the
Cyclades. There is evidence of more formal administration and organizations in some
communities by 2500 BCE, but the norm was scattered settlements separated by natural
obstacles. By the early third millennium BCE, Crete had made occasional contact with
Egypt and the coastal towns of the Levant, encountering new ideas, technologies, and
materials as foreigners arrived on its shores. People coming by ship from the coasts of
Anatolia and the Levant, as well as from Egypt, traded stone vessels and other luxury
objects for the island’s abundant copper. Graves of Aegean elites, such as those at Knos-
sos on Crete, with their gold jewelry and other exotic objects, show that the elites did not
reject the niceties of cultured life, but they knew that their power rested as much on their
rugged landscape’s resources as on self-defense and trade with others.

ANATOLIA
The highland plateau of Anatolia (in the region of modern-day Turkey) shows clear evidence
of regional cultures focused on the control of trade routes and mining outposts. True cit-
ies did not develop here until the third millennium BCE, and even then they were not the
sprawling population centers typical of the Mesopotamian plain. Instead, small communi-
ties emerged around fortified citadels housing local rulers who competed with one another.
Two impressively fortified centers were Horoz Tepe and Alaça Hüyük, which have yielded
more than a dozen graves—apparently royal—full of gold jewelry, ceremonial standards,
and elaborate weapons. Similarly, the settlement at Troy was characterized by monumental
stone gateways, stone-paved ramps, and high-status graves filled with gold and silver ob-
jects, vessels, jewelry, and other artifacts. Parallel grave finds on Crete, the Greek mainland,
and as far away as Ur indicate that Troy participated in the trading system linking the
Aegean and Southwest Asian worlds. At the same time, Troy faced predatory neighbors and
pirates who attacked from the sea—an observation that explains its impressive fortifications.

EUROPE: THE WESTERN FRONTIER

At the western reaches of the Eurasian landmass was a region featuring cooler climates
with smaller population densities. Its peoples—forerunners of present-day Europeans—
began to make objects out of metal, formed permanent settlements, and started to create
complex societies. Here, hierarchies began to undermine egalitarian ways. Yet, as in the
Aegean worlds, population density and social complexity had limits.
More than in the Mediterranean or Anatolia, warfare dominated social development in
Europe. Two contributing factors were the persistent fragmentation of the region’s peoples
and the type of agrarian development they pursued. The introduction of the plow and the
clearing of woodlands expanded agriculture. Flint mining at an industrial level slashed
the cost and increased the availability of raw materials needed to make tools for clearing
forested lands and tilling them into arable fields. Compared to the river-basin societies,
Europe was a wild frontier where violent conflicts over resources were common.
By 3500 BCE the more developed agrarian peoples had combined into large communi-
ties, constructing impressive monuments that remain visible today. In western Europe,
large ceremonial centers shared the same model: enormous shaped stones, some weigh-
ing several tons each, set in common patterns—in alleyways, troughs, or circles—known
as megalithic (“great stone”) constructions. These daunting projects required cooperative
planning and work. In the British Isles, where such developments occurred later, the
 Life Outside the River Basins! !73

0 250 500 Miles Farm settlement

Urban complexes
0 250 500 Kilometers
Corded Ware burials
Bell Beaker burials

A
NORTH Archaeological site

SE
SEA Main routes of the

IC
Grimes L spread of agriculture

T
Graves BA
Traded Commodities
ATLANTIC Copper
P E
OCEAN Stonehenge
U R O Flint
E Krzemionki Dn
iep
.
flint mines er R.
ne R
Rhi

CA

Danube R.
SP

IA
N
SE
Varna B L A C K S E A
AD

A
RI

TI
A

C
CORSICA SE T
A Alaca Horoz E S
Huyuk Tepe W
SARDINIA H
BALEARIC A N AT O L I A T
ISLANDS
Troy U Ti
AEGEAN O
SEA S

g ris
ME R.
M E D Euphrate S O
I T s R. PO
E TA
R M
R
CYCLADES RHODES IA
MALTA
A CYPRUS
N
I A
E A
CRETE Knossos
N S E A S
A

Beginnings of
palace-based societies
Nile R.

