What is Civilization?

Marshall High School Mr. Cline Western Civilization I: Ancient Foundations Unit One BE • What is an 'Ice Age'?

• The term ice age refers to a period of time in which the surface of the earth is covered with sheets of ice called glaciers.

• This does not mean that earth is one big snowball for an entire ice age.

• While this happens on occasion, most ice ages are made up of a series of warm and cold spells.

• In cold periods of glaciation, glaciers extend from poles toward the equator. And in warm periods of interglaciation, the glaciers retreat back to the poles.

• So while the term ice age might bring to mind images of wooly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers, it is important to remember that we are currently in an ice age, and have been for about 2.8 million years.

• We just happen to be in a period of interglaciation.

• Ice ages create new challenges for life by significantly altering the environment in which life forms compete.

• Ice ages lower the world's temperature, making it hard for cold-blooded animals to survive.

• Ice ages also tend to make the world a drier place by locking up the moisture in ice. * What is an ‘Ice Age'?

• This makes it difficult for plants to survive on land. This, in turn, makes it very difficult for land-dwelling animals to find food.

• Yet these challenges also present new opportunities.

• Mammals owe their current primacy to ice ages wiping out much of their competition. And while most primates suffered from the reduction of lush rainforests into arid grasslands, one sub-branch of this family would abandon the protection of trees to wander the earth in search of food.

• These were the first hominids, ancestors of modern humans.

* The Great Flood

• The Great Flood myth has been around for over eight millennia. Could it be more than a myth? What could have caused such a flood, and what effects has it had on humans?

• The Story of Noah and the Ark

• Most of us are familiar with the tale of Noah and the flood. For those of you who aren't, here's a quick recap.

• God is mad at humanity and decides to wipe us all out by flooding the earth. The only person God doesn't seem to hate is Noah, so He warns Noah of the impending flood. * The Great Flood

• God orders Noah to build an ark, providing specific instructions about the dimensions and materials to be used. In the ark, Noah is to gather his family and two of every animal.

• Noah does as he is told. He builds the ark, gathers his family and marches all the animals on board two by two. Then, it starts to rain.

• God makes it rain for 40 days and 40 nights, flooding the earth. Noah, his family and the animals he gathered are the only survivors.

• After the rains had stopped, Noah released a raven, which never returned. Seven days later, Noah released a dove, which returned having found nothing to land on. Seven days after that, Noah released the dove again. This time it returned with a sprig of olive. Another seven days and Noah released the dove. It never returned. Another seven days and Noah released the dove one last time. It never returned.

• Noah knew this meant the dove had found land. The waters subsided and the ark landed on a mountain. Noah, his family and the animals left the ark, and God promised never to flood the earth again. And he left us the rainbow as a sign of this covenant.

• Neat story, yes? But what if it's not just a story? * The Great Flood

• Other Flood Myths

• What if I were to tell you that this story shows up across numerous cultures, spaced across much of the world?

• We find a similar tale in one of the oldest myths recorded, the Atra-Hasis, a Sumerian myth written on clay tablets more than 1,000 years before the story of Noah, around 1800 BC.

• The myth tells how Atrahasis, the hero of the story, was warned by the God Enki of the Goddess Enlil's plan to flood the earth.

• In this version, it was not man's wickedness that drove the gods to flood the earth. It was simply an attempt to control the human population, which they thought was growing out of control.

• Enki also tells Atrahasis to build an ark, and gives him almost the exact same instructions even down to the materials and dimensions.

• Atrahasis builds the ark, boards it with his family and a bunch of animals, and survives the flood.

• This story is found again in the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, written eight centuries later, also on clay tablets. * The Great Flood

• Other Flood Myths

• Here, the similarities to Noah run even deeper. Like before, a god, Ea this time, tells the hero, Utnapishtim, to build a massive ark and bring into it his family and all the animals of the field.

• The gods then flood the earth to punish humans for their sinful ways. The storm lasts for six days and six nights, and wipes out the rest of the human race.

• Like Noah, Utnapishtim gets stuck on a mountain. Like Noah, he releases birds - first a dove, then a sparrow, then a raven. The first two return quickly. When the raven does not return, he knows it is safe to leave the ark. The goddess, Enlil, promises never to flood the earth again and rewards Utnapishtim with eternal life.

• Thus, it seems that we've been telling the story of the flood as a species for almost 4,000 years. Most interpret this similarity as evidence that Noah's story is very old and was borrowed from earlier cultures. This is probably true.

