First Civilization Study Questions Part II: The Erosion of Equality and The Rise of the State 1. The author describes how ingenuity and technology changed social organization in early civilizations. Why was this “one of the major turning points in the social history of humankind?” How does this alteration of social structure reflect our modern societies? Give specific examples from your own culture to demonstrate how this change persists today. Ingenuity and technology are the cause for one of the major turning points in the social history of humankind. Social hierarchy, which did not exist in gather-hunter communities, was introduced because of the accumulation of wealth. Some people had more wealth and status (titles) than other, so social …show more content…
Firstly, agricultural advances required a stronger body to use animal-drawn plows and herding or milk large amounts of animals, so men were necessary for the job. Secondly, the populations of civilizations meant that women were often pregnant, which meant that they could no longer work long hours in the field. They resorted to household chores instead, such as weaving and food preparation. Thirdly, men had more time on their hands to become specialized in different roles because they were traditionally less important in the household. Women were connected with nature, but men saw nature as “inferior, and they were connect with …show more content…
Only the elites and scribes know how to read and write. The control of writing and the control of the legal system go hand in hand. Most people thought writing was supernatural because they could not understand the symbols. The majority of written texts discovered from ancient times were about economics and politics. In Mesopotamia, there are records of taxes, debts, hours workers worked, etc. This helped strengthen the bureaucracy. Writing was a double-edged sword. In ancient China, Emperor Qin Shihuangdi buried alive hundreds of scholars and destroyed their books because of their critique of his cruel war strategies. 8. Describe the lifestyles of rulers and explain how these “elites” were connected to the new power of religion and the spirit world. The elites were very privilege; they lived off the production of others. Their lifestyles were very lavish. They lived in beautiful, grand palaces, clothed in exquisite fabrics, waited on by numerous servants, and buried with elaborate burials (pyramids, temples, ziggurats, or statues were erected in their honor postmortem). The elites were connected to the new power of religion and the spirit world because their spirits were celebrated greatly after death. Many sacrifices and constructs occurred in their honor after their death. The elites were buried with tools that were thought to help them live in the
Since the beginning of time, mankind began to expand on traditions of life out of which family and societal life surfaced. These traditions of life have been passed down over generations and centuries. Some of these kin and their interdependent ways of life have been upheld among particular people, and are known to contain key pieces of some civilizations.
Hunt discusses the way in which Ancient Greece and Rome forced many people into slavery and created many treatises in order to organize society by decree of ideology. Society had to be structured in order to properly operate, as Diamond conveys the idea that ideologies must be present for the society to have structural integrity. Once again, in chapter 14, Diamond discusses the importance of ideology as groups structure in bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states. As groups progress and evolve their ideologies, society advances and allows prosperity and welfare among the people. On the contrary, Hunt discusses the importance of custom and tradition within medieval societies. Many of these societies lacked the central authority that allowed for organization, so many systems were based off the mutual obligations and services of the people. This allowed for various ideologies to facilitate the advancement of society as their changes altered the changes of society. Thus, the medieval societies required much attentiveness to following ideology in order to operate on a sound
In this, we find the first commentary, which in fact mirrors history. Here we see that a society, as occurred with the Roman Empire, can grow only up to a certain point, after which it begins declining and decaying, due in part to the gross levels of comfort that its populace become used to. This reliance upon comfort leads to an eventual loss of civic virtue among the people of the society. Once virtue is lost, the moral framework which holds a society together begins to fail, and after a time, crumbles, leading to a collapse of the society itself.
The First Civilizations of the world were the stepping-stone into modern society, and the original basis as to what our modern society has become. Reading through the assigned text in Ways of the World: A Brief Global History by Robert W. Strayer, in the chapter titled “First Civilizations: Cities, States, and Unequal Societies”, the reader is introduced into what evolved into the world in which we currently live in. (Please note that the writer will be referring to text from Strayer’s 2011 edition of the text, in comparison to the modern version.) The entire chapter discusses the way that the civilizations emerged, as well as how equality was eventually diminished from the society, Mesoamerica, and the six civilizations themselves: Olmec, Norte Chico, Nile Valley, Mesopotamia, Indus Valley, and China. The chapter begins with asking, the general questions: “Who? What? When? Where? Why?” Giving a brief history, the first civilizations began to rise in the time period of 3500 B.C.E. and 3000 B.C.E. in the three most geographically historic regions in the world: The Middle East, Sumer, and Egypt. These places consisted of cities, political systems, and were responsible for economic input and output.