D
E

EGYPT SE
A

MAP 2.7 | Settlements on the Margins: The Eastern Mediterranean and Europe,
5000–2000 bce
Urban societies in Southwest Asia had profound influences on peripheral societies.
ƨ What three peripheral worlds did the urban societies of Southwest Asia influence?
ƨ In what ways did the spread of flint and copper tools and weapons transform Aegean and European societies?
ƨ How did agriculture spread from Southwest Asia to these worlds?

famous megalithic complexes at Avebury and Stonehenge probably reached their highest
stages of development just before 2000 BCE.
By 2000 BCE, the whole of the northern European plain came to share a common mate-
rial culture based on agriculture, the herding of cattle for meat and milk, the use of the
plough, and the use of wheeled vehicles and metal tools and weapons, mainly of copper.
Increasing communication, exchange, and mobility among the European communities
led to increasing wealth but also sparked organized warfare over frontier lands and valu-
able resources. In an ironic twist, the integration of local communities led to greater
friction and produced regional social stratification. The violent men who now protected
their communities received ceremonial burials complete with their own drinking cups
and weapons. Archaeologists have found these warrior burials in a swath of European
lands extending from present-day France and Switzerland to present-day central Russia.
74 ! !CHAPTER 2 ĕ Rivers, Cities, and First States, 3500–2000 BCE

Stonehenge This spectacular site, located in the

Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire in southwestern England, is
one of several such megalithic structures found in the
region. Constructed by many generations of builders,
the arrangement of the large stone uprights enabled
people to determine precise times in the year through
the position of the sun. Events such as the spring and
autumn equinoxes were connected with agricultural
and religious activities.

Because the agricultural communities now were producing surpluses that they could
store, residents had to defend their land and resources from encroaching neighbors.
An aggressive culture was taking shape based on violent confrontations between adult
males organized in “tribal” groups. War cultures arose in all western European societies.
Armed groups carried bell-shaped drinking cups across Europe, using them to swig beer
and mead distilled from grains, honey, herbs, and nuts.
Warfare had the effect of accentuating the borrowing among the region’s competing
peoples. The violent struggles and emerging kinship groups fueled a massive demand for
weapons, alcohol, and horses. Warrior elites borrowed from Anatolia the technique of
combining copper with tin to produce harder-edged weapons made of the alloy bronze.
Soon smiths were producing them in bulk—as evidenced by hoards of copper and bronze
tools and weapons from the period found in central Europe. Traders used the rivers of
central and northern Europe to exchange their prized metal products, creating one of the
first commercial networks that covered the landmass.

THE AMERICAS
In the Americas, techniques of food production and storage, transportation, and com-
munication restricted the surpluses for feeding those who did not work the land. Thus
these communities did not grow in size and complexity. For example, in the Chicama
Valley of Peru, which opens onto the Pacific Ocean, people still nestled in small coastal
villages to fish, gather shellfish, hunt, and grow beans, chili peppers, and cotton (to make
twined textiles, which they dyed with wild indigo). By around 3500 BCE, these fishermen
abandoned their cane and adobe homes for sturdier houses, half underground, on streets
lined with cobblestones.
Hundreds if not thousands of such villages dotted the seashores and riverbanks of
the Americas. Some made the technological breakthroughs required to produce pottery;
others devised irrigation systems and water sluices in areas where floods occurred. Some
even began to send their fish catches inland in return for agricultural produce. Ceremo-
nial structures highlighted communal devotion and homage to deities, and rituals to cel-
ebrate birth, death, and the memory of ancestors.
In the Americas, the largest population center was in the valley of Tehuacán (near
modern-day Mexico City). Here the domestication of corn created a food source that
enabled people to migrate from caves to a cluster of pit-house villages that supported a
growing population. By 3500 BCE the valley held nothing resembling a large city. People
lived in clusters of interdependent villages, especially on the lakeshores: here was a case
of high population density, but not urbanization.
 Conclusion! !75

SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
The same pattern occurred in sub-Saharan Africa, where the population grew but did not
concentrate in urban communities. About 12,000 years ago, when rainfall and temperatures
increased, small encampments of hunting, gathering, and fishing communities congregated
around the large lakes and rivers flowing through the region that would later become the
Sahara Desert. Large game animals roamed, posing a threat but also providing a source of
food. Over the millennia, in the wetter and more temperate locations of this vast region—
particularly the upland mountains and their foothills—permanent villages emerged.
As the Sahara region became drier, people moved to the desert’s edges, to areas along the
Niger River and the Sudan. Here they grew yams, oil palms, and plantains. In the savannah
lands that stretched all the way from the Atlantic Ocean in West Africa to the Nile River basin
in present-day Sudan, settlers grew grains such as millet and sorghum, which spread from
their places of origin to areas along the lands surrounding the Niger River basin. Residents
constructed stone dwellings and dug underground wells and food storage areas. As an increas-
ing population strained resources, groups migrated south toward the Congo River and east
toward Lake Nyanza, where they established new farms and villages. Although population
centers were often hundreds or thousands of miles apart and were smaller than the urban cen-
ters in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the widespread use of the same pottery style, with rounded
bottoms and wavy decoration, suggests that they maintained trading and cultural contacts.
In these respects sub-Saharan Africa matched the ways of life in Europe and the Americas.

Conclusion
Over the fourth and third millennia BCE, the world’s social landscape changed in signifi-
cant ways. In a few key locations, where giant rivers irrigated fertile lands, complex hu-
man cultures began to emerge. These areas experienced all the advantages and difficulties of
expanding populations: occupational specialization; social hierarchy; rising standards of
living; sophisticated systems of art and science; and centralized production and distribution
of food, clothing, and other goods. Ceremonial sites and trading crossroads became cities that
developed centralized religious and political systems. As scribes, priests, and rulers labored
to keep complex societies together, social distinctions within the city (including the roles
of men and women) and the differences between country folk and city dwellers sharpened.
Although river-basin cultures shared basic features, each one’s evolution followed a dis-
tinctive path. Where there was a single river—the Nile or the Indus—the agrarian hinter-
lands that fed cities lay along the banks of the waterway. In these areas cities were small;
thus the Egyptian and Harappan worlds enjoyed more political stability and less rivalry. In
contrast, cities in the immense floodplain of the Tigris and Euphrates needed large hinter-
lands to sustain their populations. Because of their growing power and need for resources,
Mesopotamian cities vied for preeminence, and their competition often became violent.
In most areas of the world, however, people still lived in simple, egalitarian societies
based on hunting, gathering, and basic agriculture—as in the Americas and sub-Saharan
Africa. In Anatolia, Europe, and parts of China, regional cultures emerged as agriculture
advanced and populations grew. Some of them, as in the Aegean and Europe, forged warrior
societies. Beyond these frontiers, farmers and nomads survived as they had for many centu-
ries. Thriving trading networks connected many, but not all, of these regions to one another.
Changes in climate affected everyone and could slow or even reverse development. How—
and whether—cultures adapted depended on local circumstances. As the next chapter will show,
the human agents of change often came from the fringes of larger settlements and urban areas.
 TR ACING THE GLOBAL STORYLINES

FOCUS ON: Societies in the Great River Basins

MESOPOTAMIA ƨ Egyptians build magnificent burial chambers

(pyramids) and worship a pantheon of gods.
After ƨ Peoples living along the Tigris River and
Euphrates River control floodwaters and INDUS VALLEY

You
refine irrigation techniques.
ƨ South Asian peoples harness the Indus River
ƨ Mesopotamians establish the world’s first and create cities like Harappa and Mohenjo

Read large cities, featuring powerful rulers, social Daro.

hierarchies, and monumental architecture. EAST ASIA

This ƨ Mesopotamia is the birthplace of writing. ƨ Peoples dwelling in the basins of the Yellow
River and the Yangzi River control the waters’

Chapter
EGYPT
flow and expand agriculture.
ƨ Peoples of Egypt use Nile River waters to
irrigate their lands and create a bountiful ƨ These people develop elaborate cultures,
agriculture. which scholars later label Yangshao and
Longshan, respectively.
ƨ Egyptian rulers known as pharaohs unify
their territory, establish a powerful state, and
Go to IJK develop a vibrant economy.
to see what you’ve
learned—and learn what
you’ve missed—with
personalized feedback
along the way.

