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Chapter 7 Developing Civilizations. Mesoamerican Civilizations
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Chapter 7 Developing Civilizations
Mesoamerican Civilizations 1. The Olmecs along the northeastern coast of Mexico are regarded as the mother culture of the Maya and other tribes of Mesoamerica. La Venta, the most significant of the Olmec sites, flourished from 800 to 400 B.C.E. It was located eighteen miles inland from the Gulf on an island in a swamp and probably supported a population of 18,000. It featured a complex of ceremonial mounds stretching out over one and a half miles. In addition to a huge four-sided clay pyramid, there is also present forty Colossal Heads up to eight and a half feet tall, weighing several tons each, and having Negroid features. 2. The ancient Maya lived in what constitutes present-day southeastern Mexico, almost all of Guatemala, the western part of Honduras, all of Belize, and the northern half of El Salvador. The height of the civilization came between 250 and 900 C.E. in the tropical forest lowland region of Guatemala at the base of the Yucatan Peninsula. The area was rich in game and building materials (limestone and hardwoods). There was no metal, water was uncertain, and communication difficult. Numerous ceremonial and administrative centers were erected throughout the region yet it remained disunited. At Tikal, the ceremonial precinct was surrounded by dense suburbs that extended from the center for several miles. The population may have numbered as much as 100,000. At Palenque there were a number of temple-pyramids characterized by vaulted galleries, courtyards or patios, and use of stucco work. The principal complex, called the Palace, is about 300 feet long and 240 feet wide with a corbel vaulted aqueduct underneath which carried fresh water. The brilliance of this Classic Mayan civilization faded in about the eighth or ninth century for unknown reasons. Some scholars suggest their demise may have come as a consequence of not only rebellion against increasing demands by the noble and priest class for larger and more ornate ceremonial centers but also greater agricultural production to support a growing population. The latter put strains on the commoners and may also have led to warfare and militarism. These pressures perhaps led to a collapse as the people moved further and further from the centers. 3. The Post Classic Maya flourished from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century and centered on the YucatánPeninsula. The peninsula is a limestone shelf, mostly without surface rivers. The soil is thin and water is taken from cenotes (sinkholes created by collapse of underground caverns). The Yucatec Maya were influenced by forces from central Mexico, the Toltecs. Mexican legend told of a king-priest being forced from Tula (near Mexico City) at the end of the tenth century. He and his followers proceeded to the Gulf and then to the Yucatan Peninsula and introduced the harsh traditions of the Mexican northwest as well as their art and architecture. The Toltecs were centered at Chichén Itzá which exercised influence and control. Decline set in between 1200 to about 1450. 4. Teotihuacán was a center of Mesoamerican civilization from 100 to 900. By 500 it covered about eight square miles. The dozen springs and rich agricultural fields (utilizing irrigation, terracing, and canals) supported a population of about 200,000. The city was centered on a two mile long, 150 feet wide avenue off of which branched streets and alleys containing more than three thousand structures including temples, palaces, ball courts, dwellings, and two impressive pyramids, the largest of which was 700 feet on each of the four sides and two hundred feet high. Apparently, Teotihuacán used its agricultural surpluses to trade for raw materials that could be turned into manufactured goods. Trade in these finished products extended to both coasts and south to Guatamala. Around 700, Teotihuacán was destroyed by semi-barbarians from the southwest. Question: 1. What were the characteristics of the Mayan and Aztec civilizations? Mesoamerican Civilizations
