Ancient Civilizations Of The World

About 5,000 years ago the first urban societies developed laying the foundations for the first civilizations. Nearly all civilizations share the same few features- they have abundant food surpluses, contained cities, political bureaucracies, armies, defined religious and social hierarchies and long distance trading. Ancient Egyptian culture flourished between c. 5500 BCE with the rise of technology (as evidenced in the glass-work of faience) and 30 BCE with the death of Cleopatra VII, the last Ptolemaic ruler of Egypt. It is famous today for the great monuments which celebrated the triumphs of the rulers and honored the gods of the land. The culture is often misunderstood as having been obsessed with death but, had this been so, it is unlikely it would have made the significant impression it did on other ancient cultures such as Greece and Rome. Neolithic means "e;new stone"e;, even though agriculture was the crowning achievement of the period. Civilizations started out small. Agriculture at first tended to tie only small groups together. These groups also all settled along rivers, important as a reliable and predictable source of water. As time passed, families usually worked the same plot of land over successive generations, leading to the concept of ownership. Ancient mortars and grinding tools unearthed in a large mound in the Zagros Mountains of Iran reveal that people were grinding wheat and barley about 11,000 years ago. Grass pea, wild wheat, wild barley, and lentils were found throughout the site, including some of the earliest known samples. This was much further east than most sites known for early agriculture. This book furnishes with utmost facility to all classes of readers, the needed information on ancient civilization. The unusual variety of the subject makes this a work of endless fascination.

that hold a particular fascination for modern readers, alongside a broader, contextual panorama of the global cultures that shaped the ancient world. The book has over 1,000 colour and black-and-white illustrations." --Book Jacket.

In this concise, yet sweeping look at the origins and development of ancient new world civiliozations, Richard adams provides a superb introductory overview of these unique and fascinating cultures. Incorporating the latest breakthroughs in the study of the cultures of Mesoamerica and the Andes, Adams examines the development of the Olmec, Maya, Aztec, and Inca peoples, among others, from simple agricultural societies to urban civilizations with complex transportation networks, distinct social hierarchies, rich artistic and religious traditions, and writing systems that have defied anthropological investigation until recently.

In this new paperback edition of Early Civilizations of the Old World, Charles Keith Maisels traces the development of some of the earliest and key civilizations in history. In each case the ecological and economic background to growth, geographical factors, cross-cultural intersection and the rise of urbanism are examined, explaining how particular forms of social structure and cultural interaction developed from before the Neolithic period to the time of the first civilizations in each area. This volume challenges the traditional assumption of a band-tribe-chiefdom-state sequence and instead demonstrates that large complex societies can flourish without social classes and the state, as dramatically shown by the Indus civilization. Such features as the use of Childe's urban revolution theory as a means of comparison for each emerging civilization and the discussion of the emergence of archaeology as a scientific discipline, make Early Civilizations of the Old World a valuable, innovative and stimulating work.

Drawing on many avenues of inquiry: archaeological excavations, surveys, laboratory work, highly specialized scientific investigations, and on both historical and ethnohistorical records; Ancient Civilizations, 3/e provides a comprehensive and straightforward account of the world’s first civilizations and a brief summary of the way in which they were discovered.

Why did the Greeks excel in geometry, but lag begin the Mesopotamians in arithmetic? How were the great pyramids of Egypt and the Han tombs in China constructed? What did the complex system of canals and dykes in the Tigris and Euphrates river valley have to do with the deforestation of Lebanon's famed cedar forests? This work presents a cross-cultural comparison of the ways in which the ancients learned about and preserved their knowledge of the natural world, and the ways in which they developed technologies that enabled them to adapt to and shape their surroundings. Covering the major ancient civilizations - those of Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, Greece, the Indus Valley, and Meso-America - Olson explores how language and numbering systems influenced the social structure, how seemingly beneficial construction projects affected a civilization's rise or decline, how religion and magic shaped both medicine and agriculture, and how trade and the resulting cultural interactions transformed the making of both everyday household items and items intended as art. Along the way, Olson delves into how scientific knowledge and its technological applications changed the daily lives of the ancients.