CHRONOLOGY

Earliest Sumerian cities appear in Mesopotamia 3500 bce

SOUTHWEST
ASIA AND EGYPT First Dynasty emerges in Egypt 3100 bce

SOUTH ASIA

EAST ASIA
Yangshao culture thrives along Yellow River 4000–3000 bce

EUROPE AND THE

MEDITERRANEAN

Chicama Valley culture thrives on Pacific coast of South America 3500 bce
THE AMERICAS
Tehuacán Valley in Mexico thrives 3500 bce
Dense village life along many lakes and rivers 3500 bce
INNER AND CENTRAL ASIA
Spread of nomadic pastoralism begins 3500 bce

4000 bce 3000 bce

 THINKING ABOUT
STUDY QUESTIONS
GLOBAL CONNECTIONS

ƨ Thinking about River-Basin Civilizations and the Environ- 1. Where and how did river basins contribute directly to the
ment Human interaction with the environment—including emergence of cities, from 3500–2000 bce? What were
climate, geography, the characteristics of the rivers, and the some similarities and differences in irrigation techniques
continued cultivation of crops and herds—played a signifi- among these early civilizations?
cant role in shaping each early river-basin civilization. De- 2. In what ways did cities in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the
scribe ways that these environmental factors influenced the Indus Valley differ from pastoral nomadic communities?
unique characteristics of each river basin civilization. How did the development of these cities introduce a hith-
ƨ Thinking about Exchange Networks Among Early River-Basin erto unknown urban-rural divide?
Civilizations Carnelian from the Indus region buried in elite 3. What are some similarities and differences among the cit-
tombs of Egypt; lapis lazuli from the region of modern-day ies and city-states that developed in Mesopotamia, Egypt,
Afghanistan on necklaces adorning Harappan necks; shell and the Indus Valley? Compare, for example, develop-
from the Indus floodplain inlaid on Mesopotamian grave ments in social hierarchies, religion, and the production of
goods—these examples provide evidence of how trade in monumental architecture (including temples and palaces).
raw materials bound river-basin civilizations together in the 4. Compare technological developments, including writing
third millennium bce. What routes might such goods have (scribes) and other technologies (such as the use of bronze
traveled? What does this exchange of commodities suggest and jade), in the various river-basin societies. What might
about other types of exchange that may have been taking account for the regional variations in technologies?
place between these river basin societies? 5. How did long-distance trade influence the political, eco-
nomic, and technological development of urban societies
ƨ Thinking about Changing Power Relationships in River-Basin
in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Indus Valley?
Civilizations From 3500–2000 bce, as civilizations devel-
oped in the river basins of Mesopotamia, Egypt, South Asia, 6. Contrast the agricultural developments in East Asia with those
and East Asia, more intensive cultivation brought agricul- taking place in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Indus Valley at
tural surpluses that ushered in a wide range of impacts. about the same time (3500–2000 bce).
Explain, with examples from each of the river-basin civiliza- 7. Identify shared characteristics of settlements in Europe,
tions, how food surpluses led to job specialization, wealth Anatolia, the Aegean, the Americas, and Africa between
accumulation, and the resulting social hierarchies. 5000 and 2000 bce.

Old Kingdom Egypt 2649–2152 bce

Sargon’s Akkadian territorial state in Mesopotamia 2334–2103 bce
Cities appear in Indus Valley 2500 bce

