561WEDNESDAY 01/15

Anthropology – Study of humans

Human variation
- Cultural
- Biological

Biocultural Species

What does it mean to be human?

- Tool making (monkey, crows, etc)
- Language – symbolic communication
- Emotions
- Fire making
- Capacity to think- complex thinking

Human behavior is both learned and biological inherited

Biological Influences:

Hominids “separated” from chimps 6-7 million years ago

Long period of immaturity due to evolution (larger brain, pelvis shift to walk straight) –
human babies
Energy trade off – energy needed to make babies is a lot, dependent infant.
Dependent infant- bigger connection, you need to care for it. Maternity, social creatures.
Because kids take so long to grow up they adapt and learn more about their environment.
Flexibility and adaptability, sociability.

Cultural:

Majority of behavior passed through learning – greatest adaptation

Culture – learned and shared behavior
Culture enables really fast adaptation to environment
Complex language/symbolic communication
Really fast change

Human biology

Culture Environment
Variation to culture, adaptation to biology and environment

History as stories of adaptation to our environment

-Climate change --- drier and fewer trees

Walking more, looking for better environment, adapt new techniques to newer
environments. Migration and adaptation to new environments

-paleolithic peoples
-Ice age
-Most of the paleolithic people were foragers (hunter-gatherers)
-Gender division of labor. Men hunters and women gatherers.
-Foragers were nomadic - They had to chase their food sources and move on when it ran
out, looking for new sources. They needed a large land area per unit of population.
-Tend to be organized into small organized political units – bands – relatively egalitarian(?)
-Known as sharing societies (shared a lot of food – you can’t store food)
-Leisure time (down time) (optimal calorie?) – How much energy would take them to get to
a food source x the amount of food they would get from that food source. They had leisure
time because it wasn’t worth it to chase a food source. Leisure wasn’t play time, they
couldn’t afford to waste their calories/energy.
-Diverse diet, they eat everything that is edible.
-Everyone assisted in everything, they were all doing the same thing. Hence the egalitarian
societies.
-Relatively stable populations. Nomadic societies have less babies. They couldn’t outgrow
their food supply. Biological constraint, they had to carry kids for 2-3 years during this
vulnerable time, and they moved around a lot, walked a lot. They sometimes killed children
or left them for dead. Long term breast feeding, biologically it takes longer till women are
able to have another one. Spacing their births, every three years.
-most economic exchange happened through gift giving. They didn’t have specialists. They
usually had gift giving partners. They didn’t have large scale trading, they had trading
networks.
-they didn’t have a sense of private property and land. They didn’t have resources to defend
the large area of land, it wasn’t strategic. They didn’t claim land.
FRIDAY 01/17

Neolithic Revolution

Around 10-12,000 years ago (or agricultural revolution)

Food collectors  food producers

Modifying the environment - unnatural selection
Animals – herding of animals (herders, pastoralism)
Crops – grains (tillers, agriculturalists)

Often inspired by the environment they are in- areas with different favorable factors.
Independent emerging, in different areas of the world at roughly the same time.
-emerges independently-

Two different theories:

Population – with growing population you need more resources. Population pressure.
Growth  outcome of agriculture

Population:
Foragers congregating in large groups
Growing complexity in rituals + burials

Most likely agriculture emerged from small increases in existing techniques

Semi-domesticating animals
Always optimizing resources
Foxed buried with animals (close relationships with animals?)

Consequences:
-Larger communities:
- Surplus of food
- Rising population density
-Land ownership, property, defense
-Specialists:
Religious
Political
Economic
Technology – craftsmen
Music + arts
-rapid change

Negative consequences:
-conflict
-social class (inequality)
-more gender inequality
-new diseases – first epidemiological transition- pop. density- waste disposal, spreads faster,
diseases from animals to humans, come from agricultural activities.
-over exploitation of environment– over reliance on one or a few food sources.
-less varied diet
-evidence in some areas of a decrease in height
-Dickson mounds Indians - 50% increase enamel defects
- 3x increase in bone lesions

Diffusion from several centers

Rapidly becomes the dominant way of life
Most other human societies become absorbed, die or pushed into marginal land
Conflicts:
-Different agricultural societies fighting each other
-and fighting the pastoralists or herders

Social complexity
-ideological explanations
 Religious beliefs
 Political ideologies
 Class, caste
-political complexity
 Centralization, rise of state
 Surplus - who controls the surplus?
 Irrigation, needs the coordination of labor
 Distribution
-technological
 Artifacts