The Valley of Mexico Under Aztec Rule 1. The Aztecs (Mexica) arrived in the crowded Valley of Mexico sometime in the early first millennium C.E. They received a cold reception due to their disgusting habits such as human sacrifice. Nevertheless, they were useful mercenaries. From the 1270s to 1319 the Aztecs resided on the hill of Chapultepec until driven from there by other cities. The survivors escaped by concealing themselves in the marshes along the lakeshore until it was safe to come out. Subject to the Culhuacan, the remaining Aztecs again served as mercenaries until their unsavory practices caused them to be scattered again. Once more they took refuge in the swamps in about 1345 occupied a small island which was enlarged by dredging the lake bottom. Here the Aztecs built the great city of Tenochtitlan and to the north an offshoot of the Aztecs from Azcapotzalco built Tlatelolco. In 1473 Tlatelolco was incorporated into Tenochtitlan. All told, Tenochtitlan covered some 2500 acres (Rome covered 3423 acres). The combined Tenochtitlan-Tlatelolco had between 60,000 and 120,000 household, and a population of more than 500,000 but less than a million (Jacques Soustelle, Daily Life of the Aztecs, p. 9). From the island the Aztecs built causeways to the mainland and a three mile aqueduct from Chapultepec for drinking water. In 1428 Tenochtitlan joined Texcoco and Tacuba (Tlacopan) to throw off the tyranny of Azcapotzalco. The victory in 1430 led to the formation of the Triple Alliance. By the 1470s Tenochtitlan dominated the alliance and the lake. 2. The shore of the bay opposite Tenochtitlan was dotted with towns and villages. Lake Texcoco was a great salt lake, bordered on the south by the fresh-water lakes of Xochimilco and Chalco. There were numerous other islands in the bay, especially the island of Tlatelolco immediately to the north of Tenochtitlan which would be linked by a bridge. in 1449 a north-south dike of ten miles was built from Iztapalapan to control flooding of Lake Texcoco. 3. The Spaniards under Cortes entered Tenochtitlan on November 8, 1519, by way of the causeway of Itzapalapan. The Spaniards would be forced to flee on the night of June 30, 1520, by the Tacuba causeway. 4. Northeast of the lake was the great ancient city of Teotihuacan which had begun to emerge as a center of culture by about 200 B.C.E. Covering about eight square miles, it was a carefully planned city on a grid pattern featuring a main thoroughfare 150 feet wide and more than two miles long. It contained perhaps 150,000 people. The community was probably built on trade that extended throughout central Mexico and may have constituted an empire. By about 800 it fell to its enemies. Questions: 1. Why had the Aztecs settled in Lake Texcoco? 2. What were the strengths and weaknesses of Tenochtitlan? The Valley of Mexico under Aztec Rule
Mesoamerica • Teotihuacán, 500-800 • City of 200,000 • Two pyramids, ball courts, ceremonial buildings • Religious importance • Maya • Agricultural techniques • Built temples, palaces, and pyramids • Written language and calendar • Importance of shedding royal blood for the gods • Aztecs • Tenochtitlán • Vassal states, tribute paying city-states • Warrior society; religious need for sacrifice
The Inca Empire, about 1500 C.E 1. About 600 C.E. the focus of Andean civilization was the highlands of modern Bolivia at Tiahuanaco just south of Lake Titicaca. A great ceremonial center, Tiahuanaco was the capital of a military state eventually controlling all of southern Peru. By about 1000, the state had collapsed, being replaced by a number of smaller states. 2. In the eleventh century the kingdom of Chimor emerged in the Moche River valley where ancient Moche had been located. The capital, Chan Chan, had a population of about 30,000 and covered about twelve square miles. The kingdom was destroyed in the late fifteenth century as the Incas expanded north from Cuzco. High in the mountains of southern Peru, Cuzco was only a small community in the late fourteenth century. Under Pachakuti Inca, who was crowned in 1438, expansion began. With the aid of his son Topa Inca, the Inca's campaign of conquest extended north beyond modern Quito by 1527 and south to modern Santiago. Brought under the domination of the Incas were perhaps nine million people. Political and military control was complimented by linguistic domination as Incan Quechua became the language of the people (as it remains today for more than 80 percent of the central Andean Indians). Also holding the empire together was an elaborate road system consisting of 24,800 miles of footpaths, rope bridges, and paved stretches. These, however, were used onlt by the military, administrators, and merchants. They were not traveled by ordinary people. 3. One of the most important keys to the Incan Empire was its intensive agriculture based on irrigation and terracing. It supported the army, the administrative bureaucracy, the priesthood, and was sufficient enough to put away a surplus for hard times. 4. Machu Pichu was an Incan fortress-city high in the AndesMountains northwest of Cuzco. It covered one hundred acres and on the terraced hillsides there was intensive agriculture. It served as a retreat for the last Inca rulers after their defeat in the middle of the sixteenth century. Questions: 1. How were the Incas able to control such a vast empire? 2. What were the strengths and weaknesses of the Incan Empire? The Inca Empire about 1500 C.E.
