Culture, Science, and Technology, 600-1450 Flashcards
Neo-Confucianism
● Strict hierarchy and filial piety
● Syncretism of Buddhism and Confucianism
● Served as an important unifying factor in a politically dividdd China
- Ming emperors relied on it as a tool to justify their rule
Woodblock printing
● Originated as early as the 200s C.E.
● It was costly and time consuming
● A block, once carved, could be used to print only one text or image, and it could not be corrected
Movable-type printing
● Allowed individual, reusable characters to be placed in a frame, and then rearranged, arose during the 100s in Song China and was known in Korea by the 1200s
Johannes Gutenberg
● Germ inventor who designed the first workable and cost-effective movable-type press
Gutenberg press
● Especially because the small number of letters in the Latin alphabet made it easy to mass-produce texts, the Gutenberg press had an explosive effect on literacy rates, the speed at which information spread, the impact of new ideas and scientific theories, and the expansion of librearies and universities
● Also play an indispensable role in Europe’s Renaissance and Protestant Reformation
Xuanzang
● Chinese monk who journeyed to India to learn more about Buddhism
● After more than a decade and a half of visiting holy sites and libraries, Xuanzang returned with wagon loads of Buddhist art and artifacts, as well as hundreds of sacred texts in Sanskrit that he and his followers studied, translated, and distributed thorughout China
● Wu Chengen’s beloved features Xuanzang as a fictional character who travels to India in the company of the Monkey King
Marco Polo
● European merchant who traveled from Venice to Asia along the Silk Road during the mid- to late 1200s
● He befriendd Kublai Khan, the Mongol ruler of China
● Played an enormous role in familiarizing medieval and Renaissance Euroeans with the riches, luxuries, and cultural advancements of Asia
Ibn Battuta
● Great explorer of the Islamic world of Morocco who began a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1325 and embarked on a journey
● Not only did he visit most of West and North Africa, along with the Middle East, he ventured throughout Central Asia, East and Southeast Asia and South Asia, going as far as the Indonesian islands
● Reveal hte remarkable diversity of customs and cultural practices among Muslim people
Zheng He
● The Chinese captain who took ships of the Ming navy on seven far-ranging voyages through the Indian and Pacific Oceans during the early 1400s
Ideal of Christendorm
● All European nations should be bound together by their allegiance to the Church
Great Schism
● 1054
● Formally divided ROman Catholicism (Latin-based and governed by the Roman papacy) from Eastern Orthodoxy (Greek-inspired and headquartered in Byzantium)
Scholasticism
● The attempt by thinkers such as Peter Abelard and Thomas Aquinas to reconcile Greco-Roman learning from the past with Christian teachings
● Adaptation of the former was limited for two reasons
- It was dangerous to accept Greco-Roman ideas that the Church objected to
- Most medieval scholars were less familiar with Greek than with Latin and tended to know Greek thinkers like Pato and Aristotle only through Latin translation
Geocentric theory
● The thoery that the church chose to adapt
● Proposed that the sun revolves around the earth
Renaissance
● Cultural rebirth
● Pominent in Italy between the early 1300s and the early 1500s
Classicism
● A greater emphasis than befroe on Greco-Roman influences
Secularism
● More frequently painting or writing about non-religious subjects, althought religion remained important
Humanism
● The convition that to be human is something to rejoice in
● Derived from Greco-Roman culture
● Ran counter to the prevailing medieval view that to be human was to be tainted with sin and that worldly life was less important than the heavnely afterlife
Islam
● Monotheistic faiths containing many similarities with Judaism and Christianity and possess an eventful shared history
● Arose in the Arabian Peninsula due to the efforts of Mohammed 570-632
Qur’an
● Teachings of Mohammed
● Sacred text of Islam
Arabic
● Holy langugae of Islam
Sharia
● Condification of traditional Islamic law
People of the book
● Mohammed instruced Muslims to acknowledge Jews and Christians as this
● He respected many figures from Judaism and Christianity
Five Pillars of Faith
● Muslims are to live by it
- There is no god but Allah
- Pray five times daily, facing in the direction of Mecca