WEDNESDAY 01/22

Riparian  civilizations that grew around rivers (large scale irrigation)

Techniques of state –
Writing
Buildings

Agriculture emerges in Anatolia/Mesopotamia

“Jericho” – one of the first cities, had walls around it
Civilization – cities, urbanizations, building things, complex political and economics.
Social economic hierarchy
Egypt
-old kingdom
-middle kingdom- attacked by the Hykkosians
-new kingdom- they became an empire/religious dispute between the elite (Ahkenaton-
pharaoh, he decides to push and implement a form of monotheism in Egypt, the nobility
hated it, loses a huge part of the empire)/it desintegrates in a period where there are other
contendents, they start getting invaded and never reconsolidate. Attacked by the “sea
people”

Upper Egypt
Lower Egypt

Mesopotamia
2 rivers, (tigress and Euphrates)?
The rivers are way less friendly than the Nile.
Alphabetical language
They invented/discovered “0”
Sumerians invented 60 minute hours and 60 second minutes/ 7 days a week
They trade in every direction – a lot of surplus
Sumerian culture – Sumerian cities – Ur, Urak, Lagesh
Gods – linked to natural phenomenon/ few Gods of abstract concepts
First work of fiction written down – “Epic of Gilgamesh”
Intermediaries between the Gods and the kings – augerers/priests
Complex religious ideology – based on the way they produce their food
Big empires emerge
Akkadian Empire – capital lost in history
-Kings are builders
- temples at the center (Ziggurats)
-complex burocracy
-took over a lot of cities but decline quickly themselves
- Babylonian empire/Assyrian empire
Assyrian empire starts taxing people with money!
MONDAY 01/27

Indian Valley Civilization (IVC) Harappa

- Indus + Saraswati River

Timeline
-4,000 b.c.e settlements
-3,000 b.c.e urbanization
-2,600 b.c.e cities
-2,000 b.c.e peak
-1,800 b.c.e decline
-1,500 b.c.e Aryans

Believed that the city of Harappa had 80,000 people – Mohenjo-Daro (another city)
And believed that the entire valley had 1 million people at height

Floodplains by the river – twice a year, predictable flooding

The course of the river was unpredictable, tended to change

Half a million square miles – large areas and highly organized urban cities

Economy:

Evidence of diverse crops and animals

animals that were not eaten: pigs, cats, dogs, camels
animals that were eaten: cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, chickens

migrating farmers
crops: wheat (primary crops), barley, rice (overtime the primary crops shift to rice) , millet,
peas, lentils, chickpeas, (pulses), seed oils, melon, dates, grapes
80% of food was from wheat and barley – until the shift to rice

cotton
trading networks – internal and external (different cities and evidence of trade with
Sumeria) 1,500 miles away

major trading partners (of the Sumerians) were the Melohhaites/Meluhha – this could be
the IVC people

A lot of migration to IVC – many of the buried in the city grew up outside of Harappa –
suggests migration

Plumbing + public baths (fed by the Indus river) – increased the desire of migration to
Harappa
Uniform bricks
Writing – seals and tablets
Art – Amulets and jewelry, pottery
Weights – standardized measurement
Grid-like structure to their cities
Citadels – large public works
Cities had upper and lower sections
Massive walls for floods and defense
Spread across several miles
Highly organized
May have been more egalitarian than other civilizations – no signs of a monarchy, all
sections of the city have plumbing, Not a big differentiation in house size
Communal quarters/living areas (might have been soldiers or organized labor)
Huge warehouses – system of distribution

 cooperation between cities

Surplus of food, diversity of crops (trade)

Decline:
Writing started to disappear
Standardized weights started to disappear
trade network started to disappear
cities were abandoned
? around 1,900 b.c.e the Saraswati river started to dry
? changes in monsoon rain patterns
? great flood?
wheat – urbanization
rice – rural crop

WEDNESDAY 01/29

Eurasian Steppe
5,000 b.c.e – middens
Lots of horse bones (believed that there were domesticated horses already in 5,000 b.c.e)
3,000 b.c.e – covered wagon in stone – lined chambers
 Enough wealth but still nomadic
2,000 b.c.e – chariots ( good instruments of warfare), the stirrup (cela de cavalo)
- grassland
- More than a thousand miles long, largest in the world, almost a 1/5 of the way around the
world
- Grasslands  Good grazing territories  pastoralists (nomadic)
- goats, sheep, cows, horses
- hunters + warriors
- Indo-European languages
Peoples of India:

