history 2
Yemima Amanuel 
WorldHistoryIChapter6.pptxOther Second-Wave Civilizations
World History I
Chapter 6
Second-Wave Civilizations
In Western history, we usually focus on the better- known second-wave civilizations such as the Greeks, Romans and Chinese, but there were many other peoples that were creating civilizations which were in many ways like these mega-cultures, but still unique.
The three main population centers around this time (600 BCE-1200 CE) were Eurasia, which harbored 85% of the world’s population, Africa, with about 10%, the Americas, with about 5%, and Oceania, which held less than 1%. The fact that Eurasia had by far the most people – and still does today - is the main reason why their civilizations are given the most focus in survey courses such as these.
Population Centers Eurasia Africa Americas Oceania 0.85 0.1 0.05 0.01
Why did some areas lag behind?
The cultures developed differently according to their natural surroundings. For example, Eurasia and Africa had lots of larger animals that could be domesticated to pull plows and wagons, or to ride in battle- but the Americas had almost none at first, until the Spanish brought horses and cattle in the 1500s.
Working metals (metallurgy) wasn’t as far advanced in the Americas, nor was writing. These are milestones of growth in civilizations, and the civilization tends to stay fairly primitive until these things are mastered.
Another reason the Americas and Oceania stayed primitive longer was the distance between them and the civilizations of Eurasia. In Africa’s case, it was relatively near Eurasia, so those things the Eurasians learned could be transferred over to Africa more quickly than the Americas or Oceania, which were thousands of miles of ocean away.
Africa
Africa, with its wide variations in climate and geography, grew many civilizations that were very different from each other. Some people lived in mountainous areas with frequent rainfall, some in dense jungle, some in desert, some in grasslands- all lived in tropical climates with plenty of insect born diseases and parasites they had to contend with.
Meroë
One lesser known African civilization was the Nubians, who lived in the Nile Valley, south of Egypt. Their kingdom was Meroë, which survived from 300 BCE-100 CE. Their ruler was all powerful, and at least ten times was a female.
As with Egypt, the people were adept at working with iron, weaving, masonry, pottery and agriculture. It was a trade center, and well known for its iron weapons, cotton cloth, and access to gold, ivory, tortoiseshells, ostrich feathers and other luxuries.
Eventually, Meroë declined, as timber used to stoke the ironworks declined, and trade moved away from inland routes to water routes. It was conquered by Axum, and eventually became part of the Islamic empire. The ruins of Meroe are shown at left.
Axum
Axum grew in the area of what is modern day Eritrea and Ethiopia. Unlike most African civilizations, Axum was able to use plows to grow massive quantities of grains, which were then traded throughout the Red Sea and Indian Ocean areas.
They erected obelisks that were the largest man made structures hewn from a single rock at the time.
The largest port on the East African coast at the time, Adulis, was in Axum and the helped the civilization to grow even more prosperous, so much so that the Romans considered the Axum empire to be of major importance, rated third after the Persian empire and Roman empire itself.
As with Meroë, Axum became heavily Christian, but unlike Meroë, and Egypt, both of which became largely Islamic, the area of the Axum empire has stayed largely Christian to this day. As with Meroë, the Axum civilization began to decline as a result of environmental changes such as soil depletion and erosion.
Niger Valley Peoples
The Niger Valley civilization began around 300 BCE, when drought forced people from other areas to travel into the Niger Valley in search of water and grassland for their cattle, sheep and goats.
These people never banded together into an empire, or even into kingdoms. Instead, they developed complex urban centers, each specializing in a certain trade such as ironworking, cloth weaving, potters, leather workers, etc., that surrounded a larger central town, which nevertheless seemed to have no form of government.
Though these areas lived peacefully and prosperously for centuries, they eventually became swallowed up by what would become the nations of Ghana, Mali and others.
MesoAmericans
In the Americas, the mountainous terrain kept many civilizations isolated from each other. This meant that Mesoamerica – the areas between central Mexico to northern Central America - would have many different languages, ethnicities and cultures.
Most of these had no larger domesticated animals or ironworking technology, with the exception of those living in the Andes, who domesticated the llama and alpaca, which provided them with food, clothing and transportation for trade with other areas.
In almost all cases, Mesoamericans grew maize, beans, chili peppers and squash, both for consumption and trade, since these items could not readily grow in many other places.
They had a pantheon of gods and goddesses and used ritual human sacrifice. Interestingly enough, despite not being near each other geographically, they still traded with one another enough to use the same calendar, with a 260-day year, such as the one below, and the same kind of writing. They even used the same goods to display their wealth- jade, obsidian, ceramic pottery, stingray spines and more.
Mayans
The Maya are probably the most widely known of the Mesoamericans. They are certainly one of the oldest civilizations in the Americas. Mayan culture dates from 2000 BCE in what is now Guatemala and the Yucatàn area of Mexico. The zenith of their civilization, when their most noted achievements were made, dated from 250-900 CE.
During that time, Mayan mathematicians (priests, most likely) produced the idea of zero, and place notation for larger numbers, allowing for more complex calculations. They used mathematical formulas to plot the earth’s cycle, predict solar and lunar eclipses, and calculate the correct length of a solar year, used in making their calendars.
Their writing was a complex mixture of pictographs, phonetics and symbols and many people seemed able to write; there are many, many Mayan writings still in existence about everything from their history to their religion to astronomy and more.
They built temples, pyramids, and many other structures, drained swamps, cut terraces into hillsides for irrigation, etc.
