Chapter 6 Flashcards
In 2010 which Bolivian president was inaugurated for a second term in office and the only president native American ever elected to that position post independence from Spain in 1825
Evo Morales
The day after the official ceremony in the Capital of La Paz, Morales traveled where; which was an impressive empire that flourished in Andean Highlands during 400 and 1000 B.C.E.
Tiwanaku
What happened to Morales once arriving at Tiwanaku?
He was cleansed with holy water and herbs and dressed in a llama wool robe
Who was Pachamama?
She was an Andean Earth goddess
Who was was Tata inti?
Was an Inca sun god.
At beginning of the Common Era, was was the projected total world population?
250 million people, substantially less than the current population of the United States alone.
How was the world’s population distributed among the three supercontinents?
Eurasia was home to 85%
Africa 10%
The Americas 5%
Oceania less than 1%
Which animals weren’t available in the Americas, that naturally were there?
Animals to pull plows or carts or to be ridden in combat
Which animals did Africa lack until contact with Eurasia?
Wild sheep, goats, chickens, horses, and camels.
Metallurgy was more prominent where?
In Eurasia and Africa rather than in the Americas
In the Americas which region was writing limited to?
Mesoamerican region and was most highly developed among the Maya
Where did the Christian faith find a more permanent foothold?
In Ethiopia
What generated a pastoral way of life among some of the Berber peoples of the Western Sahara during the first three centuries c.e.
The arrival of the domesticated camel, probably from Arabia
The Americas and Oceania, by contrast, developed almost wholly apart from this Afro-Eurasian Network until that separation was breached because of what?
By the voyages of Columbus in 1492
What was one environmental feature that set Africa distinctly from everyone else?
It was bisected by the equator, it was the most tropical of the world’s three supercontinents
Which African civilization falling partly within this time period grew up along the East African coast in conjunction with Indian Ocean Trade?
Swahili civilization
Who did the Nubians trade with and fight against and even on one occasion the Nubian Kingdom of Kush conquered them and ruled it for a century?
Egypt, while Nubia borrowed heavily from it they remained distinct and separate civilizations.
Where did Nubia civilization come to center?
ON the southern city of Meroe, where it flourished between 300 B.C.E and 100 C.E.
How was the Kingdom of Meroe governed?
Governed by an all-powerful and sacred monarch, a position held on a least ten occasion by women, governing alone or as co-rulers with a male monarch
How were Meroe queens seen as?
Meroe queens appeared in sculptures as women and with a prominence and power equivalent to their male counterparts.
What economic specialties did the city of Meroe and other urban centers house?
Merchants, weavers, potters, and masons, as well as servants, laborers, and slaves.
What was a prominent industry in Meroe?
The smelting of iron and the manufacturing of iron tools and weapons.
In the rural areas surrounding Meroe what was practiced?
Some combination of herding and farming and paid periodic tribute to the ruler.
What type of agriculture was possible in Meroe?
Rainfall-based agriculture was possible and consequently, farmers were less dependent on irrigation. This meant that the rural population did not need to concentrate so heavily near the Nile as was the case in Egypt.
How did Meroe get its wealth and military power?
Derived in part from extensive long-distance trading connections to the north via the Nile and to the east and west by means of camel caravans
What materials gave Meroe a reputation for great riches in the world of Northeastern Africa and the Mediterranean?
Its iron weapons and cotton cloth, as well as its access to gold, ivory, tortoiseshells, and ostrich feathers
What did they discover in Meroe that was probably seized during a raid on Roman Egypt, which testifies to contact with the Meditteranean world?
A statue of the Roman emperor Augustus
Who was the local lion god, which grew more prominent than Egyptian deities such as Isis and Osiris in Meroe?
Apedemek
While the use of Egyptian-style writing declined what did Meroe replace it with?
A new and still-undeciphered Meroitic script took the place
Why did the Kingdom of Meroe decline in 100 C.E. and the centuries following?
IN part because of deforestation caused by the need for wood to make charcoal for smelting iron.
Why did the Meroe rulers power diminish and the state weaken?
As Egyptian trade with the African interior switched from the Nile Valley Route to the Red Sea, the resources available to Meroe diminished.
Which finished and completely ended the Meroe phase of Nubian civilization?
