Civilizations Past & Present, Volume 1 (to 1650)

1. Stone Age Societies and the Earliest Civilizations of the Near East The Origins of Humankind

Preliterate Cultures

Preliterate Society and ReligionMesopotamian Successors to Babylon, c. 1600–550 B.C.E.

Mesopotamia: The First Civilization

The Babylonian Empire, c. 2000–1600 B.C.E.

Egypt: Gift of the Nile

Mesopotamian Successors to Babylon, c. 1600–550 B.C.E.

The Persian Empire, 550–331B.C.E.

 

DISCOVERY THROUGH MAPS

The Oldest Known Map: Çatul Hüyük 

DOCUMENT

“The Great Hymn to the Aton” and Psalm 104

DOCUMENT

 Dining with the Great King: A Persian Royal Feast

SEEING CONNECTIONS

 The Pyramids of Meroe

 

2. Early Chinese Civilization:

From Neolithic Origins to 220 C.E.

The Origins of China, 6500–221B.C.E.

The Qin and Han Empires, 221 B.C.E.–220 C.E.

 

DOCUMENT

 The Wisdom of Confucius

DOCUMENT

 Legalism: The Theories of Han Feizi (d. 233 B.C.E.)

DOCUMENT

 “The Mother of Mencius” from Biographies of Heroic Women by Liu Xiang

SEEING CONNECTIONS

 War Chariots

 

3. Early Indian Civilizations

From Neolithic Origins to 300 C.E. 

Early India

Dramatic Developments in Religion and Culture, 600–320B.C.E.

The Mauryan Empire and Other Kingdoms, 320 B.C.E.–300 C.E.

Emergent Hinduism and Buddhism, 200 B.C.E.–300 C.E.

The Meeting of East and West: Networks of Exchange

 

DOCUMENT

 Rig-Veda: Creation and the Kinds of Men

DOCUMENT

 The Jains on the Souls in All Things

DOCUMENT

 The Ramayana: The Trial of Sita

SEEING CONNECTIONS

 The Goddess Lakshmi in Pompeii

 

4. Greece

Minoan, Mycenaean, Hellenic, and Hellenistic Civilizations, 2000–30 B.C.E. 

Minoan and Mycenaean Civilizations, c. 2000–1200 B.C.E.

The Development of Hellenic Civilization, c. 1150–500 B.C.E.

The Golden Age of Greece, 500–336 B.C.E.

The Greek Cultural Achievement

The Hellenistic Age, 336–30 B.C.E.

Hellenistic Society and Culture

 

DOCUMENT

Homer—The Iliad: Andromache and Hector 

DOCUMENT

 Pericles’ Funeral Oration 

DISCOVERY THROUGH MAPS

The World According to Herodotus, c. 450 B.C.E. 

DOCUMENT

Arrian: Alexander the Leader 

SEEING CONNECTIONS

 The Buddha and Heracles

 

5. Roman Civilization

The Roman World, c. 900 B.C.E.  to 476 C.E. 

Early Italy and the Origins of Rome, c. 900–509 B.C.E.

The Republic and the Roman Conquest of Italy: 509–133 B.C.E.

The Late Republic: 133–30 B.C.E.

The Roman Empire and the Pax Romana: 30 B.C.E.–476 C.E.

The Growth of Early Christianity

The Roman Legacy

 

DOCUMENT

Columella: Roman Farm Women 

DOCUMENT

Plutarch—The Murder of Tiberius Gracchus 

SEEING CONNECTIONS

 The Roman Ruins of Nubia

 

6. The Eastern Mediterranean World, 300-750 CE

The Eastern Mediterranean Milieu

The Sasanid Empire

 Byzantium, Constantinople, and Christianity

 Muhammad and the Birth of Islam

The Arab-Islamic Empire

 

DISCOVERY THROUGH MAPS

 A Sixth-Century Map: The Madaba Mosaic

DOCUMENT

 The Ecumenical Councils and Heresies

DOCUMENT

 The Qur’an

SEEING CONNECTIONS

 The Great Mosque of Damascus

 

7. The Islamic World, 800-1300 CE

The Early Abbasid Caliphate, 750-1000

The Shaping of Early Islamic Faith and Culture

The Fatamid Empire, 909-1171

Turkic Peoples and the Islamic Near East, 1000-1200

Al-Andalus: Islamic Iberia, 700-1100

Resisting the Latin Crusades

The Islamic World, 1100-1300: Unity and Diversity

 

DISCOVERY THROUGH MAPS

 An Islamic Map of the World

DOCUMENT

 The History of Ahmad ibn Abi Ya`qub al-Ya`qubi

DOCUMENT

 Ibn Sina’s Path to Wisdom

SEEING CONNECTIONS

 A Mamluk Incense Burner

 

8. African Beginnings:

African Civilizations to 1500 C.E.

