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The Classical Era in World History: the Big Picture 500 B.C.E

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The Classical Era in World History: the Big Picture 500 B.C.E The Classical Era in World History: The Big Picture 500 B.C.E. – 500 C. Robert W. Strayer Studying world history has much in common with using unified political system fragmented into a series of the zoom lens of a cam- era. Sometimes, we pull the lens warring states. back in order to get a picture of the broadest possible panorama. At other times, we zoom in a bit for a middle- range shot, or even farther for a close-up of some particular feature of the historical landscape. Students of Even if particular First Civilizations broke down, there world history soon become comfortable with moving was no going back. Civilization as a form of human back and forth among these several perspectives. community proved durable and resilient as well as periodically fragile. Thus, in the thousand years between As we bid farewell to the First Civilizations, we will take 500 B.C.E. and 500 C.E., new or enlarged urban-centered the opportunity to pull back the lens and look broadly, and state-based societies emerged to replace the First and briefly, at the entire age of agricultural civilizations, a Civilizations in the Mediterranean basin, the Middle East, period from about 3500 B.C.E., when the earliest of the India, China, Mesoamerica, and the Andes. Furthermore, First Civilizations arose, to about 1750 C.E., when the smaller expressions of civilization began to take shape first Industrial Revolution launched a new and elsewhere—in Ethiopia and West Africa, in Japan and distinctively modern phase of world history. During these Indonesia, in Vietnam and Cambodia. In short, the more than 5,000 years, the most prominent large-scale development of civilization was becoming a global trend was the globalization of civilization as this new process. form of human community increasingly spread across the planet, encompassing more people and larger Many of these “second wave” civilizations likewise territories. perished, as the collapses of the Roman Empire, Han dynasty China, and the Mayan cities remind us. They The first wave of that process, addressed in Chapter 3, were followed by yet a “third wave” of civilizations was already global in scope, with expressions in Asia, (roughly 500 to 1500 C.E.; see Part Three). Some of them Africa, and the Americas. Those First Civilizations represented the persistence or renewal of older generated the most impressive and powerful human patterns, as in the case of China, for example, while societies created thus far, but they proved fragile and elsewhere—such as in Western Europe, Russia, Japan, vulnerable as well. The always-quarreling city-states of and West Africa — new civilizations emerged, all of ancient Mesopotamia had long ago been absorbed into which borrowed heavily from their more-established the larger empires of Babylon and Assyria. During the neighbors. The largest of these, Islamic civilization, first millennium B.C.E., Egypt too fell victim to a series of incorporated a number of older centers of civilization, foreign invaders, including the forces of Nubia, Assyria, Egypt and Mesopotamia for example, under the Alexander the Great, and the Roman Empire. The Indus umbrella of a new religion. The globalization of Valley civilization likewise declined sharply, as civilization continued apace. deforestation, topsoil erosion, and decreased rainfall led to desertification and political collapse by 1500 B.C.E. The size and prominence of these civilizations sometimes Norte Chico civilization seems to have faded away by lead historians and history textbooks to ignore those 1800 B.C.E. The end of Olmec civilization around 400 cultures that did not embrace the city and state centered B.C.E. has long puzzled historians, for it seems that the characteristic of civilizations. World history, as a field of Olmecs themselves razed and then abandoned their study, has often been slanted in the direction of major cities even as their civilizational style spread to civilizations at the expense of other forms of human neighboring peoples. About the same time, China’s community. To counteract that tendency, the following chapters will, on occasion, point out the continuing would occur later with the breakthrough of historical development of gathering and hunting peoples, industrialization. agricultural societies organized around kinship principles and village life, emerging chiefdoms, and pastoral peoples. Changes in Civilization While this panoramic perspective allows us to see the broadest outlines of the human journey, it also obscures much of great importance that took place during the second and third waves of the age of agrarian Continuities in Civilization civilization. If we zoom in a bit more closely, significant changes emerge, even if they did not result in a thorough The renewal and expansion of civilization, however, transformation of human life. Population, for example, remains the leading story. As this account of the human grew more rapidly than ever before during this period, as journey moves into the second and third waves of the Snapshot