Praxis World and U.S. History Content Knowledge (5941)

The first complex societies of Afro-Eurasia arose along major rivers that supplied water for irrigation, fertile soil renewed by seasonal floods, and routes for transport. Historians use the term civilization for societies that share a cluster of traits: cities, a food surplus, specialized occupations, social classes, organized government and religion, monumental building, and usually writing. Complex societies appeared later, and independently, in Mesoamerica and the Andes.

Mesopotamia developed between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in present-day Iraq. By about 3500 B.C.E. the Sumerians had founded the earliest cities, including Ur, Uruk, and Eridu, each centered on a ziggurat, a stepped temple tower. Sumerian contributions included cuneiform writing, the wheel, the plow, bronze metallurgy, and a number system based on sixty that survives in the measurement of time and angles. Religion was polytheistic, with gods who personified natural forces.

Open plains left the region exposed to invasion, and political control changed hands often. Sargon of Akkad (c. 2334 B.C.E.) created what is often called the first empire. The Babylonian king Hammurabi issued Hammurabi's Code around 1754 B.C.E., one of the earliest comprehensive sets of written laws; it applied the principle of lex talionis (retaliation in kind) and set different penalties according to social class. The Assyrians later built an empire known for military innovation and brutality, and the Neo-Babylonian Empire revived Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar II.

Ancient Egypt grew along the Nile, whose predictable annual flood deposited rich silt, while deserts on both sides discouraged invaders. Egypt showed remarkable continuity for roughly three thousand years under the pharaoh, a ruler regarded as divine. The Old Kingdom (c. 2686–2181 B.C.E.) built the pyramids at Giza, evidence of the state's capacity to organize labor. The Middle Kingdom (c. 2055–1650 B.C.E.) reunified Egypt and expanded trade and territory. The New Kingdom (c. 1550–1077 B.C.E.) was Egypt's imperial height, when its power reached into Nubia and the Levant under pharaohs such as Hatshepsut, Thutmose III, Akhenaten, and Ramesses II.

Egyptian religion was polytheistic and centered on the afterlife; the belief that a preserved body allowed eternal life led to mummification and elaborate tombs. Hieroglyphic writing served religious and administrative purposes, and Egyptians made advances in medicine, mathematics, architecture, and astronomy. Society was ranked: the pharaoh stood at the top, followed by priests and nobles, scribes and artisans, farmers, and enslaved people.

The Indus Valley civilization flourished along the Indus River in present-day Pakistan and northwestern India from about 2600 to 1900 B.C.E. Its major cities, Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, show sophisticated planning: streets on a grid, bricks of standard size, covered drains, and public baths. Merchants traded over long distances with Mesopotamia. Because the Indus script remains undeciphered, the civilization's government and religion are poorly understood. Its decline may have resulted from climate change, shifting river courses, or other environmental stress.

Early Chinese civilization developed along the Huang He and later the Yangtze. The Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 B.C.E.) is known for bronze casting, ancestor veneration, and divination with oracle bones, whose inscriptions are the earliest known Chinese writing. The Zhou dynasty (c. 1046–256 B.C.E.) justified its overthrow of the Shang with the Mandate of Heaven: Heaven grants the right to rule to a just ruler and withdraws it from an unjust one. Zhou kings ruled through regional lords, whose growing independence led to the Warring States period (475–221 B.C.E.), an age of constant warfare in which Confucian, Daoist, and Legalist thought developed.

Complex societies in Mesoamerica and the Andes developed independently of the Eastern Hemisphere and were not confined to great river valleys. The Olmec (c. 1200–400 B.C.E.) of Mexico's Gulf coast built ceremonial centers, carved colossal stone heads, and passed on to later Mesoamerican peoples a maize-based economy and early calendar and glyph systems. In the Andes, the Chavín culture (c. 900–200 B.C.E.) spread a shared religious art style from its highland temple center.

The Maya (c. 2000 B.C.E.–1500 C.E.) built city-states such as Tikal and Palenque across southern Mexico and Central America and reached their height in the Classic period (c. 250–900 C.E.). Their achievements included hieroglyphic writing, a mathematics that used zero, accurate astronomical calendars, and monumental pyramids and palaces. Many southern cities were abandoned by about 900 C.E.; the causes of this Classic Maya collapse are still debated and probably combined drought, warfare, and environmental strain. Maya peoples continued in the region afterward.

The Aztec Empire (1428–1521) dominated central Mexico from Tenochtitlan, an island city in Lake Texcoco. Aztec society featured a warrior aristocracy, tribute collected from conquered peoples, intensive farming on chinampas (raised garden beds built in shallow lake water, often called floating gardens), and religious practices that included human sacrifice, believed necessary to sustain the sun. The Inca Empire (1438–1533) controlled the Andes from present-day Ecuador to Chile. The Inca built roads, suspension bridges, agricultural terraces, and sites such as Machu Picchu, organized labor through the mit'a system of rotating service to the state, and kept records on knotted cords called quipu. They lacked writing and wheeled vehicles yet integrated many diverse peoples.

Both groups of civilizations rested on agricultural surpluses and produced cities, monumental temples, priesthoods, social hierarchies, and rulers who claimed divine sanction. They differed in timing and in resources. The river valley civilizations emerged between about 3500 and 1500 B.C.E.; the Aztec and Inca empires reached their height in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries C.E. Afro-Eurasian farmers grew wheat, barley, rice, and millet and used oxen, donkeys, and horses for plowing, transport, and war. American farmers relied on maize, beans, squash, and potatoes, and their only large domesticated animals were the llama and alpaca of the Andes, so human labor did most of the work.

Technology differed as well. Afro-Eurasian societies made tools and weapons of bronze and later iron and used the wheel for carts and pottery. In the Americas, gold, silver, and copper were worked chiefly for ornament, iron was not smelted, and wheels appear only on small Mesoamerican figurines, since there were no draft animals to pull vehicles. All four river valley civilizations had writing; in the Americas only Mesoamerican peoples developed it. In place of river irrigation, American farmers engineered chinampas and mountain terraces.