1. Foragers -------------------------- Dravidians

2. Farmers from the West –----- Dravidians
3. Herders from the Steppe  Aryans – 1,500 b.c.e
4. Rice farming coming from the East

Ganges River Basin:

Area of forest and rain

After the Iron age and with the invention of iron plows the Aryans manage to clear the river
basin.
Oral tradition, written down later
Vedas – written down
Rig Veda
Sacred texts – Vedic religion
“cosmic order”
-mystical belief in oneness of the universe
-matter as an illusion
-spiritual visions or selfless emotions
-cycle of reincarnation + rebirth
-advance towards perfection

1-life is suffering
2-source is desire
3-rid yourself of desire
4-path to enlightenment

About universality, salvation, morality rather than survival

Sanskrit , Prakrit - commoner version of it

Four-fold division of society (varna)

Brahma – priests
Kshatrya – warriors
Vaishya – cultivators, artisans, merchants
Shudras – landless peasants

500 a.d
Gupta Period
-boundaries become solid
MONDAY 02/03

China – Duiker 3

WEDNESDAY 02/05

Persian Empire

Achaemenid Empire – 550 – 330 b.c.e

Herodotus – Greek historian (first person that started systematically recording history)

Arid plateau  high elevation, flat, mountain ranges

Farming is not as easy, but there is some good soil, combination of farming and herding.
 inferior wheat farming, fruit trees, animal husbandry

Cyrus the Great – takes over one of the local states of the Syrian empire. He expands and
takes over several different regions.
Conquest State - poor in resources, reliant on expansion to maintain power

Indirect rule – keep local elites and incorporate them into your Empire. Solves a problem of
administrating large territories.

Religion tolerance – known for letting the Jews return to Jerusalem.

Cyrus the Great had a lot of legitimacy. ^^^ he didn’t just conquer people, he accepted their
cultural norms and their religious beliefs, kept their local rulers. He was accepted. (effective
ruling strategy) Keeping peace and prosperity for all the subjects.
23 distinct subject peoples. – different: languages, environments, deities, social customs.

Divine right to rule but they themselves weren’t divine.

2nd emperor – Cambyses

3rd emperor – Darius (third big ruler)

Satrapy – ruled by a satrap

(seen as the protector of the kingdom)
Role – collect tribute, justice, raise military levies (standing army from all provinces)
19 miles/day – speed of the army
“Royal Road” – Susa to Sardis
They built 1,700 miles of road
Royal messengers  postal system
Status of women – could supervise and earn higher wages than men. Own properties, be
political patrons.

Infrastructure
Roads
Irrigation – canal linking the Nile and the Red Sea. – qanat system (groundwater)

Parsargadae
Persepolis – ceremonial capital

Greeks – Persians as a threat

334 b.c.e  Alexander the Great – 3 years conquered the Persian Empire

Parthians , Sasanians  Persian heartland

Typology

Economic activity –
Production
Exchange – modes of reciprocity (usually between those who have equal status, gift giving),
redistribution (political center), market exchange
Consumption

MONDAY 02/10

Ancient Greece

WEDNESDAY 02/12

The Roman Empire

500 b.c.e
Roman Republic  lasts from 509 b.c.e to 28b.c.e when it is declared an Empire
Patrafamilias – head of the clan had life and death power over the rest of the clan
Who your family is, defined by the man in your clan
Your individual role in society fits in your role in your family
Elite driven
Roles and representation for everyone
Executive is 2 elected authorities – civilian authority and military authority
A bunch of annually elected officials
Senate – patricians (nobles, the rich)
Working class – plebians (peasants)
Slaves
Tribal Councils – plebian
Centuraiae – military assembly

Extensive road network across the empire.

Famous road- Appian Way

Emperor Constantine (the Emperor!!!) had to invade Rome.

Western empire falls around 470 c.e.

The eastern roman empire continues

Roman polytheistic
“cult” – exchange between the followers and the Gods
Sacrifices with the expectation of the specific God giving you stuff

WEDNESDAY 02/19

7th – 14th century Rise of Islam

5th- 13th century Europe

Allah – supreme God of Islam (before Islam???)