IN 340s C.E. the neighboring and rising state of Axum took power because of the kingdom’s conquest
In the centuries that followed, three separate Nubian states emerged because of the fall of Meroe but what also penetrated the region?
Coptic (Egyptian) Christianity
For almost a thousand years, Nubia was a Christian civilization, using Greek as a liturgical language and constructing churches in what fashion?
IN the Coptic or Byzantine fashion
After 1300 or so, political division, Arab immigration, and the penetration of Islam eroded this Christian civilization into what?
Eroded the Christian civilization and Nubia became part of the growing world of Islam
If Meroe represented the continuation of an old African/Nubian civilization what did Axum represent?
Marked the emergence of a new one
Where was Axum located?
IN the Horn of Africa in what is now Eritrea and northern Ethiopia
Axum’s strong economic foundation was based on what?
A Highly productive agriculture that used plow-based farming system, unlike most of the rest of Africa, which relied on the hoe or digging stick
What did Axum’s agriculture generate substantial amounts of?
Generated substantial amounts of wheat, barley, millet, and teff, a highly nutritious grain unique to that region
Because of participation in what, Axum had a substantial emergence as a powerful state?
Participation in the rapidly increasing Red Sea and Indian Ocean commerce, which was itself a product of growing Roman demand for Indian pearls, textiles, and especially pepper.
What was the largest port on the East African coast at the time, where a wide range of merchants sought the products of the African interior -animal hides, rhinoceros horn, ivory, obsidian, tortoiseshells, and slaves?
Adulis
What provided a major source of revenue for the Axumite state and the complex society that grew within?
Taxes on trade
The interior capital city of Axum was the center of what?
monumental building and royal patronage for the arts. The most famous structures were huge stone obelisks, which most likely marked royal graves.
What was the language used at court, in the towns, and for commerce in Axum that was derived from Southern Arabia?
Ge’ez
To the Romans, Axum was what?
Axum was the third major empire within the world they knew, following their own and the Persian Empire
Axum was introduced to Christianity in the 4th century as its monarch at the time ____ _____ adopted the new religion about the same time as Constantine did in the Roman Empire.
King Ezana
Who was the king of Axum who introduced Christianity to the region?
King Ezana
Ealy in King Ezana’s reign the coins featured gods derived from southern Arabia, but later on were inscribed with what?
A Christian cross
What Christian Church was distinct to Axum?
Coptic
Although Egypt subsequently became largely Islamic, reducing its Christian community to a small minority, Christianity maintained a dominant position in the mountainous terrain of highland ______ and in the early 21st century still, represents the faith of perhaps __% of the country’s population.
Ethiopia
60%
During the fourth through the sixth centuries C.E., Axum mounted a campaign of imperial expansion that took its forces into the _____ __ _____ and across the Red Sea into ____ in South Arabia
Kingdom of Meroe
Yemen
What is the traditional date for the birth of Muhammad?
571
By 571 an Axumite army, including a number of African War elephants, had reached the gates of _____, but it was a fairly short-lived imperial venture.
Mecca
Why did the Axumite state decline?
Owed partially to environmental changes, such as soil exhaustion, erosion, and deforestation, brought about by intensive farming. Equally important was the rise of Islam, which altered trade routes and diminished the revenue available to the Axumite state.
When the state revived several centuries later where?
Centered farther south on the Ethiopian plateau
IN the Ethiopian plateau emerged what?
The Christian Church and the state that present-day Ethiopia has inherited, but the link to ancient Axum was long remembered and revered
Where in West Africa emerged a remarkable urbanization?
The middle stretches of the Niger River in West Africa
In the 5 centuries after 500 B.C.E what brought people to the middle Niger River?
A prolonged dry period brought growing numbers of people from the southern Sahara into the fertile floodplain in search of more reliable access to water.
What did the people moving along the Niger river bring with them?
Accompanying them were their domesticated cattle, sheep, and goats; their agricultural skills; and their ironworking technologies
What was the most fully studied of the urban clusters that grew up along the middle Niger River which in its high point probably housed more than 40,000 people?
Jenne-jeno
What was the most distinctive feature of the Niger Valley civilization?
The most distinctive feature was the apparent absence of a corresponding state structure
According to leading historians of the Niger Valley civilizations, they were “_____ _______ ______”
“cities without citadels” = complex urban centers that apparently operated without the coercive authority of a state, for archaeologists have found in their remains few signs of despotic power, widespread warfare, or deep social inequalities.
the Niger Valley civilization can be compared to which civilizations?