• But that does not explain the fact that a great flood is featured in the mythology of almost every ancient culture.

• The Greek author, Hesiod, wrote of the flood, and it is mentioned in several ancient Hindu texts. * The Great Flood

• Other Flood Myths

• Even the distant Mayans had their own, unique flood myths.

• Now, I can understand Greeks and Indians retelling a story they heard from a Babylonian, but how on earth would the Maya, on the other end of the world, have known the story as well?

• That returns us to our earlier question. What if it's not just a story? What if there actually was a flood some time in our history, but so long ago that the accounts survive only in myth? Some scholars believe they have found such a flood.

• Historical Accounts of the Real 'Flood'

• When we look back in the geological record, we find that around 8,200 years ago (6400 BC), global temperatures dropped drastically.

• Scientists believe this sudden drop in temperature occurred when Lake Agassiz - a vast, prehistoric glacial lake that covered much of North America - finally melted out of the glacial walls that contained it and poured into the world's oceans. Sea levels may have risen by as much as two meters. * The Great Flood

• Historical Accounts of the Real 'Flood'

• When we look back in the geological record, we find that around 8,200 years ago (6400 BC), global temperatures dropped drastically.

• Scientists believe this sudden drop in temperature occurred when Lake Agassiz - a vast, prehistoric glacial lake that covered much of North America - finally melted out of the glacial walls that contained it and poured into the world's oceans. Sea levels may have risen by as much as two meters.

• Now, imagine you're farming in a fertile basin near the Black Sea. Miles to the west, the Mediterranean has been steadily rising. Suddenly, it tears a hole through the Bosporus and begins pouring into the Black Sea basin. Over the course of a week, the water level rises three meters, submerging millions of acres.

• The entire world, as you know it, is suddenly under water. Hundreds of thousands of people who had settled to farm the area would be drowned. Those who survived would need to find new homes.

• The Great Indo-European Diaspora

• Linguistics (the study of languages) offers support to the great flood theory.

• Many have suggested that such a disaster might have been responsible for the Indo-European Diaspora (a migration of people from their homeland). * The Great Flood

• The Great Indo-European Diaspora

• Studies of languages suggest that around 8,000 years ago, a huge human migration took place. A tide of people poured out of the Black Sea basin in all directions. These people all seem to have spoken a common language at one point, but as they settled across Europe and the Near East, they lost contact with one another and their languages diverged.

• Today we call the original common language Proto-Indo-European.

• Almost every European language and all Near Eastern languages are descendants of Proto-Indo-European.

• While this common language no longer exists, it lives on in its children.

• For example, every Indo-European language uses the sound ma to refer to mother. Yet, different groups of languages have different sounds for father.

• We and the Germans make a fa sound, while cultures along the Mediterranean use a pa sound.

• Linguists use these difference and similarities to break languages into families.

• Those that are the most similar, like Spanish and Italian, separated most recently (about 2,000 years ago). * The Great Flood

• The Great Indo-European Diaspora

• Those that are the most different, like Hindi and English, separated much longer ago.

• By tracing these similarities and divergences, linguists have traced the paths of our ancestors across the Western world, back across space and time, to the Black Sea basin, where the mother of Indo-European languages (Proto-Indo-European) was spoken around 6400 BC.

• So, from the perspective of those Proto-Indo-European people farming along the Black Sea, the Great Flood was the greatest catastrophe they had ever known. We can still sense their terror in the myths that survive to this day.

• Benefits of the Great Flood

• With the benefit of hindsight, the Great Flood may have been the best thing to happen to our species. Without the Great Flood, agriculture, civilization - perhaps even man as we knew him - might have remained a localized affair for a thousand more years, spreading only by small increments as time progressed.

• Instead, a relatively small group of dedicated agriculturalists was abruptly broken apart and quickly spread around the world. We can still see traces of this flight in the languages we speak today. * The Great Flood

• Benefits of the Great Flood

• With agriculture to support them, these groups of Indo-Europeans came to dominate the regions in which they settled.

• Within a few thousand years, settled agriculture had replaced nomadic hunter gathering from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Himalayas, from the Scottish Highlands to the Nile Valley.

• One of these groups of refugee farmers would come to settle in the Fertile Crescent and found the Sumerian civilization. It would be another 3,000 years before the Sumerians developed writing. Yet after all those generations, they still remembered the flood and wrote it down. Giving us the story we still tell our children to this day.