Syncretism – merge of religious beliefs/icons

Caliph – spiritual/temporal leader

Umayyad Dynasty – Syria

Abbasid Dynasty – 500 years

MONDAY 02/24

Ostrogoths – Italy
Visogoths – Spain

Europe between 500 – 1300

Frankish – becomes modern France (was a German kingdom) – Clovis (king) he converts to
Christianity

Monastic movement – monks

St. Benedict 6th century
Monastery

Frankish kingdom (modern day France) declines in the 7th century

800 – Charles the Great (Charlegmane) becomes the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire
843 – 3 grandsons split the kingdom when Charles dies

They start getting attacked by all sides (Vikings, muslims, and others)
Large landholdings
Deal struck with the guy who holds the land with soldiers (horses for the army, equipment
etc) Lord – vassals arrangements. Food is being grown by the peasant masses.

After 1200 and 1400 (?)

Technological developments, climatic warming period (climate change) that allows for
increased food production. Now that is warm you can grow grain. They’re creating arable
land for food production.
Technological developments - They had iron axes, scythe, saws, hammers, iron plows. Wind
and water mills = Store grains in large amounts. Big food surpluses = more specialization and
more cities
3 field system. Rotating crops

By the 11th century (maybe 12th)

You get a reemergence of specialized trade and growth and development of cities

Trade had died out after the Roman empire

By the 10th century Europe is trying to reinvent trade (they’re producing a lot of products)

When trade revives that are a couple of places that are the centers of that : Flanders??? And
Italy
WEDNESDAY 02/26

Han Dynasty (202 bce – 221 bce)

The Qin dynasty started the building of the great wall, the Han dynasty finished it

Invasions of nomadic peoples –

Xiongnu – raided deep into China reached within 100 miles of capital with 140,000 men
mounted archers
The Han dynasty expands into central Asia in response of the consolidation of the nomadic
peoples. This was the beginning of Silk routes.

State Confucianism
Provinces and districts with local governments
In the central government they had the tripartite division – civilian, military and censorate
The people that participated in the government was based on merit, the Civil Service
Examination – 30,000 students were in the academies training.

20 million population at the Zhou Dynasty – the Han dynasty had a 60 million population,
they increased the population

One Invention that was created in the Han dynasty time period was paper

What made the Han dynasty fall:

1. Nomadic threats
2. Internal disputes/rivalry
3. Concentration of land into the hands of the wealthy

Then there are 400 years where there isn’t much going on.

Next dynasties:
Sui Dynasty
Tang Dynasty
Song Dynasty

Sui dynasty (581 – 618 ce)

Buddhism + Daoism – rising influence
The state is not very strong
They build a lot of canals between the two rivers. They expanded the canal system
(there were a few already)
They lost a lot of legitimacy because the canals were built on forced labor and taxes
They stablished a tribute relationship with Korea
 Tibet – 627 – 650 first known king
- They were a force to be reckoned with until the 9th century
Tang Dynasty (618 – 907 ce)
+ Song Dynasty (960 – 1279 ce)

700 years of stability + growth

Scholar-gentry  civil service exam
Gun powder
Tang – first book
Steel
Cotton (southeast asia) comes into china at this point

The Tang dynasty tries to break the concentration of the land by trying to return to well-
field system

The Song dynasty used taxes to even out land disparity

- Greater agricultural prosperity
- Rice as the dominant crop

Song
The silk road is not one road (routes) they were both over land and over sea
Traders increasingly became private enterprisers + guilds
Paper currency + banking + credit (in order to facilitate trade)

Uighurs
often the ones who carried the goods on camels

Taklimakan Desert

Next dynasty:
Yuan (1279-1368)
Ming (1368-1644)

MONDAY 03/02

China’s Dynasties:
Xia
Shang
Zhou
Qin
Han
400 years of not much
Sui
Tang
Song
Yuan
Ming
The Mongols
They were the last great invasion from the steppes

Genghis Khan – leader

Under his leadership they dominated their big empire
They had an affective military tactic, they were fast and had a horseback army
He killed (and estimate of) 30 to 40 million
Some people say he killed (him and his descendants) around 10 to 20 million
Killed in 120 years
Lower estimates put it around 2-3% of the world’s population

Anything good about the Mongolian Empire?