- Fast during the month of Ramadan
- Givae alms to the poor (charity)
- Attempt a pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca at least once in one’s lifetime
Patriarchalism in Islam
● Required to veil themselves when in public
● Islam commanded men to treat women with respect and women in much of the Islamic world enjoyed hte right to inheirt, have dowries, and own property
● Woemn’s status remained distinctly secondary
Umma
● Political and social community of Muslims
● Linked by religious belief
Caliph
● After Mohammed’s death, the umma was governed by a caliph or “successor”
● Both a religious and political leader
● First caliph was Abu Bakr
Canon of Medicine
● By Persian physician Avicenna (Ibn Sina 980-1037)
● Became the most authoritative medical text in the Middle East and Euopre until the 1600s
Madrasas
● Chief centers of learning
● Religious colleges
● Main trust of Islamic philosophy
Averroes
● A doctor from Muslim Spain translated and analyzed the works of the Greek philospher Aristotle
● A key step in reintroducing his ideas to medieval Europe as a whole
Maimonides
● Jesish thinker whose attempted to reconcile the rationality of Greco-Roman thought with Jewish theology
Sufism
● A mystical strain of Islam that emphasizes union with Allah by means of spiritual exercises like chanting and dancing
Mud-and-timber constructions
● West Africa
● Best exemplified by the Sankore Mosque in Timbuktu
● Show a unique fusion of Islamic function with local style
Architecture of Zanzibar
● On the eastern coast
● Distinguished by the use of coral to decorate buildings
Vast walls in Great Zimbabwe
● Each stone set precisely and sturdily in place wihtout mortar
African literature
● preserved by oral tradition
● griots (djeli) chronicled history and social custom
● from Mali, named after the chieftain who founded the Mali state and relating his many exploits
Griots/djeli
● Chronicled history and social custom
● Professional storytellers
● Acted as entertainers and advised chiefs and rulers
Civil service examinations
● most government officials gained their posts by scoring well on rigorous exams
● Tested knowledge of the Confucian classics
Can Buddhism/Zen Buddhism (Japan)
● Stressed simplicity and meditation
● Became very populat after 600 C.E.
Han Lin Academy of Letters
● Sponsored by China’s Tang emperors
● A key institution of learning
● Poets who received their patronage are considered to have been extraordinarily eloquent and meditative
Forbidden City
● Architectural masterpiece of the early Ming period
● The imperial residence erected in Beijing during the early 1400s
● Serve as a seat of government and to impress onlookers with the regime’s power and grandeur
Scroll painting
● Depicted landscapes and other scnes on vertical rolls of silk and paper
Bushido
● Way of the warrior
● Code of chivalry
● Required samurai not just to be loyal and brave, but also culturally refined
Chan/Zen Buddhism
● Emphasis on self-discipline appealed to the samurai elite
● Affected several important cultural practices in Japan
- Cha-no-yu tea ceremony
- Landscaping (rock gardens and bonsai trees)
- Haiku poetry
Pure Land/Jo Do Buddhism
● Promised a heavenly after life and gained a large following among hte lower classes
Angkor Wat
● Architectural monuments
● HInduism
Outrigger canoes
● Used by Polynesian peoples
Dreamtime
● Practiced by Australia’s Aborigines
● A transcendent spiritual state that needs to be entered and understood
● In a form of animism
Earth mounds
● Mississippian civilizations raised for religious and ceremonical purposes
Pyramids
● Served as temples and worshipped many of the same gods as the Mesoamericans (Toltec, Aztecs) who preceded them
● Key deities included the jaguar god and the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl
● The sun god Huitzilopochtli is the most important
Human sacrifice
● The Aztecs believed htat the sun reappeared every morning only if reenergized by human blood
● Victims included prisoners of war, but also ordinary Aztec citizens, and the victims numbered in the thousands every year
Quipu
● Knot-typing system practiced in the Andean region (Incas)
● To keep records and accounts
Machu Picchu
● Temple complex of Incas
Temple of the Sun
● Largest place of worship
● Locate in Cosco
● Laid out in the shape of a puma
● Its interior was lined with gold
● Staffed by thougsands of acllas, or “virgins of the sun”
- Young women chosen each year from throughout hte empire to serve as acolytes
What were spread from China throughout East Asia?