• As you can also tell, the Great Flood Myths became integral parts of religion, as well, and with that, let’s look at the most widely disseminated religious practices of the time. * Prehistoric Religion

• We actually know very little about prehistoric religion. This is not surprising.

• Imagine yourself in a church. Now remove everything that a caveman would not have: no pews, no stained glass windows, no building at all. All you're left with is an altar, religious symbols and holy vessels, and all of those would be of a primitive design. Let's add a fire for light and cooking… there. Welcome to caveman church.

• The problem is it's hard to tell a caveman church from a caveman house.

• Even if they had done everything they could to decorate a holy place, after 30,000 years it ends up looking like this. Still, let us see what we can learn from this mess.

• We've got some animal bones, a couple of knives, a raised block… but that could be anything.

• This could be a workshop for chipping blades or a place for butchering animals.

• Ah, but look here. What is THIS? Well, it's obviously a woman.

• She has a distended belly, so perhaps a pregnant woman? She's made out of stone. The only other things I see made of stone are clearly tools, so she must be important. * Prehistoric Religion

• Maybe she's a goddess... a Mother Goddess. Perhaps she even represents the Earth itself, the mother of all things.

• This may all seem very tenuous, but it's really all we have to work with.

• The Mother Goddess

• Certainly, prehistoric humans did make other works of art. We've found some very nice cave painting and some other carvings.

• However, almost all other examples of prehistoric art are of animals, mostly the very animals our ancestors spent their lives hunting.

• While these images and figurines might bear some religious significance, it would be impossible to determine the nature of such animal worship beyond their obvious importance as a source of food and thus a sustainer of life.

• Oh, if only these people had known how to write!

• Yet these Mother Goddess figures show up all over the place. * Prehistoric Religion

• The Mother Goddess

• This one we're looking at is the Venus of Hohle Fels.

• Arguably the oldest example of sculpture, she was made 40,000 years ago and found near Schelklingen, Germany. * Prehistoric Religion

• The Mother Goddess

• This is her granddaughter, the Venus of Dolni Vestonice.

• She was carved about 30,000 years ago in the Moravian basin of what is now called the Czech Republic. * Prehistoric Religion

• The Mother Goddess

• And this is HER granddaughter, the Venus of Willendorf.

• She was carved 6,000 years later, near the modern day city of Willendorf in Austria. * Prehistoric Religion

• The Mother Goddess

• Archaeologists have discovered hundreds of these figurines around the world.

• Though style and technique may change, these figures all retain their femininity.

• This one here was found in Çatalhöyük, one of the oldest cities we've discovered, dated to around 7,500 BC. * Prehistoric Religion

• The Mother Goddess

• A chain of Aegean islands called the Cyclades maintained this practice of creating Mother Goddess figurines well into the third millennium BC.

• They are famous for their unique take on this figure.

• Of course by then the people of the Cyclades were also making other figures - of men, of animals, even of musicians - but Mother Goddess figures still predominate. * Prehistoric Religion

• Mother Goddesses of the Mediterranean

• It is believed by some that Mother Goddess worship reached its apex in Minoan Civilization.

• This civilization arose in Crete around the 27th century BC and flourished until its destruction around the 17th century BC by the explosion of Thera (modern day Santorini), a small island with a big volcano less than 200 km to the north of Crete.

• Somewhere along the way, Mother Goddesses had become associated with snakes.

• Snakes live in the Earth; Mother Goddesses represent the Earth - it makes sense.

• The Minoans seemed to think this made sense as well and created their Mother Goddesses with a lot of snakes, as you can see in this one example here.

* Prehistoric Religion

• Mother Goddesses of the Mediterranean

• There is some evidence that Minoan religion had expanded to include male deities as well, yet Mother Goddess figures far outnumber their male counterparts.

• These male deities are normally represented as smaller, less important 'prince consorts' to the Great Goddess, as seen in this impression of a Minoan signet ring. * Prehistoric Religion

• Mother Goddesses of the Mediterranean

• Male Figures

• Indeed, the female predominates all of Minoan art: their murals, their sculpture, even their pottery.

• However, there is one undeniably male figure that appears repeatedly in Minoan art - that of the bull.

• Nevertheless, it is worth noting that representations of bulls are almost always found near representations of a ceremonial axe, or labrys, presumably used to end the life of said bull.

• Sir Arthur Evan speculated that the Minoans were a matriarchal society in which the power of the male force (the bull) was curbed and cut short for the good of society by a female force.