They had social classes from nobles and priests, to artisans and merchants, down to peasant farmers and slaves.
Mayans
Despite all of these advances, the Mayans were war-like and fought among themselves frequently, as kings rose and fell from power. No one king ever rose to combine the Mayans together into one empire.
In 840, a drought began that, along with warfare, decimated the Mayan population, which had fully collapsed by 910 CE. Scholars are still trying to understand exactly why the collapse was so relatively quick and so profound. Mayan ruins like those pictured here continue to be valuable sites full of information.
The Aztec
The Aztec, who lived in Mexico, were similar to the Mayans in many ways. Their civilization was equally impressive, including huge cities such as Teotihuacàn, that were laid out according to plans rather than added to here and there as many other cities are.
In addition to palaces and temples, there were multiple marketplaces, apartments, buildings to house the government, and giant ziggurat-shaped pyramids. The city even had two small areas for foreigners (probably merchants) to live.
Like the Mayans, they used human sacrifices to their gods and as grave offerings when a leader died. As with the Mayans, there was a division of labor, with some people specializing in farming, others in metallurgy, weaving, etc.
Crocodiles, Jaguars and other animals decorate the face of this
temple in Teotihuacan
Teotihuacan
The Aztecs who lived in Teotihuacán directly controlled an area outside the city of about 10,000 square miles, and more loosely controlled areas even farther away.
The Aztec empire grew so powerful that it conquered at least one Mayan city (Kaminaljuyù), which was made a colony. The Mayan city of Tikal was likewise conquered at some point, but not permanently.
The city of Teotihuacàn collapsed around 650 CE, and the Aztec empire never completely recovered. Archaeologists still aren’t certain what caused the collapse.
The Moche
In the Andes, other second-wave civilizations grew, including the Inca, and before them, the Moche. The Moche lived in the high mountain peaks of the Andes, but in many ways their culture resembled the Aztec and Mayans.
For example, priests and rulers held power, workers specialized in their tasks, slavery was an important part of culture, and prisoners of the frequent wars were often used as human sacrifices.
The Incas rose as the Moche and other Andean civilizations began to dwindle, around 1000 BCE.
A Moche burial of a high-ranking official
Bantu
In Africa, in the areas of modern- day Nigeria and Cameroon, came groups of people known collectively as the Bantu. These were people who shared some common characteristics, but never banded into a single group, probably largely because of geography and often scarce food resources.
Collectively, the Bantu spoke over 400 different but similar languages. Over hundreds of years, the Bantu migrated further south, bringing with them agricultural methods that gradually replaced the hunter/gatherer way of living that had existed previously.
The Bantu Migration
The Bantu had three advantages over the hunter/gatherers:
1. They used agriculture, so there was a more reliable food supply, that could also support a larger population. This allowed the Bantu to outnumber many groups they came across- through sheer numbers, they typically assimilated the other groups.
2. They had increased immunity to animal borne illnesses and parasites, since they had domesticated cattle, etc. Therefore, they could overcome some of the diseases animals bring with them, while the hunter/gatherers were more likely to die when they became exposed to these diseases.
3. They had learned to work iron, which not only gave them stronger, more lethal weapons, but allowed them to make vessels that could carry water, cook food, etc.
Bantu Customs
Bantu religions, dance, music, and beliefs spread throughout most of Africa eventually, and influenced most of the groups already in existence.
Rather than sacrificing humans, as Mesoamericans did, the Bantu sacrificed cattle to their gods. They had systems of ancestor worship, believing that failure to show the proper respect to ancestors could result in evil deeds befalling one.
They believed also in witchcraft, seers who could divine what was happening in the next world and either curse you or protect you from harm from the dead.
A Bantu “witch-doctor”
The Anasazi
In America, second-wave civilizations included the Anasazi, or Ancestral Pueblo, of modern-day southwestern US.
The Anasazi were some of the first humans to learn to grow maize, which took about 2000 years of growth and change to become the worldwide staple crop it is now. Originally, an ear of maize was less than an inch long.
They built their homes first in pit-like structures called kivas, (see picture at right) and later in cave-like high rise structures known as pueblos.
The Anasazi civilization as a whole came to a fairly abrupt end, possibly due to climate change, but some survived, becoming the Pueblo people of today.
The Mound People
Further north in America were the mound people of modern-day Ohio and Missouri.
The Cahokia built a city near modern day St. Louis that was the largest man-made structure north of Mexico.
Cahokia was a trading hub for the Americas.
Oceania
In the Pacific, the people of Oceania also created second-wave civilizations. In the case of Oceania, most of the people came to the islands from Southeast Asia.
The new arrivals often completely changed the environment of the islands, causing extinction of species like the moa, a giant flightless bird (at right) that was hunted for food.
Entire islands were denuded of forests and soil was allowed to erode away. In many cases, islands had to be abandoned in favor of others that had not yet had their ecosystems destroyed by human habitation.
Oceania
Although these various civilizations had many differences, there were commonalities as well. Many languages were spoken, thousands in fact, but they often had their roots in the Austronesian family.
Many islanders used tribal tattoos, each of which was distinctly different than that of other islands and their people.
They depended heavily on the ocean for food and used sea- shells as currency.
Oceania
They also farmed, raising basically the same crops from island to island, especially sweet potatoes, which became a staple in Oceania akin to maize in the Americas. They shared similar religions and concepts of right and wrong and had massive trade networks that often stretched through thousands of miles of open water.
Because they were so isolated by water, they were able to live for hundreds of years in relative peace without interference from outside civilizations.
.