● Buddhist culture ● Chinese pictographs - Many of which were absorbed into Korea's and Japan's systems of writing ● Sacred texts ● Artistic and architectural styles
What were some examples of Chinese influences in East Asia?
● The temples in Korea and Japan adopted the pagoda-shaped form of Chinese temples
● The old capital of Japan, Heian, was deliberately built according to the same grid layout as Tang China’s capital, Chang’an
● Neo-Confucian principles spread throught East Asian societies
What were some examples of Indian influences in Southeast Asia?
● Cambodia’s Khmer state built the temple complex of Angkor Wat that blends Hindu culture and Buddhist culture
- Directly imitating architectural styles from south India
● THe Srivijayan Empire also built the temple complex of Borobudur, representing the path to enlightenment
Where did cultural influecne of Islam extend to?
● Spain
● North Africa
● Middle East and Persia
● sub-Saharan Africa–both int he west, in the vicinity of Mali and Ghana, and along the eastern coast
● Central Asia and China’s western frontier
● South and Southeast Asia
What were some evidences of Islam cultural influecne?
● Arabic and Persian literary, artistic, and architectural syles affected poetry, music, painting, and the building of mosques throughout the growing Muslim world
What civilizations dominated Mesoamerica and what were the influences they put in?
● Toltecs (800-1100s) and Aztecs (1100s-1500s)
● Pyramid building, human sacrifices, and the worship of a pantheon of deities that for centuries had been venerated in roughly the same form thorughout the region
What civilization dominated Andes region and what were the influences they put in?
● Incas
● Worship of the sun god and the use of quipu knot tying instead of a wirtten script for recordkeeping
What were the technology and scientific knowledge that is transfered in Muslim world?
● Muslims drived their expertise from encounters with mathematical writings from India and ancient Greece
● THe formalization of algebra as a mathematical discipline resulted from this dynamic
● Familarity with Greek texts also allowed Jewish and Islamic scholars in Muslim Spain to contribute to intellectual revival in medieval Europe
- These scholars reintroduced Greek philosophy and science, paving way for Europe’s Renaissance
What were the technology and scientific knowledge that is transferred from China?
● Astrolabe and the compass were vital for navigation on land and especially at sea
● Gunpowder weaponry that revolutionized warfare in teh 1200s and 1300s
● Printing
How did cross-cultural exchange help spread languages?
● Silk Road commerce helped to spread Turkic langugaes
● The migration of the Bantu peoples thourhgout sub-Saharan Africa profoundly affected linguistic development in many parts of the continent
- Especially in East Africa, trade and the mixing of ethnicities led to the creation of Swahil, the region’s widely adopted lingua franca, or common tongue
What was the most important factor shaping Europe’s medieval culture?
● Christian church
● During the early medieval choas, the Church played an indispensable role in preserving Greco-Roman manuscripts, promoting Latin as an international language of learning
How did the churches influence cultural development in Medieval Europe?
● The Catholic and Orthodox churches alike provided the vast majority of employment opportunities for artists, architects, and musicians
● Both churches stritctly controlled culture and severly punished art, literature and scientific ideas htat fell out of line with church doctrine
What are the architectural sophistication of the medieval era?
● Castles
● Cathedrals
What are hte changes in architecture in medieval Europe?
● Relatively simple Romanesque style to the incredibly ornate Gothic style during the High Middle Ages
● Icons, or religious paintings, were inspired by Byzantine styles
What are the music styles in the medieval Europe?