• We can see this in the famous Bull Jumping mural. The bull is restrained by two women. All around the border is a repeating pattern of overlapping axe blades. Within female control the bull may live, strive, work, thrill and entertain, yet outside of that constraint, the axe waits.

* Prehistoric Religion

• Mother Goddesses of the Mediterranean

• Male Figures

• Of course, Evans and his ilk draw many of their interpretations from the accounts and myths of later patriarchal societies.

• Their perspectives, while certainly nearer in time, are likely to carry their own biases. Yet even to them, much of Mother Goddess worship was as much of a mystery as it is to us now.

• Further Evolution

• The Catholic Church redirected the inclination to worship the Mother Goddess to the Virgin Mary

• Thus for tens of thousands of years, Mother Goddesses seem to have dominated prehistoric religion.

• Even when male gods had supplanted their place of primacy, the Mother Goddess never really disappeared.

• We can see her in Ninsun of Mesopotamian mythology, in Astarte of Syria, in Egypt's Hathor, in the Greek's Gaia. * Prehistoric Religion

• Further Evolution

• The Catholic Church redirected the inclination to worship the Mother Goddess to the Virgin Mary

• Thus for tens of thousands of years, Mother Goddesses seem to have dominated prehistoric religion.

• Even when male gods had supplanted their place of primacy, the Mother Goddess never really disappeared.

• We can see her in Ninsun of Mesopotamian mythology, in Astarte of Syria, in Egypt's Hathor, in the Greek's Gaia.

• Even the Catholic Church could not put a stop to Mother Goddess worship.

• The best they could do was to try to redirect this religious fervor toward the Holy Mother, Mary.

• Today worship of the Mother Goddess is alive and well.

• While modern Western religions may scoff at her worshipers, the Wiccan burning honey cakes to the Great Mother at some inner city park is actually participating in a rite to a deity who was worshiped 40,000 years before Abraham.

• Of course these religious practices fit in well with the lifestyle of the nomad, but what exactly is this lifestyle? * Nomadic Lifestyle Definition

• We take many things for granted in modern America. Nearly all Americans have a home of some sort; be it a studio apartment or a mansion, most of us go back to the same place at the end of each day. However, this is not true for all of the world's population today, and it certainly was not true for our earliest ancestors.

• There are still tribes in the Eurasian steppe, Africa, and even Europe who live as our ancestors did: as nomads.

• The nomadic lifestyle is likely the oldest form of human society still practiced today.

• Generally, nomads are people and tribes who do not consider themselves attached to a specific plot of land.

• Though nomadic societies have their own laws and customs, they do not practice and have little knowledge of Western property rights.

• Nomadic civilizations move from place to place and region to region depending on variables such as climate, season, availability of water, and the movement of animal herds.

• In order to better understand nomadism, let's take a look at some examples throughout history and some examples from today.

• The Plains Native Americans

• The indigenous civilizations of the Plains region of North America consisted of dozens of nomadic tribes and cultures. * Nomadic Lifestyle Definition

• The Plains Native Americans

• Prior to the arrival of European settlers in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Plains cultures followed the great herds of American buffalo which fed on the grasslands that covered the region.

• These peoples never erected permanent dwellings, preferring to live either in makeshift huts erected from grass and mud, or the hide and wood 'tipis' often seen in common representations of Plains cultures.

• The Eurasian Steppe and Russia

• Tribes and families of nomads are still commonplace today in the Eurasian steppe - an enormous region of flat grasslands similar to the North American plains.

• Families in the steppe often move from place to place according to temperature and availability of grassland.

• They live in often circular tents made from hide and timber, called 'yurts.'

• The tribes of the steppe differ from the cultures of the Plains, as they practice some modest animal husbandry.

• Most families have at least a few domesticated animals - some may even have entire herds - to provide them with milk, eggs, and meat. * Nomadic Lifestyle Definition

• The Eurasian Steppe and Russia

• Indeed, steppe people often move from region to region in order to find adequate vegetation for cattle to graze.

• Nomadic Lifestyle importance

• Nomadism is an important practice to understand because historians and archaeologists believe that nomadic hunting societies like those of the American Plains were the earliest forms of human civilization.

• Mankind's earliest ancestors travelled great distance following herds of animals and attempting to domesticate their own; had they not succeeded, modern human culture, from the nomadic pastoralism in southern Siberia to North America, may not have been possible.

• But, how did humans come to be nomads, and more importantly, why, did the vast majority of humanity give up this way of life in exchange for civilization?