Andean Civilization • Moche, 100-700 • Irrigation system • Hierarchical society • Religion • Inka • Territorial expansion, roac network • Expanded agricultural production • Hierarchical and bureaucratic government • Religion
Example of early South American ceramics. Sixth to ninth centuries, Peru
The Continent of Africa 1. Africa covers twenty percent of the earth's land surface. There are five climatic zones to the continent. In the north along the Mediterranean are fertile lands rimmed by mountains. Though unpredictable, there is sufficient rainfall for agriculture in these areas. Similar fertile lands are found on the southwestern Cape of GoodHope. South of the northern mountains is the great Sahara Desert stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the RedSea, covering 3.5 million square miles. Bracketing this and other deserts of Africa is the sahel, a dry, treeless semi-arid grass-covered plain. The Sahara gives way to savannahs and then to tropical rain forests along the coast in the area of the Niger River. These forests extend into the interior of central Africa until met by the mountains, upland plateaus, and lakes of eastern Africa. In the East African Rift Valley of modern Kenya, hominids made their appearance. Further to the south are the dense jungles of equatorial Africa watered by the Congo (Zaire) River. These lands give way to the hills, plateaus, savannahs, and deserts of the south. 2. While evidence suggests that agriculture was pursued in the lower Nile valley around 5000 B.C.E., there may have been even earlier activity in the area of Nubia at the confluence of the White and Blue Nile. Here farmers may have cultivated sorghum and millet on the upper Nile as early as the eleventh millennium B.C.E. By at least 3000 B.C.E. farming had spread throughout the savannas and between 1500 and 1000 B.C.E. settled agriculture had reached south into the Rift Valley. From the Nile valley, agriculture also moved west to the central and western Sudan. By the first century B.C.E. settled agriculture was in West Africa from where it spread to the forests. 3. By the third millennium B.C.E. the upper and lower Niletrade of Nubia included ivory, ebony, frankincense, gold, oils, cotton, and slaves. Meroe was strategically located at the intersection of the northern African trade routes and the Nile. It was here that iron working was perhaps developed (either introduced indigenously or brought by the Phoenicians to Egypt). From the Nile, iron smelting spread west and was present in West Africa by 250 B.C.E. and sub-Saharan Africa by 600 C.E. Some evidence, however, suggests iron smelting took place as early as 500 B.C.E. in the regions of the Niger River. 4. One of the most important areas of West Africa was Ghana with its capital at Saleh, a city of 15,000-20,000 by the twelfth century. Emerging in the fifth century C.E. north of the Senegaland Niger Rivers, it was located near one of the richest gold producing areas in Africa. The gold was procured from neighboring people and transported to Marrakech and Morocco where it was distributed to the northern world. Ghana also exported to the Mediterranean ivory, ostrich feathers, hides, leather goods, and ultimately slaves. In 992 Ghana captured the Berber town of Awdaghast which controlled the southern portion of the major trans-Saharan trade routes. By the thirteenth century, Ghana was destroyed and in its place grew several states including Mali, Songhai, Kanem-Bornu, and the Hausa. Mali extended from the Atlantic coast to the Niger River. Timbuktu was not only a main trading center for the gold that was used to build the power of Mali but also by the fifteenth century it had developed into a center of scholarship and learning. Songhai, at the eastern end of the Niger, was under Mali's control until 1375. By the late fifteenth century Songhai dominated the entire upper Niger and had captured Timbuktu. Under Songhai trans-Saharan trade reached its height focusing on gold, slaves, and ivory. At the end of the sixteenth century Songhai collapsed. The fourth significant state was Kanem-Bornu near Lake Chad. Kanem from 1100 to 1500 controlled the trade routes north to the Mediterranean and east to the Nile. In the fifteenth century power shifted to Bornu. Question: 1. How did geography shape the development of ancient Africa? The Continent Africa