● The best-known form of church music was plainsong, or Gregorian chant
● Secular music aronse int he form of troubadour poems, which celebrated love, chivalry (the knightly duty to protect and idealize women), and the adventures of heroes like King Arthur, El Cid of Spain and the knight Roland
What was the purpose of universities in medieval Europe?
● Religious training
● Teach law and medicine
What accelerate the spread of learning thorughout Europe in medieval time?
● Appearance of universities
● Increased use of native, or vernacular languages instaed of Latin by poets and other authors
- Geoffrey Chaucer of ENgland
- Dante Alighieri of Italy
● Stimulated a growth in literacy and made literature available to a wider range of people
● Invention of the first viable movable-type printing press
Why did the Renaissance start in Italy?
● Italy’s thriving trade-based economy
● Its exposure to wider cultural influences thorughout the Mediterranean
● Growing familiarity of its scholars with Greek science and philosophy (cultural contacts with their Jewsih and Islamic counterparts in Muslim Spain)
What were hte cardinal principles of Renaissance?
● Classicism
● Secularism
● Humanism
What were the promiennt figures from the Italian Renaissance?
● Writers Petrarch and Boccaccio
● Potical theorist Niccolo Machiavelli
● Artists Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo
What are the traditions of Islam outside of the FIve Pillars of Faith?
● Abstaining from alcohol and pork
● Avoiding the portrayal of human or animal images in art
● Supporting polygamy
- Muslim men were allowed to take up to four wives, as long as they could support them properly
What are hte holy cities of Islam?
● Mecca–the holiest
● Medina–Mohammed started his teachings
● Jerusalem–Mohammed is said to have ascended to heaven here
How did Islam influence cultural life in the caliphate?
● Muslim authorities determined waht was acceptable art or literature
● Islamic art tended to feature geometric patterns and shapes rather than human or animal figures
What are the classic Islamic literature from Medieval time?
● by Ibn Battuta
● aka featuring the famed tales of Sinbad and Sailor, Ali Baba, and Aladdin also by Ibn Battuta
● of Omar Khayyam, a mathematician and astronomer who composed this collection of bittersweet, meditative poems
● Sufi poet Rumi gave expression to many Sufism ideas in his verses
How did Islam influence cultural life in Africa?
● Most of North Africa and much of the Sahara became pat of hte Islamic caliphates
● Islam came to West African states like Ghana and Mali
● Islam blended with indigenous African traditions in the Swahili ports along the East African coast
What were some arts produced by Africa?
● Carvings and sculptures out of wood, ivory and metal
● Textiles exhibited bold colors and patterns
● Known for intricate beadwork
What wree some technological advancements in Song China?
● Develoepd compass during the late 1000s, as well as accurate water clocks and reliable water mills
● Invented gunpowder
● Popularized the use of paper currency
● Improved printing techniques, making the transition from woodblock to movable-type printing
What were some classical Chinese literature?
● about a wicked landowner
● by Wu Chengen inspired by the journey of the monk Xuanzang to India
What were Chinese products?
● Silk
● Exquisite glassware and procelain
What shaped Japanese religious life?
● Importation from China through Korea of Buddhism, Confucianism and Daosim
● Coexisted with Shinto, Japan’s native faith
What were some classical Japanese literature?
● by Lady Murasaki about love and court life
● describes the Taira-Minamoto war that destroyed the Heian regime
What religions gained popularity in medieval shogunates?
● Zen Buddhism
● Pure Land/Jo Do
What were hte cultural impacts by polynesians on Oceania?
Polytheistic form of worship principally focused on the avoidance of taboos–the Polynesian word for ritually forbidden behaviors
Why was cultural life in the pre-Columbian Americas unusual?
● Wheel, so fundamentally important in Afro-Eurasia, was essentially unknown
● Systems of writing were rare
What was the principal way of life in most of North America?
● Hunting and foraging
● Animism
● Most adavanced was the Mississippain civilization whose people practiced agriculture, built cities as trading centers and earth mounds
What were hte architectures Incas constructed?
● Large cities including hte capital Cusco (Cuzco)
● The fortress and temple complex of Machu Picchu