Longshan Culture flourishes in Yellow River Valley 4000–2000 bce

Fortified villages in the Aegean 2500 bce

Stonehenge constructed 2000 bce

2000 bce 1000 bce

 GLOBAL THEMES AND SOURCES

Competing Perspectives
Early Writing

A s agricultural production increased and labor became more specialized in river-basin societies, scribes developed and
mastered elaborate writing systems that recorded everything from economic transactions to religious ideas. The ex-
cerpts provided here demonstrate several unique types of early writing, as well as the variety of ways it was used.
From Mesopotamia, where the world’s first writing system developed (ca. 3200 bce), one Sumerian myth attributes
the invention of cuneiform writing to Enmerkar, the Lord of Kulaba, who did not trust his messenger’s memory to deliver a
complicated message to the leader of the far-off land of Aratta. Although writing appeared in Egypt just 100 years after it
did in Mesopotamia, the hieroglyphs preserved in the pyramid of Pharaoh Unas (2375–2345 bce) represent the earliest reli-
gious writing from Egypt. These pyramid texts, such as the example included here, contain a range of rituals to facilitate the
pharoah’s passage into the afterlife.
Writing systems gradually emerged in other areas as well. As early as 2500 bce, Indus Valley scribes made notations —
usually pictorial emblems and five to six signs—on steatite seal stamps, pots, and even jewelry. The seal stamps shown here
offer an example of this still undeciphered script. In China, marks on pots produced by Yangshao peoples (ca. 5000 bce)
may have been used for record-keeping, but the earliest full writing system did not appear until the Shang Dynasty (1600–
1045 bce). Shang kings used oracle bone predictions—etched on animal bones (like the one pictured here), which were
heated until they cracked—to divine the answers to questions about the will of their ancestors and the weather. The earli-
est deciphered Greek writing, known as Linear B, did not appear until around 1450 bce among the Mycenaeans, although
other forms of Greek writing developed several hundred years earlier on Crete among the Minoans. The example here
comes from the Mycenaean palace at Pylos, on mainland Greece.

PR
P R II M
MAAR
RYY S
SOOU
URRC
CEE 2
2 .. 11 has given me a clay tablet. O lord of Aratta, after you have
examined the clay tablet, after you have learned the content
of the message, say whatever you will say to me, and I shall
Sumerian Origins of Writing announce that message in the shrine E-ana as glad tidings to
the scion of him with the glistening beard . . . .
His speech was substantial, and its contents extensive. The After he had spoken thus to him, the lord of Aratta re-
messenger, whose mouth was heavy, was not able to repeat it. ceived his kiln-fired tablet from the messenger. The lord of
Because the messenger, whose mouth was tired, was not able Aratta looked at the tablet. The transmitted message was just
nails, and his brow expressed anger. The lord of Aratta looked
to repeat it, the lord of Kulaba patted some clay and wrote the
at his kiln-fired tablet. At that moment, the lord worthy of the
message as if on a tablet. Formerly, the writing of messages
crown of lordship, the son of Enlil, the god Iškur, thundering in
on clay was not established. Now, under that sun and on that heaven and earth, caused a raging storm, a great lion, in . . .
day, it was indeed so. The lord of Kulaba inscribed the mes- He was making the mountains quake . . . , he was convuls-
sage like a tablet. It was just like that. The messenger was like ing the mountain range . . . ; the awesome radiance . . . of his
a bird, flapping its wings; he raged forth like a wolf follow- breast; he caused the mountain range to raise its voice in joy.
ing a kid. He traversed five mountains, six mountains, seven (lines 500–551)
mountains. He lifted his eyes as he approached Aratta. He Source: J. A. Black, G. Cunningham, E. Fluckiger-Hawker, E. Robson, and G. Zólyomi,
stepped joyfully into the courtyard of Aratta, he made known The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (Oxford, 1998–2006), www.etcsl.orinst
.ox.ac.uk/.
the authority of his king. Openly he spoke out the words in
his heart. The messenger transmitted the message to the lord
of Aratta:
“Your father, my master, has sent me to you; the lord of PRIMARY SOURCE 2.2
Unug, the lord of Kulaba, has sent me to you.” “What is it to
me what your master has spoken? What is it to me what he
has said?” Egyptian Mouth-Opening Ritual
“This is what my master has spoken, this is what he has
said. My king is like a huge mes˘ tree, . . . son of Enlil; this tree Cleansing the Mouth with Salt Water
has grown high, uniting heaven and earth; its crown reaches These your cool waters, Osiris—these your cool waters, oh
heaven, its trunk is set upon the earth. He who is made to Unis—have come from your son, have come from
shine forth in lordship and kingship, Enmerkar, the son of Utu, Horus.
 CHAPTER 2 ĕ Global Themes and Sources!!79