Norte Chico or the Indus Valley civilization
Iron smithing?
Working with fire and earth (ore) to produce this highly useful metal
Archaeologist Roderick McIntosh, argued what? IN Jenne-jeno
“their knowledge of the transforming arts - earth to metal, insubstantial fire to the mass of iron- was the key to a secret, occult realm of immense power and immense danger”
In Niger River civilization, gradually these urban artisan communities became occupation castes..
whose members passed their jobs and skills to their children and could marry only within their own group
In surrounding rural areas, farmers tilled the soil and raised their animals, but specialization also occurred how?
in food production as various ethnic groups focused on fishing, rice cultivation, or some other agricultural pursuit
A series of distinct and specialized economic groups shared what?
authority and voluntarily used the services of one another, while maintaining their own identities through physical seperation
Why was Jenne-jeno so important?
It was an important transshipment point in this commerce, in which goods were transferred from boat to donkey or vice versa
When do scholars trace the beginning of the Maya people?
To ceremonial centers constructed as early as 2000 B.C.E. in present-day Guatemala and the Yucatan region of Mexico
In Northern Guatemala which archeological site was home to tens of thousands of people, a pyramid/temple said by some to be the largest in the world, and a stone-carved frieze depicting the Maya creation story known as the Popul Vuh.
El Mirador
What is the Maya creation story known as?
Popul Vuh
The Maya combined this mathematical ability with careful observation of the night skies to plot what?
To plot the cycles of planets, to predict eclipses of the sun and the moon, to construct elaborate calendars, and to calculate accurately the length of the solar year
What did Mayan writing record and how was it written?
Carved in stone and written on bark paper or deerskin books, Mayan writing recorded historical events, masses of astronomical data, and religious or mythological texts
In Maya civilization why was it not surprising that early scholars vied Maya civilization somewhat romantically as a peaceful society?
Led by gentle stargazing priest-kings devoted to temple building and intellectual pursuits
Why was the Maya’s cultural achievements a good economic foundation?
The Maya drained swamps, terraced hillsides, flattened ridgetops, and constructed an elaborate water-management system. “almost totally engineered landscape”
The agriculture sustained substantial _______…
elite classes of nobles, priests, merchants, architects, and sculptors, as well as specialized artisans producing pottery, tools, and cotton textiles
Why did scholars realize that their early view of the Maya was wrong and really based on the what?
They realized it was based on city-states, local lords, and regional kingdoms with no central authority, with frequent warfare, and with the extensive capture and sacrifice of prisoners.
How were the larger political units of the Maya Civilization?
Were densely populated urban and ceremonial centers, ruled by a powerful king and on few occasions queens.
What were divine rulers in the Maya civilization?
Divine rulers or “state shamans” were able to mediate between humankind and the supernatural
What was the city of Tikal?
A Mayan city containing perhaps 50,000 people, with another 50,000 or so in the surrounding countryside, by 750 C.E.
As Mayan civilization rose and fell what came along with it?
Fluctuating alliances among them alternated with periods of sporadic warfare; ruling families intermarried; the elite classes sought luxury goods from far away - jade, gold, shells, feathers from exotic birds, cacao - to bolster their authority and status.
What civilization did the Maya closely resemble?
Resembled the competing city-states of ancient Mesopotamia or classical Greece than the imperial structures of Rome, Peria, or China.
Where did Maya civilization persist in to?
Northern Yucatan
Rapid population growth after 600 C.E. pushed totally Maya numbers perhaps to what?
To 5 million or more
Because of the Maya high population in 600 C.E. what problems came along with it?
Soon they were outstripped of available resources, resulting in deforestation and the erosion of hillsides. Under such conditions, climate change in the form of prolonged droughts in the 800s may well have placed unbearable pressures on Maya society
Why was war more common in the 800s C.E. in Maya civilization?
Warfare became more frequent as competition for increasingly scarce land for cultivation became sharper
At roughly the same time as the Maya flourished in the southern regions of Mesoamerica, which giant city was also thriving further north in the Valley of Mexico?
Teotihuacan
What was the estimated population of the city of Teotihuacan?
By 550 C.E. had a population variously estimated between 100,000 and 200,000.