Ancient Ethiopia and Nubia 1. The origins of agriculture in Egypt may have been in the area called Nubia at the confluence of the White and Blue Nile. It would appear that crops such as sorghum and millet were being cultivated as early as the eleventh millennium B.C.E. By the third millennium B.C.E. the upper and lower Nile trade of Nubia included such goods as ivory, ebony, frankincense, gold, oils, cotton, and slaves. 2. Neolithic groups were migrating east from the Sahara Desert by at least 2200 B.C.E. and around 1500 B.C.E. these dark skinned people had created their own kingdom of Kush. 3. About 750 B.C.E. the Kushites took advantage of Egyptian decay and conquered Thebes, the capital of Lower Egypt. The Kushites, however, soon withdrew back to their homeland as the Assyrians burst into Egypt in 670 B.C.E. Their rule centered on the important trading center of Meroe from which the Kushites served as the conduit for goods from Central and East Africa as well as the Red Sea to Rome and its tributaries. The zenith of Kush was from 250 B.C.E to 200 C.E. 4. Axum was located in the northern highlands of Ethiopia. It was colonized about 500 B.C.E. by the kingdom of Saba (Sheba) across the Red Sea on the southern tip of the Arab Peninsula (Yemen). When Saba declined, Axum became independent. Its prosperity was based upon trade moving between India and the Mediterranean. Key was the Red Sea port of Adulis. Among the items exported were ivory, frankincense, myrrh, and slaves while imports included textile, metal goods, wine, and olive oil. In about 330 C.E. Kush was eliminated as a rival when it was conquered. 5. The zenith of Axum was from about 200 to 400 C.E. In the sixth and seventh centuries the kingdom was Christianized and the church became Monophysite in doctrine (the single, unitary nature of Jesus). Christianity became the tool for unifying the various chieftains of Axum into the kingdom of Ethiopia. By the tenth century the AxumiteKingdom had disappeared, replaced by Christian Ethiopia. In relative seclusion due to mountainous and almost inaccessible highlands, a stable monarchy and distinctive Christian culture were created. Questions: 1. How was Kush an important link to the Mediterranean civilizations? 2. What was the role of geography and location in the rise of Axum and its successor Ethiopia? Ancient Ethiopia and Nubia
Africa • Geographical and Social Diversity • Ecological problems • Mixed economies of farming and herding • Communal relationships • North Africa is Mediterranean in orientation • Ethiopia • Semitic tribes from Yemen migration, 700 B.C.E. • Capital at Axum, port of Adulis • Christian
The Emergence of States in Africa 1. In the tenth century the Muslim Umayyads of Spain gained control of Morocco but lost it to the Almoravids in the middle of the eleventh century. They soon conquered western Algeria and southern Spain. The Almoravids were succeeded in 1140 by the Almohads (Muslim Berbers) from the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. 2. In 909 a claimant of descendentcy from Fatimah (Muhammad's daughter) seized Algeria and Tunisia. By the second half of the tenth century Egypt had fallen to the Fatimids who built a new capital at Cairo. Before the empire crumbled in the eleventh century, they controlled southern Syria, the Hijaz, and Yemen. 3. Ghana built its power in the fifth century on the gold trade coming from the Senegal and Niger Rivers. It also had substantial agricultural land that supported a population of about 200,000. By the thirteenth century Ghana's empire was destroyed. Nearby Songhai did not get involved in the gold trade until the fourteenth century. Its orientation was toward the forest trade of the lower Niger and the trans-Saharan trade to eastern Algeria. Developing between the eighth and ninth centuries, Kanem's formation was as a nomadic federation of black tribes that eventually formed a single people, the Kanuri. These people took over the sedentary societies of Kanem east of Lake Chad and later Bornu, west of the lake. By the thirteenth century Kanem-Bornu controlled the southern terminus of the trans-Saharan trade route to the Mediterranean. To the south was Benin on the southern Niger. Existing at least by the twelfth century, its villages were directed by a powerful king in the fifteenth century. 4. Zimbabwe, south of the Zambezi River, was located in a rocky, savanna-woodland watershed far enough inland never to be influenced by Islam. It was founded by eleventh century Bantu speakers called the Shona and flourished until the sixteenth century. The area consisted of at least 150 settlements that were apparently involved in the trade of East Africa. Among its products was gold found to the west and north and traded to Sofala on the coast. 5. Ethiopia, centered at Axum, had commercial ties to Rome, Byzantium, as well as to the east across the Indian Ocean. It also exercised significant military and political power in eastern Africa but in the eighth century the Muslims cut off Axum's commercial contacts with the Byzantine Empire. Soon, Ethiopia lost its control of the Red Sea trade routes. 6. Kongo, located near the mouth of the Kongo River, was formed in the fourteenth century by a Bantu prince. Ultimately, six states were brought under the Mani Kongo ("lord of the Kongo"). By the 1400s, Kongo was a bureaucratic monarchy. Question: 1. How did the African states differ in their organization? The Emergence of States in Africa