I have come having gotten Horus’ eye, that your heart An empty jar.
may become cool with it; I have gotten it under Giving cool water; taking around.
your feet. Here are Horus’s two eyes, black and white: take them to
Accept the outflow that comes from you: your heart will not your countenance, that they may brighten your face.
become weary with it. A white jar, a black jar; lifting up.
Recitation 4 Times: Come, you have been invoked. Source: James P. Allen, Writings of the Ancient World: The Ancient Pyramid Texts (Atlanta,
Cool Water; 2 pellets of natron. Georgia: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005), pp. 19–20.
Condensed milk, condensed milk, that parts your
mouth, ho, Unis! may you taste its taste in front of
those of the gods’ booths: the spittle of Horus,
condensed milk; the spittle of Seth, condensed
milk; the reconciliation of the two gods’ hearts,
condensed milk.
Recitation 4 Times: Your natron-salt is among Horus’s
Followers.
5 pellets of Nile-Valley natron of Nekheb.
Your natron is Horus’s natron;
your natron is Seth’s natron;
your natron is Thoth’s natron;
your natron is the god’s natron:
your own natron is amongst them.
Your mouth is the mouth of a milk-calf on the day he
is born.
5 Pellets of Delta natron of Shetpet.
Your natron is Horus’s natron, your natron is Seth’s natron, Pyramid of Unas.
your natron is Thoth’s natron, your natron is the god’s
natron; your natron is your ka’s natron, your natron is
your natron’s natron: this your own natron is amongst
your brothers, the gods.
PRIMARY SOURCE 2.3
Your natron is on your mouth: you should clean all your
bones and end what is (bad) against you.
Osiris, I have given you Horus’s eye: provide your face with
Harappan Seal Stones
it disseminated.
1 Pellet of natron.

The Mouth-Opening Ritual

Ho, Unis! I have fixed your jaws spread for you.
The flint spreader.
Osiris Unis, Let me part your mouth for you.
An ingot of Nile-Valley god’s-metal; an ingot of Delta
god’s-metal.
Unis, accept Horus’s eye, which went away: I have gotten it
for you that I might put it in your mouth.
Nile-Valley Zrw-salt; Delta Zrw-salt.
Ho, Unis! Accept Osiris’s šjkw-mineral.
Šjkw-mineral.
Here is the tip of the breast of Horus’s own body: accept (it)
to your mouth.
A jug of milk.
Here is the breast of your lactating sister Isis, which you
should take to your mouth. Harappan Seal Stamps.
80!!CHAPTER 2 ĕ Global Themes and Sources

PR IM A RY SOURCE 2 .4 PRIMARY SOURCE 2.5

Shang Dynasty Oracle Bone Early Greek Writing (Linear B)

A partial translation of the left-hand side of this oracle bone The plot of Qelequhontas: this much seed: 276 l. of wheat
reads: R. slave of the god, holds a lease: so much seed: 12 l. of
[Preface:] Crack making on gui-si day, Que divined: wheat
[Charge:] In the next ten days there will be no disaster.
W. the priest holds a lease: so much seed: 12 l. of wheat
[Prognostication:] The king, reading the cracks, said,
“There will be no harm; there will perhaps be the coming Thuriatis, female slave of the god, dependant of P. the old
of alarming news.” man: so much seed: 108 l. of wheat
[Verification:] When it came to the fifth day, ding-you, there The plot of Admaos, so much seed: 216 l. of wheat. . . .
really was the coming of alarming news from the west. T. slave of the god, holds a lease: so much seed: 32 l. of
Zhi Guo, reporting, said, “The Du Fang [a border people] wheat
are besieging in our eastern borders and have harmed
two settlements.” The Gong-fang also raided the fields of The plot of A . . . eus, so much seed: 144 l. of wheat. . . .
our western borders. The plot of T. slave of the god, holds a lease: 18 l. of wheat
Source: This translation follows, with slight modifications by Bryan W. Van Norden, David The plot of R., so much seed: 138 l. of wheat. . . .
N. Keightley, Sources of Shang History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), p. 44.
The plot of Aktaios, so much seed: 384 l. of wheat. . . .
Source: M. Ventris and J. Chadwick, Documents in Mycenaean Greek, 2nd ed. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1973), doc. 116.