It unified the territory – which created peace down the road
Flourishing of the silk road
They encouraged trade and valued merchants
(they were the “highway police”)

Southeast Asia
Trading + agricultural civilizations

Funan – trading civilization, they had a good route/location for maritime trade
-They emerged in the 1st century and lasted till the 6th century
-culture: influenced by India, but they were also taxed by China (taxed in gold, silver, pearls
and perfume)

Khmer or the Angkor (also the name of the main city) Empire
From 802-1431 c.e
Biggest agricultural civilization
they were in the Delta area – lake called Tonle Sap (floods and deposits enough rich soil that
it enables 3 rice crops per year in this area) (because of the monsoon rains)
Mekong River Delta – swollen by the monsoon rains and flows backwards
Huge reservoirs and canals, floating rice  deep water rice
Maybe up to 1 million people
Known for Angkor Wat – it was a Hindu turned Buddhist temple complex. The largest
temple complex in the world, world heritage site.
They also traded honey, fish, salt and textiles – they didn’t just produce rice
We don’t know what led to its decline – theories about environmental factors that aided in
their fall.
Korea and Japan
A lot of Chinese influence

Korea
Constant struggle with China
Northern part of Korea, was under the Han dynasty, but got independence again during the
400 year period
Cities: Silla (southern), Paekche, Koguryo (northern)
Rice production, irrigation systems, ox-drawn plows, well-armored soldiers marching
Refugees from China brought Buddhism with them.
The Chinese came and conquered the North (Koguryo) under the Tang Dynasty
In the mid 6th century the southern (Silla) Korean state ended up unifying all of Korea
During the 10th century there are reforms of the Korean administration along Chinese lines +
Confucianism
Along the 10th century (935-1392)- Rise of the Koryo Dynasty (root of the name “Korea”)
1392 – Choson Dynasty
They were never as centralized as China – hard to obtain information nowadays

Japan
they also had issues with centralization
nobles retain power and land
-they managed to retain their old rituals (Shintoism) and also Buddhism
from the 8th century onwards they had: -community-growing seedling nurseries
-spread of barley (secondary crop)
-heavy plows (9th and 10th centuries)
-rules: farmers can inherit land, cultivated + irrigated
Emergence of the Samurai – warrior class that worked for nobles (to maintain law and
order)
12th century  Shogunate emerges – all these decentralized nobles start fighting against
themselves and the one who emerges is the military leader
It emerges just in time to not be conquered by the Mongols
The geography helped- they were in an island and typhons destroyed the Mongol’s fleet.
They did fight tho.

Timeline:
800 B.C.E – rice brought over
400 B.C.E – rice, bronze culture  mix of indigenous societies and farmer immigrants – also
decentralized clans
200 C.E – unified centralized state emerges – under a female leader
400 C.E – Buddhist monk from Korea, he is a tutor at the Japanese court.
Yamato – Mid 6th century – expand agricultural production
Taika reforms
WEDNESDAY 03/04

The Plague
Three pandemics

Caffa – trading city, Christian city, walled, how the plague reached Europe
Europeans had no concept of Germ Theory (and they wouldn’t have for another 500 years)

Flagellation – self-harm to please God. Whipping yourself, to make yourself humble under
God. Rise of flagellation as a response to the plague to try to please god to make him forgive
them and stop killing them with the plague.

Miasma – bad air, one of the theories as to why the plague happened.

Antisemitism – Jews are mostly blamed in Europe to who started the propagation of the
plague, they are banned by almost all trade in almost all the countries. They are no able to
be in most crafts, they can’t have land, and they can’t have most professions. They can be
merchants, they traded with the middle east (Muslims). And they can do banking. This just
heightens the antisemitism. They believed the Jews brought the plague from the middle
east and contaminated the drinking water. the Christian communities were super suspicious
of the Jewish population.
Jewish community is wiped out in several cities.
Jewish community moved to Poland and Lithuania areas.

Helps end feudalism in Europe

Half the workforce dies, there is now a lack of supply, the peasants start making demands.
Peasants demand to pay rent instead of having to pay with work, the land owners can’t
deny this because there is no other workforce available.

England tries to pass laws to control laborers, to accept low wages and to control them. The
English government wasn’t much successful.

Peasants were better off if they survived the plague, better wages, more rights and many
peasants rising up to become a higher class.

Churches were hit pretty hard by the plague because they tended to the sick. High death
rate amongst the priests. Clergy
Priests started running away and they didn’t help voluntarily
This makes the church look really bad.
People that they recruited after the plague weren’t as educated, they tended to be more
corrupt, etc. it wasn’t good for the church

People were much more likely to question authorities after the plague
Ex. The church, the government, etc
Revolts by the poor, wanting reforms
Young widows who had been married off to old rich men who survived the plague were
much better off because they inherited the money and became rich and safe.

European countries poured much money into universities after the plague to rebuild them,
the professors and universities were
The plague alters the economic situation, it changes the relationships between classes and
undermines the authority.