illustrates. Even though the overall trend civilization, the question arises as to how they differed was up, important fluctuations interrupted the pattern, from the first ones. From a panoramic perspective, the especially during the first millennium C.E., when no answer is “not much.” States and empires rose, overall growth took place. Moreover, the rate of growth, expanded, and collapsed with a tiresome regularity, though rapid in comparison with Paleolithic times, was requiring history students to remember who was up and quite slow if we measure it against the explosive who was down at various times. It is arguable, however, expansion of recent centuries, when human numbers that little fundamental change occurred amid these quadrupled in the twentieth century alone. This modest constant fluctuations. Monarchs continued to rule most and interrupted pattern of population growth during the of the new civilizations; men continued to dominate age of agrarian civilization reflected the absence of any women; a sharp divide between the elite and everyone fundamental economic breakthrough, which could have else persisted almost everywhere, as did the practice of supported much larger numbers. 1 slavery. Another change lies in the growing size of the states or Furthermore, no technological or economic empires that structured civilizations. The Roman, breakthrough occurred to create new kinds of human Persian, Indian, and Chinese empires of second-wave societies as the Agricultural Revolution had done earlier civilizations, as well as the Arab, Mongol, and Inca or as the Industrial Revolution would do in later empires of the third wave, all dwarfed the city-states of centuries. Landowning elites had little incentive to Mesopotamia and the Egypt of the pharaohs. Each of innovate, for they benefited enormously from simply these empires brought together in a single political expropriating the surplus that peasant farmers system a vast diversity of peoples. Even so, just to keep produced. Nor would peasants have any reason to invest things in perspective, as late as the seventeenth century much effort in creating new forms of production when C.E., only one-third of the world’s landmass was under they knew full well that any gains they might generate the control of any state-based system, although these would be seized by their social superiors. Merchants, societies now encompassed a considerable majority of who often were risk takers, might have spawned the world’s people. innovations, but they usually were dominated by powerful states and were viewed with suspicion and The rise and fall of these empires likewise represented condescension by more prestigious social groups. very consequential changes to the people who experienced them. In the course of its growth, the Many fluctuations, repetitive cycles, and minor changes Roman Empire utterly destroyed the city of Carthage in characterize this long era of agricultural civilization, but North Africa, with the conquerors allegedly sowing the no fundamental or revolutionary transformation of social ground with salt so that nothing would ever grow there or economic life took place. The major turning points in again. Similar bloodshed and destruction accompanied human history had occurred earlier with the emergence the creation of other much-celebrated states. Their of agriculture and the birth of the First Civilizations and collapse also had a dramatic impact on the lives of their people. Scholars have estimated that the large provides a telling example. The syrup from sugarcane, population of Mayan civilization shrank by some 85 which was initially domesticated in New Guinea early in percent in less than a century as that society dissolved the age of agriculture, was first processed into around 840 C.E. It is difficult to imagine the sense of crystallized sugar in India by 500 C.E. During the early trauma and bewilderment associated with a collapse of centuries of the Islamic era, Arab traders brought this this magnitude. technology from India to the Middle East and the Mediterranean, where Europeans learned about it Second- and third-wave civilizations also generated during the Crusades. Europeans then transferred the important innovations in many spheres. Those in the practice of making sugar to the Atlantic islands and cultural realm have been perhaps the most widespread finally to the Americas, where it played a major role in and enduring. Distinctive “wisdom traditions”—the great stimulating a plantation economy and the Atlantic slave philosophical/religious systems of Confucianism and 4 trade. Daoism in China; Hinduism and Buddhism in India; Greek rationalism in the Mediterranean; and Judaism, Long-distance trade routes represented another form of Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam in the Middle transregional interaction. Caravan trade across northern East—have provided the moral and spiritual framework Eurasia, seaborne commerce within the Indian Ocean within which most of the world’s peoples have sought to basin, the exchange of goods across the Sahara, river- order their lives and define their relationship to the based commerce in the eastern woodlands of North mysteries of life and death.
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