The African Environment

African Cultural Patterns

The Peopling of Africa

The Bantu Dispersion

Ethiopia and Northeastern Africa

Empires of the Western Sudan

Swahili City-States and the Indian Ocean Economy

Kingdoms of Central and Southern Africa

 

DISCOVERY THROUGH MAPS

 Mansa Musa and The Catalan Atlas of 1375

DOCUMENT

 Oral Traditions and History

DOCUMENT

 Emperor Zar’a Ya’kob’s Coronation and His Concern for the Church

SEEING CONNECTIONS

 The Chinese in Africa

 

9. The Formation of Christian Europe, 476–1300 C.E. 

The Catholic Church in the Early Middle Ages

The Merovingians and Carolingians

Feudalism and Manorialism

The Revival of Trade and Towns

The Catholic Church in the High Middle Ages: 1000–1300

The Crusades

The Development of Western European States: 1000–1300

Byzantium In Its Golden Age and Decline

Russia and the Nations of Southeastern Europe

 

DOCUMENT

Charlemagne: A Contemporary Profile 

DOCUMENT

 The First Crusade Takes Jerusalem 

SEEING CONNECTIONS

 Muslim and Christian Chess Players

DOCUMENT

Vladimir Accepts Orthodox Christianity

 

10. Culture, Power, and Trade in the Era of Asian Hegemony, 220–1350

India and Southeast Asia in the Classical and Medieval Eras

China: Cultural and Political Empires

Korea: From Three Kingdoms to One

The Emergence of Japan

Oceania

 

DISCOVERY THROUGH MAPS

 Gog and Magog in the Ebstorf Mappamundi

DOCUMENT

 Bo Juyi (772–846): “The Song of Everlasting Sorrow”

DOCUMENT

 Faxian: A Chinese Buddhist Monk in Gupta India

DOCUMENT

 Sei Sh-onagon: The Pillow Book

SEEING CONNECTIONS

 Biwa from the Imperial Treasury at Nara

 

11. The Americas to 1500

Origins of The First Americans and Their Cultures

Emerging Civilizations in Mesoamerica

Classical Mayan Civilization

The Postclassical Era

The Amerindians of North America

 

DOCUMENT

 Father Bernabé Cobo, “Pachacuti, the Greatest Inca”

SEEING CONNECTIONS

 The Aztec Sun Stone

 

12.The Great Dynastic Empires of Eurasia, 1300–1650

New Polities in Eurasia

The Ottoman Empire

The Safavid Empire in Iran

The Mughal Empire in South Asia

Networks of Trade and Communication

 

DISCOVERY THROUGH MAPS

 The World Map of Piri Reis

DOCUMENT

 The Coming of Ismail Safavi Foretold

DOCUMENT

 The Idea of Seclusion and Lady Nurjahan

SEEING CONNECTIONS

 Religious Tolerance Under Akbar

 

 

13. East Asian Cultural and Political Systems, 1300–1650

China: The Ming Dynasty

Korea: The Making of a Confucian Society

Japan: The Era of ShMguns and Warring States

Southeast Asia: States Within a Region

 

DISCOVERY THROUGH MAPS

 Map of China’s Ancient Heartland, circa 1500 C.E.

DOCUMENT

 Zhang Han’s Essay on Merchants

DOCUMENT

 Sotoba Komachi, a Fourteenth-Century Japanese NM Play

DOCUMENT

 A Traveller’s Account of Siam

SEEING CONNECTIONS

A Giraffe in the Ming Court

 

14. European Cultural and Religious Transformations

The Renaissance and the Reformation, 1300–1600 

An Era of General Crisis

The Italian Renaissancen

Italian Renaissance Art

The Northern Renaissance

The Crisis in the Catholic Church: 1300–1517

Luther and the German Reformation

Henry VIII and the Anglican Reformation

Protestantism from Switzerland to Holland

Reform in the Catholic Church

 

DISCOVERY THROUGH MAPS

The Lagoon of Venice 

DOCUMENT

Machiavelli, The Prince: On Cruelty and Mercy 

SEEING CONNECTIONS

 Marco Polo’s Book of Wonders

DOCUMENT

Anne Ayscough (Mrs. Thomas Kyme), English Protestant Martyr 

 

15. State Development in Europe:

Western and Central Europe, Russia, and the Balkans to 1650

Western and Central Europe, 1300-1500

Politics, Diplomacy, and the Wars of Religions, 1556–1598

The Austrian Hapsburgs and the Thirty Years’ War, 1618-1648

Russia: From the Tatar Yoke to the Romanovs

The Balkans: Byzantine Collapse and Ottoman Rule

 

DISCOVERY THROUGH MAPS

 The Battle of Kahlenberg

DOCUMENT

 Simplicissimus on the Horrors of the Thirty Years’ War

SEEING CONNECTIONS

 The Fall of Constantinople

 

16. Global Encounters:

Europe and the New World Economy, 1400–1650 

The Iberian Golden Age

The Portuguese and Africa

The Growth of New Spain

Iberian Systems in the New World

Beginnings of Northern European Expansion

 

DISCOVERY THROUGH MAPS

 Savage Pictures: Sebastian Munster’s Map of Africa

DOCUMENT

 Portuguese Encounters with Africans

DOCUMENT

 Disease and the Spanish Conquest omen

SEEING CONNECTIONS

 The Portuguese in Benin