Oracle Bone. Linear B from Pylos.

From the excavated Mycenean palace at Pylos, this is a typical
Linear B document inscribed on clay with linear marks represent-
ing syllables and signs.

QUESTIONS FOR A NA LYSIS

1. What sorts of topics does each example of early writing the writing, in particular the objects on which the writing
address? What do the topics discussed in these texts was etched?
suggest about the function of writing in their respective 3. What do these similarities and differences suggest about
societies? whether the writing spread through borrowing versus
2. Looking at the examples, what differences or similarities independent development?
do you notice in letter/symbol forms and the context for
 CHAPTER 2 ĕ Global Themes and Sources!!81

Interpreting Visual Evidence

Burials and Long-Distance Trade

O ne of the most intriguing types of evidence from the river basin societies discussed in this chapter is the elaborate buri-
als of the elite. These burials often contained tremendous wealth in the form of finely crafted items. A number of these
items show not only highly specialized artisanship but also evidence of long-distance trade in raw materials among these
third-millennium bce civilizations.
Consider the types of objects pictured here and the materials used to make them. Queen Hetepheres I of the 4th
Dynasty of Egypt (ca. 2550 bce) was buried at Giza (near Memphis and Saqqara) with silver bracelets decorated with
butterflies made of turquois, lapis lazuli, and carnelian. In southern Mesopotamia, “Queen” Pu-abi was interred in the mag-
nificent Royal Tombs of Ur (ca. 2600-2400 bce), which contained artifacts such as the Royal Standard of Ur pictured on
the first page of this chapter. Among the many items found in Pu-abi’s tomb was a lyre made with lapis lazuli and shell set
in bitumen, shown in the second image below. Excavation reports describe this lyre as being found in the arms of a female
lyrist who may have been a sacrificial victim at the death of Pu-abi. Harappan artisans in the Indus River valley used a bow
drill to perforate tiny beads in order to craft the necklace shown here from lapis lazuli, carnelian, and other semi-precious
stones. Much earlier, around 4000 bce at Varna on the coast of the Black Sea (see Map 2.7), a “big man” of a farming village
was buried with 990 gold objects (mostly decorative pieces sewn onto his clothing), as well as the flint daggers, axes, and
spearheads in the final image.

Bracelets of Queen Hetepheres I.

Harp, or “Queen’s Lyre,” from the Royal Harappan gemstone necklace with lapis
Tombs of Ur. lazuli and carnelian.

QUESTIONS FOR A NA LYSIS

1. Looking at Map 2.2, where did the raw materials used to make each of the
items here come from? Along what trade routes would these raw materials
have travelled? What does that suggest about trade between river basin
societies in the third millennium bce?
2. What does the presence of these highly-crafted items in the graves of elite
individuals suggest about river basin societies, especially in terms of wealth
accumulation, labor specialization, and the beginnings of social stratification?
Male warrior burial at Varna. 3. What does the ability and willingness to bury so much wealth in the dirt
suggest about these third-millennium bce societies, especially as compared
with earlier, more subsistence-based hunter-gatherer communities?
Before You Read This Chapter
GLOBAL STORYLINES CORE OBJECTIVES

ƨ Climate change and environmental degradation lead ƨ EXPLAIN the relationship between climate change
to the collapse of river-basin societies. and human settlement patterns in the second
ƨ Transhumant migrants (with their animal herds in millennium bce.
need of pasturage) and pastoral nomads (with their ƨ DESCRIBE the impact of transhumant herders and
horse-drawn chariots) interact, in both destructive pastoral nomads on settled communities.
and constructive ways, with settled agrarian ƨ COMPARE the varied processes by which
societies. territorial states formed and interacted with each
ƨ A fusion of migratory and settled agricultural other across Afro-Eurasia.
peoples produce expanded territorial states—in ƨ EXAMINE the development of microsocieties in
Egypt, Southwest Asia, the Indus River valley, and the South Pacific and the Aegean and EXPLAIN the
Shang China—that supplant earlier riverine relationship between geography and this
societies. development.
ƨ Microsocieties emerge in the eastern Mediterranean
and South Pacific based on expanding populations
and increased trade.