Chapter 8 Flashcards
The Indian caste system
Was extremely complex and stratified; a person could not change caste
The highest Hindu caste in India was the
Brahmans (priests, scholars)
The major difference between Buddhism and Hinduism was
Buddhism denied the need for caste, rites, and sacrifice to achieve nirvana
The center of the Buddhist world was
The monastic community of monks and nuns
Alexander the Great’s invasion of India
Led to the rise of the Mauryan empire and spread of Buddhism to Central Asia
All of these groups in India would have welcomed Ashoka’s official patronage of Buddhism except
Priests
Buddhism lost its appeal and influence in Guptan India because
Buddhist monks and nuns were isolated from the Indian population and did not interact much with the population
Achievements during the Gupta period included all of the following except
The conquest and unification of the Indian subcontinent
In Mesopotamia, the cuneiform culture of the Sumerians successfully assimilated invaders and provided stability and continuity. The same role in India was performed by
The Hindu social hierarchy
In that the Americas were probably unknown to other civilizations and therefore isolated, the first developments of civilization in the Americas involved
Independent invention
If Pre-Columbian civilizations in North and South America had any amount of contact between their civilizations, it would have occurred
Across the intermediate areas’ adjacent seas and land such as the Isthmus of Panama and Colombia
With regard to the origins of the American Indians
Probably migrated from Asia across a land bridge
The two cultural hearths of civilizations in the Americas included Central Mexico and
The Andean river valleys and plateaus of Ecuador and Peru
One major difference between the political development in the Americas and other river valley and classical civilizations in Africa and Eurasia was
Most American civilizations arose based on a pattern of chiefdoms and clan relationships
All of these account for the great diversity of Indians in the Americas except
Different ethnicities and races arrived from Asia, Africa, and Polynesia
The core or mother civilization for other civilizations in Mesoamerica was
The Olmecs
Although the Mayas developed similarity to other civilizations, they never
Progressed much past Neolithic technologies
Unlike most other classical civilizations, the primary reason for Mayan collapse seems to have been
Agricultural exhaustion
A constant influence on the development if sedentary agriculture and states in the Andes was
The vertical changes and microclimates created by altitude and temperature
The Incas developed a civilization based largely on
A social welfare system of cooperation and reciprocal obligations
The environmental factor, which influenced movement in Africa was
The increasing desertification of the Sahara
When the Bantu migrated, they
Spread agriculture, crops, and iron technologies across much of Africa
In Africa, to study migration and ethnic origins, historians
Study the evolution if languages and historical linguistics
In Axum, trade and contacts
Led to the kingdom’s conversion to Christianity
Ghana rose to prominence on the savannas
Through its control of Trans-Saharan trade, and regulation of salt and gold
In early Germanic society,
Women were held in high esteem and had considerable influence
Early historic Japanese culture
Was a blend in which the Japanese controlled the process of borrowing
Shinto
Is an extremely developed form of animistic nature worship
Contacts with China introduced all of these to Japan except
The idea and position of the emperor and imperial rule
In terms of distance traveled, the greatest maritime migration in history was
The spread of the Polynesians across Indian and Pacific oceans
All of these happenings must occur for a new period in world history to begin except
Nomadic peoples must overrun sedentary civilizations
At the end of the Classical Age
There was a religious upsurge as a result of social and economic problems
As the Han Empire collapsed
Large landowners and warlords dominated the governments in the Chinese states
During the 5th century C.E., Buddhism in China
Blended with Daoism, whose followers borrowed many Buddhist ideas
In India during the period after the Guptan collapse,
Hinduism maintained cultural cohesion when the central state collapsed
In comparison to the end of the classical civilizations in China and India, the collapse of the Roman Empire was
More severe and extensive than elsewhere
Christianity differed from the Classic Mediterranean culture in all of these ways except
Offering salvation to the poor and slaves
All of these contributed to the decline and fall of Rome except
Nomadic invasions
The fall of the Roman Empire
Divided the Mediterranean into three different cultural zones
Mahayana Buddhism
Sees the Buddha as a savior or god, and stresses the possibility of an afterlife
In contrast to Mahayana Buddhism, as Christianity evolved and spread, it
Was intolerant of other faiths
In the 5th century C.E., Buddhism spread to China
Where the Chinese imposed some of their own cultural values on the religion
