Ancient Civilizations

Chapter one was about the prehistory era and it talked about the near eastern civilizations. It begins with describing the time periods in the prehistory era, such as the Paleolithic period, Mesolithic, Neolithic period and the age of metals. The book describes the lifestyles, homes, arts, Food sources, and technology of these early humans. In the age of the metals, technology and weapons got much more advanced, which the book describes in more detail. Next, we learn about the beginning of civilizations, which started with Mesopotamia but later moved into Egypt and other places. The book also goes into great detail of the three successive civilizations in Mesopotamia from 3,000 – 1600 BCE, which were the Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian. These civilizations, especially the Sumerians, set up very complex civilizations, and were very influential to other civilizations. We learn about their governments, rights, agriculture, society, and cultural aspects of their societies. Those culture aspects included writing, religion, literature, science, mathematics, medicine, art, and architecture. After learning about Mesopotamia, the book shifts its focus on the civilizations of Egypt, mainly along the Nile River. Egypt was in its height from about 3500 through 1200 BCE. The book talks about these agricultural dominant societies and how they rely on the Nile. The book elaborates on all the important aspects of the early Egyptian civilizations. It talks about their government structure, technology, society, religion, writing and literature, science and medicine, architecture, which was very elaborate and amazing, and the arts such as sculpture and painting, which were very detailed and carefully crafted but lacked perspective. At t...

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... off, in plays, they created a new genre of drama known as New Comedy. Philosophy was also a major culture item in this era. The most enduring of this period’s philosophies were Cynicism, Skepticism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism. Hellenistic scientists made many advances in their time, including geometry and planes; earth’s rotating axis, and more. They also created many weapons and armor, naval advances, etc… Architecture was mainly influenced by religion during this time period. Hellenistic Architects and sculptures both worked off of Hellenic ideals. Hellenistic sculptors developed the ideas of Genre Subject and Neoclassicism.

That is what Chapters 1-4 cover in our class textbook. It goes from pre history over a hundred thousand years ago to 34 BCE. That is a lot of time and information covered.

Works Cited

The Western Humanities 7th Edition