East-civ Reading Week 1

1) The Neolithic Revolution(8000bce – 4000bce) and the Birth of Civilization

i) Neolithic (=new stone age) kits show that people were tool users and they made use of
fire
ii) What distinguish people from the animals
iii) Humans moved from Asia into what is now Alaska 25000 b.c – through improved
archeological tech.
b) Human life in the era of hunters and gatherers
i) By the late Paleolithic age, humans evolved in to the state of Homo sapiens.
ii) They used their hands and used languages
iii) Paleolitich culture
(1) Hunting and gathering
(2) Mastered fire and produced arts (cave paintings- to depict deities or to promote
fertility)
(3) Animistic religions
iv) The spread of Human culture – migrate
v) Human society and daily life at the end of the Paleolithic age
(1) Small groups migrated regularly for animals
(2) Started to domesticate plants and animals
(3) Labor was divided according to gender
(a) Men: hunting , women: gathering
(b) Women’s roles were more critical to the survival of the band
vi) Settling Down: Dead ends and transitions
(1) Agrarian revolution
(2) Trading networks existed as far as 500 miles
(3) Natufian complex – highly sophisticated settlement
(a) New tools, production techniques, and improvement of storage
technique
(i) Matrilocal – men went to live with their wives’ family
(ii) Matrilineal – family descent traced through the female lie
(iii) Women who gathered food crops – explain the power and influence
vii) Tales of the Hunt
(1) Cave painting of animal – ritual purpose and pursued by human hunters
c) A precarious existence
i) People were extremely influenced by the climate and environment – relentless struggle
for survival
d) Agriculture and the origins of civilization: the Neolithic transformations
i) Plant cultivation required more labor than hunting and gathering – but with advanced
techniques, agriculture was a way to support more people
ii) Population growth
(1) Climate changes – animal migrates – where agriculture starts
 (2) Hunting and gathering pattern reached higher levels of productivity
e) Domestication of plants and animals
i) Initially agriculturist retained their hunting and gathering activities along with the
agriculture. And some practiced a mix of hunting and shifting cultivation (continue to
move about)
ii) Domestication of animals
(1) Dogs – tamed from wolves – control herd animals
(2) Cattles were source of protein meat and milk
(a) Also used to produce clothes, shelters, manure, and etc
(3) Contact with animals led to the disease
f) The spread of the Neolithic revolution
i) Sedentary agricultural communities coexisted with numerous bands, but also conflicts
exist
(1) Nomads developed the military skills to challenge populated agrarian societies
ii) Ppl passed on their production techniques to other people – spread of crop and
agriculture
g) The transformation of material life
i) Humans now transform surrounding environment
ii) Great increase in the number of farmers
iii) Variety of agriculture tools and irrigation systems were invented
iv) Houses were uniform in construction
h) Social differentiation
i) Surpluses led to the exchange of their crops for other specialized services and products
ii) Political and religious leader & elite class emerged
iii) Skilled people began to manufacture implements beyond their own need for exchange
iv) Precedents for regional specialization and interregional trade
v) Change in gender role
(1) Previous: women took over the gathering – critical to their survival
(2) With the farming culture, women position declined. Men took heavy labor and
monopolized the new tool.
i) Representations of women in early art
i) Venus of Laussel : voluptuous women : reproduction and nurturing
ii) Depicted as a goddesses: suggest political authority of women
2) Jericho
a) Represents the first stirring of urban life
b) Houses were made of mud and brick on the stone foundations – had underground tunnels
c) The town was enclosed by the ditch cut into the rocky soil and a wall – great deal of labor was
required to build this wall
d) They had religious shrines
e) They were based on the wheat and barely farming. Also they relied on the hunting and trading
as well.
 f) It was governed by a distinct and powerful ruling group(probably the keepers of shrine
centers)
3) Catal Huyuk
a) More diverse and larger population than Jericho, and even wealthier
b) Their mud-brick houses were identical in their styles
c) They had windows high in their walls and used roofs as their entrance and chimneys
i) they were fortified because of the threat by nomads and other bands
d) more imposing ruling group than Jericho –
e) many religious shrines at the sites which indicates that powerful priesthood existed
i) shrines contained sanctuaries surrounded by several rooms related to the ceremonies
(i) Growing role of religion in the lives of Neolithic peoples
f) Major center of production by artisans
4) The idea of civilization in world historical perspective
a) The distinction between the civilized and barbaric was used pervasively throughout the world.
Being civilized meant “cultural”, not biological or racial (ex. China)
b) However such thought were changed by the thinkers in Western Europe
i) 1. They defined a series of stages in human development that ranged from the lowest
savagery to the highest civilization, classifying nomads as barbarians.
ii) 2. European thinking and social interaction on racial or biological differences of human
social organizations were alleged to be the innate capacities of each human race.
(1) Some races were more inventive, moral, courageous, and artistic – Caucasians
1. Charles Darwin was against this idea: race and level of cultural
development were seen in the perspective of thousands of years of
human change and adaptation rather than as being fixed in time
iii) Such ideas were used to justify European imperialist expansion (=civilizing mission)
iv) It was gradually undermined as 1. Revolts of colonized ppl and 2. Crime by Nazis.
v) And they failed to provide proof of innate differences in mental and physical aptitude
between the various human groups.
vi) Perspective : one of several human approaches to social organization rather than
identifying a specific kinds of cultural achievement
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5) The 4 millennium bce: another watershed
a) Invention and dissemination of new tools and production techniques during the 4 th millennium
bce
i) Increased crop, wheeled vechicles, larger populations could be supported
ii) New technologies began to spread in Afro-Eurasia in the centuries after 3500bce
iii) Cross-cultural exchanges became ever more complex and vital for the societies that
participated in them
iv) Develop of writing (gave more power to political elites)– innovative tech
6) The Neolithic revolution as the basis for world history
a) “Essential to the development of cross cultural and interregional linkages between dispersed
and isolated human groups, and to the rise of the world history”
b) Diffusion of agriculture – spread new ideas and technologies
 c) Transition to the agriculture society enables to support more population, and agriculture is
linked to the domestication of the animals.
d) Also surplus food production familicated the emergence of non-farming elite groups

Gilgamesh

1) wisdom
a) “he saw everything and knew what was to be known”
b) “His wisdom clung like a cloak”
c) Knew the secret of things
2) Strength
a) Gilgamesh is perfect in strength
b) He even destroys stone wall
3) Intimacy with god / demigod
a) He was two-third god and on third god
4) He is the hero, he is the uruk, he the butting bull, he leads the way