At this point in the Paleolithic Era, technology and politics coexisted in harmony; one did not dominate the other, nor did one influence the other. Their technology was simple. The...
...nything in the politics field because of the men. The made the household income and the women stayed at home.
During this time in Aztec society, women played significant roles in society, although men were still considered the dominant sex. Women were sometimes owned by men, in result women had very little chance to take part in government and religious activities. However while men worked in agriculture and fought in battles, women's responsibilities were to stay at home and were to weave, cook, for the family as well as an attempt to raise children. Women were taught to do these tasks starting from young ages. As young girls they were taught home skills that would significantly increase their worth in marriage such as spinning by the age of four and cooking by the age of twelve.
Women's roles in farming and gathering in early Neolithic societies were equal to men's with the jobs and roles they held. The equality was there because both men and women were farming and only women worked in textile weaving. Both men and women earned prestigious titles and there was no dominance from either gender. However, in some villages in later societies, there was no equality in families because women had no social lives and had to care for the children because they were controlled by the men. As we look and think about the history of this time period, there were a couple of major influences on women and their roles in society. One of the major influences was the Agricultural Revolution. The results that it had on women were catastrophic as it paved the way for the inequality of women.
All the way from the start of civilization through to the Early Christianity there has been a pantheon of; destruction, recognition, wars, cultural diffusion, religious breakthroughs, laws that have been established, kings and queens crowned and dethroned. The Mesopotamian Civilization it was the land between two rivers the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers that civilization first began.
The Neolithic Period, which includes events from 12,000 years ago, is one of the most important revolutions to occur in history. The Neolithic lifestyle was established first in the Middle East, and then later in the Yellow river basin in China, which then spread over the years into the Western Hemisphere. During this time period, the domestication of plants and animals and the development of cities was starting to become more prominent and well known to many different civilizations across many different countries. It consisted of many changes in human cultures from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of farming and settlement, which supported a larger population. As civilizations expanded, so did traditions and techniques. A major technological and cultural change to modern ways of thinking and acting began in Western Europe, and from these beginning new approaches to science and law spread quickly around the world. It spread to countries, causing more people to become aware of when and where to properly irrigate a crop, which type of area had the best security, and other common living strategies. Surely enough, many years later, traditions are the same as they were thousands of years ago. Although traditions may not have changed, the way people think about their God and religions have changed from culture to culture. Throughout the years, men and women from the Middle West completely changed their relationship from nature, to a more independent lifestyle; human beings learned to have more control over their lives.
A History of World Societies, Volume 1: To 1600 [VitalSouce bookshelf version]. Retrieved from http://online.vitalsource.com/books/9781457665363/id/L5-2-1
In their society, the duties of men and women were strictly separated. The males would hunt, fish and construct the tools used by the family. Women, however, were responsible for cleaning the animal skins, cooking, sewing the clothes ( a woman's sewing ability was equally as attractive to a man as her beauty was), and raising the children. Male children were preferred because they could care for their parents in their old age; female children when often strangled soon after birth.
Homo Sapiens, or what we know today as modern man.. The topic of this paper is
A civilization is the starting point of a society. Civilizations have existed for millions of years and are the basic unit of structure for a society. Civilizations were the base of great societies such as Egypt and Rome. If not for civilizations these societies would not have flourished or even existed.
About fifty thousand years ago, the human cultures started to be more and more similar to modern culture. The hominids killed animals not only to feed themselves but also for the production of clothing (Pickrell, 2006). The hominids had the sense of shame. They used hides to cover their body. Besides, the hominids have the thought to bury their companions (Pickrell, 2006). It is an idea of group or family. With the final formation of human society, people developed and valued quickly. The oldest cave painting had more than thirty-three thousand years’ history (Pickrell, 2006). It is the proof of original humans’ pursuit of art. Almost ten thousand years ago, the systematic agriculture appeared, developed and spread with an amazing speed (Pickrell, 2006). Humans started to plant cereal and raise and train livestock. After that, the Bronze Age carried on the Stone Age (Pickrell, 2006). The change of tool materials helped people have higher efficiency when they were working. At the same time, the first recorded human culture appeared in Mesopotamia (Pickrell, 2006). Until this time point, human beings finished their evolution from ancient apes to modern humans. The process, which had experienced more than hundreds million years, was the most wonderful evolution on the